"I'm not fearing any man!"
Fri Apr 04, 2008 at 06:50:03 AM PDT
Today is a sad anniversary.
Today's date is burned into our collective memories. The scars of the pain and frustration of what happened forty years ago are still evident: physical scars on cities torn by riots, and emotional scars often detectable in the conversations we have.
Today, though, I would like to remember just what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was doing in Memphis on April 4, 1968, and why it was worth the risk to him to be there.
Had Dr. King retired from activism after the march on Washington, it would have been enough for many Americans. He had already been a part of the most successful confrontation to the color line in America since Reconstruction. Had he retired to a quiet academic life after the Voting Rights Act, he would have been able to live a lauded (and perhaps long) life.
He didn't do that.
The final years of Dr. King's life saw him challenge the injustices of the United States in ways that went beyond forcing Northern liberals to shake their heads in disgust when watching the vitriol of Southern racism on the evening news. Forty-one years ago today, Dr. King spoke out against the tragic war the United States was embroiled in in Vietnam. His opinion was a deeply unpopular one and it emboldened his enemies (including J. Edgar Hoover) to further the allegations that he was a Communist and a subversive threat. But Dr. King saw the war as not only imperialistic brutality against the people of Vietnam but also a specific oppression of the young African Americans who were sent to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. He saw the war as aggravating the problems of violence endemic to many American cities, North and South.
Northern cities. Where Jim Crow signs didn't exist but segregation defined communities. Where residential segregation was at its most extreme. Where massive public housing projects became racially-segregated warehouses of the poor. Northern cities, where talk of lovingly breaking the law in non-violent fashion was seen as weak by many who had suffered at the hands of the police for decades. Where Malcolm X's invocation of justice by any means necessary had resonance for people tired of police commissions and empty promises from local politicians.
Dr. King came to Chicago in 1966 intent on dismantling residential segregation in that city. In the past decade, buses, schools, lunch counters, voting booths and other institutions throughout the south had seen successful challengers to Jim Crow. But Chicago was intractable. Marches in white neighborhoods were met with abuse. At one in August, Dr. King was hit in the head with a rock. He later remarked, "I have seen many demonstrations in the south but I have never seen anything so hostile and so hateful as I’ve seen here today."
Meetings with Mayor Daley produced promises but no results. Chicago remained as segregated as ever, a failure for the movement.
But Dr. King kept fighting. Aware that economic inequalities in both rural and urban America were devastating communities, he pushed access to economic opportunity in the last months of his life, attempting to launch a "Poor People's Campaign" across the nation. Implementation of the campaign was difficult in many places, but a crisis in one city led Dr. King to believe he could help with an existing problem. In Memphis, tensions between the city and its sanitation workers (an entirely African American workforce operating under brutal conditions with no job security) exploded into a strike in February of 1968.
The strike was deeply unpopular. As in Chicago, a march led to violence, and Dr. King left the city under a cloud of criticism. But by then he was committed to the strike, saying "the movement will live or die in Memphis."
He knew Memphis was dangerous. He knew that though the FBI was always close to him that they were not interested in protecting him. But he returned. On April 3, he delivered his ultimate address in support of the strike. He spoke openly about the great personal dangers to himself and the strikers, calling their journey a Jericho road "a dangerous road" and one where fear could prevent him from doing his work. But, if that work was not done, what would become of the sanitation workers?
Fear would not, could not, stymie the fight for justice. And that is why Dr. King -- a husband, a father of small children -- returned to Memphis.
I quoted the conclusion of the "I Have Been to the Mountaintop" speech in yesterday's diary. Forgive me as I am about to quote it again. It is too important to ignore.
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!!
Dr. King invoked the story of Moses to challenge us -- and himself -- not to give into fear in the fight for justice. It is a challenge unfortunately declined by too many in the early twenty-first century. But it is a challenge he himself took up. He stayed in Memphis.
He stayed in Memphis the next day.
He died in Memphis the next evening.
I grew up a witness to the devastation wrought by the pain left in the wake of Dr. King's death. On the South Side of Chicago, empty lots where stores used to stand lay vacant five, ten, twenty years after the riots of April 1968 claimed them. Banks, grocers, and other business institutions simply left. And Chicago's scars were not unique.
Then there are the emotional scars. I grew up raised by people who still wince at mention of 1968. I grew up in a community of people heartbroken by the death of Dr. King. Some resolved to work harder to improve schools, social services, and fight segregation. Some feared the consequences of fighting. Some became hopeless.
All those reactions are understandable. The scars left in the wake of Dr. King's death were great, and they are visible today. But I write this diary to make two points:
- Dr. King, like Franklin D. Roosevelt before him, resolved not to give into fear.
- Though Dr. King died in Memphis, his efforts there were not in vain.
I cannot do justice to the stories of the people fighting in the Memphis strike here. I urge you to read Michael Honey's masterful history of that movement to get an appreciation for their actions. But I can say here that Coretta Scott King led -- in the immediate aftermath of her husband's death -- a march through the streets of Memphis that attracted international attention. I can say here that the outrage over Dr. King's death allowed the strikers to win recognition from the city and gain some measure of job security and economic justice.
T.O. Jones, the man who had worked for eight years to unionize the sanitation workers, who had himself been the target of an incredible amount of threats and physical abuse, tearfully summed up the mood upon ratification of the new union contract.
We have been aggrieved many times, we have lost many things. But we have got the victory.
Dr. King returned to Memphis for that victory. It was not, to be sure, a victory that would erase all existing injustices, but it was a victory that would better the lives of hundreds of workers.
It was not a victory Dr. King lived to experience, but it was a victory he saw from the mountaintop. A victory that was deeply unpopular by many who then and now see union activity as somehow un-American, subversive to patriotism and the status quo. But Dr. King's patriotism was in its challenge to the status quo to live up to the promise of its founding documents and provide a just society for all. His optimism -- his hope -- triumphed over fear and even his own sacrifice could not prevent that victory.
I'm not fearing any man.
We would do well to live by his example and never cease in the fight for a more just America.
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