 On The Line -- Issue 618 -- January 19, 2007  Online News and Views of Life in San Benito County with Herman Wrede Published by HollisterOnline.com -- Copyright 1995-2008 HollisterOnline.com
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On The Line -- Issue 618 -- January 19, 2007 Online News and Views of Life in San Benito County with Herman Wrede Published by HollisterOnline.com -- Copyright 1995-2008 HollisterOnline.com
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I was mildly surprised to find I had received no mail -- not even an advertisement -- on Monday, Jan. 15 until I remembered that it was the official holiday memorializing the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. All federal offices, including the Postal Department, and all state offices were closed.
King burst into the national consciousness in 1955 shortly after Rosa Parks decided that she was not going to surrender her bus seat to a white man in Montgomery, Ala. She was arrested and jailed for her breach of an old established order in the South. King was the minister of a church in Montgomery and he sensed that it was the time to redress an ancient wrong. He was in his mid-20s then and must have realized that the course he was about to embark on was going to be difficult and dangerous. He had been born Michael Luther King on Jan. 15, 1929 but later changed his first name to that of his father's, who was the minister of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Ga. as his father had been before him. The boy grew up during the Depression and World War II. He attended a segregated school, and graduated from high school at 15. He attended Morehouse College to earn his bachelor's degree, then went to Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania, then to Boston University for graduate work. It was at the latter that he met Coretta Scott. Their marriage led to two sons and daughters. King became the minister at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery. By then the young man had been chosen to be on the executive committee of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. In that position and with his feelings about segregation, he helped establish a boycott of the Montgomery bus system. Officials sneered at the attempt to desegregate the system because Blacks had always ridden in the back of the bus since it began, and were compelled to give up their seats to Caucasians when their section was filled. But the sneers turned to surprise when Blacks found other ways to get to work or other destinations than by the bus. As the system started missing their fares, surprise turned to alarm and anger. King was arrested for not calling for a halt to the boycott. He was personally abused and his home was bombed. But the boycott continued into months, then a year, and finally ended after 382 days when the Supreme Court determined that the segregated system was unconstitutional. All that time King had insisted on peaceful resistance among his followers, as Mahatma Gandhi had done in India against the British colonists, and Henry David Thoreau had advocated in the 19th Century, His failure to yield his principles exposed him to virulent hatred from many White Southerners who called him racist epithets and who branded him a Communist. The latter stigma still had power to hurt back then, and some Caucasians who sympathized with his cause backed off because of it. In 1957 King was elected president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. In that role he traveled more than six million miles and spoke more than 2,500 times against segregation, inequality among American classes and unfairness. He wrote 10 books during that time, led many peaceful marches of protest and at 35 became the youngest person to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Time Magazine named him its "Man of the Year" in 1963. All that time Blacks who protested in many communities were beaten, lynched and saw their churches fire bombed. National Guard units were called out in many Southern states to quell the protesters with high-pressure fire hoses, and some sheriff's departments used dogs against them. When King led a protest march to the nation's capital, an estimated 250,000 people joined him, From the Lincoln Memorial the crowd stretched out to the Capitol Mall, and he delivered the best-known speech of his career, "I Have a Dream." He conferred with President John F. Kennedy, then with his successor when JFK was slain, President Lyndon B. Johnson. Eventually the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act became the law of the land. In April of 1968, King went to Memphis, Tenn. where he had been invited to lead a protest march for the sanitation workers. Black men were paid less than White workers and were not paid at all when they were sent home for a lack of work, unlike their Caucasian colleagues. On April 3, King spoke at a Memphis church. He said, "I am not afraid of what they may do to me in the course of my mission." Those who heard the speech were to vividly recall that passage later. The following evening King was standing on the balcony outside his motel room when a shot rang out. He fell, mortally wounded by a bullet through the throat. The fate that he sensed might befall him finally claimed him. The nation and the world were aghast. Many Black people rioted upon learning of his death until Black leaders reminded them of what King had stood for. His courage and confidence in his mission won millions upon millions of White supporters who marched with him and braved the dangers. Most of all, his career changed American history and began the tearing down of artificial barriers that separated Americans. Martin Luther King Jr. has become an icon of freedom throughout the world. People of Third World countries recognize his valor and strive for his ideals. He stands with Abraham Lincoln as one of the greatest Americans, of one of the greatest persons of any nation. |
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