MLK and progress
This year, the federal holiday honoring Martin Luther King Jr. falls on his true birthday. He would have been 95 on Monday.
He delivered his most iconic speech in 1963 at the Lincoln Memorial, as part of the historic March on Washington, and it was acknowl- edged immediately as a triumph of rhetoric by contemporary listeners.
A Los Angeles Times article commented on King’s “matchless eloquence” and called him an orator of “a type so rare as almost to be forgotten in our age.” A New York Times reporter said King was “full of the symbolism of Lincoln and Gandhi, and the cadences of the Bible.”
The speech surely influenced Time Magazine’s selection committee—King was named as the publication’s “Man of the Year” for 1963 shortly afterwards.
But King’s prowess as a speaker did not translate into popularity. Most white Americans thought he was trying to move things too fast. Some Black activists thought his insistence on nonviolence was too compromising, and too slow-moving for revolutionary change.
While the majority of 21st century American adults claim to be familiar with his speech, according to Pew Research Center survey results published last August, the percentages vary with age.
Two-thirds of U.S. adults above age 65 said they had read or heard a great deal about King’s speech, but only a bare majority (53 percent) of people in the 18-29 age group said so.
Among young adults, 16 percent said they knew nearly nothing about the speech.
I recommend watching the video and reading the transcript in its entirety as a fine and fitting activity for the holiday. But analyzing progress in the six decades since is done best by focusing on specific grievances he called out.
These points came in the middle part of his speech, where he stuck fairly close to his prepared notes.
“We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of unspeakable horrors of police brutality.” The days of officers unleashing attack dogs on peaceful marchers are long gone, but issues of unfair treatment of Blacks by police still persist. A separate Pew study found that most Americans believe video technology capable of capturing police violence helps to hold officers accountable.
“We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities.” Blacks are well-represented among guests of all hotel chains and welcome at motels, bedand-breakfasts and Airbnbs everywhere today.
“We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one.” The Black poverty rate has fallen by more than half since 1962. More importantly, in 1962 only 4 percent of Blacks had attained a college degree (half the white percentage), compared to 26.7 percent in 2022 (three-quarters of the white percentage).
“We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating for whites only.” Any such signage would be universally unthinkable and unacceptable today.
“We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote.” Blacks have the same voting rights as whites in Mississippi and every state today. Mississippi had a higher share of eligible voters who are Black than any other state in a 2022 Pew study.
Last year, the New York State Assembly selected its first-ever Black speaker, and more than 15 percent of legislators are Black, which mirrors the Black population proportion in the Empire State.
About seven paragraphs into his prepared speech, when King paused, gospel singer Mahalia Jackson shouted “tell ’em about the ‘dream.’” King subtly pushed his notes aside, and departed from his prepared remarks. He seldom looked down during the improvisation of the final minutes— where he repeatedly says he has a dream—and that unscripted oration is what ultimately set the speech apart.
King could not have foreseen additional challenges that replaced state-sanctioned racism. In 1960, there was only a 13-point difference in the marriage rate between whites (74 percent) and Blacks (61 percent). The rate has plummeted for both races, but worse for Blacks, so the gap has grown to 24 points. Births to children without fathers in the home have become an epidemic in Black families as well.
Neither of those have to do specifically with racial justice as King envisioned and sought it. But both have much to do with racially disparate social and economic outcomes.
Martin Luther King Jr.’s vision and dream was ahead of his time. His ability to express both is timeless.
The fact that the tide of public opinion about him has done a complete 180 (82 percent of whites in 2023 said King had a positive impact on the country, according to Pew), and that his explicit instances of gross injustice have been lessened or eliminated are both examples of praise-worthy progress worth noting.
Celebrating progress doesn’t mean ceasing it.
Quite the opposite: Recognizing improvement typically inspires more of it.