Under the baobab: What would Dr. Martin Luther King think of America in 2021?

Happy 92nd Birthday, Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.

We honor you. We love you. We miss you. Your life continues to be a beacon that shows us from where we have come to where we should be going, bending always toward justice.

When I first came to Happy Valley 25 years ago, one of my primary guides was Professor Dan Walden, a comrade in arms in the civil rights struggle. He hosted Rev. King during his Jan. 21, 1965 visit to our campus. It was 10 years after King had led the Montgomery Bus Boycott, a year and half after his “I Have a Dream” speech and four weeks after he had received the Nobel Peace Prize in Norway. The Edmund-Pettus Bridge and Voting Rights Act was yet weeks away. The Northern campaign organized around combating Chicago’s housing discrimination was a year away. King’s Riverside Church antiwar speech was two years away. When King spoke to 9,000 students at Rec Hall, he said, in part,

“…Now, before the victory’s won, some of us will have to get scarred up a bit, but we shall overcome. ... Before the victory is won, some more may have to face physical death, but if physical death is the price that some must pay to free their children and their white brothers from an eternal psychological death and eternal death of the spirit, then nothing can be more redemptive. Yes, we shall overcome, because the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.”

Rev. King did face his own physical death in Memphis three years later. As he predicted, he paid the price to “free our children and white brothers.” He knew what might be coming. The night before he was assassinated, he spoke at a rally.

“…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.”

In 1995 the century was coming to a close. I asked Dan what King might think of the events which were closing out the millennium. He thought that King would be happy to see that the country was no longer involved in Vietnam and imperialistic wars. He would be delighted that so many formerly discriminatory white institutions had become racially inclusive. Dan thought that King would have been most disappointed by the rising economic gulf between the haves and have-nots.

This week in 2021 another America era is coming to close. We might pause to wonder what Rev. King might think of the country’s present circumstances. I believe he would be shocked that such virulent strains of white supremacy still infected so many of our fellow Americans. He would certainly celebrate the political victories of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, the first African American and first Asian American woman to be elected VP. He would probably be most pleased by the efforts of his hometown folks who successfully voted the scoundrels out and elected to the U.S. Senate, the Rev. Raphael Warnock, his successor on the pulpit of Ebenezer, and Jon Ossoff. The hard-working empowered organizers of Georgia used the vote to shift control of the U.S. Senate to the Democrats.

Probably the most shocking and devastating event to Rev. King would be the attempted treacherous coup inspired by the President of the United States and facilitated by other high political and administrative officials. He would have been beyond outraged to know that thousands of armed thugs overwhelmed the police and invaded the U.S. Capitol, in order to prevent the United States Congress from certifying a presidential election.

Rev. King, we are still building our beloved community. Sometimes it is so difficult.