Tag Archives: President Lincoln

Remembering Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. – January 15, 2024

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ZUMA Press/Newscom/File

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., was first and last an American patriot. As he stated in his Letter From A Birmingham City Jail,

I have no fear about the outcome of our struggle in Birmingham, even if our motives are at present misunderstood. We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation, because the goal of America is freedom. Abused and scorned though we may be, our destiny is tied up with America’s destiny. Before the pilgrims landed at Plymouth, we were here. Before the pen of Jefferson etched the majestic words of the Declaration of Independence across the pages of history, we were here. For more than two centuries our forebears labored in this country without wages; they made cotton king; they built the homes of their masters while suffering gross injustice and shameful humiliation -and yet out of a bottomless vitality they continued to thrive and develop. If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail. We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands. Link Letter from a Birmingham City Jail, April 16, 1963

Months later in front of the Lincoln Memorial, Dr. King continued to profess his belief as a patriot, “I still have a dream,” he said. “It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” Link I Have A Dream Speech, August 28, 1963.

Even in his last speech in support of striking sanitation workers at the Mason Temple in Memphis, Tennessee, the night before he was assassinated, Dr. King, harkened to his deep belief in the American experiment:

Let us rise up tonight with a greater readiness. Let us stand with a greater determination. And let us move on in these powerful days, these days of challenge to make America what it ought to be. We have an opportunity to make America a better nation. And I want to thank God, once more, for allowing me to be here with you. Link I’ve Been to the Mountaintop, April 3, 1968.

Today marks Dr. King’s 95th birthday. Would that this great patriot were alive today to give us his wisdom, faith, and profound belief in democratic principles.

Remembering Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. – January 17, 2022

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The profundity of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s loss is at times an exponential stain on our nation’s history and national psyche.

Gone is the greatness of his very public intellect and conscience. Yes a leader for civil rights and equity, but also for social justice on the streets of Chicago and Memphis, and in the rice fields of Viet Nam in his calls to withdraw American troops from that theater of war.

Can we imagine him today? A great prophet of the airways? His verbal prowess on display, a great orator toying with the sophists and cynics who ply the boards of what we now call political discourse as they banter about espousing fascism like the school children they are playing with chemicals they neither understand nor care about until, perhaps, some combination blows up in their faces.

I weep for the ideal of our nation. Yes. After all is said and done a patriot of sorts. Molded by my parents idealism and my father’s turn as a revolutionary. Even with his Marxist-Leninist frame of reference, he believed in the experiment. Said, as Zhou Enlai famously quipped of the French Revolution, that we would find out in a couple of hundred more years whether the democratic ideals of the USA’s founders really meant something, but until then, do what we could to ensure its ultimate success.

Dr. King was in many ways our best hope for that success embodying every ideal even as he despaired at the hopelessness he saw all too acutely. Last year’s entry by Democracy Now gives a flavor of the latter day Dr. King, speaking with passion about the ills of America, and the work needed to heal them.  The lessons still reverberate, would that he were here to be our conscience now.

 

Remembering Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. – January 18, 2021

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What would Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., make of us today?

ZUMA Press/Newscom/File

We have undergone a violent insurrection at our nation’s Capital Building by those intent on not only impeding the acceptance of the Electoral College vote that saw President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris winning the election, but one that showed a resounding 306-232 win. Those perpetrating the attempted coup and their enablers also came to the Capital with murderous intent seeking out the Vice President and the Speaker of the House for assassination.

A man of faith, Dr. King’s philosophy of non-violence saw him to lead a movement for Civil Rights and go on to embrace anti-war sentiments, social justice, the rights and plights of the poor, and the deeply rooted fractures and faults of the American experiment that were rooted in slavery. That Dr. King persevered through beatings, imprisonment, and attempted assassinations before finally succumbing to a white supremacist’s bullet is a testament not only to his faith but to his belief in democracy.

On the cusp of inaugurating the nation’s first Female, Black, South-Asian Vice President, let us consider how Dr. King’s legacy has fueled our sense that justice must come for our experiment to succeed. Now more than ever, that project is in peril and it is up to all of us to fight for the “liberty and justice for all” that continues to allude our understanding of a more perfect union.

Dr. King’s 1967 speech at Stanford University is as potent today as it was 54 years ago. We must overcome.

remembering martin luther king jr. – january 20, 2020

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Remembering Martin Luther King Jr. – January 20, 2020

“For years now, I have heard the word ‘wait’ … this ‘wait’ has almost always meant ‘never.’ We must come to see that ‘justice too long delayed is justice denied.”

To understand Dr. King is to know the record of his work. “King: A Filmed Record … Montgomery to Memphis” was released in 1970. It carried the raw pain of his terrible loss a mere two years before along with a clear understanding of the arc and breadth of his work for civil rights and social justice — fights we engage in today with a renewed urgency for action to overcome the ills of racism, intolerance, fascism, anti-immigrant fervor, anti-semitism, the denial of LGBTQ rights, climate change denial, and on and on.  Now as then we are called upon to witness and fight against justice denied.

remembering Martin Luther King Jr. – january 15, 2018

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Remembering Martin Luther King Jr. – january 15, 2018

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., ZUMA Press/Newscom/File

Today would have marked Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s 89th birthday. This image of Dr. King flanked by the American flag is particularly poignant–since his sacrifice to the greater good of the United States resonates so powerfully in our polity today. We should not forget that the America of his dream continues to fight to shout out his teachings with full pride of place–no matter the obstacles.

On September 12, 1962, Dr. King gave a speech at New York City’s Park Sheraton Hotel commemorating the 100th anniversary of what was known as the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation by President Abraham Lincoln. The speech was thought to have been lost for decades until a young intern discovered an audio copy of it in the New York State Museum in Albany.  As noted by WBAI in their commentary on the speech: At the end of the speech, Dr. King quotes a preacher (former slave) who he says “didn’t quite have his grammar right but uttered words of great symbolic profundity.”

“Lord, we ain’t what we oughta be. We ain’t what we want to be. We ain’t what we gonna be. But, thank God, we ain’t what we was.”