That Day In Memphis

Martin Luther King, Jr. was murdered 40 years ago today, standing on the balcony of The Lorraine Motel in Memphis, preparing to lead a march of garbage workers on strike. King was 39 years old. I was a 12 year old student in junior high school (now called middle school) in Shreveport, Louisiana and I do remember being at an evening event at the school and being told by school administration of Dr. King's demise. We were all shocked by such an act of violence. At our tender age, 12 year olds being much more sheltered than today's 12 year olds, we were being taught that King was a leader in the civil rights movement, the face of the movement. I was in a public school. I don't remember any black classmates at that school. Segregated schools were the norm, as were segregated neighborhoods and life in general. I was raised by wonderful black women, employed by my parents in our home, and they and their families were part of ours.

What I pondered as this sad anniversary approached was, so why did the murder of Robert Kennedy just a few months later stand out more vividly in my mind? I think it is because politics and political discussions were a part of my upbringing and Kennedy was running for President when he was shot. I was enamoured with Kennedy, much as the swooners for Obama are today. I was 12, though.

King was not running for any office. He was not a political creature in the purest sense. He was leading a movement for his people, the American people. He was a brave man and took the advantages of being in the right place at the right time. That's leadership.

Today it was interesting to note the way in which the three remaining Presidential candidates were commemorating the date. Clinton and McCain were in Memphis today. Obama was in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

Juan Williams wrote an insightful op-ed piece in The Wall Street Journal today. It is titled "Obama and King" and clarifies the differences in the two men. Obama is no Martin Luther King, Jr. is what the reader comes away with. It speaks to the beginning of the Obama campaign where he had to prove he was black enough or a child of the civil rights movement or old enough or able to withstand racist threats to his life. It was the votes of young, white supporters in Iowa that brought him to the forefront of the race early on. Then after New Hampshire and towards South Carolina, as black voters were more secure in trusting that Obama could in fact be a winner, the black support began to grow to its present level.

Williams writes, "So far, Mr. Obama has been content to let black people have their vision of him while white people hold to a separate, segregated reality. He is a politician and, unlike King, his goal is winning votes, not changing hearts. Still, it is a key break from the King tradition to sell different messages to different audiences based on race, and to fail to challenge racial divisions in the nation."

"While speaking to black people, King never condescended to offer Rev. Wright-style diatribes or conspiracy theories. He did not paint black people as victims. To the contrary, he spoke about black people as American patriots who believed in the democratic ideals of the country, in nonviolence and the Judeo-Christian ethic, even as they overcame slavery, discrimination and disadvantage. King challenged white America to do the same, to live up to their ideals and create racial unity. He challenged white Christians,asking them how they could treat their fellow black Christians as anything but brothers in Christ."

"Instead the senator, in a full political pander, is busy excusing Rev. Wright's racial attacks as the right of the Rev. Wright generation of black Americans to define the nation's future by their past. He stretches compassion to the breaking point by equating his white grandmother's private concerns about black men on the street with Rev. Wright's public stirring of racial division." "But when Barack Obama, arguably the best of this generation of black or white leaders, finds it easy to sit in Rev. Wright's pews and nod along with wacky and bitterly divisive racial rhetoric, it does call his judgement into question. And it reveals a continuing crisis in racial leadership. What would Jesus do? There is no question he would have left that church."

Juan Williams is a political analyst for National Public Radio and Fox News. He is a liberal, black American with a strong sense of personal responsibility in the today's black community. His most recent book is "Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America-- and What We Can Do About It". His son ran as a Republican in the last D.C. city council election cycle.

Hillary, in Memphis, was over the top in her pseudo emotional recollection of the day King was murdered. Who knows how much of her story is true. She very well may not know herself.

John McCain stood in the rain before a crowd gathered at the Lorraine Motel, members of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. It was a moving speech, a sincerely delivered speech. He admitted that his vote against establishing MLK Day as a Federal holiday was a mistake. Some in the crowd jeered. Many shouted encouragement to him, "We forgive you." "Every man makes a mistake." "Thank you." Etc. Very interesting. McCain remained jovial, respectful throughout.

McCain was a POW when King was murdered. The North Vietnamese tried to use the assassination as anti-American propaganda.

"And yet for all of this, forty years and a world away, we look up to that balcony, we remember that night, and we are still left with a feeling of loss. Here was a young man who composed one of literature's finest testimonies to the yearning for equality and justice under law -- writing on the margins of a newspaper, in the confinement of a prison cell. Here was a preacher who endured beatings, survived bombings, suffered knifings, abuse, and ridicule, and still placed his trust in the Prince of Peace. Here was a husband and father who will stand to children in every generation as a model of Christian manhood, but never got to raise his own sons and daughters, or to share in the gift of years with his good wife. All of this was lost on the fourth of April, 1968, and there are no consolations to balance the scale. What remains, however, is the example and witness of The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., and that is forever."

King has now been dead longer than he lived. It is good to remember.