The King I know....

With the recent anniversary of the "I have a Dream" speech, I find myself a bit reflective. When people talk about Dr. King there is this sort of (what is the opposite of demonization?) Santa Clausification.

I understand the need retroactively claim a hero. But let us not forget while King was alive, he was hated and unpopular to large swaths of the public.

So it is important to remember what Dr. King and his contemporaries actually did for the African American community. Not the country at large, but specifically African Americans. I personally do not have the words to describe it, nor did I live it. But my parents did, and my grand parents as well. I remember the "stories" and the "lessons", about how to act. The pervasive sense of fear that existed in this country for a segment of the population.


It will seem unrecognizable to most today. To be born black in this country prior to the last couple of generations was to be born into a brutal dictatorship. This piece, "Most of you have no idea what Martin Luther King actually did", does a wonderful job of articulating that feeling and conveying it to a generation that does not remember, and has not experienced it in such a concentrated form.

I was kind of sarcastic and asked something like, so what did Martin Luther King accomplish other than giving his "I have a dream speech."
Before I tell you what my father told me, I want to digress. Because at this point in our amnesiac national existence, my question pretty much reflects the national civic religion view of what Dr. King accomplished. He gave this great speech. Or some people say, "he marched." I was so angry at Mrs. Clinton during the primaries when she said that Dr. King marched, but it was LBJ who delivered the Civil Rights Act.
At this point, I would like to remind everyone exactly what Martin Luther King did, and it wasn't that he "marched" or gave a great speech.
My father told me with a sort of cold fury, "Dr. King ended the terror of living in the south."
Please let this sink in and and take my word and the word of my late father on this. If you are a white person who has always lived in the U.S. and never under a brutal dictatorship, you probably don't know what my father was talking about.
But this is what the great Dr. Martin Luther King accomplished. Not that he marched, nor that he gave speeches.
He ended the terror of living as a black person, especially in the south.

So when I hear Rep. Michelle Bachmann lecture us about how the Founding Fathers fought slavery, or how Gov. Rick Perry talks of squabbles over taxation rates, as of a kind, with the Civil Rights movement.

Once and for all, your ideological struggle is not like the civil rights movement. Unless you were forcibly placed in bondage, taken from your home, your men beaten and tortured, your women raped, and you children sold. Much like the Holocaust, there are no equivalents to these acts. You favor lower taxes? Make your case. No one likes taxes it will be pretty easy to make. Leave some of the greatest crimes against humanity out of it.

-Cheers