King and Obama
Today is another one of those doleful anniversaries we face this year, 40 years after the tumultous events of 1968. On April 4 that year in Memphis, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated by a sniper in Memphis while standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel. King, America's most important civil rights leader, had gone to Memphis to support the city's striking sanitation workers, who were so poorly paid that most qualified for welfare.
King was probably slain by James Earl Ray, an escapee from a Missouri prison where he was serving a 20-year sentence. Ray pleaded guilty to King's murder to avoid a death sentence. He recanted his confession three days later, but off to prison he went and no trial was ever held. To believe he was not the killer you would have to believe a lot of other things, including that he was a patsy in a massive conspiracy to kill King hatched by parties unknown. But enough doubt remains that you can at least wonder about the case without being labeled a complete loon.
Living in Holland, Michigan, which at the time was an overwhelmingly white (with a smattering of Mexicans) town of 25,000, I didn't experience firsthand the riots that broke out across the nation after King's death. They were stories in the newspaper, not something happening close by. I don't recall anything in particular happening at school, either. No assemblies, certainly. My civics teacher might have mentioned it.
King has come into focus for whites more in the 40 years after his death than he ever did during his years at the helm of the Civil Rights movement. For many, that is summed up in, "I have a dream," a good speech that did not convey the totality of King's life and revolutionary beliefs. To the white power structure in the 1960s, King was one scary n--------can't say that word, of course. No one gets assassinated just for a speech like, "I have a dream."
Barack Obama is the closest thing we have today to a Martin Luther King. In truth, just as he has both black and white blood, he has some of the best qualities of King and Bobby Kennedy, the next of the doleful anniversaries we will remember this year. What I hope is that Obama also can channel the best of President Lyndon B. Johnson--not the warmaking Johnson who let the Vietnam War grow out of control, but the master legislative tactician who gave us the 1958 and 1964 Civil Rights Acts and much progressive, Great Society legislation.
March 31 was the anniversary of Johnson's televised speech to the nation in 1968 announcing that he would not seek renomination for another term as President. You can read it here. I had never seen it in print and had forgotten how long it was, and of course the punch line doesn't come until the end. It is a fascinating historical document--among its gems is Johnson's reminder that real average income for Americans grew 30 percent during the seven years of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations.
Seems like paradise compared to the last seven years here.