Celebrating Martin Luther King Jr.

Two of the men I admire most were assassinated 50 years ago this year: Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4th, 1968 and Robert F. Kennedy on June 5th, 1968. (Bobby died on June 6th about 25 hours after being shot.)

 

Both men had jobs to do and both men did them extraordinarily well.

 

Both men were seeking justice–the undoing of wrongs–in the positions they held:

MLK’s Where Do We Go From Here? http://amzn.to/2DyOd5b and Strength to Love http://amzn.to/2DA2gYo

RFK’s The Enemy Within at Amazon

 

Interestingly enough, they might both have ended up in the same field: religion.

 

Bobby Kennedy considered the Catholic priesthood as a young man. Before they married, his wife Ethel considered becoming a nun, which left him chagrined wondering aloud to his sister, “Do I dare compete with God?”

 

But both men ended up in the jobs that were, I like to think, ordained for them from on high.

 

Both were social justice warriors.

The Landmark Speeches of Martin Luther King Jr. http://amzn.to/2FHvRiT

American Journey: The Times of Robert Kennedy: http://amzn.to/2FHtJYr

 

Both wanted a fair deal for all Americans willing to do the work to achieve what they needed and wanted to live decent, productive lives.

 

Mexican Americans, Native Americans and African Americans still have photos of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. prominently displayed in their homes. I own a cherished t-shirt with them on it.

 

King’s “I Have a Dream Speech” and Robert Kennedy’s comments on the day King was killed are etched into my memory as two of the greatest speeches I ever heard during my lifetime.

 

Another of Bobby’s best was this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yp81OYCjXtU

 

But on this Martin Luther King Jr Day I want to express how Martin Luther King Jr. inspired a white kid like me to put myself in the black man’s shoes and walk with him until my feet hurt and my soul cried out for justice.

 

I remember well asking my mother, as a child of the 50’s living in the mostly-white world of the Pacific NW at the time, what country I was seeing on our television set that was turning police dogs and batons and fire hoses loose on black people in the streets. When she said, sadly, “It’s our country,” I was utterly appalled and horrified. I simply couldn’t believe it.  Our country? Where?

 

The only two black people I’d known personally in my short lifetime to date were my Sunday School teacher and her son Walter, both of whom I adored. They were terrific people!  So… what must they be thinking, seeing, hearing, watching on their TV sets?   Was this news to them, too, or did they already know that part of our country was like this? (Little did I know, until later, that the north wasn’t a whole lot better when it came to the way they viewed black people…)

 

I wasn’t raised racist. The topic of races never even came up except in Sunday school where we were taught to sing, “Red and yellow black and white, They are precious in His sight, Jesus loves the little children of the world.”

 

I was soooooo mad at white people!  I wanted to go down there and crack open some heads myself. I wanted to see those monsters rocked back on their heels and told to go home or get arrested!

 

And then this black man came on TV, this reverend, a man who actually lived down there. And while he was upset, he wasn’t livid. He wasn’t hateful like I was. He was quiet, decent, and measured.

 

Inside myself, I was feeling a lot more like Stokely Carmichael and Malcolm X than I was Martin Luther King. Jr.

 

But as I listened to King I instinctively knew, “We can’t get anywhere good as long as we’re at each other’s throats. We need to calm down, recognize our mutual challenges and interests, and find a way forward together.”

 

Martin Luther King Jr was the one bright spot, the guiding light, that could get us from where we were to where he and I and others of goodwill wanted us to be.

 

I was mesmerized by his ability to keep loving in spite of the vitriol and hate that seemed amassed against him. (I found the same thing amazing about President Obama.)  I kept asking myself, “If I was black, would I have whatever it takes not to take racism personally?”  And if I wasn’t (and I doubted I was), would I have been one of the black people swinging by their necks from trees?

 

Martin Luther King Jr. was the saint we needed to get us through those dark days with some semblance of sanity.  He de-escalated with his rhetoric. He stated facts but always with deepest regret, and then reassured us that we could do better…that we were better than this as a nation.

 

That alone makes me take this blessed day of remembrance very, very seriously.

 

Martin Luther King Jr reminded me that the loving little girl I was was the same person who would see us through to a brighter day. He reminded me that it is love and compassion that redeem the world, not anger or vitriol.

 

I still believe that. I still have the dream. I will die with it in my heart.

 

And I have Martin Luther King Jr. to thank for that.