An American Holiday

[Daveparts]

An American Holiday
By David Glenn Cox



As we celebrate Dr. King’s life and his contribution to the lives of us all, let us stop and remember for a moment that Dr. King wasn’t alone in his struggle. That there were also thousands and tens of thousands and millions who suffered and struggled for the dream. From school children to the elderly, working towards the goal of the dream that he spoke of. But it was Dr. King’s voice and his presence that crystallized that dream that gave it its power and gave it legs.

That voice, with its strength, its haunting vibrato, its compelling tone of anguish and determination, the greatest manifestation of the teachings of Jesus Christ that any of us will ever hear in our lifetime. King did what Christ advised, he picked up his cross and followed him. But his voice was not alone, the reactionary voices where loose as well, advocating violence advocating armed insurrection. Leaving King to energize his followers but not to anger them. When his own house was bombed in Montgomery he told the assembled crowd that they must try to love and understand their enemies.

Easy enough to preach from a church pulpit, a little more difficult task from the ruins of your own home. I remember at the time King was called a rabble rouser, a troublemaker, just trying to be a big shot. Of course he was also called every ugly vile name that the white populace could think of even a commie. Everyone who upset the status quo in the 50’s and 60’s had to be a communist. His movement created a tear in the social fabric of our nation, a tearing off of the patch of second class citizenship. It made him a big shot all right, a big shot who lived under death threats to himself and to his family, he indeed paid the cost to be the boss.

With his eloquence, he forced America took take a good look at its self, asking do the laws and principles that this nation prides itself on and boasts to the world about mean anything at all? Our are they just meaningless platitudes and slogans that can be ignored whenever it becomes inconvenient. That by itself was no great contribution, but King’s message was one of accommodation not just of African Americans into white American society but of accommodation of all of us as Americans and brothers. When Dr. King spoke, he was speaking to all people of all races arguing that civil rights wouldn’t just improve the lives of African Americans but of all Americans.

The logistics of being the leader of such a movement must not be downplayed every word he spoke was evaluated and put under a microscope. Striving to defeat not just deep-seated prejudice, the Klan, the energized rednecks, local police departments, but even J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI. Who among us would pick up that cross and walk? The beatings given to marchers in Selma and Birmingham were felt by King as well, it would be impossible for such a man to not feel the blows that others took for the actions he encouraged them to do. We watch the archival footage of the Birmingham police turning dogs and fire hoses on school children. Imagine for a moment the weight that placed on Dr. King’s heart, a man with children of his own.

But today, even though we have made his birthday a national holiday we begin to take for granted the things that he accomplished. I remember living in Montgomery in the early 1970’s being in an abandoned neighborhood of derelict warehouses and there was a corner store or bar with its windows long ago boarded up. At the corner were two doors and above one of the doors was a sign fading into eternity that said, “Whites only.” That was the only sign of its type that I ever saw myself because of my age and I imagine that most of us have never even seen that much. That is a good thing but it is a bad thing as well.

It makes it too easy to trivialize the accomplishments of a man who used his life and gave his life to change the world. A man of peace who knew little peace for himself and his family. I wonder how many times he lay in bed at night and reminisced about being that preacher in Montgomery before the bus boycott. When his greatest concerns were for the Sunday sermon or the Wednesday supper. How many times in the dark night might he have asked, Lord if you could but take this cup from my hand?

Dr. King paid the price not just on the day he died but on every day that he lived. His haunting last speech in Memphis was almost a premonition of his own death but even as he came to his end, his last breaths were of hope and of certainty. “That we as a people will get to the Promised Land.” He was speaking to a black audience that night but Dr. King knew that he was speaking to history as well and I’d like to think at least, that he was speaking to us all. That is the reason we celebrate his life, not because he was a great African American but because he was a great American and his holiday allows all of us to be a part of that and take pride in what he accomplished.

Today we have what I call the null racists, they think Dr. King has his holiday so we are finished, the dream is accomplished. So lets put it away and not talk about it anymore, lets talk about mainstream America and what makes us all the same. A bland hodge podge of subterfuge, a stew diluted with red herring and straw man. Ignorant that it is our differences that gives us our flavor. I once saw a sign outside a restaurant in London, Genuine Chicago style American Pizza. Our as the noted German author Gunter Grass explained in his book “Peeling the Onion” that he played American Jazz. Terms that can’t be explained but are readily understood around the world.

Dr. King’s dream was of acceptance, not that we should all become the same but that we should accept each other and learn from each other’s differences. No different from Christ’s own message of accepting Jews and Gentiles into his own ministry, fighting his own battle of a cultural apartheid and King as a student of both Christ and Ghandi had no illusion as to where it would lead. So today we celebrate, tomorrow let us go back to work and remember not how Martin Luther King Jr. died but how he lived, we gave to us and gave up for himself.