Steve Burns: Recovering our memory of Dr. King

A powerful memory of Martin Luther King, long suppressed, came out of hiding on Monday night, at the 24th annual Dane County – City of Madison King celebration.

In the past, I’ve been critical of these events, because the memory of King that is often presented is one that is de-politicized, de-radicalized, and even de-racialized. Speakers have emphasized community service over collective political action, and the message to the Black community has been one of personal responsibility and self-help, an approach I’d summarize as “Dr. King wants you to stay in school.”

I think the man who once called the United States government the “greatest purveyor of violence in the world today” would probably have something else to say to Black youth besides “Stay in school,” but this idea was seldom hinted at.

But all that changed on Monday night. After seven years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, I was startled to hear a speaker at our City-County Martin Luther King Jr. observance note that Martin Luther King was strongly opposed to the Vietnam war. For the first time, I heard a speaker refer to King’s opposition to the “giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism.” The speaker was Rev. Trinette V. McCray of Milwaukee, president of the American Baptist Churches, and the memory of King that she brought forth was a memory of a political activist, a man who could be passionately angry at his own country, who went beyond demanding personal responsibility from African-Americans to demand justice from the larger society. And, like King, Rev. McCray did not shrink from making audacious demands of our country, insisting that our nation set the goal of “eliminating poverty in our lifetime.”

Why the welcome change in tone? Credit should go to Rev. McCray, of course, but I also wonder if the present moment doesn’t inspire us all to more powerful memories of the real Dr. King. The past thirty years, a bleak time for those who hoped for justice, have been a time for the retrenchment and downsizing of dreams. King made demands on the conscience of our nation, and after Reagan, Clinton and Bush, African-Americans could be forgiven for thinking that the conscience of our nation was dead, or at least deaf. And a message of self-help is the logical response to a society that has made it clear that no other help will be forthcoming.

To have called for “eliminating poverty in our lifetime” when we were still in the depths of the dark days of Bush would have seemed like lunacy. Does it seem so today? A little less so, I think.

First, there’s the possibility of racial reconciliation offered by Obama’s election. As Rev. McCray put it, ”When Iowa happened, we knew then…When that state, with its predominantly white population, handed Barack Obama his first primary victory, we could strongly sense then that something much bigger than what we had ever seen before was at hand." Racism has always been a powerful tool for those who have tried to kill Federal anti-poverty programs in the past; perhaps it’s a less potent tool today.

Our calamitous economic situation is another inspiration for thinking big. When the banks on Wall Street needed money, hundreds of billions of dollars were “found”, in an instant. For years, those who work against poverty have been told “Sorry, but there’s no money.” Paradoxically, at a time of economic collapse, we’ve discovered that there is money – if those in power want there to be money – and that’s a lesson the working poor of our country won’t forget soon.

President Obama has received credit for a new spirit of hopefulness in our country today. But, on Monday night, I saw a new aspect of the “Obama phenomenon.” That community leaders like Rev. McCray might see, in Obama’s election, an inspiration for making new demands on our society, and that we all might be more likely to believe that those demands could be met – well, that’s where I’ll be getting my hope from in the days to come.