I was one of a few who had the privilege of spending King’s last birthday, Jan. 15,1968, with him. How he spent it is testimony to how Dr. King himself would want his birthday commemorated.
First, he had breakfast that morning with Mrs. King and the children, a reflection of his commitment to his family. Then, around 10 o’clock, he came to church, dressed in work clothes, to meet with his staff and allies from around the country. He met with them to organize a poor people’s campaign, a campaign to lift the boats stuck at the bottom of the river, to move forward those left behind in search of the American Dream, to challenge the nation’s conscience and to change the nation’s priorities.
Around 1 o’clock, Zernona Clayton, a friend, brought a cake. That was the only way we knew it was his birthday. We stopped, ate cake and drank punch, laughed together, and then went right back into the session on how to end the Vietnam War and revive the war on poverty.
In his famous “I Have A Dream” speech at the 1963 march on Washington, D.C., the dream was his refrain, one he had used many times before. His focus was on the promissory note for opportunities, jobs and education that had been issued to African-Americans upon their release from slavery. It had bounced, he argued, labeled “insufficient funds, and he led the protest march to demand that it be honored.
We’ve come a long way since. The walls of Jim Crow apartheid have come down. African-Americans have their civil rights. We have the right to vote. Today, doors are open that once were closed.
Yet I cannot help but wonder what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would have to say to America if he were alive today. Recently, President Clinton spoke to a church in Memphis about how Dr. King would be dismayed and disappointed at the level of violence in our society. Yes, that is true. The cost in lives lost and hopes crushed is incalculable.
But Dr. King would not and never did stop at a condemnation of our violence. Dr. King went on to demand a change in our priorities–we need only look at his actual words for confirmation. “A nation,” he warned, “that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”
The realities of Dr. King’s statement are now painfully revealed. Unemployment is failing overall to 6 percent, but black unemployment is rising to 13 percent–50 percent for our youth. The gap between rich and poor is wider now. Our schools are becoming more segregated, not less. A savage inequality in funding for education helps track some children for Yale and some for jail. The ghettos and barrios of our cities are poorer, more isolated and more desperate. Our youth are killing each other in the streets with no regard for human life. What would Dr. King do or say?
If the president is going to preach, Dr. King would call on him to preach on the great defining issue of race, to call upon our nation to resume its historic struggle toward creating equal protection under the law. Dr. King would call upon him to use his power not simply to exhort and preach, but to set priorities in our nation’s interest. He would urge the president to seek out relief and remedies born of hope, not reactions born of fear and expediency.
He would appeal to the president to boner his covenant to the people to invest $20 billion a year in rebuilding our cities and putting people back to work.
He would appeal to the president to launch an urban-development plan to encourage teachers, police and firefighters to move into areas of greatest need. If we offer them subsidized mortgages, it will provide an economic incentive to rebuild neighborhoods. This plan should be modeled after the plan developed for Poland, which offered 40-year loans at 3/4 of 1 percent interest, first payment due in 10 years. If we can help Poland, Russia, Europe and Japan, surely we can rebuild our own cities.
As a vocal opponent of excessive military spending, Dr. King would be shocked to find that four years after the fall of the Berlin wall, the United States will spend $274 billion on its military. The Russians will spend less than $50 billion. Germany is united but we pay to keep more than 300,000 troops and dependents in Germany looking for something to do. Let us decide that a safe measure of our security is to spend only as much as the rest of the world combined. That would free up more than $50 billion a year to reinvest in this country. We have the money; we need a change.
Dr. King would be leading the fight against a crime bill that offers more jails and more police instead of preventive measures against crime. More jail cells, more ways to kill are not the answer. It is morally wrong and cost-inefficient to cut the Housing and Urban Development budget by $4 billion while funding $100,000 new condo-style jail cells.
Dr. King would be leading the offensive for change in this country. He would be asking the president for an urban-policy plan, rural development, education for the children and jobs for their parents. He would be leading the charge for moral and spiritual redemption.
If Martin Luther King Jr. were here today, be would tell us that we have the power to change our present state. He would spend his own birthday, as he did in 1968, in struggle. And he would be proud of us if we did the same. If we stand together with moral authority and honor, we can again change the state of America today. We overcame before. We shall overcome again.
