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Friday, Jan. 16, 1998
Perspective
White protesters in California show King's dream is still unfulfilled
Recently, a school board in Riverside, Calif., voted to name a local school after prominent civil rights Martin Luther King Jr. The board's decision was unanimous.
Unfortunately, so was the opposition of a group of white protesters. The protesters were angered because they felt the school should he named after something relevant to the county such as an orange. In addition, some of the protesters expressed fear that if the school was to be named after a black man, then it would be perceived as a black school. This, they argue, would limit their children's college opportunities.
Opponents of the school board's decision to name Martin Luther King Jr. High School claim the issue of race is not the reason for protest. However, the protests shed a saddening light on how far we have to go toward race relations.
The United States was supposedly founded on the premise that all men are created equal. The founders fled from the oppressive tyranny of the British crown to ensure the blessings of liberty and e quality for themselves and their posterity. This notion has bloodied the storied history of this country.
But citizens of the first colonies were not united. For
nearly one hundred years after its establishment, America was divided as to what our founders meant in their discussion of liberty and equality. The idea of equality about which Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence was engrossed by the ominous cloud of slavery, which was not lifted until a great war nearly tore the United States apart.
But the Civil War still did not provide a concrete definition of liberty and equality, as many had hoped it would. For another hundred years America was still a divided nation, disjointed and unequal.
In the 1960s the civil rights movement was ushered in so that the American dream of liberty and equality, denied to so many, could be expanded to all Americans as it should have upon the inception of this country.
King was at the forefront of this movement. He sought to provide us with a definitive interpretation of the founders' abstract ideas of liberty and equality. King reminded us that in order to form a more perfect union, we must finally assert what has been an illusion for 200 years—that all of us are equal.
equality for minorities but to all Americans. Thus, it seems hypocritical for the school protesters in Riverside to argue that King had nothing to do with them. One protester suggested the school should be named after Bob Hope saying, he entertained the troops from World War II to Vietnam. Bob Hope may have sought to entertain some, but Martin Luther King sought to enlighten all. Thus, King has something to do with all of us.
King not only sought to ensure equality for minorities bu
The founders, for whom so many schools are named, used words to invoke high ideals of liberty and equality, but people like King put meaning to those words. If Riverside residents believe as they claim that their protests do not have racial overtones, then why do they object to their children attending a school named for a man who wanted to make the American dream a reality for all people?
King said in his famous "I Have a Dream" speech, "I have dream that one day this nation will rise up, live out the true meaning of its creed; we hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal." King's speech now seem like a cliche to some. We have listened to it over and over.
Have we really heard it?
Nick Zeller is a Tulsa, Okla., senior in Chinese and microbiology.
Dates in the Life of Martin Luther King Jr.
Tina Connolly/KANSAN
1929—Born Jan. 15 in Atlanta.
1954 (age 25) — In May became pastor of Dexter Avenue, Baptist Church, Montgomery, Ala. (this was the same month as the Supreme Court decision on segregation of public schools.)
1955 (age 26) — Received Ph.D. at Boston University. Montgomery Bus Boycott began. Montgomery Improvement Association organized, King chosen as president.
1958 (age 29) — Published Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story. Stabbed in New York while autographing the book.
1960-62 --- Sit in, freedom rides, organization of movement throughout the South.
1963 (age 34) — Birmingham movement. Thousands jailed. Church bombed. King wrote "Letter from Birmingham Jail," and Why We Can't Wait. Aug. 28, March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. "I Have a Dream" speech.
1969 (age 39) Assassinated in Memphis, Tenn. on April 4 while joining in a strike by sanitation workers.
1964 (age 35) - Received Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo on Dec. 10.
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Excerpt
'I am in Birmingham because injustice is here'
This page commemorates the legacy of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., for whom we take pause on Monday.
The following is an excerpt of his Letter From Birmingham Jail, written in April, 1963. Bob Shelton, professor of religious studies,
assisted the editorial editors with selecting the excerpts. The letter is widely considered to be one of the most eloquent pieces of American writing. If you have not read it, please read it. If you have read it, read it again.
can be found online at Stanford University's web site, which contains King's papers and other historical documents.
The full text of the speech
The art on today's opinion page was drawn by Tina Connolly, a Lawrence senior in English and French.
I think I should give the reason for my being in Birmingham, since you have been influenced by the argument of "outsiders coming in." I have the honor of serving as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization operating in every Southern state, with headquarters in Atlanta.
Georgia. We have some eighty-five affiliate organizations all across the South-one being the AlabamaChristian Movement for Human Rights. Whenever necessary and possible we share staff, educational and financial resources with our affiliates. Several months ago our local affiliate here in Birmingham invited us to be on call to engage in a nonviolent direct action program if such were deemed necessary. We readily consented and when the hour came we lived up to our promises. So I am here, along with several members of my staff, because I have basic organizational ties here.
Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere in this country.
gospel of Jesus Christ to practically every hamlet and city of the Graeco-Roman world, I too am compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my particular home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.
Beyond this, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the eighth century prophets left their little villages and carried their "thus saith the Lord" far beyond the boundaries of their home towns; and just as the Apostle Paul left his little village of Tarsus and carried the
You deplore the demonstrations that are
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presently taking place in Birmingham. But I am sorry that your statement did not express a similar concern for the conditions that brought the demonstrations into being. I am sure that each of you would want to go beyond the superficial analyst who looks merely at effects, and does not grapple with
You are exactly right in your call for negotiation. Indeed, this is the purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community thatas constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. I just referred to the creation of tension as a part of the work of the nonviolent resister. This may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word tension. I have earnestly worked and preached against violent tension, but there is a type of constructive nonviolent tension thatis necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from
You may well ask: "Why direct action? Why sit-ins, marches, etc.? Isn't negotiation a better path?"
underlying causes. I would not hesitate to say that it is unfortunate that so-called demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham at this time, but I would say in more emphatic terms that it is even more unfortunate that the white power structure of this city left the Negro community with no other alternative.
Tina Connolly/KANSAN
In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: 1) Collection of the facts to determine whether injustices are alive. 2) Negotiation. 3) Self-purification and 4) Direct action. We have gone through all of these steps in Birmingham. There can be no gainsaying of the fact that racial injustice engulfs this community.
"We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressors; it must be demanded by the oppressed...We must come to see...that justice delayed is justice denied."
Martin Luther King Jr.
the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, we must see the need of having nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men to rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood. So the purpose of the direct action is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation. We, therefore, concur with you in your call for negotiation. Too long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in the tragic attempt to live in monologue rather than dialogue.
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My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure. History is the long and tragic story of the fact that privileged groups seldom give
up their privileges voluntarily.
individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups are more immoral than individuals.
We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be
demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have never yet engaged in a direct action movement that was "well timed," according to the timetable of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the words [sic]" Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with a piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant "Never." We must come to see with the distinguished jurist of yesterday that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."
I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Councilor or the Ku Klux Klaner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action;" who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.
Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.