Dropping the Ball -- Again
Tue., January 22, 11:12 AM
The plan for yesterday, Martin Luther King Day, was to write something in remembrance. But I seem to have a little cold — uncomfortable but not serious — and I didn’t write anything. That’s me: a day late and a dollar short.
Yesterday’s newspaper had a couple of articles that caught my attention. The first discussed that, with the passing years, many people know the “icon” rather than the many different sides of the man. The other article discussed the fact that schoolchildren in particular know “I have a dream,” but they know nothing else about that powerful speech. Do you even remember the episode of the Bill Cosby show where the entire Huxtable family sat and listened to the whole speech?
My little community radio station makes a point of playing the entire speech every year. The announcer reminds us, it will be at 8:35 a.m., right after the news, and you should set aside about fifteen minutes if you want to listen. Sometimes my mind tunes in at the middle, and I hear something I don’t remember hearing before.
In 1963 I was newly out of college, trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life (you know how new college grads are). Was I paying attention to the news? I don’t know. There was a lot of stuff going on, but… The following paragraph sounds especially poignant now.
It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.
Dr. King was right, of course. The unrest continued, culminating in the horrific spring and summer of 1968. Why do I have the feeling that we “dropped the ball”? Ask yourself, do I judge a child (or a teen) by the color of his skin rather than the beauty of his character?
