It interests me that four very different answers were forthcoming. You can read the four brief takes on Dr. King here. It seems that different people can find different aspects of King's words, deeds and legacy to embrace or be challenged by.
Dr. King's life, and his life's work, continue to recede a bit farther into the past every year, but the importance of what he stood for and what he accomplished only seem to grow with the passing of the years. Not that long ago - prior to the rise of Donald Trump - I was optimistic that the United States had reached a critical mass of transformation on questions of racism and racial discrimination. That bubble has burst for me. No doubt it was naive to be optimistic in the first place.
All of which suggests that those who worked for Martin Luther King Jr. Day to be a national holiday were on to something. It first came onto my radar as a young man in the 1980's when the work was practically done - when President Reagan dithered on promulgating it as a national holiday. This Wikipedia article gives more of the history. It wasn't a no-brainer at the time that it would become a national holiday. One colorful anecdote from the Wikipedia article:
Senators Jesse Helms and John Porter East (both North Carolina Republicans) led opposition to the holiday and questioned whether King was important enough to receive such an honor. Helms criticized King's opposition to the Vietnam War and accused him of espousing "action-oriented Marxism". Helms led a filibuster against the bill and on October 3, 1983, submitted a 300-page document to the Senate alleging that King had associations with communists. New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan declared the document a "packet of filth", threw it on the Senate floor and stomped on it.In retrospect, those who opposed it would seem to be the archetypal Men On The Wrong Side of History.
That said, I'm not entirely sure the holiday is all the way there yet. Is Martin Luther King Jr. Day truly a national holiday today? I worked yesterday. So did one of my kids who works in the public sector, so not even all the government facilities were closed yesterday. We had our usual garbage and recycling pickup yesterday, something that doesn't happen on Memorial Day and Labor Day Mondays. To be sure, a couple of my kids had the day off from school, including one who goes to a private college. But I would say that, as of now and as a whole, it's more like an intentional holiday than a truly national holiday.
I think it deserves more than that. We don't generally make a big deal of our national holidays, anyway, but let's at least do the minimum. Dr. King's legacy, and the issue that raised him to our consciousness, are sufficiently important that workers can get the day off. Where I live, it's too cold to have a parade in January, but our civic leaders and organizations can come up with alternative ways of commemorating the life and legacy of one of the most important Americans in our national history.
I was shocked to come across this article yesterday. Apparently it is not fake news. In the '60s I had heard talk of Dr. King's possible communist connections, but didn't know that the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover had gone to these lengths to try and make the the charge stick (it didn't). The letter does read like they were trying to push him to suicide.
ReplyDeleteSo is that letter an attempt by white FBI agents to sound as though they are a black man? That's ... something.
DeleteAnd it's remarkable that King and his advisers immediately concluded that the letter was the work of the FBI.
I am remembering the nuns who taught in the Catholic school I attended in the '60s as being very pro civil rights. I saw pictures of nuns in traditional habits taking part in marches. My parents at the time wished they wouldn't get involved in politics. They didn't know many Black people (like maybe *any*) and I don't think they understood the extent to which systemic racism still existed.
ReplyDeleteThere was a story we heard at the National Catholic Reporter -- pretty well attested, but to try to confirm it might have caused great tsouris among one Franciscan community -- that went like this: Some of the sisters asked permission to go to Selma at the time of those marches. Mother Superior said no, Franciscan sisters do not make a public spectacle of themselves.
Delete"But, Mother," quoth one of the sisters, "St Francis himself stripped naked in the public square!"
"Yes," Mother replied with great disdain, "but he was a radical.
Katherine - re: your parents: I don't doubt that they were reflecting a sort of common view at the time.
DeleteI'm told that, in Chicago, on the South and West Sides where white flight was a reality, there were parish priests whose attitude was, "No damn n*****s are going to worship in this church or enroll in this school." And when King led marches in Chicago, those were good parishioners who were throwing bricks and bottles at him (I'm told).
At the other end of the spectrum, Don Wycliffe, a prominent journalist (and Commonweal contributor) once told me that his dad's road to becoming a Catholic deacon started when his family was made to feel welcome and equal at a Catholic parish and school in a town they had recently moved to. (I hope I have these details right; working from memory here.)
I don't see the church as being very publicly supportive of the Black Lives Matter movement today. It seems a bit more morally ambiguous to me - but I suppose that most things do when they are right in front of us and we lack a perspective to see it clearly.
DeleteJust fyi, in 1963 when I was a senior at LU (Chicago) a group of students following the lead of the sit-inners and tested Mrs. Frank J. Lewis and the administration on a rule that restricted our fellow student Micki Leaner (African-American) from using the pool on the downtown campus. The students picketed but its was the Franciscan nuns from Alverno High School picketing with the students that sent the story viral. Here's a longish quote from a story I wrote in 2009: https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/my-chicago-catholic-bubble
Delete"Chicago has been called the most segregated city in America; not a title anyone (white) owned up to in my youth, but one they were content to live with. In fact, in some parts of the city's sprawling neighborhoods that racial fact was actively maintained by “parish boundaries,” as described in historian John McGreevy's telling study by that name, and by local political arrangements between white and black Democratic politicians that worked to keep people in their own neighborhoods.
....
"Loyola students were alert to the changing landscape, especially the lunch-counter sit-ins, but probably not prepared to do much about the situation, until...Mrs. Lewis's pool became a test case. The ICCW failed the test, turning away our classmate Micki Leaner (black), but welcoming another, Nancy Amidei (white). The student newspaper, the Loyola News (where Peter Steinfels and Barry Hillenbrand were editors and I a reporter—the Lois Lane of the operation), was on the case. There are various account of how matters proceeded after the tests were made and reported to other students. Barry and Nancy were following the issue with Micki and another black student, Warren Bracey.
"The short version is that student demonstrations gradually built up, while Mrs. Lewis resisted the urgings of many prominent Catholics to change her policy. Finally on July 1, 1963, the matter was settled (sort of) when seven Franciscan sisters in habits showed up on the picket line, and were pictured on the front pages of all four Chicago newspapers and in national magazines. Mrs. Lewis, after expressing her great disappointment with the nuns to whom she had been so generous, agreed to open the club to black women."
I have a fairly high dudgeon reply to "letter to the editor" in the current issue of CWL (1/26/18). The youngish person writing to the editor seems pretty ignorant about Catholics and race, as do many people. Were Catholics perfect, No! But some were better than some seem to remember, especially nuns and some priests. And yes, there is still racism, etc....
DeletePeggy - good for you, Peter and your fellow journalists (and the nuns!)
DeleteSome years ago, my mass communications class asked students, faculty, and staff to write their dream on a placard, and they made a video with audio of King's speech playing over a slideshow of everyone and holding their dreams.
ReplyDeleteWhat came out of the project was funny and surprisingly moving. A few people said their dream was to "get off academic probation" or "pass this class."
But the ones that got to me were modest dreams like "pay my bills," "find a job," "spend more time with my family," "my brother will come home from Afghanistan," and "find a cure for diabetes."
Underneath those dreams were doubtless stories of hardship and perhaps injustice--a struggling worker, someone forced to work two jobs instead of being with his kids, or a family member with a chronic illness he couldn't afford.
At first I thought that their dreams really didn't have much to do with MLK. But as MLK Day observations seem to be turning into a time to reflect on justice and human dignity, and to offer service to our neighbors, and I think that dreams expressed in the student video dovetail nicely with that.
My hope is that MLK Day will not become simply a "black holiday"--we do need to hear those stories each year about what thing were like in the Jim Crow days--but that we are all inspired by the imagination of a great American, regardless of race.
The first of the four leaders whose thoughts appeared in that article referenced in the original post noted that Dr. King was a great Constitutionalist. As we're now in the midst of a presidency in which carelessness and contempt are being shown toward the Constitution, that is a legacy worth pondering. I would guess that not many people would have foreseen that Dr. King as a champion of the Constitution would have something to teach us, but it seems that may well be the case.
DeleteKing's witness against war and economic injustice are muted these days during the public honorifics. Even his civil rights work was meant to free all people, blacks from their being oppressed, whites from their sinful prejudice. I've always considered King a leader for all Americans.
DeleteCatholics may want to ponder their part in the Civil Rights movement by watching "Sisters of Selma" or reading about Sr.Antona Ebo in America mag. Quite a story of faithfulness! https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2017/11/22/sister-antona-ebos-lifelong-struggle-against-white-supremacy-inside-and-outside
ReplyDeleteThere are some excellent books and several pretty good TV specials, and the Selma movie wasn't too bad. But the MLK events I've attended through the years have all settled for the simple theme: He had a dream, spoke at the Lincoln Memorial about it, and segregation fell. (Sort of like Reagan speaking about tearing down the Berlin Wall and communism going away. Right, Vlad?)
ReplyDeleteKing's opposition to the Vietnam War and the purpose of his posthumous march on Washington to end poverty are pretty much lost. "He spoke, and now everything is cool" is the message of interracial King Day breakfasts. "He spoke, and more must be done" is the message is for a breakfast that is more black than white. Without MLK, I guess we aren't up to being pro-peace or antipoverty. Good thing that he at least ended racism when he spoke. (Right, Donald?)
But, Jim, Lincoln and Washington lost their special days, and nobody but specialists knows much about them anymore. Columbus holds onto his day by his fingernails, and, frankly, the damage to his reputation he paid for it made it hardly worthwhile. St. Patrick still gets attention on his day, but it is not a national holiday, and around here bereft fans of Columbus have turned even St. Patrick's Day into a Joe-Paddy or Paddy-Joe Day, bringing in St. Joseph, just to make sure everybody gets plenty to eat or drink -- and doesn't have to pay any attention for the real people the day is named for.
I am not sure the Millennials are able to generate enough reverence and understanding. The current era, which disdains both reverence (except for money) and understanding outside the bubble militates against it.