If Martin Luther King Were Alive Today
This is the 35th anniversary of King's death and I am here with a contingent of historians. As hundreds of Memphis residents pass by, we wonder how many Americans outside of this city know that King came here to lead sanitation workers in a strike against low wages and intolerable conditions.
When the march arrives at the huge church where King gave his last speech, hundreds of schoolchildren are still filing into the building. While we wait, we listen to a recorded medley of King's last speeches.
During the last year of his life, King moved beyond civil rights. After much soul-searching, he broke his silence and denounced the war in Vietnam.
There is never a good time to oppose your government, he told a stunned congregation at the Riverside Church in New York City in 1967. "There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because conscience tells him it is right."
During that year, King also launched an interracial movement of the poor, for which he received vicious attacks and mounting death threats.
Now we hear an anguished voice address a Chicago congregation in 1967. "I don't mind telling you this morning that sometimes I feel discouraged. Living every day under the threat of death, I feel discouraged sometimes. Living under extensive criticisms, even from Negroes, I feel discouraged sometimes. Yes, sometimes I feel discouraged and feel my work's in vain."
In his last speech, delivered in this cavernous Memphis church, he meditates on the meaning of his life. His language turns prophetic and his voice, strong and stirring, rises with biblical cadence: "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'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. . . . I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord."
This is a man who understands that he has closed one chapter of his life. Or, perhaps he senses his imminent death.
This morning, in a church packed with several thousand schoolchildren and Memphis residents, a local reverend reminds us, "It is not merely the dream we must remember. It is the legacy that we must carry on." The children are asked to rise and to "tell the story. . . and to pass it on."
Most Americans prefer to celebrate the man we have turned into a safe, sanitized, secular saint. Here in Memphis, however, the community honors the man most Americans have chosen to forget -- the courageous leader, who, in the last year of his life, spoke out against the war in Vietnam, warned his country that it was on the wrong side of the world's revolutions and organized the poor in their struggle for better working conditions.
If he were alive today, King probably would be reviled by many as an unpatriotic traitor. Why? Because he would oppose a pre-emptive war on Iraq. Because he would organize nonviolent civil disobedience against American military aggression. Because he would lead a march of the poor against tax cuts for the rich.
It is this kind of moral leadership that many people miss today. That is why they march in Memphis: to mourn King's death, but also to draw inspiration from his life.
This article was first published in the San Francisco Chronicle.