(Revised Post -- I've finished the story...at least for now)

[The] reason that I'm happy to live in this period is that we have been forced to a point where we're going to have to grapple with the problems that men have been trying to grapple with through history, but the demand didn't force them to do it. Survival demands that we grapple with them. Men, for years now, have been talking about war and peace. But now, no longer can they just talk about it. It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it's nonviolence or nonexistence. -- from Dr. King's last speech.



So here it was, right where the wreath is on the second floor of the Lorraine Hotel, where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was murdered. He had been concerned with death for a couple of days before because he'd been receiving an extraordinary amount of death threats. The night before he was asked at the last minute to give a speech in Memphis where he had come to add his voice to a workers' rights protest, and he did, though he did not have time to script it at all. That speech, known as the "Mountaintop" speech, was King's last as he was assassinated by James Earl Ray the following afternoon.

I stood behind a glass window looking out at that balcony, next to the room Dr. King was staying in that day, and I thought about how great our nation's loss was April 4, 1968, and how, perhaps, we've never truly recovered. I wasn't born yet when Dr. King was killed, but standing there, looking out at the view Dr. King looked at moments before he was shot, I felt as if I had been there, and I cried. Dr. King's incomprehensible bravery, his ability to articulate what so many felt in words that were beautiful and elegant, and his steadfast dedication to nonviolence overwhelmed me, left me knowing that it was only through the bravery of a few, and the willingness of others to stand up with them, that true change can occur.

Dr. King's message was one of inclusivity, so very different than the messages of most supposed "leaders" today. His mentor was Mahatma Gandhi, a man who also lost his life to an assassin's weapon though he taught unequivocal peace and nonviolence. Dr. King's hotel room is the last room on the tour of the main building of the museum. Before I got there, I went through a room about the history of voting rights from the founding of our country, and room after room documenting the progress (and bloody history) of the civil rights movement from the 18th century until 1968. There is another building across the street that covers the movement's history since then, but I wasn't able to visit it. I spent nearly three hours touring the first building, moved by every word and image, and I was worried about getting back to Chicago so I saved the second building for another visit.

Through the rooms we see the effects of slavery, the brief relief of Restoration, and the decades of oppression under Jim Crow, when every aspect of public life was segregated in the south and to a somewhat lesser extent in the north. From the brutal murder of Emmitt Till in 1954 which jumpstarted the national civil rights movement, to the Freedom Rides of 1964, thousands upon thousands of African-Americans, Native Americans, caucasians, and others risked their lives to help secure that our government behaved as our Constitution promised, with equality for everyone. The movement met horrific resistance. It was bloody. More than once violence erupted because of local governments' collusion with local racists, and only federal intervention changed things. There was James Meredith, the first African-American student of Ole Miss, who had to be escorted to class by the National Guard for an entire year; there were Cheney, Goodman, and Schwermer, three civil rights activists who were murdered in Mississippi.

After President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, then the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the civil rights movement began to fracture as more and more African-Americans began to be disillusioned with the nonviolence movement and started to organize into armed organizations, such as the Deacons for Defense and Justice, a Louisiana organization, and the Black Panthers, (started in Oakland, California with a significant group in Chicago), and the movement for black separatism. Dr. King was distressed about this split, and became more involved in housing issues and workers' rights during the last few years of his life partially to address the issues these other groups were raising. His attempt to protest in Chicago is the last room of the museum before the hotel room, and it is a discouraging story, as Daley I had ironclad control over all aspects of city government making it basically impossible for anyone to change anything Daley didn't want to have changed. (I'll write more about this later -- now we have Daley II, who is a conundrum of a mayor, loved and hated by most all at the same time.)

Somehow, though, Dr. King remained committed to working toward social change until the very minute of his death. He understood that many things come around slowly, but that instead of being passive observers of what's around us, we should be actors and step forward, join the line, walk alongside those who are struggling. It's an amazing message, really.

I was moved once again by the story of Emmitt Till and how his mother dealt with his death. I had heard the story of Till's murder before, of course; he is a Chicagoan who will always be remembered, in large part because of his assumption that the world was as it should be rather than as it was. In 1954 he went alone to Mississippi to visit relatives. Once there, he told his cousins about all of the white friends he had in Chicago, how he could talk to them the same way he talked to other African-Americans. His cousins told him he could never do that in Mississippi, and dared him to talk to a white woman in their town as he would talk to a white woman in Chicago.

No one, least of all Till, could have dreamed the nightmare to follow. Till and his cousins went into town and picked out candy at the local shop. Till paid for his candy and told the white woman behind the counter, "Thanks, baby," as he walked out the door. She was the wife of the owner of the candy shop. She called her husband, he gathered his friends, and within several hours Till was dead, beaten to death by a mob of men who could imagine nothing more egregious than a black man, a boy, speaking to a white woman so casually.

Till's mother's reaction was not so different than Cindy Sheehan's is today. She was outraged over his murder and filled with grief. She had her son Emmitt's body brought back to Chicago and she demanded an open casket funeral. She wanted everyone in the country, poor, rich, white, black, Asian, Native American, mixed race, to see the animalistic brutality of a group of southern racists. Pictures of Emmitt Till's body were splashed across the nation's papers, and according to the museum, the story of his murder galvanized the nascient civil rights movement and encouraged formerly apathetic people to act and risk their lives so there would be no more Americans murdered as Emmitt Till had been.

I think Till's mother wanted his death to have meaning. She could not bear the thought of his death becoming another statistic among many leading to more death and more statistics. She wanted to prevent other mothers from feeling as she did, gutted through with grief.

Dr. King's message of nonviolent resistance was unbelievably effective, and the many civil rights groups at the time were organized and cohesive, working together toward common goals. One of the rooms in the museum is about the sit-ins at lunch counters, which were often segregated and off-limits to African-Americans. The museum showed a film that was used in the training of sit-in protesters which detailed how to be most effective in your protest like being polite at all times, and what to do if you were confronted with physical or verbal violence. I had no idea there was so much organization. The entire movement was grassroot-oriented by nature, but it was sophisticated grassroots. It was not thrown together thoughtlessly. The safety of the protesters and the effectiveness of the protest were discussed and emphasized. What a powerful movement it was.

I was talking to my mother and her friend Howard tonight about the museum and how moved I was by my experience there. My mother was an activist in the feminist movement and was, to a lesser extent, involved in the anti-war and broader civil rights movements. Howard questioned whether anything had improved these past four decades and whether or not it would be possible to have such a movement in our current political climate. I think things have improved dramatically, but not dramatically enough. The ghettos in Chicago, first formed by the early 20th century mass exodus of African-Americans escaping the racial violence and indentured servitude of sharecropping, have never been transformed into viable neighborhoods, leaving hundreds of thousands of Chicagoans economically and socially disenfranchised. It is a black mark on our society that literally millions of Americans are without health care, adequate housing, or access to decent education systems. That said, though, it is possible for African-American men to say "Thanks, baby" to a white woman without the threat of brutal death. An improvement, yes, but not enough. I think, too, that the political climate today is terrible (obviously), but I don't think it is worse than it was during Dr. King's life. The difference is not the politics, it is the apathy of so many of us who wish for someone else to speak for us, act for us, instead of doing it ourselves. We have become restful, for the most part. But many of us are being awakened, forced to act out of conscience, and activists like Cindy Sheehan are the catalysts.

I don't know what will come over the next few years. I'm hopeful because so many Americans are finally waking up and seeing reality for what it is. At the end of September, there will be a massive anti-war (or pro-peace, take your pick) march and rally in Washington D.C. If S is not home for R+R then (we still don't know when he is coming home -- I can't wait to see him! Why can't it be tomorrow?!), my mother, Howard, and I will go to Washington D.C. and march. It's not much, I know. But if enough of us do it, perhaps we will force our failed leadership to develop a viable plan for Iraq, and make them face up and take responsibility for the tangled mess they've created that's destroyed so many beautiful lives.

Here is the last paragraph of Dr. King's last speech, given on April 3, 1968. Still it resonates:

Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm 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. And I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

I have a hundred things to write about, and I will later today. I got in real late last night from Memphis, where I had a near-religious experience at the National Civil Rights Museum housed in the Lorraine Hotel where Dr. King was assassinated on April 4, 1968. I will write about it, along with a bunch of other things, including a handful of articles I've come upon lately:

The LA Times on "Grooming Politicians for Christ";

Bouphonia on our abhorrent treatment of some Iraqi prisoners and our lack of shame;

The New York Times on evolution and religion;

The military's plan for four more years in Iraq, with no mention of where the soldiers will come from and whether or not they will finally put an end to the stop-loss madness;

The Democrats and their inability to have any kind of cohesive, unified voice, even in the face of the absurdity of the Republican party and their followers who apparently think assassination is okay and wish harm on grieving mothers;

And finally the unbelievable insult of American Enterprise Institute's Reuel Marc Gerecht who had this to say on Meet the Press Sunday when asked about the Iraq constitution's inclusion of sharia and erosion of women's and girls' rights:


My next post about the National Civil Rights Museum and the blood spilled in securing the basic civil rights of African-Americans and women, especially after 1900, and the ongoing struggle to secure the same civil rights for everyone in this country, will make Mr. Gerecht's comments all the more egregious. Democracy is not democracy when it is only for a select few. The only good thing is these shameless fake-patriots are finally saying what they feel, thus betraying themselves for the selfish, short-sighted, and greedy bastards they are.