Page 12
April 11, 2018
O PINION
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Thank You Dr. King, We Will Carry On
The profound
impact he had
on my life
M arian W right e delMan
I first heard Dr. Martin Lu-
ther King Jr. speak in person
on April 19, 1960 during my
senior year at Spelman College.
Dr. King was just 31 but he had
already gained a national reputa-
tion during the successful Mont-
gomery bus boycott five years ear-
lier. The profound impact on me
of hearing Dr. King that first time
is evident in my diary where I re-
peated long portions of his speech
that had vibrated the chords of my
freedom- and justice-hungry soul.
It is not often that great leaders
and great turning points in histo-
ry converge and sweep us up in a
movement.
Dr. King became a mentor and
friend. Many children today have
come to see him as a history book
hero – a larger-than-life, mythical
figure. But it’s crucial for them
to understand Dr. King wasn’t a
superhuman with magical pow-
ers, but a real person – just like
all the other ministers, parents,
teachers, neighbors, and other fa-
miliar adults in their lives today.
Although I do remember him as
a great leader and a hero, I also
remember him as someone able
to admit how often he was afraid
and unsure about his next step.
But faith prevailed over fear, un-
certainty, fatigue, and sometimes
by
depression. It was his human vul-
nerability and ability to rise above
it that I most re-
member. “If I Can
Help Somebody
Along the Way”
was his favorite
song.
Dr.
King’s
greatness lay in
his willingness to struggle to hear
and see the truth; to not give into
fear, uncertainty and despair; to
continue to grow and to never
lose hope, despite every discour-
agement from his government and
even his closest friends and advis-
ers. He would say: “Take the first
step in faith. You don’t have to see
the whole staircase, just take the
first step.” That first time I heard
him at Spelman he told us to al-
ways keep going: “If you cannot
fly, run; if you cannot run, walk; if
you cannot walk, crawl. But keep
moving. Keep moving forward.”
Ten years ago I wrote a letter to
Dr. King in my book ”The Sea Is
So Wide and My Boat Is So Small:
Charting a Course for the Next
Generation.” I rewrite just a small
part of it here:
Although you have been gone
50 years, you are with me every
day. We have made much but far
from enough progress in over-
coming the tenacious national
demons of racism, poverty, mate-
rialism, and militarism you repeat-
edly warned could destroy Amer-
ica and all of God’s creation. So
I wanted to write you a letter on
what we have done and still have
to do to realize your and Ameri-
ca’s dream. What a privilege it
was to know, work with, and learn
from you in the struggle to end ra-
cial segregation, discrimination,
and poverty in our land.
Just as many Old and New
Testament prophets in the Bible
were rejected, scorned, and dis-
honored in their own land in their
times, so were you by many when
you walked among us. Now that
you are dead, many Americans
remember you warmly but have
sanitized and trivialized your mes-
sage and life. They remember Dr.
King the great orator but not Dr.
King the disturber of unjust peace.
They applaud the Dr. King who
opposed violence but not the Dr.
King who called for massive non-
violent demonstrations to end war
and poverty in our national and
world house.
They applaud your great 1963 “I
Have a Dream” speech but ignore
the promissory note still bounc-
ing at America’s bank of justice,
waiting to be cashed by millions
who are poor and non-white. We
now have more than 40 million
people who are poor in America
including more than 13.2 million
children although our gross do-
mestic product is more than three
times larger than in 1968. And the
income gap between rich and poor
in the United States continues at
historically high levels and higher
than in every other wealthy indus-
trialized nation.
But you struggled on as the
civil rights leadership splintered,
as white Americans tired of black
demands, and as the country be-
came preoccupied with Vietnam.
I marveled every night during the
long Meredith March from Mem-
phis to Jackson at your patient
discussions with Stokely Carmi-
chael and Willie Ricks and other
SNCC leaders who wanted to ex-
clude whites from the movement
and push you to endorse all nec-
essary means for change, includ-
ing violence. You listened as they
vented their justified frustrations
about the slow pace of racial prog-
ress and you tried to reason with
them, repudiating their proposed
“Black Power” slogan and strat-
egies without repudiating them.
You taught me and others of your
followers how to parse out the
good from the not so good, and to
always seek common ground. And
when you had no immediate solu-
tion you gave others the courtesy
of a respectful hearing.
In the years between Montgom-
ery and Memphis, you listened,
learned, grew, and spoke the
truth about what you discerned,
and resisted those who sought to
ghettoize your concern for social
justice and peace. After your op-
position to the Vietnam War pro-
voked a firestorm of criticism by
whites, blacks, friends, and foes,
you correctly asserted that “noth-
ing in the commandments you be-
lieved in set any national boundar-
ies around the neighbors you were
called to love.”
Black people told you to be
quiet, not anger President Johnson
and jeopardize his support for civ-
il rights and antipoverty efforts.
White people told you to be quiet
because you were not an expert on
foreign policy, as if black leaders
and citizens had no stake in a war
tearing our nation apart and tak-
ing disproportionate numbers of
lack children’s lives, forgetting it
was the “experts” that got us into
this ill-fated war in the first place.
Some contributors deserted you as
you called not only for an end to
the Vietnam War but for a fairer
distribution of our country’s vast
resources between the rich and the
poor. Why, they asked, were you
pushing the nation to do more on
the tail of the greatest civil rights
strides ever and challenging a
president who already had de-
clared a war on poverty? You un-
derstood that our nation’s ills went
deeper …
You blessed America with your
rich faith, spiritual traditions, and
prophetic preaching. You gave us
your deep and abiding love and
lifelong commitment to nonvi-
olence. You shared your moral
clarity and courageous truth tell-
ing. You left us your unrelenting
commitment to justice for the poor
and every one of God’s children.
You showed us the way through
your example and call for massive
nonviolent action in the service of
justice and peace. And you gave
us your life.
Thank you. We will carry on.
Marian Wright Edelman is
president of the Children’s De-
fense Fund.
King’s Dream Included Economic Equality, Too
Work to reshape
America’s
values continues
J essiCah P ieree
The 50th an-
niversary of the
day Martin Lu-
ther King, Jr. was
assassinated was
commemorated last
week. Just after 6
p.m. on April 4, 1968, King was
fatally shot while standing on the
balcony outside his second-sto-
ry room at the Lorraine Motel in
Memphis, Tenn.
American history rightly honors
King as one of its most celebrated
civil rights leaders. Growing up, I
remember learning about his fa-
mous “I Have A Dream” speech.
by
My teachers always highlighted
him as a peaceful, non-violent
protester against segregation, and
a preacher who promoted messag-
es of love and justice for all.
He was all those things. But
that’s only one part of King’s
legacy.
King was actually very rad-
ical about his vision of change
for America. He didn’t just
criticize segregation — he
recognized the need for deep,
structural changes to our en-
tire economic and political sys-
tem.
King identified three evils
plaguing western civilization. In a
speech at the National Conference
on New Politics in 1967, King said
the United States is suffering from
“the sickness of racism, excessive
materialism, and militarism” — a
sickness that “has been lurking
within our body politic from its
very beginning.”
“We have diluted ourselves into
believing into believing the myth
that capitalism grew and pros-
pered out of the Protestant ethic of
hard work and sacrifice,” King ob-
served. But “the fact is capitalism
was built on the exploitation and
suffering of black slaves and con-
tinues to thrive on the exploita-
tion of the poor — both black and
white, both here and abroad.”
King foreshadowed that if we
maintain our exploitive economic
and political systems, then we’d
get not only racial apartheid, but
economic apartheid as well.
He was right. Nearly 51 years
after that speech, we’re still head-
ing in that direction.
A recent report from the Insti-
tute for Policy Studies found that
just three people — Jeff Bezos,
Bill Gates and Warren Buffet —
own more wealth than the bottom
half of the country combined.
“The Forbes 400 list altogether
own $2.68 trillion in wealth, more
than the gross domestic product
of Britain, the world’s fifth richest
country,” the report notes.
On the other end of the spec-
trum, one in five Americans have
zero or negative wealth. The pro-
portion grows larger when we
break it down by race, rising to 30
percent of black families and 27
percent of Latino families.
As much as we cite the vision
that MLK laid out for America,
decades later we’ve not moved in
the right direction. Within the past
year alone, we’ve seen GOP tax
cuts siphon wealth from middle
and working class Americans to
the ultra-wealthy and big corpo-
rations.
And we’ve seen a proposed
federal budget that increases mil-
itary spending to a historic 61
percent of discretionary spending
in 2019. Housing and community
programs would receive a 35 per-
cent cut, according to the National
Priorities Project.
It’s all there: racism, material-
ism, and militarism.
King called for a “radical redis-
tribution of political and econom-
ic power” in order to end those
three evils. Now is the time for
this necessary radical change. We
must channel MLK’s revolution-
ary spirit into an effort to reshape
America’s values to ensure justice
for all — “both black and white,
both here and abroad.”
Jessicah Pierre is the inequali-
ty media specialist at the Institute
for Policy Studies. Distributed by
OtherWords.org.