Let us rise up tonight with a greater readiness. Let us stand with a greater determination. And let us move on in these powerful days, these days of challenge to make America what it ought to be. We have an opportunity to make America a better nation. And I want to thank God, once more, for allowing me to be here with you.
Those words, and the words of the title of this diary, were spoken 40 years ago today. It was to be his last public speech, for the following evening, while standing on a balcony at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Martin Luther King Jr. was shot to death, and our cities exploded. Tomorrow we can remember that tragic death, but today we should remember this speech, and the events that brought King to Memphis, because he was there for the basic reason of economic justice - for a batch of garbage men.
In the portion of the speech, the full text of which can be read here. immediately after what King said above, he looked back to when he had been stabbed while speaking on a book tour, and as the papers reported, had he even sneezed he would have died, because the tip of the blade still lodged in his chest was resting against his aorta. He informed his listeners of the letters from famous people sent to him expressing concern for his health, including from the President and Vice-President, and a visit from the Governor of New Yokk but that he did not remember they said He then quoted the letter from a 9th grade white girl who having read about him in the New York Times, wrote
While it should not matter, I would like to mention that I'm a white girl. I read in the paper of your misfortune, and of your suffering. And I read that if you had sneezed, you would have died. And I'm simply writing you to say that I'm so happy that you didn't sneeze.
From this brief statement King begins a peroration that I would like to quote in its entirety:
And I want to say tonight -- I want to say tonight that I too am happy that I didn't sneeze. Because if I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been around here in 1960, when students all over the South started sitting-in at lunch counters. And I knew that as they were sitting in, they were really standing up for the best in the American dream, and taking the whole nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the Founding Fathers in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been around here in 1961, when we decided to take a ride for freedom and ended segregation in inter-state travel.
If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been around here in 1962, when Negroes in Albany, Georgia, decided to straighten their backs up. And whenever men and women straighten their backs up, they are going somewhere, because a man can't ride your back unless it is bent.
If I had sneezed -- If I had sneezed I wouldn't have been here in 1963, when the black people of Birmingham, Alabama, aroused the conscience of this nation, and brought into being the Civil Rights Bill.
If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have had a chance later that year, in August, to try to tell America about a dream that I had had.
If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been down in Selma, Alabama, to see the great Movement there.
If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been in Memphis to see a community rally around those brothers and sisters who are suffering.
I'm so happy that I didn't sneeze.
King saw how far the nation had come. King was only 39, having come to national attention in his mid twenties during the Montgomery Bus Boycott and having received the Nobel Peace Price at the tender age of 35, and he had lived through a life of criticism and threats. He had been criticized for using children in the civil rights movement. He had been criticized as being an outside agitator when he was locked up in Birmingham jail, yet his response in the letter he penned around the margins of a copy of the New York Times is one of the most profound political and moral documents this nation has ever produced. When he criticized Vietnam because he saw our involvement in that war as connected with the inequity of our society he was told by many to stick to his knitting. And now he had come to Memphis, to a city in the Old Confederacy. An op ed in today's Philadelphia Inquirer tells why he was there, and why he was speaking:
He was in Memphis for the sanitation workers' strike, but he was not meant to speak that night. Ralph Abernathy, whom King described as "the best friend that I have in the world," had begun to speak. But he recognized immediately that it was not his crowd and called for Martin.
King was exhausted. But he agreed, in part because that was how they worked and in part because the sanitation workers' strike was important.
It had begun when two black sanitation workers, Robert Walker and Echol Cole, had sought shelter from rain in the only place they could - the back of a compacting garbage truck. When the truck was activated, they were crushed to death.
The strike began Feb. 12, and by Feb. 20 a loose coalition of union leaders, civil rights activists, and churches worked to support and sustain the nearly 1,300 striking workers.
The strikers' requests were basic: The right to form a union. A livable wage. Safe working conditions. But the mayor and city council refused.
After a disastrous march during which violence erupted, King entered the Mason Temple amid dissension and FBI-instigated rumors that he had abandoned the movement.
I cannot hope to summarize the power and sweep of the words King offered. Before the selections I have quoted King provided a context, by references to several stories in the Bible. And, as the op ed by Sean Patrick O'Rourke and Ron Manuto notes,
King took a "mental flight," tracing the struggle for freedom and dignity from ancient Egypt to that night in Memphis.
He connected the struggle in Memphis to the larger struggle of oppressed people everywhere. From Accra, Ghana, and Johannesburg, South Africa, to Memphis, he said, "the cry is always the same: 'We want to be free!' "
In so doing, he spoke in a prophetic voice as did the Prophets of the Hebrew bible, who so often called to account the rulers and the comfortable whose actions they challenged.
Most people do not look beyond the timing of the speech, that the following day King would be killed. They read the speech, and note that King seem to be prescient about the possibility of his own death. He spoke of the threats against him, before the incident where he was stabbed, and of those he confronted as he came to Memphis. And one can read the end of the speech and only think of that.
But I think the words carry far greater meaning, for King was not one to waste words. Let me offer that conclusion of the speech. King has told the audience of the threats on this trip, for this speech. And then he offers these words
And then I got into Memphis. And some began to say the threats, or talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers?
Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop.
And I don't mind.
Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!
And so I'm happy, tonight.
I'm not worried about anything.
I'm not fearing any man!
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!!
Those words were offered in the context of hope, of recognition of how far we as a nation and a society had come. They were offered as words of encouragement to those who struggled for simple economic justice. They were spoken by a man who knew the risks he was taking - after all, he had been living under threats of death for much of his adult life. He had overcome fear, and was attempting to give to his listeners an important lesson. We have come far, and looking back we should be amazed. We still have far to go, but possibly, just possibly, like Moses on top of the Mountain, we can get a glimpse of the Promised land. And like Moses we have to recognize that the struggle is far greater than any of us. The point is not that any individual achieve that promise, although every individual is precious. It is that together we, as a people, will get to the promised land!
The words King offered are so apt for us today, and in so many ways. People often misunderstand the prophetic voice. It is so easy to take words out of context, to focus on things that we believe we can criticize and demand they be rejected. King knew that experience, and we have seen it again with Jeremiah Wright. King was criticized for his insistence, and told to be patient, that things take time, yet responded with an expression that one candidate now offers us as an explanation why as a still relatively young man, although more than half a decade older than King was at his death, he does not wait his turn, the idea of "the fierce urgency of now."
If we listen to the speech (and the link I have provided has an mp3 file of the entire speech, and some video of the end) rather than merely read it, we come to realize that each of us will be touched in a slightly different way, because each of us bring to our listening different experiences, somewhat different hopes and different fears. And yet - we are, if willing, all touched, challenged and comforted, chastised and encouraged, by our listening. That is what a prophet does. And that is often what a prophet suffers. We read, King James Version, in Matthew 13:57:
And they were offended in him. But Jesus said unto them, A prophet is not without honour, save in his own country, and in his own house.
To confront and to challenge is to subject oneself to criticism and condemnation, and many in the midst of that challenge react only in their fear and uncertainty of what the future might hold. And as we are challenged by the tasks before us, perhaps we need the broad vision of the Prophet, who like King in this speech, can do three things simultaneously;
- Provide a broad context on which to base our understanding
- Remind us of how far we have come, even as we know we still have far to go
- Offer us the words of comfort, that the journey will be completed, that as a people we can and will reach the promised land we seek even if some of us as individuals can see only partially.
I am reminded of the words of Paul in 1st Corinthians, clearly intended in a different context but applicable to what King said,
For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.
King's vision has not been achieved. We lack economic equity and justice. We have never fully achieved racial reconciliation. In our dealings with other nations we still lack full empathy and the willingness to understand and accept differences among us.
And yet, and yet. Perhaps for me it is because as a teacher I cannot fully see the impact I am having, although every so often I get glimpses when students contact me or I merely read about them years after they have left my classroom. Those of you who are parents and grandparents get glimpses of the future that will be experienced - and in part created - by your progeny.
Tomorrow we will commemorate the death of a remarkable human being, one who was truly prophetic, challenging the nation and the world to keep striving to be better than it is, reminding us how far we had come, and assuring us that as part of all of us we would reach the promised land.
Our journey is not yet complete. But we can be certain that it is possible. Our Declaration gives us the right to the pursuit of happiness. King demonstrated the obligation to work towards that end, not just for ourselves and our own, but for all mankind.
I do not say that I have been to the mountaintop. And perhaps that is why the part of the speech that speaks most to me is not the ending that is so familiar, but rather the part with which I began this musing, and with which I feel I also most conclude. They are words that encourage me when I feel despair about how much there still is to do, and my own sense of inadequacy for the tasks that are mine in particular. So let me end as I began, with those words from King:
Let us rise up tonight with a greater readiness. Let us stand with a greater determination. And let us move on in these powerful days, these days of challenge to make America what it ought to be. We have an opportunity to make America a better nation. And I want to thank God, once more, for allowing me to be here with you.
Peace.