by Eric Payne
The Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929 ““ 1968) in many ways has been distilled and diluted down to his “I Have A Dream Speech.” Between the pre-holiday commercials, cursory textbook coverage of the civil rights movement and the endless empty statements by aspiring beauty pageant queens, you’d think that all this civil rights visionary and leader did was dream of equality. But in fact, he was a true man of action.
Often, the Civil Rights Movement placed King at odds with the laws of the states and cities he visited as he advocated economic and social equality through acts of non-violence. In the spring of 1963, he was directly warned and/or threatened in advance not to bring his trouble to Birmingham, Alabama. Following his conscious, King went anyway and the subsequent savagery committed against non-violent African American protesters by the city’s police force went beyond what most today would consider unimaginable. At its conclusion, King was jailed for his act of civil disobedience.
While in jail, Dr. King felt it necessary to respond to and ultimately repudiate local Birmingham clergy who subtly condemned his visit to the city via the media. He did so in what is now known as the “Letter From A Birmingham Jail.”
In his letter King states:
“I am here because injustice is here.”*
One paragraph later he repudiates his detractors for their complacency:
“I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham.”*
He points out that at the time the mindsets in the African American community. In the following passage he describes two of them:
“”...a force of complacency, made up in part of Negroes who, as a result of long years of oppression, are so drained of self-respect and a sense of “somebodiness” that they have adjusted to segregation; and in part of a few middle class Negroes who, because of a degree of academic and economic security and because in some ways they profit by segregation, have become insensitive to the problems of the masses.”*
He also addresses the consequences of inaction and choosing to do nothing when one knows better:
“…We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right.”*
These last two statements by themselves do not embody the entire spirit of King’s moving letter. However, they shed a frightening light on the fact that today in 2011, though much has changed regarding nomenclature and human and civil rights, our mindsets remain strikingly similar.
Last week, it snowed where I live. After taking my kids sledding one afternoon at a local park, my five-year-old daughter noticed a lone beer bottle sitting upright in the snow. She asked me why it was there. I told her someone had left it behind. They had littered on Mother Earth. She excitedly said, “Let’s pick it up and throw it out!” Immediately my father-bear guard went up. Even though she was wearing gloves I immediately thought, “Don’t touch that! You don’t know where it’s been.” My next thought was, “Someone who works here will clean it up.”
But something stopped me from saying any of this. My daughter’s currently untarnished mindset has her correctly believing that this local park is our park. It is something which we are all collectively responsible for. It wasn’t the job of someone else to pick up that bottle. She decided it was hers. She moved to do right in the face of injustice, however small. The only protective measure I enforced was to pour out the beer still in the bottle. I handed it back to her and we brought it home to put in our recycling bin. Like Dr. King, my daughter gets it. How long has it been since we’ve gotten it as a community or a culture?
Interconnectedness is everywhere we turn in the virtual world as social networking continues its ever growing consumption of our time and attention. But interconnectedness in the real world has conversely become less and less relevant and existent for people. In order to survive and eventually thrive we will need to move beyond believing we are connected because we “know” or “follow” people via our computers and smart phones. We need to once again “reach out and touch” in the real world.
In celebration of the life and legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr., please find a way and then pledge to go beyond your current boundaries. Whether it’s volunteering, mentoring, heading up or participating in a major benevolent initiative or simply keeping your neighborhood clean – even if your next door neighbor doesn’t. Positivity begets positivity. Love begets love. Sooner or later we need to abandon the mindset of “it is what it is” and hopelessness that comes from only discussing what is wrong and giving little to no consideration to taking action to do what is right.
To learn how to do this, take a page from Dr. King’s playbook. No longer allow yourself to be dismayed or paralyzed by injustice. Now is the time to dig in and get involved. Add your influence and principles to the equation. Do this in your relationships, at the dinner table with your family, in your kids’ schools, on the job, in your communities, in your churches. Whether large or small, we can all do our part to do more than simply dream of a better day.
Like Martin Luther King, Jr., will you do more than dream? Regardless of what people around you are or are not doing, will you make your best effort to visit the mountaintop and bring as many in your community along with you for your and ultimately everyone’s betterment?
*Excerpted from Letter From A Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963.
Author of the now infamous, My Wife Is NOT My Friend (on Facebook), Eric talks about being a father and a husband on his blog, Makes Me Wanna Holler ““ Man, Dad, Husband. You can follow him on Twitter or find him chopping it up on his Facebook Page. He is the author of I See Through Eyes, a book of poetry and short stories. In his “spare time” Eric reviews autos and writes relationship articles for Atlanta-based J’Adore Magazine.