We Need Dr. King--a model of civility

I walk past the Mystery and Fiction sections in the Milwaukee Public Library. I’m looking for a Scottish mystery.  I’m in a hurry.   I’m parked in a 15 minute zone out front. And then it happened......The King Center Imaging Project.

Up pops a 15’ by 15’ enclosed exhibit about Martin Luther King Jr.  And it’s not even February (Black History Month) or April 4th (King’s death.) It is, however, the 49th anniversary of the March on Washington and the “I Have a Dream Speech.”   But,  I’d not heard of this exhibit.  Little or no publicity.   And this is its last of three days here.

Only one other person is examining the exhibit, but I am eagerly pursued and then welcomed by a young man  who explains the options, and there are many, for interacting with Dr. King, the Movement, his family and friends, and the times.   You pull out drawers and examine  ‘sermons’, ‘speeches’, ‘family life’ etc.  There are visual projections of Dr. King speaking and a half-dozen computers geared to take you to any of a dozen different aspects of his life.  They emphasize his childhood, education, church and community involvement, and, of course, his principle contribution as leader of the Civil Rights Movement.

I circled the exhibit catching bits and pieces of things he had said. Then I was gradually drawn closer and closer to his writings, his letters--both personal and public--and his speeches and sermons.

I simply was blown away. Awestruck.  And this is not the first time I have been encountered and moved by Dr. King.  I have to take account of this once more.  I participated in Dr. King’s Chicago march protesting the Vietnam War, cheered him at the packed houses of Chicago’s Southside black churches, and felt a small, but important part of this history in the making.  More recently I have read some of his writings, the biographies by Taylor Branch, and shake my head at the gradual watering down of his message.

Adding to the struggle, is that this significant exhibit is ‘An Initiative of JP Morgan Chase and Co.’  Yes, that’s Jamie Dimon’s money.  How hard it is to have clean hands.  Impossible, even.

Nevertheless, however the message of truth and clarity came, it came, again.  I have been thinking about what ‘history of the United States‘ I want my grandchildren to know.  I definitely want them to know about the slave trade, slavery, the removal of Native Americans to make room for the rest of us, the genius of the men and women who did create the American system and the Civil War over slavery.  I want them to know about Reconstruction (a return to a more subtle slavery), I want them to know of the participation of African-Americans and Native Americans in defending the United States in its wars,  I want them to know about the Great Depression, and  about the unknown and known military men and women of the two great  World Wars, and I want them to know about Dr. King and the Civil Rights Movement.  Of course there is more.  And there is context.  But there are key events that have shaped our country more than others.  And perhaps none more than the Civil Rights Movement led and taught by Dr. King.

I do not want these true stories of our history to be either forgotten or stuck in the quagmire of the game we see acted by public officials now to avoid the truth. I mean the  ‘everyone has a right to their own facts’ debates.  Neither do I  want to deflect the deep reality of these facts by turning them into guilt trips about racism--the facts are plain enough.  They need telling but not enhancing or sermonizing. 

In my next ‘blog’ I intend to point to the things I learned, again, at the exhibit today.  Things that give me a model of clear thinking, not just about 49 years ago, but about today.  I am convinced that Dr. King’s greatness lies in both his courageous leadership, but also in the timeless and the straightforward truth telling that is so lacking today even in the leaders whom I admire and will vote for.  Now is the time to advocate for an emphasis in education that is about history (historical accuracy to the best of our ability) and justice (placing life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness within the reach of all.)