Martin Luther
King Day, 2013: Two Takes
Take One
It’s obvious that President Obama’s second inauguration will
occur tomorrow on the Martin Luther King Federal Holiday. And it’s obvious that Barack Obama is
well aware of it. The re-elected
president will be taking his oath on two Bibles: Abraham Lincoln’s and Martin Luther King’s. Myrlie Evers – widow of one of the
first well-known martyrs of the U.S. Civil Rights struggle, of which the
Reverend King became the leader – is giving an invocation. And there’s a new official Presidential
portrait, one that shows a smiling Chief Executive with noticeably gray
hair.
The point of mentioning the last factoid? It’s that President Obama is now twelve
years older than Martin Luther King at the time of his death. We tend to forget how young King was
when he was assassinated: he was only
39, and his hair had not grayed.
When Barack Obama was first elected, he was 47 years old (and looked
considerably younger) and to many U.S. citizens, he embodied the promise of the
Civil Rights’ Movement. There was
a lot of talk about a post-racial politics. This country congratulated itself
on its ability to move beyond the significant parts of its history that are
tragically race-riven and instead, to embrace a more enlightened, 21st-century
present and future.
Alas, such a transition has not been accomplished easily,
and perhaps hardly at all. Barack
Obama’s presidency has been assaulted by overt and covert racial attacks: on his birth, his religion, his family,
his political legitimacy, his intelligence, his understanding of what it is to
be American. And not just by crazy
far-rightists – also by the ‘responsible’ leaders of the opposition, who
convened on his first inauguration to plot how to ruin Obama’s presidency. Kind of like the FBI attempts to
discredit Martin Luther King.
So why is this (now gray-haired) man smiling in his new
official portrait? It may be
because he’s survived, literally and politically. He’s been to the mountaintop and seen the promised land of a
better United States. And it
appears that he believes he’ll get there.
This is the Martin Luther King mantle that, I believe, Barack Obama has
claimed.
King (and certainly not only King) prepared the road. Obama has had the confidence and the
political smarts to walk it. His
first term was about securing legitimacy and politically managed change, most
notably with the Health Care bill, an heretofore unreachable goal for
Presidents reaching back to Theodore Roosevelt. His second term may be about fighting – fighting really
hard, yet fighting with liberated and righteous joy – for racial and economic
fairness in this country and for a more ethical yet efficacious role in the
world. These are the sorts of
fights that Martin Luther King, if his life had not been so tragically cut
short, would have endorsed . . . and joined.
Such may be reasons why President Obama’s new portrait shows
a self-assured, smiling middle-aged man in contrast to the Reverend King’s
photographs, which suggest a contemplative, even sad person who is already
looking beyond real-world mountains.
Maybe Martin Luther King foresaw his own untimely death and thought a
next generation (or generations) would be the necessary embodiments of his
hopes and ideals. Maybe Barack Obama realizes that he has crossed an age divide
– that he can now be seen as a fully initiated elder instead of as a newcomer
who’s not yet earned his chops.
Maybe our President believes he can actually accomplish some, or many,
of King’s legacy missions, plus new missions time and circumstance and personal
convictions have mandated . . . given a second term with its severing of
re-election fetters and its baseline of carefully built popular (minus the
crazies) goodwill.
And maybe he can.
Take Two
[Few people will be
interested in my own ‘journey’ with Martin Luther King. Thus, let me suggest that non-family
and non-close-friend readers now go back to more useful pursuits. But for those who might want to know
how Dr. King influenced me (and by analogy, people like me), read on.]
I grew up in what might have been the most UN-diverse communities
in the United State: Marinette WI; Menominee MI; Appleton WI: (short diversion,
due to polio epidemic) Yorkville IL; back to Appleton WI. What did these northern Great Lakes
state towns have in common, back when I was young? No African-American citizens. No Latinos. No Asian-Americans. Almost no American Indians. Heck, almost no Jews or Italians, and
certainly no Muslims or Buddhists or Hindus or anyone else who wasn’t Roman
Catholic or Lutheran (except for a
scattering of other mainstream Protestants ). In other words, I grew up in
totally ‘white’ environments.
Somehow, I got hooked on ‘Africa’ when I was about ten years
old. (The ‘somehow’ is probably
not too mysterious – I was a contrarian kid, so I found something to be
different about. To my parents’
great credit, they rolled with their older daughter’s tide and even supported
it.) My first-ever date was with a
Kenyan exchange student from nearby Oshkosh. My folks accompanied this young man and me (then thirteen)
into our church and up to communion, staring down the shocked looks and then
going farther, hosting a brunch for him and his Episcopalian church sponsors at
our house. Not many of our
church’s regular congregants came.
Fast forward to college. Wellesley College, to be specific. Hillary Rodham (later Clinton, whom I knew only in passing)
was in my Freshman class, which included, as far as I can remember, only one
African American student. I did
what I believed I wanted and needed to do – get engaged to an eligible Harvard
man, which happened when I was still seventeen and he was a Senior.
Unfortunately, my fiancée went down to Duke Law School, in North Carolina, after
his graduation, which left me stranded,
at eighteen and a Sophomore, at Wellesley.
What to do? Raise
my GPA [which was woeful, as my Freshman efforts had been directed toward areas
that had nothing to do with academics] and bolster my general serious-girl
record so I could transfer to Duke and join my fiancé. And find other things to keep me from
going crazy.
(Yes, Martin Luther King is coming . . . )
Since I really didn’t want to go crazy, I rediscovered the
happiness that can attend hours in the library and research-empowered eureka
moments. But, needing and having time for more contact with my classmates, I
started attending a small discussion group in my dorm, a group ostensibly
focused on African issues. Which
turned out to be African American issues.
About which I knew virtually nothing.
These few young women were completely different from any (including
Hillary Rodham) that I’d so far met at Wellesley. They were . . . ACTIVISTS! In other words, they thought it wasn’t enough to sit on
heirloom oriental carpets in our common rooms and talk about economic and
racial inequity. Some were
planning to help on voter registration drives during summer vacation, and many
volunteered in various area programs.
It was with through these women that I first became aware of Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr. Shamefully, I had
not really heard of him until then; even more shamefully, I pretended that I
had. Thank goodness I had
reacquainted myself with the wonders of libraries, so I was able to read some
of King’s writings and to find out what he actually was trying to do. My ignoble motivation was to not appear
stupid to my new, worldly older friends.
With this group’s encouragement, I did do mentoring in
Roxbury (a then disadvantaged section of Boston), although I never felt very
good at this job, as I was younger than many of the young women I was supposed
to be helping. Mainly, I supplied them with cigarettes so they would talk to
me. I suppose that smoking
together on the steps of their high school did something useful , but don’t ask
me what it was. I did try bringing
up Dr. King, but they hadn’t heard of him.
Fast forward: I’ve successfully transferred to Duke
University, I’m a Junior, and my wedding is two months away. I’m studying in my dorm, when news
trickled in that Dr. King had been assassinated. Soon, more news – that Durham NC was in flames. (Which it was – almost all of Ninth
Street was burning.) My fiancé
picked me up around midnight, and we drove through smoke-filled streets and out
to the highway, heading to his parents’ home in Greensboro where we thought it
would be safer. I had not yet
adjusted to the South (there was still a huge ‘Welcome to Smithfield’ sign
sponsored by the Ku Klux Klan looming over the only route to the beach) and,
frankly, I was terrified that night.
By what or whom, I wasn’t even sure. But this furious, confused, smoldering world was not one I
knew.
Fast forward to a few years later: I entered graduate school (once our daughter was pre-school
age). Back then, graduate
students in English could be ‘qualified’ to teach Freshman classes one week
after their own matriculation into the program. I was, so I did.
The prescribed ‘reader’ for Freshman English was a collection of essays
(almost none of which I’d read previously, as I’d taken no literature classes
in college), so for that pre-class week, I poured over the textbook, trying to
get ideas about how to use the materials to help young people write more
effectively.
One of the essays was Martin Luther King’s “Letter from
Birmingham Jail.” I may have read
it earlier, with my Wellesley study group, but certainly not with extraordinary
attention. I can still remember
the excitement of finding such a huge variety of argumentative strategies,
logical syllogisms, and rhetorical appeals in this relatively short
document. And I remember how these
masterfully orchestrated words affected me then, as I was about to embark on a
teaching career that ultimately lasted decades.
The point was not the beautiful craft of the letter. The point was that Dr. King had
something extremely important, and extremely urgent, to say – and that he had
the skill, patience, and wisdom to use the craft of writing in order to get his
ideas across and move his audience to action.
This seemed to me then – and now – a wonderful and ethical
baseline upon which to teach writing and literature. It’s how, to the best of my ability, I structured those
first classes. It’s how I
structured subsequent classes, from literature surveys to graduate
seminars. It’s what I asked from
my students’ writing . . . that they have something real and true to
communicate and that they respect that position enough to take the care to
write it very, very well.
That’s the biggest gift that Martin Luther King gave me and,
I hope, many students over the years after his death.
There are myriad ways to effect change in this world. Dr. King embraced most of them, from speaking
and preaching and writing to organizing and marching and, ultimately,
dying. Most of us do not have such
courage and greatness of spirit.
But if we can learn something from even one aspect of King’s works and
life – and try honestly to put it into practice – we are honoring his memory by
attempting to make our shared earth, insofar as our spheres of influence and
our individual talents allow, a little bit better.
