Want to start at Part 1?
Prequel
For those who would like more context for the civil rights
movement, here is my short history of American racism against Blacks.
Many conservative Christians believe that the USA is a
“Christian nation.” I would debate that. However, if that is the case, slavery,
which was allowed in our founding Constitution, must be our original sin. (The
genocide against Native Americans is another original sin, for another study.) Even
the Emancipation Proclamation was not a complete repentance. It changed the
law, but not hearts and minds. The Supreme Court in Plessy v Ferguson decided
that “separate but equal” was good enough. Of course, as MLK said, the “separate”
was rigidly enforced while the “equal” was rejected. Reconstruction was an
attempt to reform the slave states, but it lasted barely a decade. It was
followed by KKK terrorism, lynchings, Jim Crow laws enforcing segregation, and other
overt racism. “Race riots” (for example: 1866, 1868, 1900 New Orleans; 1906
Atlanta; 1917 East St. Louis; 1919 Chicago; 1921 Tulsa Black Wall Street
massacre; 1943 Beaumont, Texas, Detroit, Harlem) happened when Blacks stepped
too far out of their proscribed roles and were beaten back. It wasn’t only the South
because the North had de facto segregation and racism all along.
Many urban centers did have segregated pockets of Black success.
What started the Civil Rights movement as we know it? What prepared the ground
for it to grow? Black Americans organized in the face of this hatred. In 1909,
the NAACP was formed. Crusaders like Ida B. Wells, accomplished people like
W.E.B. Du Bois, and everyday people, pushed against an unjust system that
seemed not to budge. FDR
issued Executive Order 8802, prohibiting racial discrimination by defense
contractors. Eleanor
Roosevelt championed Marian Anderson, a Black opera singer who was denied a
stage. In 1947, Jackie Robinson broke the baseball color barrier. In 1948, President
Truman gave an order to integrate the Armed Forces (which was not fully
implemented until the early 50’s). In 1954, the Brown v. The Board of
Education Supreme Court decision overturned “separate but equal” in public
schools. The murder of Emmett Till in Mississippi in 1955 motivated even people
outside of the South, and beyond the Black community.
This history set the table for Martin Luther King, Jr and
others. He led the people that pushed the system, and they accomplished things,
not least of all, awareness, but also the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting
Rights Act of 1965, the Fair Housing Act of 1968. But that was over a half
century ago. How much has changed since then? Are our schools and neighborhoods
any less segregated? Are the votes of Black Americans as important as those of
Whites?
A recent New
York Times article looked at the “everyday violence” in some Chicago
neighborhoods. The poorest neighborhoods have the most shootings and fewest
banks. The article includes maps showing the concentration of gun violence.
During King’s open housing campaign in Chicago, he stayed in a “slum” building
on the west side, in the 1500 block of S. Hamlin. From the article:
Black Americans are also less
likely to live in communities with strong institutional support. Exclusionary
housing policies and discrimination have pushed Black Americans into segregated
neighborhoods. Both governments and the private sector then neglected these
neighborhoods, leaving people without good schools, banks, grocery stores and
institutions….
Violence can perpetuate
disinvestment. Business owners do not want their shops, restaurants, and
warehouses in violent neighborhoods. People do not want to live in places where
gunshots are fired daily. And governments shift resources away from places that
officials deem lost causes. It is a vicious cycle.
Notwithstanding the bibliography here, my two favorite books
about Black American history are The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of
America’s Great Migration, by Isabel Wilkerson, and Frederick Douglass: Prophet
of Freedom, by David W. Blight.
 |
| King at the Stars for Freedom tour benefitting the SCLC, Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Arena, photographed by Bob Fitch on October 15, 1967. From Stanford University Libraries Department of Special Collections and University Archives. |
Personal Connection
In 1966, when I was six years old, our family of four moved
to Washington, DC, so my father could work for the U.S. Commission on Civil
Rights. We had a bumper sticker on our refrigerator which said “I Have a Dream
- Martin Luther King, Jr.” We were taught that racism was bad.
At the time of King’s assassination, we were returning from
somewhere in Maryland. We were stopped by National Guardsmen at the DC border and
asked where we were headed. I didn’t hear the entire conversation from the back
seat of the car, but I think they were warning us not to go downtown due to
rioting.
When the Montgomery to Memphis King documentary movie
came out in 1970, my dad took us to see it at the now-defunct RKO Keith’s theater
in downtown DC, blocks from the White House (where Nixon was then residing).
Forty years later, I became a Christian. I heard King’s final
speech with new ears, which prompted me to read Birmingham Revolution. Then,
I saw more non-Christians get turned off to the Christian Gospel by bad theology
and bad behavior. I considered Christians that I admired who were better
ambassadors for Christ. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. seemed the most obvious,
so I started here.
Bibliography
Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference, David J. Garrow. Open Road Books,
1986.
Birmingham Revolution: Martin Luther King, Jr’s Epic
Challenge to the Church, Edward Gilbreath. IVP Books, 2013.
The Essential Martin Luther King, Jr: “I Have a Dream” and
Other Great Writings, Martin Luther King, Jr., edited and with a Foreword
by Clayborne Carson. Beacon Press, 2013.
The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr., edited
by Clayborne Carson. Grand Central Publishing, 2001.
Head and Heart: A History of Christianity in America, Garry
Wills. Penguin Books, 2008.
Under God: Religion and American Politics, Garry
Wills. Simon & Schuster, 1991.
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s
Great Migration, Isabel Wilkerson. Vintage, 2010.
April 4, 1968: Martin Luther King Jr.'s Death and How It Changed
America, Michael Eric Dyson. Civitas Books, 2009.
“What Did MLK Pray at a Billy Graham Crusade?”, Footnotes
by Jemar Tisby.
How to Pray: The Best of John Wesley on Prayer, Barbour
Publishing.
“Did the news media, led by Walter Cronkite, lose the war in
Vietnam?”, Joel Achenbach. The Washington Post, May 25, 2018
“Everyday
Violence: We look at where most of America’s gun violence happens”, German
Lopez and Ashley Wu. The New York Times, July 8, 2022.
The Sit-in: Harry Belafonte Hosts The Tonight Show, 2020
documentary streaming on Peacock. Johnny Carson gave hosting duties to Harry
Belafonte for a week in February 1968. Martin Luther King, Jr. was among the guests.
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