The key tension in King’s life was over how to push relentlessly for change but within an existing moral structure. But by the late-’60s many felt the social structure needed to be torn down. The assassin’s bullet set off a conflagration.
At King’s funeral, the marshals told the throngs that nobody should chew gum because it would look undignified. But niceties like that were obsolete.
Building the social fabric after the disruption of that period has been the work of the subsequent generations – weaving the invisible web of family, neighborhood and national obligations so that people stay in school, attend to their kids and have an opportunity to rise if they play by the rules.
Progress has been slow. Nearly a third of American high school students don’t graduate (half in the cities). Seventy percent of African-American kids are born out of wedlock. Poverty rates in Memphis have scarcely dropped.
Martin Luther King Jr. at least left behind a model of how to repair the social fabric. He was scholarly, formal, assertive and meticulously self-controlled in public. If Barack Obama’s campaign represents anything, it is the triumph of King’s early-’60s style of activism over the angry and reckless late-’60s style. King was in crisis when he was gunned down. But his inspiration is outlasting his critics.
A confused and dishonest column, in my assessment. Brooks can see the reality, but refuses to admit it: King’s dream was shoved aside almost immediately after his assassination in favor of the sort of venomous racial politics spouted by the pastor of the very man Brooks points to as the legacy of King’s approach.
Venomous racist politics? You mean the Republican race baiting that happened in the 70’s and 80’s?
Not a great article. There isn’t any single person who represents Black America. It’s always had a diversity of viewpoints.