Remembrance
Attracting thousands of people to downtown's South Main district, the event was a spectacle for a man who came to Memphis to champion the humblest and most overlooked of laborers: the non-unionized sanitation workers whose pitiful salaries and harsh working conditions inspired not just a demand for economic justice but a declaration of humanity, as represented by the iconic “I AM A MAN” signs.
It also was an event that took place a day after police arrested immigration protesters outside the Shelby County Criminal Justice Center while city officials touted a King-inspired “I AM MEMPHIS” promotional campaign on billboards and buses.
Even the weather — sunny but chilly — expressed contradiction.
The national dignitaries who appeared at the commemoration mostly spoke on the fateful balcony in front of King's preserved Room 306, at a podium behind a wreath that was draped in black until it was unveiled at 6:01.
Their comments were captured, analyzed and transmitted around the world by the satellite trucks bristling with antennae that ringed the museum.
The speakers included activists; religious and labor leaders; civil rights icons; and survivors of the 1968 Memphis campaign (including labor leader Bill Lucy and nonviolence advocate Rev. James Lawson). Local politicians fared less well than the out-of-towners; Tennessee's Republic governor, Bill Haslam, was booed, while Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland and Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell were drowned out in some areas of the crowd by protesters chanting "Fifty years — No change."
Many of the speakers suggested that King's mission remains urgent. "While Confederate flags may have been lowered, their spirit flies high and strong across America today," said Rev. Michael Pflegler, a Chicago activist priest.
Although he appeared only via a videotaped message broadcast on a large center screen, Obama earned perhaps the loudest applause from the VIPs in the folding chairs in the museum courtyard and the onlookers massed along Mulberry Street, in front of the Lorraine facade that serves as the west wall of the civil rights museum. (Hundreds more watched the commemoration from bleachers erected in front of a pair of large “TV To Go” screens on nearby Main Street.)
“America is fairer and freer and more just than it was in Dr. King’s time,” Obama said. “But we have to take stock of all the work that remains.”
He praised those who follow King’s “hopeful vision" (including the young people who recently marched “to stem gun violence”), as “each new generation… recognizes it, too, is America.”
Jesse Jackson, a ubiquitous Memphis presence this week, alluded to Obama when he remarked on the progress of black America since the tragedy of 1968: “From the balcony in Memphis to the balcony of the White House”
Jackson book-ended his remarks with his trademark “I Am Somebody" chant, a particularly meaningful exhortation for Memphians ever since the civil rights leader employed it at the famous 1972 Wattstax concert devoted to Stax artists in Los Angeles.
A Baptist minister who was with King in Memphis, Jackson — who delivered his remarks not far from where he stood when the civil rights leader was killed — explicitly compared the martyred King to Jesus.
“If Atlanta is his Bethlehem, Mason Temple Church of God in Christ is his Gethsemane, then this is his Calvary — and not far from Calvary is resurrection,” said Jackson, referring to the city of King’s birth and to the site of his “Mountaintop” speech as well as to the Lorraine Motel.
"From this balcony we decided we would not let one bullet kill a movement," said Jackson, adding that King is again “alive” whenever people carry on his work. "When the children marched last week — he’s alive," he said. At another point, he recalled King’s murder, shouting “Pow!” and slapping the door frame of Room 306.