Dr King: A Different Look
by Joe C. Hopkins
Discrimination and racism were born out of the need for some white
men to believe that they are somehow superior to Black men. In a book entitled, The Negro, A Beast Or In The Image Of God,
dated 1900, a writer, Chas Carroll considers "The Negro a beast, but created with articulate speech, and hands, that he
may be of service to his master-the white man." In the same book, which was utilized to reinforce the white man’s
need to be superior, Carroll quotes so-called experts who say things like, "If the white man was created in the image of
God , then the Negro was made after some other model; and a glance at the Negro indicates the model; his very appearance suggests
the ape." A Professor Winchell is quoted in this best selling book as saying that "The inferiority of the Negro is
fundamentally structural." The Apostle Paul is quoted in this book as declaring that "There is one kind of flesh of men,
another flesh of beasts, another for fishes, and another of the birds. The author then postulates that "The Negro, not
having been descended from Adam, is consequently not of the flesh of men [and] belongs to one of the other three kinds of
flesh, and that being a land animal - an ape - [and] belongs to the flesh of beasts."
This book with it’s tales of white superiority and Black inferiority
serves as the back drop for white thinking at the time that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. began the fight for equality that
disturbed the Southern way of life. To really understand what King and the Civil Rights giants were up against, we need to
understand this history. Too often we use Dr. King’s birthday to glorify the results, but we need to re-visit the whys
in order to appreciate the giant that he slew.
This week there will be speeches by people who hated the things
that King stood for. Speeches will be made by people who criticized his methods of fighting and most, if not all, of them
will quote his Dream speech, while forgetting many of his speeches and letters such as the one he wrote from the Birmingham
jail. In that profound letter he implores ministers of the Gospel of Jesus Christ to join him in the struggle by direct non-violent
actions, rather than "waiting" on the courts to change the way of life for Black Americans.
In the letter written while King was in the Birmingham jail on April
16, 1963 for illegally demonstrating for Civil Rights, King writes:
"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 word, ‘wait’ it rings in the ear of every Negro with a piercing familiarity. This wait has almost
always meant ‘Never.’ It has been a tranquilizing thalidomide, relieving the emotional stress for a moment, only
to give birth to an ill- formed infant of frustration. We must come to see with the distinguished jurist of yesterday that
‘justice delayed is justice denied.’ ... I guess it’s easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts
of segregation to say, ‘wait.’ But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and
drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate- filled policemen curse, kick, brutalize and even kill your
Black brothers and sisters with impunity; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering
in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech
stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has
just been advertised on television, and you see tears welling up in her little eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed
to colored children...; when you take a cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable
corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading
‘white’ and ‘colored’; when your first name becomes ‘nigger’, and your middle name becomes
‘boy’ (however old you are) and your last name becomes ‘John,’ and when your wife and mother are never
given the respected title ‘Mrs.’; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a
Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next..., then you will understand why we find
it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged
into the abyss of injustice where they experience the blackness of corroding despair..."
These are the words that need to be remembered on Kings birthday,
as it needs to be remembered that it was Black Americans whose rights were being fought for by Dr. King. Today, Dr. King’s
words are comfort food in the mouths of folks who hated him and what he stood for on the day he died in 1968. His words were
never meant to comfort anybody but to stir the minds and prick the consciousness of those who sit in the seats of power to
work to make things equal for all Americans. That the struggle then was one for the rights of Black folks must not be lost
in a dream of tranquility that makes the speaker a hero.
We need a cadre of dream fulfillers who are sickened at watching
Black youth sink deeper into the abyss of under-education, unemployment and over-imprisonment while we are told to "wait"
and give those in power time to help. Because King was a man of action, I believe it is time to re-open the struggle for equality
in the same areas he fought for education and employment. Stop dreaming and go to work to change things!
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