Monumental legacy of Martin Luther King
Behold, this dreamer cometh…let us slay him.
Genesis 37: 19, 20
MEMPHIS, Tenn.--Taste is a great divider. Classic works of literature versus
dime-a-dozen novels. Serious nonfiction books versus kitsch. Classical music versus noise.
So it is with my favorite cemetery, Père Lachaise in Paris. There I commune with the famous dead like Molière, Oscar Wilde, Chopin and Rossini. But, alas, most people
rush to the grave of rock star Jimmy Morrison.
It’s similar in Memphis. People flock to Graceland. Yet to me Elvis Pressley, the king, is meaningless. The King who matters was the one assassinated here in 1968.
Speaker after speaker at the third annual Media Reform Conference here spoke fervently about Martin Luther King and his monumental legacy. But the 3,500 attendees came not to praise King but to denounce the Corporate Media, the media that is strangling American democracy.
Jesse Jackson, in the rolling cadences of a black preacher, told how the media would ask King for comment about racial issues. But when King deplored the Vietnam War he was accused of knowing nothing about foreign policy.
“If America’s soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam,” King said. “It can never be saved so long as it destroys the hopes of men the world over.”
Today he would say the same thing about Iraq.
King also on Vietnam: “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” Ditto about Iraq.
When King attacked the savagery of capitalism and the gap between the rich and poor, why, he was told he knew nothing about economics.
King said: “Something is wrong with capitalism as it now stands in the United States. We are not interested in being integrated into this value structure…a radical redistribution of power must take place.”
No wonder the FBI hounded him, sending false reports to the press slandering him and calling him a communist. No wonder the FBI never warned him of assassination threats it had learned of.
Yes, the “I Have a Dream” speech is marvelous. But, unfortunately, that is all that too many people remember about king: his fight for racial equality. They do not remember his battles for social justice and for a decent America.
Indeed, the reason he came to Memphis was to support 1,300 striking sanitation workers. The night before he was murdered he told them: “The issue is the refusal of Memphis to be fair and honest in its dealings with its public servants…All we say to America is: ‘Be true to what you say on paper.’ ”
It recalls the anguished yet hopeful lines of poet Langston Hughes: “O, let America be America again. The land that never has been yet…O, yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me. And yet I swear this oath: America will be!”
King, speaking to the sanitation workers, invoked the biblical prophet Amos: “Let judgment run down as waters and righteousness as a mighty stream.” He spoke eloquently of the Good Samaritan.
King was fond of recalling his student days at Morehouse College in Atlanta. There he first read Thoreau’s great essay, “Civil Disobedience.” He became fascinated with the idea of refusing to cooperate with the evil of apartheid in the South.
“I was so deeply moved that I reread the work several times,” King said. “This was my first intellectual contact with the theory of nonviolent resistance.”
As Thoreau put it: “Must the citizen ever for a moment…resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? I think that we should be men first and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law so much as for the right.”
Thus, it is moving to visit the Lorraine motel where King was slain. A large white plaque points to the fatal balcony of room 307. The words are by Ralph Abernathy, then president of the Southern Christian Leadership Council.
Abernathy quotes from Genesis: “They said one to another, behold, here cometh the dreamer…let us therefore slay him…And we shall see what will become of his dreams.”
The throat tightens. The eyes moisten.
King, in his speech to the sanitation workers, admitted that he might not get to the promised land. But, thanks to him, the nation got partway there. It still has an awfully long way to go to fulfill King’s dream for America.
Genesis 37: 19, 20
MEMPHIS, Tenn.--Taste is a great divider. Classic works of literature versus
dime-a-dozen novels. Serious nonfiction books versus kitsch. Classical music versus noise.
So it is with my favorite cemetery, Père Lachaise in Paris. There I commune with the famous dead like Molière, Oscar Wilde, Chopin and Rossini. But, alas, most people
rush to the grave of rock star Jimmy Morrison.
It’s similar in Memphis. People flock to Graceland. Yet to me Elvis Pressley, the king, is meaningless. The King who matters was the one assassinated here in 1968.
Speaker after speaker at the third annual Media Reform Conference here spoke fervently about Martin Luther King and his monumental legacy. But the 3,500 attendees came not to praise King but to denounce the Corporate Media, the media that is strangling American democracy.
Jesse Jackson, in the rolling cadences of a black preacher, told how the media would ask King for comment about racial issues. But when King deplored the Vietnam War he was accused of knowing nothing about foreign policy.
“If America’s soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam,” King said. “It can never be saved so long as it destroys the hopes of men the world over.”
Today he would say the same thing about Iraq.
King also on Vietnam: “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” Ditto about Iraq.
When King attacked the savagery of capitalism and the gap between the rich and poor, why, he was told he knew nothing about economics.
King said: “Something is wrong with capitalism as it now stands in the United States. We are not interested in being integrated into this value structure…a radical redistribution of power must take place.”
No wonder the FBI hounded him, sending false reports to the press slandering him and calling him a communist. No wonder the FBI never warned him of assassination threats it had learned of.
Yes, the “I Have a Dream” speech is marvelous. But, unfortunately, that is all that too many people remember about king: his fight for racial equality. They do not remember his battles for social justice and for a decent America.
Indeed, the reason he came to Memphis was to support 1,300 striking sanitation workers. The night before he was murdered he told them: “The issue is the refusal of Memphis to be fair and honest in its dealings with its public servants…All we say to America is: ‘Be true to what you say on paper.’ ”
It recalls the anguished yet hopeful lines of poet Langston Hughes: “O, let America be America again. The land that never has been yet…O, yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me. And yet I swear this oath: America will be!”
King, speaking to the sanitation workers, invoked the biblical prophet Amos: “Let judgment run down as waters and righteousness as a mighty stream.” He spoke eloquently of the Good Samaritan.
King was fond of recalling his student days at Morehouse College in Atlanta. There he first read Thoreau’s great essay, “Civil Disobedience.” He became fascinated with the idea of refusing to cooperate with the evil of apartheid in the South.
“I was so deeply moved that I reread the work several times,” King said. “This was my first intellectual contact with the theory of nonviolent resistance.”
As Thoreau put it: “Must the citizen ever for a moment…resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? I think that we should be men first and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law so much as for the right.”
Thus, it is moving to visit the Lorraine motel where King was slain. A large white plaque points to the fatal balcony of room 307. The words are by Ralph Abernathy, then president of the Southern Christian Leadership Council.
Abernathy quotes from Genesis: “They said one to another, behold, here cometh the dreamer…let us therefore slay him…And we shall see what will become of his dreams.”
The throat tightens. The eyes moisten.
King, in his speech to the sanitation workers, admitted that he might not get to the promised land. But, thanks to him, the nation got partway there. It still has an awfully long way to go to fulfill King’s dream for America.
posted by Jake Highton | 4:51 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home