February 14, 2018
Page 17
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O PINION
Martin Luther King Jr. and Passing the Baton
Reviving an anti-
poverty crusade
M arC h. M orial
“We read one day, ‘We hold
these truths to be self-evident,
that all men are created equal,
that they are endowed by their
Creator with certain inalienable
Rights, that among these are
Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of
Happiness.’ But if a man doesn’t have a job
or an income, he has neither life nor liberty
nor the possibility for the pursuit of hap-
piness. He merely exists.” — Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr.
It is near universally known that Dr.
Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream. For
the most part, that dream is closely tied to
his courageous work around racial inequal-
ity and injustice. This dream conjures up
images of little black boys and girls join-
ing hands with little white boys and girls as
brothers and sisters.
But Dr. King had another dream. It was
a dream of economic justice for all of our
nation’s poor. Tragically cut down by an
assassin’s bullet before the start of the new
Poor People’s Campaign, Dr. King would
not live to see the launch of his dream for
economic justice. Fifty years later, as the
baton passes from the legacy of Dr. King
by
to the leadership of Rev. William J. Barber
II, the poor of our nation have another ad-
vocate to fight on their behalf.
Rev. Barber is no stranger to so-
cial justice movements centered on
fighting for the poor and the most
vulnerable. During his time as the
president of the NAACP’s North Car-
olina chapter, Rev. Barber led “Moral
Mondays” protests at the North Caro-
lina state house. His coalition of pro-
testers transcended race, socio-eco-
nomic or ideological divides. They were
united in a multi-issue struggle, mirroring
the kind of coalition Dr. King and Ralph
Abernathy envisioned for the Poor Peo-
ple’s Campaign a half century ago.
The conditions of poverty that spurred
Dr. King to action in 1968 continue to mo-
tivate Dr. Barber in 2018. According to the
latest census figures, more than 40 million
Americans live below the federal poverty
line today. During Dr. King’s time, 35 mil-
lion Americans lived in poverty. While the
latest job figures show that racial gaps in
employment are slowly closing, yawning
income inequality and the consolidation
of wealth at the top of the economic food
chain remain stubborn fixtures of our top-
one-percent centric economy.
Dr. King spoke of “the presence of a
kind of social insanity which could lead
us to national ruin” in 1968. Today, we are
bracing for the impact of the regressive
Tax Reform law—legislation that per-
manently cuts taxes for corporations, but
offers this relief temporarily for middle
and working-class Americans. Members
of Congress pushed hard to gives tax cuts
and breaks to the wealthiest Americans,
but have not found the same political will
to fund the Children’s Health Insurance
Program, leaving millions of American
children at risk of losing vital healthcare
coverage.
Politically, our country is a far cry from
the “war on poverty” declared by President
Lyndon Johnson in 1964, when the federal
government’s priority was “not only to re-
lieve the symptoms of poverty, but to cure it
and, above all, to prevent it.” Today, as we
watch the social safety net is systematically
unraveled beneath our feet, it is clear that
we are fighting a targeted war on the poor.
For thousands, that fight will be fought
under the banner of “The Poor People’s
Campaign: A National Call for Moral Re-
vival,” led by Revs. Barber and Liz Theo-
haris. The agenda is “to challenge the evils
of systemic racism, poverty, the war econ-
omy, ecological devastation and the na-
tion’s distorted morality” with close to five
weeks of action at statehouses around our
country and at our nation’s capital.
We in the Urban League Movement were
privileged to engage with Rev. Barber and
discuss his mission and vision first-hand
when he spoke at our 2017 Conference in
St. Louis. His address left us energized and
inspired to continue the work of my pre-
decessor, Whitney M. Young, who worked
hand-in-hand with King and other leaders
of the era as executive director of the pri-
mary civil rights organization dedicated to
economic empowerment.
The work of the Poor People’s Campaign
culminated with a Poor People’s March on
Washington shortly after Dr. King’s assas-
sination, and a six-week occupation of the
Washington Mall by march participants
and advocates. With campaign’s revival
soon upon us, it is clear that the spirit of
1968 is alive and well—and its spirit has a
newfound home in Washington.
I was recently honored with an invita-
tion to discuss Dr. King’s economic justice
dream at the new exhibit of the National
Museum of African American History and
Culture, “City of Hope: Resurrection City
& the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign.” We
stood among the relics and pictures of past
but felt very connected to our struggles in
the present. Dr. King’s struggle remains
our nation’s struggle, and we must contin-
ue to move towards equality and economic
justice for all.
Marc H. Morial is president and chief
executive officer of the National Urban
League.
Handicapping African-American Progress for Decades
A war of ideas
between black folk
and white liberals
o sCar h. b layton
In January of 1963, I
was in my senior year
at my all-Black high
school and required to
take a course in U.S.
Government.
Our
teacher was a World
War II veteran who was also the basket-
ball coach with an easy-going manner. We
spent more time discussing current events
than dead presidents and supreme court
justices.
The most recent civil rights demonstra-
tion was usually the topic of discourse. But
one day, in the middle of that month, our
teacher asked the class if we knew who
Malcolm X was. Every hand in the room
went up. But when asked to explain who he
was, few of us were able to say more than
he was a “Black Muslim” and that he had
once been in prison.
Two weeks earlier Malcolm had led
a demonstration at New York County’s
Criminal Court Building, in Manhattan,
protesting police hostility toward two
Nation of Islam Muslims who had been
selling Muhammad Speaks newspapers
in Times Square on Christmas Day. This
demonstration received national attention
by
and 30 years later was portrayed in Spike
Lee’s film bearing Malcolm X’s name. But
as a 17-year-old high school student at the
time, I had not been paying much attention.
A few weeks later, Malcolm led a
demonstration of 230 Muslims in Times
Square, protesting police brutality. Ameri-
ca was now paying even more attention to
Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam. The
immediate response from white America
was that the Nation of Islam was subver-
sive and dangerous, a fringe group led by
Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X that
preached a hatred of all white people.
But a year earlier, in 1962, Malcolm
had been speaking less about the racially
skewed teachings of Elijah Muhammad
and had begun getting more involved in
seeking civil rights and justice for Afri-
can Americans. But the damage had been
done. The worst of Malcolm X’s words
were weaponized against him and he was
declared as being beyond redemption. By
the time of his assassination in February
1965, he had been condemned as an anath-
ema to America and its values. This was a
view held by conservatives, most liberals
and many Blacks.
In January 1999, the United States Post-
al Service issued a stamp in honor of Mal-
colm X.
Malcolm could not have changed from
the time of his assassination until his be-
ing honored by the Postal Service. He was
dead. What had changed was America. It
became clear to our nation that the wrongs
and injustices against which Malcolm
fought were real and his struggle had vir-
tue. Despite his offensive words in his ear-
lier career, Malcolm sought to make Amer-
ica a better place.
In recent weeks, news has surfaced that
Barack Obama stood for a photograph in
2005 with Minister Louis Farrakhan, the
current leader of the Nation of Islam. The
overheated reaction by numerous white
liberals to this revelation is reminiscent of
the reaction to Malcolm X 50 years ago.
This inability of these white liberals to
contextualize Malcolm X within the Amer-
ican fabric in 1965 and Louis Farrakhan in
2018 reveals a daunting problem that has
handicapped the progress of African Amer-
icans for many decades. Too many white
liberals want to make Black folk in their
own image. In the mental construct of the
world they wish to create there is a place
for Black folk, but not Black folk like Mal-
colm X or Louis Farrakhan.
To some white liberals, the Malcolms
and the Farrakhans are wrinkles in the
American fabric that must be removed if
a future liberal America is to be smooth.
But those wrinkles have been created by
centuries of racism, both in the U.S. and
abroad and they cannot be removed with-
out destroying the fabric itself.
Too many white liberals see African
Americans as two-dimensional cutouts
that can be disbursed throughout a liberal
America. Our presence would be devoid
of our history of slavery, Jim Crow and
modern-day oppression and the social
complexities which they have created. Our
presence would also be disconnected from
other oppressed people of the world. In a
word, our presence would be non-threat-
ening to the preferred world order of most
white liberals. But that is a white liberal
fantasy that cannot exist in a world as com-
plex as ours. It is a flawed national view
and a flawed worldview.
One person who typifies the white liber-
als holding these flawed views is Alan Der-
showitz. The Harvard law professor emer-
itus has championed many liberal causes
and shown himself to be deeply concerned
with civil rights. Nonetheless, he is report-
ed to have said on Fox News recently that
had he known of the Obama – Farrakhan
photograph taken in 2005, he would not
have supported Obama’s presidential bid
in 2008.
Citing offensive remarks attributed to
Farrakhan about Judaism and Israel, Der-
showitz has denounced him as a subver-
sive, un-American anti-Semite.
The problems with Alan Dershowitz’s
position regarding Obama’s taking a pic-
ture with Farrakhan are two-fold. First, by
associating Obama with Farrakhan’s views
he is painting with too broad a brush. Many
politicians have their pictures taken with
individuals with whom they do not agree
politically or ideologically. In 2005, Farra-
khan, as a resident of Illinois, was one of
C ontinued on P age 18