On the aeternal flame of the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr.
Quite often I am confronted with people who feel the need to discuss how “MLK would have a different view of things if he were around today”. Recently I was made aware of an organization that is issuing an MLK challenge where you are to watch a video on MLK and then proceed to discuss how he would have looked at the world differently. I do not wish to speak with derision with social activists, but I have to say that I do not feel it is appropriate to watch simplistic movies and short form media to describe a man of King’s stature and if his message would change. I find this idea somewhat discouraging as MLK was a man of many words and his words are without doubt the most powerful words of our time.
Therefore I will address this with some excerpts from the Reverend Dr. King’s words himself, as there is much evidence in his words that he was aware of the long struggle that it would take to find a union between all people. There are many who feel his message would change. I feel as if he would hold his message more true than ever. I will give an extremely brief thought in this based upon some very crystal points that ring out to me from my reading of King.
In his text Strength to Love. King discussed the perennial struggle of the progressive. He likens the current struggle to the christian struggle against the Romans. In this he discusses how a person must stand apart and to not conform to society. Often those who say that Dr. King would think differently and also perceive him as a conformist to the mood of the time. The idea that he was simply a part of a movement demies his true identity as a preacher (of a religion I do not practice, but delivering such messages in a way that I could not help but to have learned from). In this Dr. King saw that change came from a polygenerational struggle. To those who commonly say “If he saw what was still going on” I say Rev. Dr. King would say “Look at what we have DONE!” And he would have educated about the greatest changes that have been made while never shying away from the horrors that the african american still faces every day.
Listening to his worlds at the completion of the Selma to Montgomery March, the person of our times must know that MLK had witnessed horrors that were easily as great as the horrors we see today, these were horrors not written down in history. “Yes, we are on the move and no wave of racism can stop us. … The burning of our churches will not deter us. The bombing of our homes will not dissuade us….The beating and killing of our clergymen and young people will not divert us.” To say MLK would be changed by the world he saw today infers that he was not witnessing a world of much greater horror. Racism, particularly the violent racism against the black man still persists, but in the words of NAS in Fight the Power 2020 “Once Central Park was a Thriving Black Town”. In MLK’s time, it was a time of the Tulsa massacre. The events of today would not, I argue, dissuade the Reverend Doctor. I would say like the Reverend Jessie Jackson in his 1988 DNC speech, he would find hope; he would like the Reverend Jackson, strive to “Keep Hope Alive”.
With this I will move to one of my favorite quotes from “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community; a book that anyone who has read will make them realize MLK was well aware of the struggles we would be facing today.
One of the most agonizing problems of human experience is how to deal with disappointment. In our individual lives we all too often distill our frustration into an essence of bitterness. Or drown ourselves in the deep waters of self-pity. Or adopt a fatalistic philosophy that whatever happens must happen and all events are determined by necessity. These reactions poison the soul and scar the personality, always harming the person who harbors them more than anyone else. The only answer lies in ones honest recognition of disappointment even as he clings to hope, one’s acceptance of finite disappointment even while clinging to infinite hope
Now I will close with some thoughts on change. I do have some simple ideas on how MLK would have changed. I feel he would have if anything found a greater scope of equality and compassion. I feel he would have spent time with LhamoThpondup (the 14th Dali Lama) and with this he would have a more diverse idea of compassion that would if anything have given him greater compassion. I feel he would have been a companion to Nelson Mandella and watched the fall of apartheid and he would again, have more commitment to nonviolence. I would also hope that he would have spent time with Abdullah Ocalan, the founder of the Kurdish liberation movement and he would of adjoined the phrase “the first oppression is the oppression of women” and he would have corrected his language to be gender egalitarian.
I am sorry that I can not have an opinion on the Reverend Doctor based upon a series of movies where others relate his words. I must judge a man by his own words and MLK gave us so many words to know him. I would not want a person to ask how I would solve a solution in the future by others biographies on me, I would hope that I had left enough of my own very few words; and MLK left us such an amazing array of sermons, prose and philosophy, I would be shamed to not use this in my opinion of how he would be changing the world with his message of love and compassion today.
I am unsure if you have or have not read the Reverend Doctors works such as what I quote here; Strength to Love & Where Do We Go From Here , But I will say that in my opinion, no person in this nation has begun the path of fighting racism unless they have read his sermons and words. No biography, no movie will give the truth to power that he carried.
I wish the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King jr. were here today. We need the message he gave us alongside John Louis and Reverend Jessie Jackson, We need it more than ever. We need people like James Bevel, Dian Nash and MLK, leading the way. I feel what holds us back the most is how we have lost the message he carried with a brighter torch than any other activist of his time.
As you move forward in this world and you meet people that wish to discuss how great men and women may have changed were they to see the world today; this is a time to really reflect on how self absorbed we have become with our current struggle. Often if you look back in history, you will find that the struggles these great human beings faced were often far greater than our contemporary challenges.
It is a terrifying time, do not get me wrong. We are seeing global war, famine, plague. But we are also responding better than we ever have. The Covid pandemic truly was dealt with as a world united, and the fight against autocracy is not only being led by a unified league of nations, but it is primarily fought with sanctions. And famine… well that is one we should think about as the big famine is still a few years away.
But as I say all of this, I say that the Reverend Doctor would tell us that there is hope and that we must take those steps forward in peace, as we have for decades if not centuries.
I do with all my heart wish he was here to lead us.
But I must settle for his writings.
~JSM
Jan 16, 2023
Citations:
King M. L. (1968). Where do we go from here : chaos or community? Beacon Press.
King M. L. (1963). Strength to love ([1st ed.]). Harper & Row.
