When
the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.
was being held in jail in Alabama in
1963 he received a letter signed by
several well-known White self-proclaimed
racial moderates and liberals which
decried the unpleasantness and social
disruption of the on-going campaign against
racial discrimination in Birmingham.
Since he had unaccustomed time
on his hands he took the time to patiently,
even lovingly explain the situation
in America’s most segregated city
and why he and the Black citizens of
the city were compelled to launch their campaign
of non-violent direct action braving
beatings, dogs, firehoses, threats,
bombings, and jail to do
so.
But
he also chastised the ministers’ smug assumptions and refusal to either take any risks to correct
the underlying cause of the unrest or dirty
their hands in labor to correct
it. “Shallow understanding from
people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from
people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright
rejection.” He said that the white church needed to
take a principled stand or risk being “dismissed as an irrelevant social club.”
That
message could not be more pointed or
relevant today. The decedents of those nervous and alarmed clergy can still be found in too many pulpits and in the pews
of good Christians who in today’s moral crisis fret that the simple declaration of the fact that Black Lives Matter is somehow racist; that a broken window, scuffle with
police, or the disruption of holy commerce is somehow more terrible than Black bodies in the streets or whole
communities living in the terror of a virtual
occupation. Ministers who do speak out, even in many liberal congregations face backlash from both pledging members and the wider
communities in which they must work.
 |
| King in the Birmingham Jail. |
If
he had lived the Reverend Martin Luther
King, Jr. would have turned 87 years old today. Nothing
would have surprised him more.
Most
folks know and can quote snatches of
two or three of his most famous speeches. The TV
will play clips of the I Had
a Dream speech given at from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial at 1963’s March
on Washington for Jobs and Justice.
Maybe they will also show a tad of his prophetic I Have Been to the Mountain Top
speech given to a church audience in
Memphis the night before he was killed.
His
more devoted fans treasure other things, perhaps most
notably his Letter From the Birmingham Jail. But that still make liberals uncomfortable.
The
quotes most apt to surface are about non-violence
or his blander paeans to brotherhood. That’s because the largely White establishment media wants to use
his birthday and the official holiday as a sop to Blacks on one hand and an only thinly veiled, almost hysterical plea to them “Don’t hurt us!” on the other.
 |
| Dr. King Speaks. |
Today,
I would like to celebrate with a collection
of quotes from Dr. King that illustrate
exactly how radical, even revolutionary, he was. Let him speak for himself.
Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must
be demanded by the oppressed.
Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but
comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work
for our freedom. A man can’t ride you unless your back is bent.
Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of
creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.
Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern world that
we must love our enemies—or else? The chain reaction of evil—hate begetting hate,
wars producing more wars—must be broken, or else we shall be plunged into the
dark abyss of annihilation.
History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of
this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people,
but the appalling silence of the good people.
Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable... Every
step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle;
the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.
I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a
burden to bear.
I submit to you that if a man hasn’t discovered something
that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.
It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but
it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that’s pretty important.
Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the
philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make
philanthropy necessary.
Property is intended to serve life, and no matter how much
we surround it with rights and respect, it has no personal being. It is part of
the earth man walks on. It is not man.
That old law about “an eye for an eye” leaves everybody
blind. The time is always right to do the right thing.
The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain
neutral in times of great moral conflict.
The past is prophetic in that it asserts loudly that wars are
poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.
We are not makers of history. We are made by history.
When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are
wrong, you cannot be too conservative.
No comments:
Post a Comment