The Dream is Alive

I heard that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated on Armed Forces Radio while I was living in Tunisia. I wept. His hopeful vision of change without violence seemed forever blotted out by the blood that covered him and stained the body politic of our nation.

I never met Dr. King but his life and struggle moved me work in politics, to register voters in South Central Los Angeles to try (unsuccessfully) to keep the public from repealing the Rumford Fair Housing Act. He moved me to march for fair housing at various demonstrations in Southern California and later, as a performer, to donate my time, and such talent that I possessed, to play benefits for the Congress of Racial Equality, and then briefly for the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee.

The day after Dr. King’s death a special memorial assembly was held at the Lycee where I taught during my two years of Peace Corps service. Think about that for a moment. In Arab, Muslim, North Africa a service was held for an American Black Christian clergyman. My colleague Monsieur Attila read the “I have a dream speech” in French to the students. Again, I wept.

Then it was my turn to speak, to try to explain what had happened and why Dr. King had been murdered. I did not have good answers, and I couldn’t blame my stammering on my faulty French. I still don’t have a good answer.

In that Arab society, they taught that you follow rules and laws. The students did not have any understanding of the philosophy of civil disobedience. They did not know of Gandhi or Thoreau. The idea that Dr. King led based on a higher law than was legislated by men or imposed by dictators was nearly beyond their comprehension. They knew about revolutions and civil wars. They understood rebellion, but peaceful civil disobedience to appeal to the conscience, was a new idea.

I do not believe that hate triumphs over love, or that violence will be victorious over peace. I do believe that fear is a mighty toxic agent and we, as most people, fear fear itself. We fear change. We fear difference.

Now, forty years later, I still weep when I hear the speech. I weep because I miss the hopeful enthusiasm of my youth. But I also weep that Dr. King missed the progress we have made as a nation. He didn’t get to see his dream come true of his four little children walking hand in hand with people of other races and being judged on the content of their character rather than the color of their skin.

Yes, racial prejudice still exists. Yes, we are still involved in both painful dialogue and painful denial about the role of race in our society and in our hearts. Yes, Earl Ofari Hutchinson is right in his poignant op-ed piece in today’s Los Angeles Daily News, we are still two Americas—with the Black community having made real progress at the upper half of the spectrum, but the lower half has fallen further behind socially, economically, in education and in hope. The issues are puzzling but Dr. King, as Earl Ofari Hutchinson, would, I think, struggle with complex issues based on fearless introspection and a deep sense of personal conviction, values and hope.

The struggle that the Dr. King exemplified goes on. We still search for justice and we know, as Dr. King knew, that justice is not divisible by race or class. Nor can it be divided into racial justice, social justice, legal justice and economic justice. It is one, as we must be one.

For both Black and White the anthem We Shall Overcome, must not be a battle cry against just some evil “them.” We have to overcome our own fears, insecurities and false securities. The Dream though not realized is still alive. We have not reached the Promised Land but it is within sight and not just from the mountaintop. We can see it from here. The only way to get there is together.