Martin Luther King Day 2021 occurs during dark times. Millions of polarized Americans hate each other. Covid infections are spiking again. Even hoping for a just society is difficult.
Martin Luther King Jr. is not a dead icon to honor now and then. He and the civil rights movement are still a guide star that point the way to a better world. MLK and the movement were ordinary people who did extraordinary things. Reverend King was an inexperienced Pastor of 26 when he was chosen to lead the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955. He was murdered less than 14 years later. No one in the movement including King individually had much political power.
MLK worked continually to create a multi-racial multi-class coalition. He said, “We are bound together in a single garment of destiny”. He explicitly rejected the slogan, “Black Power”. He believed all races have “aspirations for freedom and human dignity”. Even as violence increased around him MLK only used non-violent political tactics.
King is remembered as a civil rights leader but he was also a labor leader. He died supporting a Union Strike. His “I have a dream” speech was given at a march organized and funded by Unions. The event was called the “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom”. One of the marchers’ demands was to raise the Federal Minimum wage to what today would be over $15 an hour.
The Labor Movement of the 1930’s inspired many of the tactics later used by MLK. Reverend King believed unions are an essential part of the coalition necessary to get to “The Promised Land”. In a 1961 speech to the National AFL-CIO convention King said, “That is why negroes support labor’s demands and fight laws that curb labor.” He also said, “Labor will have to intervene in the political life of the nation to chart a course which distributes the abundance to all instead of concentrating it among a few”.
Until the end of his life King supported and worked with unions despite the fact that much of labor were racist and despite his disappointment that the AFL-CIO supported the Vietnam War that he opposed.
In his last years Dr. King told his friends there was a “Hell hound” on his trail. The hound caught up with him in Memphis, Tennessee. Reverend King gave his last speech to an AFSCME Union Strike rally the evening of April 3, 1968. He said, “I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I am 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.”
The next day King was murdered. He was only 39. Like Moses before him King did not get to the promised land-will we?
Oh, Deep in my heart, I do believe, we shall overcome, some day.
