Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. - A Man To Make Proud - By David Pratt
Ninety-one years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was born in Atlanta, Georgia. In the course of a too-short life, ended by a gunshot in Memphis 39 years later, Dr. King would spend nearly half of it fighting for the equality of all people. The movement he led was catapulted to national notoriety when he, along with fellow activist E.D. Nixon, organized the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955, an event which eventually led to the end of segregation of Montgomery public buses, an enormous triumph for African Americans at the time.
From this beginning, King’s accomplishments and his opposition grew in equal share. He was criticized by fellow activists such as Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael for not being radical enough in his methods. He was pursued by the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover personally taking an intense interest in King and going all-out to discredit him, using Federal resources to try and establish ties between the Doctor and the Communist movement, or expose his affairs to use as blackmail against him. He marched in Selma. He marched in Montgomery. He marched on Washington, where he let the country know he had a dream. He marched in Chicago and spoke in New York, not content with simply tackling the overt racism of the South, but also the hidden and, in some ways, more insidious racism of the North. He was there when Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the President gave King the pen he used for his signature.
In the course of 39 years, Dr. King inspired millions to hear his words and rise up against the oppression that was a part of everyday life. Unlike Malcolm X, he saw a future, not through militant uprising, but by peaceful demonstration, through sit ins and speeches, through marches and boycotts. Unlike Stokely Carmichael, he sought not the separation of races to exclude others, but a unified country where little African American boys and girls would join hands with little caucasian boys and girls as sisters and brothers. He railed against Vietnam and the millions spent abroad killing those who had never wronged us rather than aiding the poor at home.
On April 3rd, 1968, the day before his assassination, Dr. King gave one final speech, which he concluded by saying:
“Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”
As we know, he did not get there. It is debatable whether any of us did. The Dr. King of 1968 might look at the world of 2020 and find it deflatingly similar to the one he left behind. Racist men with racist slogans march through the streets. Police officers brutalize and victimize with relative impunity. Poverty grips African American communities throughout the nation while the government spends trillions of dollars on foreign adventures. Stacked courts dismantle legislation meant to ensure equality, including the Voting Rights Act King was instrumental in securing in the first place. To the enemies of those behind these acts, the same tired calls that those who fight for a better tomorrow are communists, traitors, or they themselves the racists, are once again laboriously heaved out into the public arena. It is a world Dr. King would be all-too familiar with.
Yet on this day, which would mark the 91st birthday of Dr. King, and one in which he would conceivably still be alive if not for that morning in Memphis 50-odd years ago, we must remember his lessons of hope. We must continue to honor his dream and, though the road still seems long, we can turn and recognize that we have come ten miles for every one that King himself walked in his short life. Though we live in a time where the evils of yesterday that were driven to restlessness by time’s inexorable march and lashing out before being consigned to the dustbin of history seem to be resurging, thanks to Dr. King, to his contemporaries and successors, we now have more allies in this battle than ever before. Even when that dark night seems an impenetrable funeral shroud laid across the future of a nation, hand in hand we will march together into the piercing light of dawn and see the other side of the mountain.
These whimpering gasps of a dying evil, its tendrils limply slithering through our society, are nothing but a reaction to decades of progress and one glorious era of promise. It may have left those of us who thought it gone for good surprised and demoralized, but now we stand together. Now is the time for our retaliation, for us to shine that light of truth and of freedom and of equality on these gluttonous sins of greed and hatred. This year, 2020, with all its promise, is the year the spirit of Dr. King will look down upon the world to see that it is no dream, it is no speech. He will see that the nation he envisioned has come to pass, and that after five decades resting in power, he might finally rest in peace.
