Three items caught my eye today:
- The New Yorker’s reprinted account of the march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, originally printed on April 10, 1965.
Finally, after an extravagant introduction by Mr. Abernathy, who referred to Dr. King as “conceived by God” (“This personality cult is getting out of hand,” said a college student, and, to judge by the apathetic reception of Mr. Abernathy’s words, the crowd agreed), Dr. King himself spoke. There were some enthusiastic yells of “Speak! Speak!” and “Yessir! Yessir!” from the older members of the audience when Dr. King’s speech began, but at first the younger members were subdued. Gradually, the whole crowd began to be stirred. By the time he reached his refrains—“Let us march on the ballot boxes. . . . We’re on the move now. . . . How long? Not long”—and the final, ringing “Glory, glory, hallelujah!,” the crowd was with him all the way.
- Dr. King’s speech, which I’d never actually read in its entirety before.
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 an exile in his own land. And so we’ve come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.
- My dad’s recollection of marching in a rally in Kokomo, IN, after Dr. King’s assassination.
On 4/4/67, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot. We were appalled. Anyone familiar with this period knows there were many assasinations before and after this, from political leaders to civil rights workers. We had had enough.
That weekend, there was a protest rally in Kokomo IN, hardly a bastion of liberal thought. Kokomo was then, and may be now, primarily a factory town. Berta, my mother, and I marched in the rally.
There were not many white faces in the Kokomo rally, but we were among them. It is only an accident of history we made it to the church where the rally ended without incident, as the streets of Kokomo were lined with jeering people, mostly white.