I am doing a new thing. Having credits on Audible, I’m listening to the new book, King: A Life, about the late Martin Luther King, Jr. I haven’t gotten very far in it as it runs nearly 24 hours, or over 550 pages, excluding copious notes.
Still, I’ve learned that his grandfather, James Albert King, married Delia, and both were Georgia sharecroppers. James became an alcoholic, in no small part due to the stresses of Jim Crow.
James’ son Michael managed to get a high school education and attended Morehouse College to study for the ministry. He also began to woo the daughter of a minister at an Atlanta church. And not just any church. Adam Daniel Williams had been the pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church since 1894.
Adam and Jennie’s daughter Alberta began dating Michael in 1920 and married on November 25, 1926. The author suggested that Michael’s courting of Alberta was as much a function of ambition as love.
Shortly after marrying Alberta, Michael became assistant pastor of the Ebenezer church. Senior pastor Williams died in the spring of 1931 and that fall, Michael took the role.
By this time, Michael and Alberta had three children: Christine (m. Farris, 1927-2023), Michael Jr. (1929-1968), and Alfred Daniel “A. D.” (1930-1969).
Name change
This description from the Smithsonian dovetails with the book: “In 1934, [MLK Jr.’] father embarked on a religious journey around the world. The senior King traveled to Rome, Tunisia, Egypt, Jerusalem, and Bethlehem before arriving in Berlin to attend the Baptist World Alliance meeting. The trip to Germany, which occurred only one year after Adolf Hitler became chancellor, would profoundly affect him. As he toured, the senior King gained a great respect for German monk and theologian Martin Luther, whose 95 Theses challenged the Catholic Church and ultimately split Western Christianity.”
Michael Sr. changed his name to Martin Luther King in August 1934, and his elder son was soon renamed.
Publisher’s description
This description of the book was on the MacMillan Publishers website:
“Vividly written and exhaustively researched, Jonathan Eig’s King: A Life is the first major biography in decades of the civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr.―and the first to include recently declassified FBI files. In this revelatory new portrait of the preacher and activist who shook the world, the bestselling biographer gives us an intimate view of the courageous and often emotionally troubled human being who demanded peaceful protest for his movement but was rarely at peace with himself.
“He casts fresh light on the King family’s origins as well as MLK’s complex relationships with his wife, father, and fellow activists. King reveals a minister wrestling with his own human frailties and dark moods, a citizen hunted by his own government, and a man determined to fight for justice even if it proved to be a fight to the death. As he follows MLK from the classroom to the pulpit to the streets of Birmingham, Selma, and Memphis, Eig dramatically re-creates the journey of a man who recast American race relations and became our only modern-day founding father―as well as the nation’s most mourned martyr.
“In this landmark biography, Eig gives us an MLK for our times: a deep thinker, a brilliant strategist, and a committed radical who led one of history’s greatest movements and whose demands for racial and economic justice remain as urgent today as they were in his lifetime.”
And still, we rise.
Eig spent about a quarter of the book about MLK before the Montgomery Bus Boycott years. I suspect that grounding will give the reader a complete understanding of the man as more than an icon.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar recently wrote in the preview of his Substack page:
“Life is an endless series of making decisions, some easy and some difficult. But each of them causes some level of anxiety… That is why people turn to heroes and saviors to make their decisions for them. If we choose to follow someone else’s teachings, we abdicate responsibility for the outcome of following those teachings…
“I have had many heroes in my life, [including] Dr. King. However, the difference between heroes and the cult of personality is that I accept the flaws in my heroes. What made them heroes is that they were just ordinary people who were willing to risk personal comfort to make the world a better place. They didn’t have to be saints. They didn’t always have to be right.”
I thought this was a cogent analysis as I worked my way through the book. I’m looking forward to reading King: A Life in memory of the 66th anniversary of his assassination. Meanwhile, I’ll read a little Maya.
Martin Luther King Jr. Day typically brings about some great discounts!
My wife sent me an article from Leah Donnella at NPR called “MLK is not your wingman.” It’s the introduction to the Code Switch podcast episode for January 10, 2024, Everyone Wants a Piece of Martin Luther King’s Legacy. You should listen to it.
But the Donnella intro hit me right between the eyes because it’s SO true.
“For decades, everyone and their mother has tried to get a piece of that sweet, sweet MLK Pie, from car companies… to politicians (no matter what their actual politics are). And don’t forget about the deals! A recent article in Forbes probably put it best: ‘MLK Day is unequivocally about celebrating the life and legacy of civil rights leader, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,’ they wrote (emphasis mine). But also, the article went on, ‘Presidents’ Day, Memorial Day, Labor Day and even Martin Luther King Jr. Day typically bring about some great discounts.’ (Cue the swelling applause.)”
Yes, and this makes me… exasperated and weary and sad. One of the things I’ve hated about the MLK Jr. legacy after his assassination is that his image became embedded in amber, as I railed against last year.
You’d think he gave just one speech, heck, one part of one speech. When I excerpted that address last year, I intentionally omitted the most familiar section because it has been weaponized as a declaration that WE HAVE Overcome, which I’ve primarily heard since Obama was elected President in 2008.
“Those moves are from a very old playbook, Yazdiha told us… Take Ronald Reagan. As president, he publicly helped instate Martin Luther King Day as a federal holiday. But Yazdiha says that in private letters, Reagan assured his friends that he was ‘really going to drive home throughout his presidency the story that Dr. King’s dream of this colorblind nation has been realized, and so now racism is…over and we can move on.’ That play – of invoking a radical figure only to manipulate or defang their teachings – has proved incredibly enduring and incredibly effective.”
These conversations ignore continuing inequality in wealth, health, and many other aspects of life in America.
I noted this back in 2015. “According to the Gallup poll: ‘In 1963, King had a 41% positive and a 37% negative rating; in 1964, it was 43% positive and 39% negative; in 1965, his rating was 45% positive and 45% negative; and in 1966 — the last Gallup measure of King using this scalometer procedure — it was 32% positive and 63% negative.'”
Led a 10-year drive to organize the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP) and served as the organization’s first president. He directed the March on Washington
We’re gathered here for the largest demonstration in the history of this nation. Let the nation and the world know the meaning of our numbers.
We are not a pressure group, we are not an organization or a group of organizations, we are not a mob. We are the advanced guard of a massive, moral revolution for jobs and freedom. This revolution reverberates throughout the land touching every city, every town, every village where black men are segregated, oppressed and exploited. But this civil rights revolution is not confined to the Negro, nor is it confined to civil rights for our white allies know that they cannot be free while we are not.
We want integrated public schools, but that means we also want federal aid to education, all forms of education. We want a free, democratic society dedicated to the political, economic and social advancement of man along moral lines. Now we know that real freedom will require many changes in the nation’s political and social philosophies and institutions.
taking to the streets
And so we have taken our struggle into the streets as the labor movement took its struggle into the streets, as Jesus Christ led the multitude through the streets of Judaea.
The months and years ahead will bring new evidence of masses in motion for freedom. The March on Washington is not the climax of our struggle but a new beginning not only for the Negro but for all Americans who thirst for freedom and a better life. Look for the enemies of Medicare, of higher minimum wages, of Social Security, of federal aid to education, and there you will find the enemy of the Negro.
In the struggle against these forces, all of us should be prepared to take to the streets. The spirit and techniques that built the labor movement, founded churches, and now guide the civil rights revolution must be a massive crusade.
When we leave, it will be to carry on the civil rights revolution home with us into every nook and cranny of the land, and we shall return again and again to Washington in every growing numbers until total freedom is ours. We shall settle for nothing less, and may God grant that we may have the courage, the strength, and faith in this hour of trial by fire never to falter.
National Chairman, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
To those who have said, “Be patient and wait,” we have long said that we cannot be patient. We do not want our freedom gradually, but we want to be free now! We are tired. We are tired of being beaten by policemen. We are tired of seeing our people locked up in jail over and over again. And then you holler, “Be patient.” How long can we be patient? We want our freedom and we want it now. We do not want to go to jail. But we will go to jail if this is the price we must pay for love, brotherhood, and true peace.
I appeal to all of you to get into this great revolution that is sweeping this nation. Get in and stay in the streets of every city, every village and hamlet of this nation until true freedom comes, until the revolution of 1776 is complete. We must get in this revolution and complete the revolution. For in the Delta in Mississippi, in southwest Georgia, in the Black Belt of Alabama, in Harlem, in Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, and all over this nation, the black masses are on the march for jobs and freedom.
They’re talking about slow down and stop. We will not stop. We must say: “Wake up America! Wake up!” For we cannot stop, and we will not and cannot be patient.
National Director, Congrees Of Racial Equality, imprisoned in Louisiana; Floyd McKissick (1922-1991) of CORE reads
From a South Louisiana parish jail, I salute the March on Washington for jobs and Freedom. Two hundred thirty-two freedom fighters jailed with me … also send their greetings. I wanted to be with you with all my heart on this great day. My imprisoned brothers and sisters wanted to be there too…
You have come from all the nation and in one mighty voice you have spoken to the nation…we will not stop our demands for freedom now. We will not slow down. We will not stop our militant peaceful demonstrations. We will not stop until the heavy weight …of oppression is removed from our backs and…we can stand tall together again.
While intelligence, maturity and strategy dictate that as civil rights agencies use different methods, we are all united as never before on the goal of first class citizenship for all Americans now.
That we meet here today in common cause, not as white people nor as black people, nor as members of any particular group is a tribute to those Americans who dared to live up and practice our democratic ideals and our religious heritage. That we meet here today is a tribute also to all black Americans, who for 100 years have continued in peaceful and orderly protest to bear witness to our deep faith in America. In this method of protest, to affect change. That we meet here at all however, is to the shame of some who have always blocked the progress of the brown American.
The evils of the past and the guilt about it cannot be erased by a one-day pilgrimage, however magnificent. Nor can this pilgrimage substitute for an obligation to tomorrow by these same citizens.
And so this march must go beyond this historic moment. We must support the strong. We must give courage to the timid. We must remind the indifferent, and we must warn the opposed. We must work together even more closely back home where the job must be done to see that Negro Americans are accepted as first-class citizens and that they are enabled to do some more marching.
healthcare
They must march from the cemeteries where our young and our newborns die three times sooner and our parents die seven years earlier. They must march from there to established health and welfare centers. They must march from the congested, ill-equipped schools, which breed dropouts and which smother motivation to the well equipped integrated facilities throughout the city. They must march from the play areas and crowded and unsafe streets to the newly open areas in the parks and recreational centers.
And finally, they must march from a present feeling of despair and hopelessness, despair and frustration, to a renewed faith and confidence due to intangible programs and visible changes made possible only by walking together to the PTA meetings, to the libraries, to the decision making bodies, to the schools and the colleges, to the adult education centers for all age groups, to the voter registration booth. The hour is late. The gap is widening. The rumble of the drums of discontent resounding throughout this land are heard in all parts of the world.
The missions which we send there to keep the world safe for democracy are shallow symbols unless with them, goes a living testament that this country practices at home the doctrine which it seeks to promote abroad. How serious our national leaders are will be measured not by words but by the speed and sincerity with which they pass necessary legislation, with which they admit to the tragic injustice that has been done our country, and its Negro citizens by historic discrimination and rejection.
Executive Secretary, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
First of all, I want to thank all of you for coming here today because you saved me from being a liar. I told them you would be here. They didn’t believe me because you always make up your mind at the last minute. And you had me scared. But isn’t it a great day?
Remember that this has been a long fight. We were reminded of it by the news of the death yesterday in Africa of Dr. W.E. B. Du Bois. It is incontrovertible that at the dawn of the twentieth century, his was the voice that was calling to you to gather here today in this cause. If you want to read something that applies to 1963, go back and get a volume of the Souls of Black Folk by Du Bois published in 1903. Well my friends, you got religion here today. Don’t backslide tomorrow.
As Americans we share the profound concern of millions of people about the shame and disgrace of inequality and injustice which make a mockery of the great American idea.
As Jews we bring to this great demonstration, in which thousands of us proudly participate, a two-fold experience — one of the spirit and one of our history.
In the realm of the spirit, our fathers taught us thousands of years ago that when God created man, he created him as everybody’s neighbor. Neighbor is not a geographic term. It is a moral concept. It means our collective responsibility for the preservation of man’s dignity and integrity.
From our Jewish historic experience of three and a half thousand years we say:
Our ancient history began with slavery and the yearning for freedom. During the Middle Ages my people lived for a thousand years in the ghettos of Europe . Our modern history begins with a proclamation of emancipation.
It is for these reasons that it is not merely sympathy and compassion for the black people of America that motivates us. It is above all and beyond all such sympathies and emotions a sense of complete identification and solidarity born of our own painful historic experience.
the greatest problem
When I was the rabbi of the Jewish community in Berlin under the Hitler regime, I learned many things. The most important thing that I learned under those tragic circumstances was that bigotry and hatred are not the most urgent problem. The most urgent, the most disgraceful, the most shameful and the most tragic problem is silence.
A great people which had created a great civilization had become a nation of silent onlookers. They remained silent in the face of hate, in the face of brutality and in the face of mass murder.
America must not become a nation of onlookers. America must not remain silent. Not merely black America , but all of America. It must speak up and act, from the President down to the humblest of us, not for the sake of the black community but for the sake of the image, the idea and the aspiration of America itself.
Our children, yours and mine in every school across the land, each morning pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States and to the republic for which it stands. They, the children, speak fervently and innocently of this land as the land of “liberty and justice for all.”
The time, I believe, has come to work together – for it is not enough to hope together, and it is not enough to pray together, to work together that this children’s oath, pronounced every morning from Maine to California, from North to South, may become. a glorious, unshakeable reality in a morally renewed and united America.
Dancer, singer and actress, who participted in the French resistance during World War II
Josephine Baker with Lena Horne
Friends and family…you know I have lived a long time and I have come a long way. And you must know now that what I did, I did originally for myself. Then later, as these things began happening to me, I wondered if they were happening to you, and then I knew they must be.
And as I continued to do the things I did, and to say the things I said, they began to beat me. Not beat me, mind you, with a club—but they beat me with their pens, with their writings. And friends, that is much worse.
When I was a child and they burned me out of my home, I was frightened and I ran away. Eventually I ran far away. It was to a place called France. I must tell you, ladies and gentlemen, in that country, I never feared. It was like a fairyland place.
And I need not tell you that wonderful things happened to me there. Now I know that all you children don’t know who Josephine Baker is, but you ask Grandma and Grandpa and they will tell you. You know what they will say. “Why, she was a devil.” And you know something…why, they are right. I was too. I was a devil in other countries, and I was a little devil in America too.
When I was young in Paris, strange things happened to me. And these things had never happened to me before. When I left St. Louis a long time ago, the conductor directed me to the last car. And you all know what that means.
But when I ran away to another country, I didn’t have to do that. I could go into any restaurant I wanted to, and I could drink water anyplace I wanted to, and I didn’t have to go to a colored toilet either, and I have to tell you it was nice, and I got used to it, and I liked it.
return to the US
Then after a long time, I came to America to be in a great show for Mr. Ziegfeld, and you know Josephine was happy. You know that. Because I wanted to tell everyone in my country about myself. I wanted to let everyone know that I made good, and you know too that that is only natural.
But when I got to New York way back then, I had other blows—when they would not let me check into the good hotels because I was colored, or eat in certain restaurants. And then I went to Atlanta, and it was a horror to me. And I said to myself, My God, I am Josephine, and if they do this to me, what do they do to the other people in America?
You know, friends, that I do not lie to you when I tell you I have walked into the palaces of kings and queens and into the houses of presidents. And much more. But I cold not walk into a hotel in America and get a cup of coffee, and that made me mad. And when I get mad, you know that I open my big mouth. And then look out, ‘cause when Josephine opens her mouth, they hear it all over the world.
So I did open my mouth, and you know I did scream, and when I demanded what I was supposed to have and what I was entitled to, they still would not give it to me.
So then they thought they could smear me, and the best way to do that was to call me a communist. I was hounded by the government agencies in America, and there was never one ounce of proof that I was a communist. But they were mad. They were mad because I told the truth. And the truth was that all I wanted was a cup of coffee. But I wanted that cup of coffee where I wanted to drink it, and I had the money to pay for it, so why shouldn’t I have it where I wanted it?
Friends and brothers and sisters, that is how it went. And when I screamed loud enough, they started to open that door just a little bit, and we all started to be able to squeeze through it.
scream
Now I am not going to stand in front of all of you today and take credit for what is happening now. I cannot do that. But I want to take credit for telling you how to do the same thing, and when you scream, friends, I know you will be heard. And you will be heard now.
But you young people must do one thing. You must get an education. You must go to school, and you must learn to protect yourself. And you must learn to protect yourself with the pen, and not the gun. Then you can answer them, and I can tell you—and I don’t want to sound corny—but friends, the pen really is mightier than the sword.
I am not a young woman now, friends. My life is behind me. There is not too much fire burning inside me. And before it goes out, I want you to use what is left to light that fire in you. So that you can carry on, and so that you can do those things that I have done. Then, when my fires have burned out, and I go where we all go someday, I can be happy.
You know I have always taken the rocky path. I never took the easy one, but as I get older, and as I knew I had the power and the strength, I took that rocky path, and I tried to smooth it out a little. I wanted to make it easier for you. I want you to have a chance at what I had.
Ladies and gentlemen, my friends and family, I have just been handed a little note, as you probably say. It is an invitation to visit the President of the United States in his home, the White House.
I am greatly honored. But I must tell you that a colored woman—or, as you say it here in America, a black woman—is not going there. It is a woman. It is Josephine Baker.
President, Southern Christian Leadership Conference
Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.
But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free; one hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination; one hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity; one hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself in exile in his own land.
So we’ve come here today to dramatize a shameful condition. In a sense we’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was the promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note in so far as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.”
sufficient funds
But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so we have come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.
We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.
Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy; now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice; now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood; now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children.
It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the worn threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.
soul force
We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy, which has engulfed the Negro community, must not lead us to a distrust of all white people. For many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.
We cannot walk alone. And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back.
There are those who are asking the devotees of Civil Rights, “When will you be satisfied?” We will not be satisfied until “justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.
Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered the sermon “The Death of Evil upon the Seashore” on May 17, 1956, to 12,000 people. The venue was the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York, the headquarters of the Episcopal Diocese of New York State.
The occasion was an ecumenical program commemorating the second anniversary of the Supreme Court school desegregation decision in Brown v. Board of Education. As the Montgomery bus boycott was still going on, this was early in this phase of the civil rights movement.
King had preached this sermon at least twice in the past, based on the biblical story of the exodus from Egypt, comparing the Israelites’ captivity with the plight of African Americans. The scripture text was: “And Israel saw the Egyptians dead upon the seashore.”-Exodus 14: 30
I try to find sermons by MLK for the holiday that are both well-regarded yet largely unfamiliar.
Evil
There is hardly anything more obvious than the fact that evil is present in the universe. It projects its nagging, prehensile tentacles into every level of human existence. We may debate over the origin of evil, but only the person victimized with a superficial optimism will debate over its reality. Evil is with us as a stark, grim, and colossal reality…
But we need not stop with the glaring examples of the Bible to establish the reality of evil; we need only to look out into the wide arena of everyday life. We have seen evil in tragic lust and inordinate selfishness. We have seen it in high places where men are willing to sacrifice truth on the altars of their self-interest. We have seen it in imperialistic nations trampling over other nations with the iron feet of oppression. We have seen it clothed in the garments of calamitous wars which left battlefields painted with blood, filled nations with widows and orphans, and sent men home physically handicapped and psychologically wrecked. We have seen evil in all of its tragic dimensions…
[The telling of the Red Sea story in Exodus]
This story symbolizes something basic about the universe. It symbolizes something much deeper than the drowning of a few men, for no one can rejoice at the death or the defeat of a human person. This story… symbolizes the death of evil. It was the death of inhuman oppression and ungodly exploitation.
Colonialism
Notice how we have seen the truth of this text revealed in the contemporary struggle between good, in the form of freedom and justice, and evil, in the form of oppression and colonialism. Gradually we have seen the forces of freedom and justice emerge victoriously out of some Red Sea, only to look back and see the forces of oppression and colonialism dead upon the seashore.
[Statistical analysis of colonialism and how it was slowly breaking down.]
What we are seeing now in this struggle is the gradual victory of the forces of freedom and justice. The Red Sea has opened, and today most of these exploited masses have won their freedom from the Egypt of colonialism and are now free to move toward the promised land of economic security and cultural development. As they look back, they clearly see the evils of colonialism and imperialism dead upon the seashore.
The struggle in the United States
In our own struggle for freedom and justice in this country, we have gradually seen the death of evil. Many years ago, the Negro was thrown into the Egypt of segregation, and his great struggle has been to free himself from the crippling restrictions and paralyzing effects of this vicious system. For years it looked like he would never get out of this Egypt. The closed Red Sea always stood before him with discouraging dimensions. There were always those Pharaohs with hardened hearts who, despite the cries of many a Moses, refused to let these people go.
But one day, through a world-shaking decree by the nine justices of the Supreme Court of America and an awakened moral conscience of many White persons of goodwill, backed up by the Providence of God, the Red Sea was opened, and the forces of justice marched through to the other side. As we look back, we see segregation caught in the rushing waters of historical necessity. Evil in the form of injustice and exploitation cannot survive. There is a Red Sea in history that ultimately comes to carry the forces of goodness to victory, and that same Red Sea closes in to bring doom and destruction to the forces of evil.
Hope
This is our hope. This is the hope and conviction that all men of goodwill live by. It is… the conviction that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that the whole cosmic universe has spiritual control. It is, therefore, fitting and proper that we assemble here, just two years after the Supreme Court’s momentous decision on desegregation, and praise God for His power and the greatness of His purpose, and pray that we gain the vision and the will to be His co-workers in this struggle.
Let us not despair. Let us not lose faith in man and certainly not in God. We must believe that a prejudiced mind can be changed and that man, by the grace of God, can be lifted from the valley of hate to the high mountain of love.
Let us remember that as we struggle against Egypt, we must have love, compassion, and understanding goodwill for those against whom we struggle, helping them to realize that as we seek to defeat the evils of Egypt, we are not seeking to defeat them but to help them, as well as ourselves…
I prefer to live by the faith that the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of our Lord and His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever, Hallelujah! Hallelujah!
“a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual”
Particularly in the past year or two, there are certain songs, a famous speech, and a cliched term that I have grown tired of. I feel as though that saying so is almost a betrayal of the culture.
There are songs played/sung too often. This includes Imagine, the John Lennon song, played whenever we have a “Can’t we just get along” moment. Gal Gadot admits her cover was in “poor taste.”
Leonard Cohen’s great song Hallelujah is another. I’m partial to the version by k.d. lang, but there are others. I don’t even watch music competition shows on TV. But when I flick through the channels, someone is emoting that song. A 50-year moratorium would be nice; OK, 20 – give another generation a chance to rediscover it.
Also on the list is the hymn Amazing Grace. This is definitely a COVID thing. I ADORE Amazing Grace, especially Aretha’s version. Yet, after too many deaths, from disease, disasters, and other tragedies, it’s become the go-to song. And not always done well. I could use a break from it. Sacrilege, I know. Though when it’s played on bagpipes, it STILL gets to me; go figure.
Promissory note
I’ve said this before, but it’s the “I Have a Dream” speech by MLK. (sigh.) No, not the WHOLE speech. “One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination.” Good stuff.
Or, “In a sense, we’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men – yes, black men as well as white men – would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
“It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked insufficient funds.”
The summer of our discontent
Or “This sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality… Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual.”
That’s all in the first third of the address. Instead, all we hear is the ending. Specifically, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
To that end, the takeaway by too many is that we’re all now equal, those who were born on third base and those in the on-deck circle with a broken bat. No, one can’t talk about the latter part without fixing the former. (n.b., we ain’t there yet.)
Free speech
The term “cancel culture” has, to my mind, been rendered meaningless. The culture has always “canceled” people, whether it be Hester Prynn in fiction or Copernicus in real life. It is almost “them” doing the canceling, whereas when “we” do it, it is to create “standards.”
As this article states, “Cancel culture is built into the fabric of documenting history. Implicit in the phrase ‘those in power write the history books’ is the notion that stories, victories, and pain of everyone but the winners are erased or greatly diminished.”
In my lifetime, there was a group called the John Birch Society. Its critics, such as old-line conservatives such as William F. Buckley Jr. and the magazine National Review, considered it a fringe organization element of the movement. They were certainly “canceled”, in modern parlance.
Yet, Politico noted in 2017, The JBS is back. “Bircher ideas, once on the fringe, are increasingly commonplace in today’s GOP and espoused by friends in high places. And the group is ready to make the most of it.” And has.
If so virulent an organization has become the “mainstream”, then “cancel culture” is, at best, not nearly as monolithic as some have suggested.
I am doing a new thing. Having credits on Audible, I’m listening to the new book, King: A Life, about the late Martin Luther King, Jr. I haven’t gotten very far in it as it runs nearly 24 hours, or over 550 pages, excluding copious notes.
My wife sent me an article from Leah Donnella at NPR called “MLK is not your wingman.” It’s the introduction to the Code Switch podcast 
The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom 
Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered the sermon “The Death of Evil upon the Seashore” on May 17, 1956, to 12,000 people. The venue was the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York, the headquarters of the Episcopal Diocese of New York State.
Particularly in the past year or two, there are certain songs, a famous speech, and a cliched term that I have grown tired of. I feel as though that saying so is almost a betrayal of the culture.