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 What Would Dr. King Say?
by Tom Campbell
January 24, 2008
It was a sweltering hot day in August when I visited the Civil Rights Institute in Birmingham, Alabama. As a young white boy, growing up in the 1960’s, I remember our courthouse with white and “colored” water fountains and rest rooms, the balconies where Negroes had to sit to watch movies, and certain restaurants that had one side for whites and a far less appealing side for blacks. Now I was face-to-face with those memories in a city on the front line of the battle for racial equality.
I wasn’t prepared for what awaited me. Exhibit after exhibit showed actual television footage, news stories and pictures of racial intolerance, brutality and hatred. I was overwhelmed at just how horribly humans can treat other humans.
And through it all was the voice of a young minister who responded to the horrors and hatred with encouragement, inspiration, and a dream of how different races could live peaceably together. Reliving those days made it clearer than ever that Dr. Martin Luther King was the driving force, while also being a governing force that prevented this movement from escalating into more violence than it did. King was truly the man for this time and set in motion the equal rights legislation that changed this country’s course.
Many are rightfully asking just how Dr. King would view today’s landscape. No doubt he would be appalled at the still-present discrimination and saddened at the rate of poverty and other problems among his people, but he would thrill at a door opened to more opportunity. King would rejoice that life was appreciably better for so many who previously had little chance.
Having read and heard speeches from Dr. King I think he would be disconsolate that more African Americans are not taking advantage of the opportunities he and so many risked so much and worked so hard to secure. King would never understand a mindset where it wasn’t “cool” to get the most education you could, to rise as high as possible. He would be angry at black-on-black crime, at neighborhoods taken over by gangs and drug dealers, at how many black men were in jail for crimes they committed, for those who could, but choose not to do honorable work, and for the deterioration of the black family. As a pastor who used his pulpit to preach against injustice and inaction we have to believe he would be critical of other pastors and Black leaders who are not speaking out against what is happening in Black America, for not exhorting their community to do more, and for accepting excuses instead of finding solutions.
We can almost hear that beautiful, lyrical voice saying we have come a long way but that the journey isn’t over yet. To be sure discrimination still exists, but so does greater opportunity. The history of the African race is of people who overcome adversity and rose above problems. Martin Luther King had the dream. Now each of us, in our own way, must put aside excuses and abuses and bring about the “coming true” of King’s dream. |
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