From the Mountain Top
King’s last speech before his April 3, 1968 assassination
Every third Monday in January, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is celebrated for his peaceful efforts to get voting rights and other civil rights legislation. But King knew equality required education, wage equity, housing and economic justice. And that peace without justice was neither. Any “spiritual and moral lag” in humanity, King once said, is due to racial injustice, poverty and war. There’s been an ongoing struggle to fulfill that vision ever since … even unto today.
In the Bob Gelfand article on City Watch this week, he writes appropriately, “If we are going to have a holiday celebrating King’s work, let’s at least insist that the country act better than it did in 1968. Nearly 55 years after King’s assasination, this nation is still not there yet.”
At Boston Common, there is a new Hank Willis Thomas public memorial honoring the love and sacrifices made by Coretta Scott King and King in the city where they first met.
On Friday, Jan. 13, the Boston Common — which is the nation’s oldest public park — unveiled its first permanent memorial in 60 years, titled “The Embrace.” The 22-foot-tall bronze sculpture shows King and Scott’s arms intertwined in a hug, which Thomas based on a 1964 photograph of the moment they learned that King won the Nobel Peace Prize. Rather than recreate the entire scene, Thomas isolated their points of contact, leaving space for visitors to stand within.
Some have criticized this abstraction in a public monument without understanding the deeper symbolism and yet it is still only symbolism, no matter how exquisite or powerful. It is not the accomplishment of the vision from the mountain top itself.
Thom Hartmann in his daily blog this week points out the discrepancies.
• Poverty and homelessness stalk our land: more than one-in-seven Americans live in poverty today;
• Millions have no access to affordable healthcare and families suffer over 500,000 medical bankruptcies every year;
• Higher education is increasingly just for the well-born and well-off;
• Most non-unionized workers have few rights and little say in the workplace: only 10.8% of non-government American workers have a union.
And all of this exists even as our econsteps
omy is experiencing a robust recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. This section of King’s last speech still makes me catch my breath. His words still speak to the whole world today. Something is happening in our world. The masses of people are rising up. And wherever they are assembled today, whether they are in Johannesburg, South Africa; Nairobi, Kenya; Accra, Ghana; New York City; Atlanta, Georgia; Jackson, Mississippi; or Memphis, Tennessee — the cry is always the same: “We want to be free.”
And then he is connecting the dots about war and peace and survival.
And another reason that I’m happy to live in this period is that we have been forced to a point where we are going to have to grapple with the problems that men have been trying to grapple with through history, but the demands didn’t force them to do it. Survival demands that we grapple with them. Men, for years now, have been talking about war and peace. But now, no longer can they just talk about it. It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it’s nonviolence or nonexistence. That is where we are today.
His conclusion still brings a tear to my eyes for he knew that the end of his journey was near, but that what matters is that legacy, that the struggle still survives.
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 so, 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!
The very next day, at the age of 18, I was in Washington D.C. near the National Mall at an interracial dance party that ended abruptly with the announcement of King’s assassination. It was the saddest party I ever attended. And then that night, as the outrage spread, the nation’s capital was surrounded by riots and fires, the national guard was immediately called out in force, machine guns and barbed wire were placed on the and in the morning smoke and tear gas still wafted through the air. It was clear to me then, as it is today, that the dream from the mountain top was a vision of what should be, but that it was going to take a long time to get there. And that it wouldn’t be accomplished without many years of struggle.
Luther King Jr. knew he was not the first nor the last to die in this conflict with America’s original sin of slavery, one that should be taught in every school, because the struggle for freedom and equality is one that speaks for all of our history, and should never be censored nor covered up for political advantage or subterfuge.