Martin Luther King Junior is regarded as the quintessential success story that represents the embodiment and essence of everything that America stands for. It is the drama of how one man’s talents, perseverance, integrity, faith and personality effected a change that altered the course of history in a country that was receptive and conducive enough and constitutionally amenable to a then cataclysmic modification to the body politic. His efforts resulted in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voters Rights Act of 1965. Both of these landmark acts legislatively transformed the status of the “Negro” and the future of America politically and socially.
He is the legendary icon of the “feel good” story of American folk lore - from the genre of log cabin to President. No other American, not even Lincoln, has had a Public Holiday enshrined in his honor and on and on. This Nobel Peace Prize Laureate is undisputedly the greatest orator of the twentieth century and with Ghandi and Mandela one of the most influential activists who initiated transformation. At the height of his popularity in the early sixties he was voted, in a Gallop poll, the second most influential man of the twentieth century. Today he is revered and even the crazies pay homage. The honors and eponymous buildings, highways and the like are only rivaled by popular Past Presidents.
NOT REVERED IN LAST YEAR OF LIFE
It is the perception, of most, that this revered status existed till his tragic end rising to a crescendo following his assassination, that is challenged in a recent book by Travis Smiley, entitled “Death of a King”. Smiley lays bare that myth. Smiley, in a tightly written volume with suspenseful prose, chronicles the nightmare the final year of King’s life. He also reveals that at the time his death, in April 1968, three quarters of Americans were against him and fifty - seven percent of African Americans thought he was “irrelevant”. Travis and his co writer David Ritz compellingly explain how all this came about. In so doing they revealed much about what shaped the giant’s persona, his commitment to non violence, his unswerving faith and his humility. They spell out the factions that were responsible for his rejection by the body politic that had lionized him so recently. Finally, they detail the deep depression he suffered, his self medication with alcohol, his torment with sleeplessness, his awareness of imminent death and fixation on the latter and suicide in the final year of his life. The message of their narrative is that much of what caused King’s spiraling downfall prophetically relates to today’s controversies on poverty and America’s propensity to militarism.
MLK’S DILEMMAS
King was dissatisfied that the benchmark legislation that Johnson had enacted was having enough impact on the day to day lives of the newly “freed” citizens. “What does it profit a man to have access to an integrated lunch counter when he does not earn enough to take his wife out to dinner”. While his emphasis was on a new attack on poverty - “Poor People’s Campaign” - he linked this with militarism and this is where his major problems with the administration begun.
Vietnam.
As Smiley’s story opens, a year before his assassination, King is reflecting on his decision to agree to talk on the Vietnam war. He feels that this extravagant militarism is connected to racism and poverty. So against all his advisors advice he feels he cannot, in good conscience avoid the burning controversy of the day any longer. The “doc”, as he is referred to by his closest, vents in no uncertain terms. “America is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today” and “Bombs being dropped in Vietnam land in the ghettoes of USA”. In one fell swoop he brings down on his head, the liberal media, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Life and the like. The “Negro” establishment including, Ralph Bunche, Carl Rowan and Thurgood Marshall all are at odds with his decision not to mention those within his movement the Southern Christian Leaders Conference, (SCLC),”. Not the least he has antagonized the paranoid Lyndon Johnson who believes that any criticism of the war is directed at him. In the months to come he would add insult to injury by refusing to have meetings with the President. This allowed the manipulative FBI director, Edgar J. Hoover, to gain traction with his off the wall belief that MLK was a Communist. The FBI, who some credibly believe was responsible for his assassination, infiltrate his organization and make his life more and more uncomfortable.
It is no exaggeration to conclude after he made that speech at the Riverside Church on April 4, 1967, he was politically dead. He had needed to remain in his political space as so many of his advisors had cautioned.
Black Power
As if the black establishment weren’t enough to handle Stokely Carmichael of the Black Power Movement was steadily eating into his support. The youth was more attracted to Carmichael's style and his commitment to violence. Disgruntled with the lack of progress and angry with the establishment, they were in favor of violence and militancy. In addition at every Southern Christian Leadership Convention there are more and more challenges to his leadership. It is uphill as he goes into the last year of his life wedded to non violence under any and every circumstance. He is being told on the one hand to leave the Poverty Campaign alone by an increasing number of his supporters and on the other to start the Second American Civil war.
War on Poverty linked to the world, racism and Vietnam.
This war on poverty project was his main thrust and he envisaged that it would climax in a gigantic march and an encampment in Washington in the following year. He remained dogged and persistent in this objective that became more and more politically unrealistic as the year went on. The more quixotic the notion became the more he frenetically championed its fulfillment.
He saw poverty globally: “Like a monstrous octopus, poverty spreads its nagging, prehensile tentacles into hamlets and villages all over our world. Two thirds of the world go to bed hungry at night”….. in Marks, Mississippi,… “I saw hundreds of little black boys and black girls walking the streets with no shoes to wear. They are ill housed; they are ill nourished and shabbily clad. I saw their mothers and fathers trying to carry on a little Head Start Program, but they had no money.”
Smiley comments in this context, “He speaks of his recent visits to the tenements of Newark and Haarlem and the frustrations that he faces as a man determined to heed the cries of the dispossessed”.
He has his greatest condemnation for Congress whom he maintains together with the WhiteHouse are about to enact an immoral and monumental backward step on the War on Poverty, "I am appalled that the House may eliminate 272,000 poor children from Head Start; 250,000 high school drop outs from the Neighborhood Youth Corps and an additional 50,000 poor adults from much needed jobs - (this is) an open invitation to social disorder in the streets of our beleaguered ghettos. It is disgraceful that Congress can vote upwards of $35 billion a year for a senseless immoral war in Vietnam but cannot vote a weak $2.5 billion to carry on our all too feeble efforts to bind up the wounds of our nation’s 32 million poor. This is nothing short of Congress waging political warfare against the defenseless poor of our nation.”
Does this sound like the beginning of so many deja vus to follow?
MEMPHIS - THE SALVATION?
So the die is cast. The visionary is way ahead of his flock. The political animals around him see the dangers and try and warn him. The vultures in the movement challenge him to take over the mantle that he has created. The black activists mock his non violent and establishment like demeanor. His family suffers and Coretta is resentful at his continual absence and her inability to play a role in the struggle. He confesses to his infidelity to add to the pressure. No-one but him is interested in his Poverty Campaign. The SCLC is penurious and money has stopped coming in. To cope he emerges himself in a backbreaking schedule. He drinks, is obsessed with death, discusses his eulogy and expects to die. He is in hopeless denial and continues obsessively to discuss the Poor Peoples March where he envisages thousands pouring in from all over America. In retrospect it all looks like a Greek tragedy with an inevitable ending.
The Memphis saga started when “Doc” learns that two black garbage workers in Memphis sought refuge during a storm in the only area they were allowed, a garbage storage cylinder. The mechanism misfired and the workers succumbed. King follows the sequels and learns from a fellow pastor, Reverend James Lawson, that the city officials refuse to improve safety conditions and nearly all of the 1100 employees have gone on strike. Then follows a march where the police bludgeon the protestors. The media are ignoring the whole incident and Lawson repeatedly calls for King. The latter is ambivalent as his priority has to be the Poor People’s Campaign. He also is under constant threat of death. Finally, he acquiesces and addresses a crowd of 15,000 in Memphis. He is once again the conquering hero and he reiterates what he has been prophesying for some time America may be going to hell.
He is exhilarated by the response to his message and he is rejuvenated that his grand vision of occupying Washington with a shanty town in the Mall can become a reality, “I ask you to make this the beginning of the Washington movement. We are going to keep marching until the walls of injustice come tumbling down", all articulated with the old familiar mesmerizing cadence. Memphis, as Smiley sums up, is his new rallying point.
The denouement of the Memphis movement will be a protest march on March 28. The latter turns into a disaster with looting and rioting, arrests and a 16 year old dead.The instigators of the violence were black agitators. His old friend Stanley Levison attempts to comfort him as he resigns himself to the blackness and gloom ahead, “Martin Luther King is dead” he opines. The vultures pick at the corpse, The New York Times screams that this is a powerful embarrassment to Dr. King and his descent on Washington would be likely to counterproductive.
His advisors once again caution him not to go ahead with yet another march but there is no way he will stop clinging to this mirage. He will lead another march in Memphis but he is so ill he is unable to address the throng prior to the event. There is also no way that the crowd will disperse till they have heard him. He is on message non violence is the most potent weapon. The march will still go on regardless of legal attempts to stop it. The march once again ends in chaos and violence. What is now resonating in his head and heart is “Why America May Go to Hell’. as he steps out of his hotel room and a shot rings out and a King is dead at the age of 39 years.
WHAT AND WHY
It is understandable that a reformer such as MLK could not stop reforming. It is comprehensible that those who had the political nouse would want to curtail him when they thought it was impolitic. The question is why those that had followed him deserted him in every direction. The simple answer is that his support came from many constituencies. The youth were no longer motivated by his non violence and the politicos knew that America was not ready for more. The liberal media cynically shared the politicians' assessment. There needed to be a pause. His administration powerful allies deserted him when he became a threat to the status quo and if the perception was that Kennedy was killed by the military industrial complex who was King to take them on?
That Martin Luther King was a prophet is borne out by the fact that the two issues he honed in on, the poor and militarism, are front and center again. It was Travis Smiley’s motive for publishing this book to provoke discussion on the three missions in King’s life - racism, poverty and militarism. He has provided the ideal vehicle to do so and if nothing else his book should be compulsory reading for all those in public life today.
While Smiley was not optimistic when Jon Stewart interviewed him he should take some solace from the fact that the Congressional African American Caucus has 43 members and that African Americans are widely represented in the every sphere of life in America . And in case no-one has noticed the re elected President of the United States is an African American. Obama has acknowledged that this could never have happened without Martin Luther King Junior. Also the financial inequities that were central to MLK’s raison d’être will be addressed in the next decade even if it is only because the demographic change in the American electorate will force it to be.
So while racism is still alive and well the bohaai the Travyon Martin and the Martin Brown killings have provoked, for example, are indicative of the fact that the majority of Americans are agonizing over the still present discriminatory behavior against minorities.
Martin Luther King, notwithstanding his doubts, was fundamentally an optimist and believed that all was attainable: “Our goal is freedom and I believe we are going to get there however much she strays from it the Goal of America is freedom. Abused and scorned though we may be as a people, our destiny, our destiny is tied up in the destiny of America”.
Jay H. Ell believes that when the day comes that there is no more freedom to strive for on this earth the messiah will have arrived! In ending - just a quote from two of his heroes - Mandela, “The walk to freedom is long” and Churchill. “You can trust the Americans to do the right thing after they have tried everything else”.
No comments:
Post a Comment