Dr. King said to the Memphis crowd:
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.
We edit and transform history into useful myth. We agree that Dr. King represented racial equality, racial justice, non-violence. He was a Christian who used the tool of turn-the-other-cheek meekness to prod Americans into doing the right thing and grant Black Americans legal equality. We are OK with that.
But by 1968, his message was much broader. He was in Memphis in support of a strike for better pay for Memphis sanitation workers. Their job was dangerous; two men had recently been crushed and killed. The job paid just over minimum wage for long-term permanent employees: $1.60/hour for most workers, $1.90 for men who drove the trucks. (For comparison, I was earning $2.00/hour at the same time to vacuum floors in a part-time job at college.) The workers qualified for food stamps. Workers were expected to put in time "off the clock." There were both Black and White workers, but Black workers experienced worse working conditions than White workers. He was doing the gritty practical political work of coalition-building. He wanted Black churches to support the strike.
King's portfolio had grown to include economic justice. He led a "Poor People's Campaign." That brought new opposition to him and his mission. It is one thing to argue that Blacks should not be bitten by police dogs and beaten with clubs, but agitating for higher wages smacked of "communism" or "socialism." The year 1968 was the height of the Cold War. Dr. King said that the rich have unequal power and capitalism exploited that inequality. Unequal racial power and unequal economic power were two sides of the same coin.
King also became a peace advocate. He opposed the Vietnam War. He said our war there was a colonial war of exploitation and part of the greater system of inequality and violence by the strong against the weak. He spoke to the United Nations and said there was a "moral imperative" of both racial equality and "world brotherhood." It wasn't enough to stop fighting. We needed to have love and compassion for our enemies.
By 1968 King was articulating a broad critique of modern society. It was conspicuous for being both Christian and revolutionary. We were supposed to do the hard things, and do them in real life, not just as platitudes. We were supposed to love our neighbor, love the poor, care for the sick and hungry, and even love our enemies. "Let us develop a kind of dangerous unselfishness," he said in that last Memphis speech. Like in the parable of the Good Samaritan on the road to Jericho, we see the man on the side of the road. Do the hard thing. Care for him.
Americans want to forget the mission of Dr. King's final years because much of it is inconvenient. Racial equality is hard enough, and after 55 years we still aren't there. Day to day economic, social, and political equality are too hard. Dr. King's message defies human nature. The rich man does not want to give it all to the poor to follow Christ or anyone else. The rich man says he earned it; that money is his. America has a capitalist economy and we operate a world empire that protects our safety, wealth, and way of life. We may pray to change that, but when we open our eyes we don't really want change. Otherwise we would do it. We can put Jesus in a mental category box of "religious." It is spiritual, not practical. But Dr. King was here and now, back in 1968. His message became too religious, too fundamental, too much like a day-to-day practical Jesus. We can't handle that, so we edit it out.
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5 comments:
A system skewed towards hoarding the wealth, which is society's historical norm, is unstable politically and descends into oligarchy and worse. It is because of racial and class injustice that a few are prosperous and minorities are disadvantaged. It begins with a financial system that favors the wealthy, rewards itself out of proportion to its contribution and withholds resources from the rest of society.
The idea that one's money is "mine" is Regressive and ultimately unsustainable. This is not to say that effort and success shouldn't be rewarded, just not at the expense of the larger society, especially one like ours with a fundamental inequalities at odds with its founding principles.
Using "human nature" as a defense of indefensible values is also Regressive and discounts the unlimited possibilities of human potential. This message is at the core of Dr. King's evangelicalism.
I find it ironic that the banks close on his holiday, when they are closed to so many others every other day.
Thank you for reviving the MLK who makes us uncomfortable, Peter. Economic inequality and militarism are as deeply ingrained in our nation as racism. The great agglomerations of corporate and financial power have no significant difficulty promoting social equality--indeed, they have discovered that tapping the previously unused abilities of women and people of color is advantageous. Not so with a just economy and international order.
Martin Luther King, Jr. famously said:
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
White nationalists have coopted that quote as a pretext for their War on Woke and CRT. They’ve twisted ‘diversity, equity and inclusion’ into the ‘Great Replacement Theory.’
At a commencement address in 1965, MLK, Jr. said:
“There are all too many people who, in some great period of social change, fail to achieve the new mental outlooks that the new situation demands. There is nothing more tragic than to sleep through a revolution. There can be no gainsaying of the fact that a great revolution is taking place in our world today. It is a social revolution, sweeping away the old order… The great challenge facing every individual graduating today is to remain awake through this social revolution.”
As a ‘Yankee’ attending grade school in the segregated South, I remember being told, “The South will rise again.” They had a zealous belief, divorced from reason, in the rightness of their cause. Today that pretty much sums up the GOP.
And the beat goes on.
MLK‘s message was inclusive. MLK advocated for color-blind justice; judging the people by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. I was a supporter of MLK.
The current push for racial identity politics and “equity“ (as opposed to equality) betrays MLK’s legacy. And then, when you oppose this new woke ideology, its supporters call you “racist,“ an epithet which derives its moral authority from the works of people like MLK, who would have opposed woke ideology had we been fortunate enough to still have him around.
We are dazzled by the latest new thing, attention diverted from the hard work of this Nation to live our principles. Fifty five years is almost two generations, these are grandfather stories. We quest the horizon without a backward glance at the painful road that was before our time. True, things are better optically now for we have as a people have to learned the art of slight and diversion, the secrets of the noble couturier that now cement our individually earned advantages at the expense of others. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s message is troubling today because it says we are failing as a nation and as individual to stay committed to the dream of equality and justice for all people. Furthermore, we are deceiving ourselves to think that we are the embodiment of MLK's noble vision for America. There is work to do.
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