April 4, 2018/April 4, 1968

Fifty years ago, in the early evening of a Thursday I was at home.  Eleven years old I sat watching TV.  My parents were out.  My guess is that mom was at the Lady Rebekah’s and my dad was at an Oddfellows meeting.  I was watching some program, maybe Bewitched when the scroll began across the bottom of the screen. 

In 1968 we knew well the scroll.  On a black and white TV, the scroll was a gray shaded band with contrasting letters that carried news of great importance across the bottom inch of the screen. Disasters and crisis moments were highlighted by the scroll. The scroll was often a stalling tactic while ABC, NBC and CBS got their news staffs into the studio to begin an ad hoc broadcast based on whatever they could confirm by phone and wire. 

On that spring Thursday night, the scroll at the bottom of the screen announced that Martin Luther King, Jr., had been shot.  Quickly the scroll changed to announce that Dr. King had been killed. Once Dr. King’s death was confirmed the scroll disappeared. Every network broke into their primetime programs with coverage of the Noble laureate’s death.  

On that day the world changed, America changed.  A gunman with a scope took down the hopes of so many who had wanted American to move forward toward a non-racial progressive democracy.  An angry man afraid of losing his privileges, those that belonged to him because of his membership card of white skin, killed a dark-skinned preacher whose life had been focused on nonviolent but seismic change.

Cities burned in the aftermath of the wanton killing of that man of peace.  In the fear spawned that summer we lost focus on what really mattered.  We for forgot or let slide the concept of equality.  Simple truths, easy to be spoken but hard make reality, became seemingly unobtainable. One person is entitled to equal rights under the law.  One person is entitled to live where they desire and can afford not where they are steered.  One person is entitled to be judged on the merits of their skill and knowledge and not historically biased perceptions of what “their people” were like. Visible marks of difference such as skin color, sex and traditional garb need to be ignored. 

We never got our footing back in the march for a better world.  We Americans threw in with a new law and order regime.  Seemingly we accepted that the silent majority wanted stability more than anything else.  As a result, instead of getting visionaries like Dr. King we got instead a President who flaunts his ethnocentric bias saying things like, ““They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people,” about the Mexican people.  We are led by a man who refuses to acknowledge the dark racial component of white supremacy present in Charlottesville.

There are choices we will have to make again and again going forward to promote equality and justice for all.  Standing up for the right thing will probably get us pilloried by both the hard left and the hard right.  But even an old soul like me knows that if we don’t stand up and say no more to laws and procedures designed to disenfranchise the different and the poor, the ideals of what America is and what it should be will die just like Dr. King did.  Hate swings with a vengeance.  We must be prepared to fight, and we must be prepared to take the body blows that speaking truth to power will bring. We must stay focused and stay strong.