2 posts tagged “dr. martin luther king jr”
Perhaps one of the most uplifting, memorable moments of the Boomer Age occurred on August 28, 1963 when 200,000 people participating in a peaceful civil rights rally in Washington, D.C., heard Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. deliver his "I Have a Dream" speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial.
We still had hope – we still had both Kennedys, we’d made a breakthrough with the Soviet Union, the space race was exciting to watch, the nation was struggling with racism, but it seemed like a fight we could win! Five years later, when the Democratic National Convention opened in Chicago, Illinois, John, and Bobby Kennedy, Dr. King and even Malcolm X had all been shot and killed. The dream had become a nightmare in Vietnam. The DNC became a major battleground in the fight to get US out—and left the nation even more divided. Even more sadly, the dream had turned into a nightmare in our own cities—Chicago, Detroit, LA… But all these years later, while the 1968 Democratic National Convention leaves us with painful memories, we still remember with joy Dr. King’s speech, his beautiful, soul-stirring words. We remember those words and that day in August 1963. We remember how we wanted to stand up to be counted, to make our world a better place. As he, himself, put it: “Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends… “And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’ “…With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.” It may be tattered and worn around the edges these days, but somehow, I still have that dream!
Any week that starts out with a day for playing practical jokes should be fun. That’s what the BBC thought in 1957 when they produced a fake documentary about spaghetti crops in Switzerland, though many in their audience commented, “We are not amused.”
Unfortunately, by the late 60s, there was little in the way of laughter for Boomers. Between the riots in the streets and the war in Vietnam, violence had taken the bloom out of flower power. Yet Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was preaching nonviolence, urging us to act, exhorting us to turn the other cheek. On April 4, 1967, he told a crowd at the Riverside Church in New York City that the U.S. was "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today."
364 days later, he told the striking sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee that he had “been to the mountaintop” and he’d “seen the promised land.” As though he knew what was to come, he told those assembled there that he might not get to the promised land with them.
On April 4, 1968—just one day after he made that pronouncement, the great civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot to death in Memphis, Tenn. He was just 39 years old. (Go to article.)
Gone, but not forgotten. His words and the principles he stood for still ring true today. But it didn’t take 40 years for his legacy to build. On the same day he was talking to the sanitation workers, North Vietnam agreed to meet with U.S. representatives to set up preliminary peace talks. Not quite one year later, on April 3, 1969, Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird announced that the U.S. was to embark on a new course in Vietnam. This plan, which was labeled “Vietnamization” was basically a way for the U.S. military to buy time until the South Vietnamese armed forces could take on the defense of their own nation. A lot of us were ready to get out of Vietnam yesterday, though, as was obvious when on April 5 huge antiwar demonstrations were held in cities throughout the U.S., including New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. In spite of our protests, it wasn’t until April 7, 1971 that Nixon announced plans to increase the rate of troop withdrawals from Vietnam. Were we foolish to tie this announcement to an early re-election campaign ploy? Hmm…
Maybe early April is just a time of foolishness. Maybe that’s why baseball starts in that same week each year. And speaking of baseball—a happier topic by far—it was on April 4, 1974 that Hammerin’ Hank Aaron matched Babe Ruth’s record home run total by hitting his 714th four-bagger. Four days later, he surpassed that mark. I’ll just bet Dr. King was smiling down on him from that mountaintop.
