Spend some time with King today
On Martin Luther King’s birthday, I assign myself to read
one of his speeches or letters. I got the idea from friends at the Milwaukee
Journal Sentinel’s Minority Caucus, who would commemorate the day by sending around
King quotes and thoughts about him on the interoffice computer system.
I have continued this tradition for myself, years after
leaving the paper, because I wanted to make sure to keep and expand on my own
accurate intellectual memory of King. I was half way to 10 when he was killed. My
memories of him include standing with my family as King spoke in a baking hot
park on the South Side of Chicago. Dr. Strickland, who lived down the street,
had a big black umbrella, which I found fascinating. I remember my mother,
stunned and still in front of our little black and white TV when the news of
King’s assassination was announced. I remember my sister staying at home for
days because of riots throughout the city and because of the unrest at her
predominantly white North Side high school.
These little freeze frame memories are precious to me, but I
know that I have to build on my memory of King, to illuminate it with King’s
own words and as much reliable information as possible. I’ve made a promise to
myself not to let anyone else – not Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama – define
King for me. This is especially important today and it’s especially important
for those of us who call ourselves journalists or truth tellers.
Last year in this space, I wrote my thoughts about King’s
speech from New York’s Riverside Church, where he shaped and molded his
anti-Vietnam stance before an overflowing crowd of more than 3,000 people. That
speech was given exactly one year before King was assassinated in Memphis. Reviewing
the speech was especially timely last year because of the debate over the Iraq
war. King’s comments seemed prescient even from the grave, but yet we still are
there in that war. Some politicians are now debating on how best to slowly
tiptoe out backwards; others want to stay.
Last night, I read King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” He
started the letter in the margins of newspaper and on scraps of paper from a
black trusty when he was jailed for integrating lunch counters and
non-violently protesting Jim Crow conditions in Birmingham.
King and Ralph Abernathy were arrested on Good Friday, 1963, and were
held for eight days. Hundreds of others also had been arrested during the
campaign. In “Why We Can’t Wait,” King talks about the days leading up to his
arrest. He worries about how funds for producing bond were dwindling and about the
wavering morale among his comrades. King also had come under attack from local
clergy, which led him to write his letter from the Birmingham jail.
King wrote the Birmingham Jail letter in response to eight
clergymen who, in a published letter, had urged him to butt out of the city’s
business. I first remember being introduced to King’s Birmingham letter in college by an English
teacher who extolled the letter for its organization, narrative and phrasing. I
remember it for its lasting phrases.
“I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be
concerned
about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere
is a threat to justice everywhere.”
He talked about waiting and what that meant to black people.
“For
years now I have heard the word “Wait.” It rings
in
the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This
“Wait,”
has almost always meant “Never.”
And he talked about the pain of telling his children about
the realities of his country in the 1960s – of not being able to tell his six-year-old
daughter that she couldn’t go to the amusement park she saw advertised on TV.
He talked about watching his Negro brothers “smothering in an airtight cage of
poverty in the midst of an affluent society,” a haunting image that still
hasn’t been erased from our view today.
It still amazing to me how eloquent and powerful King is in
his writing, like an orchestra. My fear though is that people will take lines
from his music without listening to his whole song, either because they don’t
have the time or because it’s not convenient for their cause. That’s why I
cringe when I hear most politicians use his words. After reading “Letter from
Birmingham Jail,” or the entire “Why We Can’t Wait,” the politician’s goal of
getting elected to higher office comes off flat.
So, if you haven’t already done so, spend some time with
King today. Learn the history yourself and pass it on to someone else.
Curtis Lawrence is a
journalism professor at Columbia College Chicago.
clawrence@colum.edu