Lessons from MLK

This is my own photograph of the Dr. King mural in the basement of the Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama.  Martin Luther King, Jr. served as pastor there from 1954 to 1960, in the earliest days of the Civil Rights Movement.  I stood looking at the mural for a long time one afternoon in April, 2004, in the course of a long drive across the United States and through my distant memories of the Deep South. I was emotionally overcome by the sheer power of the art; the painting is simple, direct, but it contains everything.  You can see Rosa Parks, the buses organized by Dr. King as an alternative to the segregated buses of Montgomery, George Wallace, the Klan, the Capitol just up the street.  It was a quiet afternoon in this little museum, this shrine to Dr. King.  I was just about the only patron, and it felt almost silly to stand there with tears rolling down my cheeks. Almost, but not really.

Dr. King was that rarest of humans, a truly great man.  A noble being.  He graced our lives during his short span on Earth, gave us an insight into what true courage looks like.  How to stand up to evil power when you really don't know if you'll win or not, whether you even stand a chance.  He was, of course, the greatest orator in the history of America.  There are really no close seconds.  He was to public speaking what Muhammed Ali was to boxing, Jordan to basketball, Beethoven to the symphony. Simply in a class by himself..  He was as well a deep and courageous writer, a powerful and complex thinker, a visionary.

It is just and fitting that Barack Obama should be inaugurated the day after Dr. King's birthday, the national holiday finally installed after a battle with old guard racists like Dick Cheney and John McCain, who doggedly fought it.  Barack's ascension is in a sense the end of Dr. King's journey, the final resting place for the march that began on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma so long ago.  I know that Barack Obama reveres and emulates Dr. King, that he has internalized some of King's oratorical flourishes and cadences, and that his attitude of nonviolent inclusiveness is modeled on King, to a certain degree. It's important, however, to recall that Barack Obama got to the mountain top by a route different from that traveled by Dr. King.  Martin Luther King suffered through the sweltering heat of Southern racial bigotry and segregation, played always with a deck stacked against him,and came from nothing to become the unrivaled leader of the Civil Rights Movement.  I think Barack Obama still has to learn some of the things that Dr. King instinctively knew from the cradle.  If Barack really wants to be the "People's President," he's going to have to learn how to piss people off sometimes, to challenge their sense of power and supremacy.  Not all, not even most, opposition can be charmed and mollified.  He's taking on a power structure that is dedicated and consecrated, more than anything else, to the preservation of the perogatives of the very rich: tax structure, government funding of the military-industrial complex, health care - over the last 30 years, it has all been set up to serve their interests.  They are not going to give Barack what he says he wants; he's going to have to take it.

That's what Martin Luther King did.  He gladly accepted the help and good wishes of the sympathetic and well-intentioned.  And as to those who opposed him and his cause, he took it to the street.