Remembering Dr. King

Dear editor:

Fifty years ago, on April 4, 1968, Dr. King was planning a national occupation of Washington, D.C., to be called the “Poor People’s Campaign,” when he was assassinated by James Earl Ray. On the eve of his assassination, speaking in Memphis, Tenn., he said, paraphrasing, in part:

If I was standing at the beginning of time, with the possibility of general and panoramic view of the whole human history up to now, and the Almighty said to me, “Martin Luther King, which age would you like to live in?” I would take my mental flight to Egypt through, or rather across the Red Sea, through the wilderness on toward the Promised Land. And in spite of its magnificence, I wouldn’t stop there. I would move on by Greece and take my mind to Mount Olympus. And I would see Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Euripides and Aristophanes assembled at the Parthenon as they discussed the great and eternal issues of reality.

But I wouldn’t stop there. I would go on, even to the great heyday of the Roman Empire. And I would see developments around there, through various emperors and leaders. But I wouldn’t stop there. I would even come up to the day of the Renaissance, and get a quick picture of all that the Renaissance did for the cultural and aesthetic life of man. But I wouldn’t stop there. I would even go by the way that the man for whom I’m named had his habitat. And I would watch Martin Luther as he tacked his 95 theses on the door at the church in Wittenberg.

But I wouldn’t stop there. I would come on up even to 1863, and watch a vacillating president by the name of Abraham Lincoln finally come to the conclusion that he had to sign the Emancipation Proclamation. But I wouldn’t stop there. I would even come up the early ’30s, and see a man grappling with the problems of the bankruptcy of his nation. And come with an eloquent cry that we have nothing to fear but fear itself.

But I wouldn’t stop there. Strangely enough, I would turn to the Almighty, and say, “If you allow me to live just a few years in the second half of the twentieth century, I will be happy.” Now that’s a strange statement to make, because the world is all messed up. The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land. Confusion is all around. That’s a strange statement, but I know, somehow that only when it is dark enough, can you see the stars.

And I see God working in this period of the 20th century in a way that men, in some strange way, are responding, something is happening in our world. The masses of people are rising up and wherever they are assembled today, whether they are in Johannesburg, 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.”

Now, 50 years later, confusion is still all around. The cry is still the same. Charles Wagner Smith Hot Springs