What our country needs right now is leadership

The tragic events in Charlottesville are an example of the growing violence in a climate that is reminiscent of the atmosphere of the 1960s. The racial tension from the past is rearing its ugly head as we continue to reimagine the American identity to include all people. The difference between then and now is that we had inspiring, strong, determined individuals who stood up to the racist tendencies that threatened to harm American society.

Diane Nash and Ella Baker were voices in the Civil Rights movement as they organized the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee - sending students to lunch counters in 1960 and on Freedom Rides in 1961. James Meredith and the NAACP integrated the University of Mississippi in 1962. John Lewis and Josea Williams stood toe-to-toe at Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965 as the state police crashed down on a peaceful march from Selma to Montgomery. Robert Kennedy led an effort to confront poverty in Bedford-Stuyvesant hoping to give impoverished people a better life, a program that continues today. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had a vision for the nation of non-violence, which he never surrendered despite the growing militancy in the Civil Rights Movement.

We need to look to these lessons of the past to help us navigate the travails of the future. Charlottesville is an example of that danger. We need Dr. King’s dream to guide us and embrace love, not hate. President Barack Obama tweeted a quote from Nelson Mandela in his effort to make sense of Charlottesville. “No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin or his background or his religion... People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love … For love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.” Mandela emphasized love as a way to fight violence. Dr. King’s 1964 Nobel Peace Prize speech emphasized the power of love when he said “I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality.” This is the leadership that we need today.

When we lost Dr. King on April 4, 1968, Robert Kennedy spoke to a group in Indianapolis, Indiana, informing them of his murder. Kennedy went on speaking, from the back of a pickup truck, without any notes. He concluded that speech emphasizing King’s dream saying, “What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness; but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or they be black.”

What we need in the United States today is leadership. The 1960s taught us that leadership doesn’t have to come from Washington. It can come from a seamstress refusing to give up her seat on a bus or a six-year old girl sitting by herself in a classroom to integrate a school. The last few years are a warning that although we’ve made progress, the issues from the past continue to challenge us today. Whether it be the tragic death of 14-yearold Emmett Till in 1955, the beatings of peaceful demonstrators at lunch counters in 1960, firehoses and dogs attacking demonstrators in Birmingham in 1963, or the deaths in 1964, 1965 and 1967 at riots in our cities, the nation had leaders to guide them through those difficult times.

We need to stand up and emphasize love not hate, compromise not confrontation, compassion not indifference. Those ideals are the legacies of our past leaders who wanted a better world for the next generation and it is our responsibility, as we confront those same ugly issues in the twenty-first century, to make good on the promise that some of them, Kennedy and King included, gave their lives in hope of a better world.