Round anniversaries are for remembrance and contemplation — and tweeting?
I like “round anniversaries” — the 20th of this, the 100th of that, the 500th of can you imagine? — because they prod us to remember what we otherwise overlook.
That is, at least, the theory. We have not been doing well at commemorating, let alone pondering, the anniversaries of either the 1810a, 1860s, 1910s, or 1960s recently — we’re doing better with the 1990s, perhaps unfortunately — and it’s not for lack of plenty to remember. The absence of any serious commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I this November, which someone recently suggested would have been exactly the time for a military parade (if Trump could bear sharing the billing with Woodrow Wilson), suggests that things aren’t going to be getting better anytime soon.
But it’s the next nine weeks, beginning today and extending through June 6, that I had for years expected would be a time of great reckoning and remembrance. And maybe I’m watching the wrong news shows, but I’m not seeing it. So we will have to make it happen ourselves — not with a 30-second tag at the end of the evening news, but with some deeper though that puts ourselves and our contemporary society into the story.
Today is the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., at a motel in Memphis, where he had been involved in promoting a strike by sanitation workers. Dr. King had moved beyond civil rights alone to focus more on economic inequality and opposition to the Vietnam War — which, some believe, is what finally got him killed. That — and whether James Earl Ray did it, did it alone, and who were accessories before and after the fact — have been hashed out in previous years without universal agreement (a true harbinger of today’s times.) That’s not what I’m looking for here.
What I’d like to ask readers to imagine is how things would have been had there been no Dr. King, but (as was possible) things still would have proceeded more or less — perhaps more slowly and surely, and certainly less elegantly and eloquently — along the same lines of the unraveling of Jim Crow. (LBJ and Earl Warren, as well as John Lewis and Thurgood Marshall and Jesse Jackson and Ralph Abernathy, and everyone from the NAACP and from the Urban League to the Black Panthers, after all, were still around.) But let’s imagine that it was in OUR times, in these past five years or more, that we had had the unprecedented (in our land) civil rights leader who captured the heart and attention of much of the country. — someone bigger and more fiery than Barack Obama, who I’ll venture would not have become President were it not for the precedent of Dr. King, regardless of what other gains might have been made. Someone who seemed like a prophet, who one could imagine someday having a holiday named after him. And then imagine that that person was violently cut down in the prime of his life and his influence.
My question is: how would we react?
I’ll start you off with the NRA arguing that it had been the work of an isolated madman, and that it wouldn’t have happened if Jesse Jackson, standing near King, had had a gun — already, maybe that last bit goes too far — and that social media, would of course, explode, whatever that means and with whatever effect it would have. And yes, there would be riots — as there were at that time — but they might be very different in nature.
I don’t think that we would come of so well if our version of Dr. King were murdered today — but I leave discussion of that, and the details, to all of you. I propose this essentially as a way for us to chronicle how much the world has changed in the last 50 years, and perhaps how it hasn’t, and to at least give this round anniversary of the murder of a modern-day prophetic voice more of the deeper contemplation that it warrants. We were here at the 50th anniversary, and we may well one day wonder, what did we do? We can say that we did this.
*LBJ, J. Edgar Hoover, Clint Merchasen, Nelson Rockefeller and Richard Nixon….were
the guys that did the dirty deeds and killed at least the following: Malcolm X, MLK, RFK and JFK. In addition, they attempted to take out Bob Dylan and others. But don’t forget
we are just conspiracy theorists. Yep, the Dalley Plaza set was created in Mexico and the
CIA Snipers practiced for three weeks before JFK arrived. No biggie….this is just America doing what it had to do….to keep control of the society. We kept drafting Black Kids and of course outspoken White kids and some Jews that knew what was happening. Our Military Industrial Complex, Big Oil, Big Pharma, Big Agra, Big Chema….had all its chips on the table….so it is totally understandable. Nixon took it to a new extreme and we invaded Cambodia. Who cares, they were just little yellow people, right? If we killed 58,000 American kids…they were just incidental damage. We are not going to mention Collateral Damage….because that infers that the event had to happen because of an actual plan.
It sounds as if you are endorsing the idea of some vast, right wing conspiracy… so broad and deep that it could sucker in otherwise well- meaning leftists.. The Barnie bots come to mind!
I wouldn’t advise spending a lot of time trying to decipher the code.
*Here is another one……..We voted American Independent for six election cycles…..so you can draw your own conclusions!
Please attend to the prompt.
You did mention the obvious. We left a bleeding hole in Laos and Cambodia and there are still 80,000,000, 80 million unexploded bombs in Laos and Cambodia that we dropped there on Nixon’s orders. Carter, Bush sr, Clinton, Bush jr, The great Obama of course could have paid to clean it up so children would not be dying there to this day and forever till we clean it up.
All the great presidents we elected turned their back on the little yellow people. What is wrong here who are we. When people, any people see themselves as more important than other human beings they condemn themselves. Ethnocentric is the word. This is planet earth and we are all equal humans here.
58,000 Americans – 5,000,000 Vietnamese dead and that does not count Laos and Cambodia.
With or without Martin there has been no change. When the great black man took office I thought he would give some little time to equality. King would have loved him if he did.
But Obama did nothing, nothing. Health care was his one target, not making a societal change that could have brought up a whole lost class of people.
It seems to me that when a certain group of people or corporations or person gets someone elected the President owes them at least an ear. Obama had the chance but gave the very people that put him in office the foot.
Today black Americans are double the unemployment rate of whites, the schools have black kids on one side of town and on the other side of town are the white kids.
A black man applying for an apartment will still get the boot over a white person. A black man will still get the shoe over a white home buyer. Obama’s shoe, Obama’s boot.
What the heck was he thinking; certainly this is a stain on King’s grave, his man in office that turned his back on equality.
Our entire country is less for the people that are not equal. The people that do no get the same education, the people that do not have the same job opportunities. Black and mixed race is 21% of America that could be part of the whole system and our better future. Or not.
Yeah this should be an op ed.
Well, Martin did say, “Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.”
Having read the account of MLK’s demise from his family members….is eye opening to be sure. NIMBYism got its start…..with Reconstruction. Seeing black families prosper, encouraged “Carpet Baggers” to take their land first, then take the land of the Poor White Trash, then take the land and businesses of the Plutocrats left over in the South. A couple of things however which create a certain amount of optimism in the lack of a decent Social Contract: Black folks now are speaking English….not Ubonics! The Rap Artists are speaking clearing enough to be understood by almost everyone. The focus on Education, Military Service and Black community Business endeavors….is positive and noteworthy.
If people like Bill Gates would come home from Africa (selling them Monsanto Products and forcing them to create GMO crops), and actually worked on The Homeless Issue and Black plight….Empowerment Zone……well, maybe a better standard of living for our Black Brothers and Sisters might be forth coming. We love the participation of Black Kids after the Parkland Shooting. Very cool. The current Administration cannot stay in office forever……so lets go kick ’em where it hurts in November, and with a Strong Letter to Follow!
“…Obama did nothing…” STFU, dumbass!
But uh the black vote put Obama in and he did nothing to help them. Same unemployment same segregation in schools same lack of housing opportunities same brain drain in colleges today as 50 years ago.