Remembering the dreamers

Fifty years ago this Spring two great heroes of many Americans and of many people around the world were tragically assassinated. On April 4, 1968 Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis, Tenn. and on June 4, 1968 Senator Robert Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles, Calif.

In 1955 King had organized the Birmingham, Ala., bus boycott as a major opposition to public segregation in the American south. Throughout the late 1950s King was the most prominent American civil rights leader as he gave great dignity to black Americans who in almost half of America were inundated with Jim Crow segregation laws that had existed for a century, following the previous two centuries of slavery.

King led the massive march for civil rights on Washington in 1963 where he delivered the “I have a dream” speech of a day where humankind will be free at last from prejudice between people who were different from each other.

King was the leading American political activist behind the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which eradicated discrimination in public places based on race, as well as the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that ensured every American irrespective of race the right to vote in every election in every state.

By 1967 King was publically criticizing the Vietnam War and called for an immediate halt to the U.S. bombing of North Vietnam and a withdrawal of U.S. troops, which alienated him from many of his former supporters in the Democratic White House of President Lyndon Johnson.

In early 1968 King called for increased public spending to alleviate poverty through better funded social programs and a massive federal jobs program. In March of 1968 King travelled to Memphis to support the city’s predominately black sanitation workers who were trying to attain better pay and safer working conditions after two of them had been recently crushed within a garbage truck where they took shelter from a rainstorm because Memphis bylaws at the time would not permit them in or near privately owned facilities. King was shot and killed in this last attempt to bring public attention to the injustice and economic inequality of so many black Americans by trying to overcome local laws against Memphis sanitation workers from striking and publically protesting.

Martin Luther King the dreamer was killed, however, his dream lived on.

On the night of April 4, 1968, hundreds of riots erupted in predominantly black sections of almost every major U.S. city except in Indianapolis, Ind., where Democratic Senator Robert Kennedy was campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination and informed the crowd that King had been shot and killed and that the best way to honour him was to not seek vengeance against those of another race for that was not what King sought. Kennedy reminded the crowd that he had suffered the loss of a family member through this same violent act from a white man even though his brother, John F. Kennedy, was white.

Robert Kennedy ran for president in 1968 on a platform to end the Vietnam War and reached out to oppressed American minority groups who were disproportionately affected by poverty and discrimination with a message of empathy and inclusion. Tragically, after a series of Democratic presidential primary victories, which culminated with major win in the June 4 California primary, Robert Kennedy was shot and he died on June 6, 1968.

Robert Kennedy’s dream of seeing things that never were and saying “why not?” never died, as today we still seek a society free of war, poverty and discrimination and we have attained in the last half century racial integration, the election of a black U.S. president, more educational and political opportunities for women and gay rights.

King’s message of non-violent public protests and recognizing that any injustice in the world is a threat to justice everywhere in the world have been emulated by many social activist causes.

Their dreams have not been completely fulfilled and they died young attempting to attain their will.

However, the hundreds of millions of people they touched means their historical legacy endures.

John Ryall Mount Pearl