By Cal Thomas
Tuesday, August 20, 2013
It was an atypical August summer day in Washington, D.C.,
50 years ago next week. Temperatures were in the low 80s, about 10 degrees
cooler than normal. Skies were partly cloudy. Most government officials were
vacationing.
I was a young copyboy at the NBC News Washington bureau.
Correspondent Jack Perkins asked me to accompany him to hear a speech by Dr.
Martin Luther King Jr. at the Lincoln Memorial.
What I knew about African-Americans ("negroes"
they were called then when people wanted to be polite; much worse when they did
not) was limited to my experience with two maids employed by my parents during
my childhood and years playing college basketball.
I knew our maids only by their first names, a vestige of
slavery when blacks were viewed as less valuable than white people and denied
even the dignity of their surnames. Basketball exposed me to people I might not
otherwise have met growing up in an all-white suburban Washington, D.C.,
neighborhood. Basketball and socializing with my African-American teammates
began to teach me about race, class and discrimination.
Then came that August day. Never before and not since
have I heard or seen a person with such rhetorical power, conviction and
authority. For those who were not alive at that time, it is important to
remember the enormous pressures facing Dr. King, his family and associates.
Many voices rejected Dr. King's nonviolent strategy. They believed such a
tactic delayed and thus denied justice. Stokely Carmichael, H. Rap Brown,
Eldridge Cleaver, Bobby Seale and his Black Panther Party and others preferred
confrontation, including violence.
King thought it more effective to appeal to the better
angels of whites. He saw goodness -- or at least its potential -- even in those
who called him a communist and much worse.
Observing that sea of humanity stretching down the
Reflecting Pool was the beginning of a turning point in my own view of civil
rights. King appealed to religious themes at a time when much of America still
responded to such ideals and even when some, especially Southern churches and
Southern Democrats, used scripture to justify segregation.
The civil rights movement seems cool in retrospect, but
it was dangerous for many and deadly for some. Friends of mine were beaten and
jailed for marching for the rights of African Americans -- and not only in the
South. Journalists were attacked.
This month, Turner Class Movies has been running the
documentary "King: A Filmed Record ... from Montgomery to Memphis."
While it has long been available, first on VHS and now DVD and excerpts have
been televised over the years, the broadcast of the entire documentary is
magnetic. Mostly without narration, the film is allowed to speak for itself and
speak it does ... loudly and powerfully.
One sees contorted faces and hears un-bleeped profanities
hurled at black marchers. "Go back to Africa!" is one of the few
slurs that can be printed in a family newspaper. The scenes are gut-wrenching,
embarrassing.
Mine was not the only life touched by Dr. King's "I
Have a Dream" speech. It is rightly called one of the greatest orations of
all time. For those who were there, this is not an overstatement.
One wonders what Dr. King might think of racial progress
today. Yes, there have been great advances in civil rights, but fewer advances
in strong black families and economic empowerment. Dr. King's sacrifice opened
the door to progress for African-Americans. Perhaps he would say many who are
mired in poverty need to go back and retrieve something they seem to have lost,
including personal responsibility, accountability and, yes, even faith about
which Dr. King often spoke as he salted his speeches with spiritual truths.
Such as this one: "I have a dream that one day every
valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough
places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and
the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it
together."
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