USA TODAY International Edition
MLK’s legacy fights for footing
50 years after assassination, his ‘mountaintop’ is in sight but still out of reach
Nearly 50 years after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, his protégé Jesse Jackson ticks off a list of the many ways in which the civil rights leader’s push for people to reach what he called the “mountaintop” — a final plateau of racial and economic harmony — continues to be a struggle.
Jackson, who was with King in Memphis to press for fair wages for the city’s sanitation workers on the day of the killing, notes all these years later, more than half of African-American workers earn less than $15 an hour — and income inequality in America has ballooned.
White supremacists, Jackson said, are boldly and more frequently espousing their racist views.
And a string of police shootings of unarmed black men and women — including the shooting death of Stephon Clark last month in Sacramento — continues to exacerbate an uneasy relationship between law enforcement and the African-American community.
“We are paying a price for ignoring Dr. King’s prophetic wisdom,” Jackson, head of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, told USA TODAY. “Fewer and fewer have more and more, and more and more have less and less. We have a bigger military budget than the next 15 nations combined. At home, we have 350 million guns in the street. We’re becoming consumed and addicted by violence abroad and at home.”
On Wednesday, the nation marks 50 years since King was shot April 4, 1968, as he stood on his balcony at Memphis’ Lorraine Motel — a dark moment in American history that triggered violence in more than 100 U.S. cities.
In Memphis, civil rights leaders will commemorate King’s legacy with a march through the city. In Washington, the National Council of Churches will hold a rally on the National Mall they say will be the starting point of a multiyear effort with the goal of eradicating racism and bringing the country together. Smaller memorials honoring King are scheduled throughout the country.
But the milestone also is being observed as the nation finds itself wading through choppy waters in race relations.
Last month’s police shooting of Clark, an unarmed black man who was killed by police officers in Sacramento responding to a call of someone breaking a window, ignited angry protests and renewed the national debate about police tactics in black communities.
Clark, 22, is the latest in a long list of police shootings of black men — such as Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo.; Laquan McDonald in Chicago; and Walter Scott in North Charleston, S.C. — that have shaken America in recent years.
“I think King would be asking questions today similar to those he was asking near the end of his life with the Poor People’s Campaign and with the garbage workers’ strike in Memphis,” said Kofi Ademola, 37, an organizer for the Baltimore and Chicago student group, Good Kids Mad City, that advocates for broad changes in the justice system.
Jim Winkler, president of the National Council of Churches, said incidents such as the Clark shooting, the rise of white nationalism and the 2015 shooting rampage at a black church in Charleston by a gunman who said he wanted to ignite a race war underscore the need for Americans to address the scourge of racism.
“You can’t just ignore what’s happening around you, especially if you’re a serious Christian,” said Winkler.
“I know Dr. King would have been in his late 80s if he we were alive today, but I’m confident he’d be out there in Sacramento. I know he’d be calling for an investigation of what happened, and I think he’d be saying this is about more than what happened to Stephon Clark.”
“If King were alive today he’d be confounded by how little has changed in terms of African-American encounters with the criminal justice system and law enforcement community,” said the Rev. Marshall Hatch, a Chicago-based activist. The Chicago pastor was only 10 when King was assassinated. But the memories of the riots and looting that engulfed a swath of the city’s West Side after King’s death are still clear.
“There is very little talk about the wide and growing disparity between the rich and the poor,” Hatch said. “It says something very disturbing about the country. The moral climate has declined precipitously.”
Jackson said that if King were alive today he would see a ray of hope amid the uncertainty in the diverse group of young people who organized last month’s March for Our Lives rallies. “There is unfinished business, but my hope is that America has become disgusted with this attempt to go backward,” he said.
“I know Dr. King would have been in his late 80s if he we were alive today, but I’m confident he’d be out there in Sacramento.” Jim Winkler National Council of Churches