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

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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.