What would King protest today?
By Clarence Page
Published January 15, 2006
WASHINGTON -- I knew we had entered an interesting phase of American history when I saw a discount mattress company’s jubilant TV ad for a “Martin Luther King Day Sale.”
Contrary to the firm’s slogan, I did not “have a good night’s sleep” that night.
Instead, I lay awake rationalizing that King Day is not really selling out, but that America finally is buying in.
But into what?
Forty years ago, King did not want us to get a good night’s sleep. As historian Taylor Branch recounts exhaustively in “At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-68,” King and the rest of the civil rights movement were making an important transition in 1966, a transition from concerns about race to concerns about class, poverty and economic opportunity.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were passed, banning racial segregation and paving the way to an explosion of elected representatives who were black.
Soon would come an additional concern, the Vietnam War, which would divide the civil rights movement and the nation.
“Canaan’s Edge” is the third and final doorstop of a book that Branch has written on the King years, and it may be the most revealing of the racial and political dynamics that shape and haunt American politics today.
While most King Day tributes focus on the slain leader’s hope-filled 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech and its attractive vision of little black and white boys and girls, the descendants of slaves and descendants of slave-owners sitting together at the table of brotherhood, King’s final three years offered a less-unifying prescription of what America needed to do to bring his dream alive.
The vast majority of Americans had little problem agreeing with King’s notion that the dream of equal opportunity was “as old as the American Dream.” But when it came to taking steps to help those left behind economically and politically, even at the expense or inconvenience of those who were further ahead, King ran into opposition from within and outside his movement.
Branch reveals a King who constantly was trying to hold his movement together and stay up to date on emerging issues such as the war, while trying also to maintain his own moral authority. Angry college students of my generation rallied around “black power,” which would prove to be a slogan forever in search of an agenda. Many of my fellow Baby Boomers, our afros leaping to the skies, ridiculed King as being too conservative and over the hill.
J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI, the world would later learn, was secretly eavesdropping and harassing King from another angle, particularly his marital infidelities. In fact, Branch describes King confessing to his wife about his indiscretions during a guilt-ridden moment in 1968, astonishingly while she was recovering from an operation.
By the late ‘60s, King moved increasingly away from the South into the more-vexing and racially related problems of discrimination in jobs, schools and housing in the urban North. With that came a backlash by some whites against school busing, open housing and affirmative-action plans. Northern white working- and middle-class ethnics didn’t mind King’s movement until it came to their neighborhoods. As a result, King suffered a tactical defeat when he confronted Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley over slumlords and housing discrimination, a setback unlike any he had faced in the South.
Forty years later, we see all of these issues bearing new fruits. We heard the “voices” of white backlash in Judge Samuel Alito Jr.’s recollections of the middle- and lower-middle-class whites with whom he grew up in Trenton, N.J., traditionally Democratic strongholds who later would become Reagan Republicans.
Cultural politics divided the Democratic Party between anti-war liberals who followed King and the Cold War warriors who followed the late Sen. Henry “Scoop” Jackson of Washington state. Prominent neo-conservatives such as Paul Wolfowitz, Elliot Abrams and Douglas Feith, part of the Bush administration, all got their start working for Jackson, who failed in two attempts to win the Democratic presidential nomination.
Democrats seem to love to argue among themselves, as do those who inherited the remains of King’s civil rights movement. Yet King and his movement forced Americans to re-examine ancient prejudices and the elusive dream of opportunity shared by pioneers and immigrants across this diverse nation. Were King to look down on us today, he would see that his movement has become more localized. Racial and ethnic relations vary widely from one town to another. Yet there are new public-private partnerships springing up to build low-cost housing and there are advances made by women and non-whites that would have been hard to imagine 40 years ago.
The next frontier, the growing divide between Americans who see opportunities opening up and those who see opportunities shrinking, remains to be conquered. That revolution calls for all of us to be leaders in every corner of American life, as long as we feel what King used to call “divinely dissatisfied.”
King Day holiday message: Anybody can serve
BY MARY MITCHELL SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST
January 15, 2006
“Don’t miss the Martin Luther King Day sale,” the announcer said cheerily in a commercial for a furniture store.
Just when I thought we had escaped the commercialization of King day, the retailers are gearing up. I shouldn’t be surprised since retailers were disappointed by the lackluster Christmas spending.
Obviously, just as there is no connection between Columbus Day and the “Columbus Day Sale” we should have expected that King Day would also end up in a sales ad. Yet, turning King Day into a giant after-Christmas promotion feels horribly wrong.
Don’t let retailers hijack holiday
Although we aren’t being bombarded by King-themed displays, “Martin Luther King” banners are popping up over furniture, shoes, mattresses, even fried chicken. I’m used to national holidays being nothing more than an extra day to shop or do laundry. Still, I hate to see the same thing happen to King Day.
Unfortunately, we’ve been slow to create traditions surrounding this holiday.
I don’t have a King Day flag stashed with my other decorations, or a dinner menu like the one I have for New Year’s Eve. Thus far, there has been no widespread cultural ritual that's developed around the holiday.
In years past, I’ve gone to events that are organized as fund-raisers for important causes. But after a while, these events run together. A celebrity speaker gives a speech that is too long. A popular gospel choir belts out a few songs. A gifted student who is preparing for a career in motivational speaking, recites the “I Have A Dream Speech.”
Ironically, no matter how worthwhile the cause is, when organizers use the “Martin Luther King Jr. Day Celebration” as a way to sell event tickets, the event has the scent of exploitation.
I don’t remember what I did last King day. This year, I’ll be thankful for a day without phones and e-mails. My point is this: if you’re like me, it’s little wonder the retail industry is about to hijack King Day.
To stop that from happening, we’ll have to change our ways.
For instance, hosting events that raise money for nonprofits in the name of King seems noble, but is it really any different than using the holiday to lure shoppers into department stores?
How about a day for have-nots?
So instead of any of us trying to profit off of King Day, why don’t we make it a day when Chicago enjoys free passes to everything from museums to sporting events. On King Day, let’s make sure the have-nots in this city have the same access to culture and beauty as the haves.
What would be more in keeping with King’s spirit?
That approach might also put Stevie Wonder’s “Happy Birthday To Ya” back in the holiday.
Because Martin Luther King Day comes two weeks after the end of the long holiday season, it arrives without any umph. Just about everyone is dieting and detoxing. So while we start out with good intentions, by the third week in January, we aren’t looking forward to events that require a lot of dressing up and stepping out.
The planning for Black History Month also robs King Day.
King Day comes just two weeks before the monthlong observance of African-American history. Because of the timing, most organizations plan their events around Black History Month. After all, most contemporary black history lessons and exhibits center around the civil rights movement, and you can’t discuss that movement without discussing King’s legacy.
Some worthwhile events
That doesn’t mean the King holiday is irrelevant. There are some wonderful events Monday.
For instance, the HistoryMakers Annual Open House and tour of the historic Second Presbyterian Church will take place from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. And black leaders in every profession will be at PUSH/Excel’s annual Dr. Martin Luther King Scholarship Breakfast at the Chicago Hilton Hotel.
But on Friday morning, when I was driving through the West Side, my eyes fell on the mounds of trash blowing along Washington Blvd., and it was clear: King Day has to be about service.
Last summer, I was involved in a Chicago Cares service project painting classrooms at Marconi School, a Chicago Public School. On Saturday, Chicago Sun-Times volunteers were scheduled to return to the school to paint a mural and donate books to its library. Saturday’s “Celebration of Service” honors the legacy of Dr. King and will bring together 2,000 volunteers from across the city.
Many would argue that letting kids stay home from school isn’t a fitting tribute for King, who became great because he understood the relationship between preparation and greatness. Getting students involved in a service projects on King Day, however, would keep his legacy alive.
“Everybody can be great because anybody can serve,” King once said.
No matter what history lessons we teach, if we allow the King holiday to evolve into a day of shopping instead of a day of service, we would be committing cultural suicide.
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