The winter and early spring of 1968 was a hard time for Dr. King. Facing hostile criticism for his activism against the Vietnam War and attempts to advocate racial and economic justice in his Poor Peoples Campaign, he had spent much of the past six weeks attempting to help Memphis's sanitation workers get their union recognized by the city. As I wrote in February, the fight was a flashpoint in the civil rights movement, leading to a violent crackdown of a March demonstration Dr. King led.
He returned to Memphis, fully aware of the great dangers being in Memphis posed to both the movement and his own personal safety. The imagery of traveling the Jericho Road, a hard and dangerous road, made all too much sense to Dr. King as he returned to a city with a hostile mayor under close watch from the FBI (not, mind you, there to protect the reverend from the scores of death threats against him, but to watch his every move for suspicious activities).
The "I Have Been to the Mountaintop" speech is not the oratory of a man impressed with his verbal gifts, but a serious call to remain committed to a calling no matter what the obstacles. That calling included both the general push for social justice in America and the specific push for the city of Memphis to give its African American employees recognition as a unionized workforce deserving of better pay, better job security, and a measure of respect. As he had done so many times in the past, Dr. King inspired the crowd who came to hear him speak to rise above their fears of what might happen to push for what could happen.
He invoked historical examples to magnify the importance of the campaign at hand, arguing that 1968 marked a time as important as Moses leading the Jews out of Egypt, as important as the Renaissance and Reformation, as important as the Emancipation Proclamation and the New Deal. He argued that if he had the power to ask God to allow him in the short time he had to see any one period, it would be (at the time) the present.
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 20th 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 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 twentieth 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, South Africa; 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."
And another reason that I'm happy to live in this period is that we have been forced to a point where we are going to have to grapple with the problems that men have been trying to grapple with through history, but the demands didn't force them to do it. Survival demands that we grapple with them. Men, for years now, have been talking about war and peace. But now, no longer can they just talk about it. It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it's nonviolence or nonexistence. That is where we are today.
That is where we are today. Out of crisis comes opportunity. And Memphis in 1968 was -- as Birmingham, Montgomery, Little Rock, and Chicago before it -- in crisis.
That is where we are today. It was this perspective that led Dr. King to say that despite the vitriol and abuse that he was happy God had allowed him to be in Memphis to live to see what was happening.
Happy not to be a detached bystander, but one of many active participants in the struggle. Not the most important nor indispensable one, either. Never more than in this speech, Dr. King's realization of his mortality was in clear focus. He compared the current campaign to the Jericho road, a dangerous road. He talked explicitly about attempts on his life, about a stabbing where the blade came so close to his heart that had he sneezed he would have died.
He could have easily used that story to caution his audience away from action and into the safety and silence of their own homes. But he did not do that. The final paragraphs of the speech have been analyzed as a premonition of his death. Yet they are much more than that.
The man speaking was not a man acting with no regard for his personal safety. Dr. King had fears. He had fears as a man who had endured specific threats to his life for years. He had fears as a husband and as the father of young children who themselves were in danger just for being his family. Yet he was willing to work to overcome those fears in order to bring hard-fought change. His hopes and dreams depended upon overcoming those fears.
He also was working to inspire others to do the same no matter what happened in the days ahead. He gave practical and specific advice about what the community in Memphis could do to bring a satisfactory end to the strike. But he also requested of his audience to "let us develop a kind of dangerous unselfishness" in order to do the work.
The fear and the threats were real, and could not be avoided if real change was to come. "The question is not: if I stop to help the man in need, what will happen to me? The question is: if I don't stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to them?" That was the question Dr. King posed to himself, and to his listeners.
He spoke, as I mentioned above, about an attempt on his life. I want to quote this passage at length. I recommend both listening to it and reading the complete transcript for context, but it is worth excerpting here. The fear and the threats were real, and not new. Dr. King had endured threats on his life before. How he spoke of those threats was instructive and as powerful an attack on the politics of fear as any American speaker since at least Franklin D. Roosevelt.
You know, several years ago, I was in New York City autographing the first book that I had written. And while sitting there autographing books, a demented black woman came up. The only question I heard from her was, "Are you Martin Luther King?" And I was looking down writing, and I said, "Yes." And the next minute I felt something beating on my chest. Before I knew it I had been stabbed by this demented woman. I was rushed to Harlem Hospital. It was a dark Saturday afternoon. And that blade had gone through, and the X-rays revealed that the tip of the blade was on the edge of my aorta, the main artery. And once that's punctured, your drowned in your own blood -- that's the end of you.
It came out in the New York Times the next morning, that if I had merely sneezed, I would have died. Well, about four days later, they allowed me, after the operation, after my chest had been opened, and the blade had been taken out, to move around in the wheel chair in the hospital. They allowed me to read some of the mail that came in, and from all over the states and the world, kind letters came in. I read a few, but one of them I will never forget. I had received one from the President and the Vice-President. I've forgotten what those telegrams said. I'd received a visit and a letter from the Governor of New York, but I've forgotten what that letter said. But there was another letter that came from a little girl, a young girl who was a student at the White Plains High School. And I looked at that letter, and I'll never forget it. It said simply,
Dear Dr. King,
I am a ninth-grade student at the White Plains High School."
And she said,
While it should not matter, I would like to mention that I'm a white girl. I read in the paper of your misfortune, and of your suffering. And I read that if you had sneezed, you would have died. And I'm simply writing you to say that I'm so happy that you didn't sneeze.
From that modest, touching show of support, Dr. King took stock in his life leading up to the evening of April 3, 1968.
And I want to say tonight -- I want to say tonight that I too am happy that I didn't sneeze. Because if I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been around here in 1960, when students all over the South started sitting-in at lunch counters. And I knew that as they were sitting in, they were really standing up for the best in the American dream, and taking the whole nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the Founding Fathers in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been around here in 1961, when we decided to take a ride for freedom and ended segregation in inter-state travel.
If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been around here in 1962, when Negroes in Albany, Georgia, decided to straighten their backs up. And whenever men and women straighten their backs up, they are going somewhere, because a man can't ride your back unless it is bent.
If I had sneezed -- If I had sneezed I wouldn't have been here in 1963, when the black people of Birmingham, Alabama, aroused the conscience of this nation, and brought into being the Civil Rights Bill.
If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have had a chance later that year, in August, to try to tell America about a dream that I had had.
If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been down in Selma, Alabama, to see the great Movement there.
If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been in Memphis to see a community rally around those brothers and sisters who are suffering.
I'm so happy that I didn't sneeze.
Had he ended here, the story would have a neat and happy ending. On April 3, 1968, Dr. King was vibrant, alive, and doing his inspirational work as he had for more than a decade. The story's end was happy, had the story ended there. But the speaker knew it was not yet over. He knew when he returned to Memphis how real the dangers were.
And yet he returned.
I left Atlanta this morning, and as we got started on the plane, there were six of us. The pilot said over the public address system, "We are sorry for the delay, but we have Dr. Martin Luther King on the plane. And to be sure that all of the bags were checked, and to be sure that nothing would be wrong with on the plane, we had to check out everything carefully. And we've had the plane protected and guarded all night."
And then I got into Memphis. And some began to say the threats, or talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers?
Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop.
And I don't mind.
Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!
And so I'm happy, tonight.
I'm not worried about anything.
I'm not fearing any man!
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!!
The mountaintop. A view of a more enlightened nation where (to paraphrase an earlier speech of Dr. King's) the color of one's skin did not affect the person's ability to rise to prominence; rather, the content of one's character determined what one could accomplish.
Dr. King knew, as he invoked the Bible, that a better place awaited even if he himself would not live to join the rest of us there. Even had he died the next day -- and as we know, he would be dead by evening of the next day -- it was worth the risk to get America into the place he saw in the distance from the mountaintop. No fears -- not even fears of death -- were going to stop him. The work was too important, the promise of what lay ahead if that work be done was too great.
Now, I don't know exactly what Dr. King saw as he looked beyond April 3, 1968. Much in the subsequent forty years might please him; much would disturb him. The violence engulfing America's largest cities after his murder would surely sadden him; the abandonment of those scarred neighborhoods for decades by political and economic institutions would surely have enraged him.
More challenges lay ahead. The rise in violent crime killing thousands of African Americans -- including many young people -- between the mid-1970s and mid-1990s. The pseudo-scientific explanations of these phenomena as proof of biological inferiority became fashionable in policy circles. Dr. King may have been encouraged by sustained drops in violence beginning in the mid-1990s, though still disturbed by America's high rates of homicide when compared to the rest of the industrialized world.
Violence and fear. What would Dr. King have said in the hours, days, and months after 9/11? What would Dr. King have said as our leaders led us into war in Iraq? What would Dr. King have said as our leaders passed the Patriot Act, wiretapped us, and told us suspension of our civil liberties was necessary to prevent mushroom clouds over our cities? How would Dr. King have reacted to the Bush administration's deliberate actions to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of American citizens after the struggle to win voting rights was supposedly won for good?
How would Dr. King have been demonized on the floor of Congress, on cable news, on the radio? How would the FBI and TSA treat this man today? So much of what this country does today would face damning criticism from the man. How much of his rhetoric of the nation's ills would be sliced and diced in the media to inflame passions and distract from the challenges at hand?
Those challenges, as well as others remaining from his campaigns in the 1960s, endure. The residential segregation Dr. King struggled against in Chicago in 1966 remains a defining characteristic of American geography. Disparities in economic opportunity endure. Though Dr. King had seen federal dismantling of protections of Jim Crow laws in his lifetime, the structural inequalities of decades of Jim Crow (and centuries of slavery) still enacted a daily toll on Americans in 1968. And continue to do so today.
Yet there has been progress. Promises of more to come await, if we are willing to take the risks to get there.
Dr. King, in his short lifetime, had already seen pioneers such as Carl Stokes come to political power. In the years since, more came through the door, as Tom Bradley, Harold Washington, David Dinkins broke barriers to lead the nation's three largest cities. Dozens of other municipalities saw new leadership, and the House of Representatives saw distinguished members such as Barbara Jordan provide leadership. Massachusetts elected Edward Brooke to the Senate, giving African Americans representation in the upper chamber of Congress for the first time since Reconstruction. Illinois subsequently sent Carol Moseley Braun and Barack Obama to that body.
If Dr. King could see from the mountaintop forty years into the future, he would be able to make out Barack Obama's run for the presidency. He would have seen a man with skin similar to his own attempting to win the highest office in the land, and that in itself would represent a great leap forward from 1968. Shirley Chisholm's run just four years later represented a tremendous advance. The campaigns of Dr. King's friend and colleague Jesse Jackson represented great progress.
Yet Barack Obama's campaign would not be remarkable because of the color of his skin so much as the content of his campaign. Once again, fear and threats dominate the American body politic, be it fears of Islamic terror, fears of dirty bombs, or fears that Americans will not elect a black man. (Or, among many, fears that a certain fate will befall a black presidential candidate.) It is no accident that the watchword for Obama's campaign is "Hope" just as it was no accident that Jesse Jackson implored his audience to keep hope alive twenty years ago. Unlike some deeply cynical depictions made recently, these appeals to hope are not those of naive children who believe if someone says let’s get everybody together, let’s get unified the sky will open, the light will come down, celestial choirs will be singing, and everyone will know we should do the right thing, and the world will be perfect. No. Hope is the courage to keep on going down the Jericho road, despite knowing the odds against you.
This century fear has caused this nation to abandon so much of what it has stood for. Fear has led us into a war without end. Fear has led us to sanction torture. Fear has led us to demonize those who seem foreign to us, be they on television or living around the corner. Fear has prevented us from -- as John Kerry quoted another prominent American, Langston Hughes -- "letting America be America."
Hope is vital to deliver us freedom from fear. I suspect Dr. King would recognize that if he could see what is happening now from his view at the mountaintop.
There are many real differences between Dr. King and Senator Obama. Dr. King was an agitator working to pressure the system to change. (If Dr. King was alive today, no doubt he would try to pressure Candidate Obama into more explicit economic relief programs for American workers and more explicit repudiations of imperialistic foreign policy. His criticisms of Presidents Kennedy and Johnson make that clear.) Senator Obama's path is to work within the system to enact change from within. Their life stories have different paths, differences only partially explained by the dynamics of historical change over the past century. Yet had Dr. King seen Barack Obama's 2008 campaign from his perspective on the mountaintop, I suspect it would be one example he would give to those listening in 1968 to motivate them to keep fighting.
We today must listen. Dr. King said those words forty years ago in support of a specific struggle. (I must mention here that though we remember the strike mostly for the tragedy of April 4, this movement and even Dr. King's death catalyzed a significant victory in Memphis. Within days of the assassination, the city relented under overwhelming pressure and recognized the sanitation workers' right to organize. Even in death, Dr. King achieved victories.) Yet his words are instructive as we face challenges in the twenty-first century. I cannot begin to speculate what words Dr. King would use if he were here today to inspire us to move forward, but I know he would tell us to move forward. Everything about how he acted in his life and what he said forty years ago today makes me certain of that conclusion.
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