Something to think about today.
“Except for Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, Martin Luther King, Jr., in 12 years and 4 months from 1956 to 1968, did more to achieve political, economic, and social justice in America than any other event or person in the previous 400 years” – Clarence B. Jones, May 18, 2007
Clarence Jones was a close advisor of Dr. King. He not only contributed to the construction of the I Have a Dream speech, but he smuggled the first parts of Dr. King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail out of King’s cell on scraps of toilet paper and then smuggled paper in so he could complete it. He has a new book out that is available at Powell’s called Behind the Dream: The Making of the Speech that Transformed a Nation.
He also wrote a good book named What Would Martin Say?
Today, we all need to ask ourselves…
…Do you think King’s dream has been realized in the world today? What needs to happen to either keep his dream alive or to make his dream a reality? What is your dream for the world today?
What are your answers?
Having just studied Constitutional Law, I’d say that Jones is wildly wrong in his statement. The Congressmen who pushed through the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution were pretty damn important in helping American achieve political, economic, and social justice. Slavery was ended and outlawed, voting rights established (for men, at least).
Equality took longer thanks to Jim Crow, but thank God we had the 14th Amendment and the Equal Protection clause when Brown v. Board went to the Supreme Court.
he didn’t say ‘persons.’
My thoughts: While significant progress was made in the 3 decades following Dr. King’s “I have a Dream” speech, I feel that a large part of that progress has been halted or nullified over the last decade, as Conservatives, under the guise of ‘post-racial politics’ have ended or cut back equality initiatives in the workplace (sexual as well as racial), in Schools (Look at Charlotte/Mecklenburg for an illustration of this), in general speech (listening to Rand Paul and others from the Appalachia region, or the Old South), to the point I hear things said and done that I hadn’t heard since my youth in the late 60’s-early 70’s.
We still haven’t achieved the significant or lasting change Dr. King advocated and fought for…and I’m not certain we’ll ever be able to, the way things are now. We’ve lost a lot of progress in recent legislation and executive actions that would take many more years to recover, if the will existed to even try.
In the past 40 years progress had been made on racism, sexism, homophobia.
On the other hand economic injustice and war are thriving. The US no longer has any functioning institutions – whether it be the legal system, religious institutions, educational system, political system, health care or business ethics, – the sense of “fairness” has declined greatly.
In most ways the post WWII period (1945 – 1970 conservatively, 1980 at most) was an anomaly of US supremacy both economically and militarily. The economic supremacy began ending in the 70’s. The military supremacy is fading but will linger for a bit longer. The US is in decline in all respects. As such, “progress” on the issues that mattered to MLK is unlikely.
Sadly in an age of audio and video, the majority of Americans know nothing of MLK’s interest in economic justice, or “peace”. Below age 50 or so most folks have only a vague idea that he was “all about the black folks”. Makes you think how completely distorted is our understanding of the life and philosophy of another “peace warrior” of 2000 years ago – who in reality was probably a fairly decent fellow, but no “God”.
OK – hate or ban me now 😉