Black Lives Matter! MLK

BY WILLIAM R. FREEMAN (M.Div.‘01)

A few weeks ago the world remembered the 50th anniversary of the assassination of one of the greatest men in history — The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Notice, I did not say one of the greatest black men; NO, I said one of the greatest men.

As a young man living in the village of Harlem, New York, Dr. King was one of my idols; the other, paradoxically was el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz (Malcolm X). Now that may sound strange to some, but perhaps to understand this, you would have to have been a young black male growing up in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Emmett Louis Till, a 14-year-old boy, was murdered on August 28, 1955, in Mississippi. Medgar Wiley Evers, a civil rights activist and NAACP field secretary for the state of Mississippi, was murdered in his driveway on June 12, 1963. Four black girls (Addie Mae Collins, Carol Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley) were killed when four members of the Ku Klux Klan bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, on Sunday morning, September 15, 1963. James Howard Meredith, the first black person to enter the University of Mississippi, was shot by a sniper on June 6, 1966.

As you can see, blacks getting murdered or shot is not new. The main difference between then and now is back then the perpetrators were mostly civilians in the South; today they are mostly policemen, or young white men, all over the country.

You may ask, ‘how was it that men and women were admirers and followers of both Martin and Malcolm?’  Well, these two GIANTS were fighting for the same thing: equal rights for ALL people, but especially black Americans! The difference was Dr. King‘s way was “non-violence” and Brother Malcolm’s was, “by any means necessary!”

Remember, in 1968 although schools had been LEGALLY desegregated in 1954 (Brown v. Board of Education), like today, most were and still are segregated. Although barriers that kept black people from voting had been made ILLEGAL (Voting Rights Act of 1965), like today, states still find ways (gerrymandering), to keep political power in the hands of the few. Although housing discrimination has been made ILLEGAL (Fair Housing Act of 1968), back there and today, black families are steered to certain neighborhoods.

Lastly, don’t forget that on June 6, 2018, the world will also remember the 50th anniversary of the assassination of another giant, Robert F. Kennedy, whose life was snuffed out by a bullet two months after Dr. King’s, on June 6, 1968.  Bobby Kennedy evinced authentic commitment to equal rights for all people.

We will never know, but this writer believes that had these three men lived, things might just be a little better and black lives might just matter a little more in this nation!