MLK/ RFK column

In the April spring of 1968, I was on the cusp of graduating, well being freed,  from Catholic elementary school. It appeared that we would not be able to afford  a distant Catholic high school, and I had trepidation about facing a public junior high. I was against the war in Vietnam at that tender age, in part, because I was an altar boy at too many funerals for young soldiers. I was for McCarthy, so I resented RFK. I was pleased the MLK had turned against the war.

I remember a real sense of loss when the news reported the assassination of Rev. King. I don’t recall the first time I heard of RFK’s speech in Indianapolis that awful night, but I have visited the site as an adult. It can be heard and seen , that five minute extemporaneous marvel on you tube. Looking back, I am struck by the respect RFK showed the crowd that night. Twice he quoted the ancient Greeks. For a moment his grief over his brothers melted into that public loss: “in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”  It had a touch of the prophetic, both in the sense of looking into the future but also speaking the truth about a situation. He saw us at a crossroads: increased polarization and bitterness or a path toward replacing violence with compassion and love to deal with the “stain of bloodshed.” Indianapolis did not have the riots of other cities that night. Kennedy would not live into the summer, so he could not help “tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.” We graduated 8^th grade that day.

I am convinced that King had a premonition of his death that night of his last speech in Memphis. The speech  has the feel of a valedictory, as he recounts milestones in the struggle for civil rights. King spends time recalling a life-threatening stabbing in New York about 10 years before the speech. He also goes into sermonic mode. I had forgotten that he does an extended extension of the parable of the Good Samaritan. He used it to speak of a “dangerous unselfishness.” King derived an interesting lesson why the two religious figures passed by the stricken man: Maybe it was due to important religious rules and work; maybe it was due to their desire to focus on large issues, the causal root of trouble and not a victim, they were afraid. they also wondered what would happen to them, if they stopped to help, King responds that our question should be what would happen to the person hurt if we do not act. One has the sense that King was addressing his own fear that night.

The famous end of the speech, of course, draws for the story of Moses receiving a glimpse of the Promised Land. He draws on 3,000 years of Biblical history to make a heartbreaking peek into the future.

Instead of treating our fellow citizens with respect for their intelligence, we have descended to a sorry spectacle of aiming at the lowest parts of our nature, from oratory to rants on twitter. 

We have made great strides in our country. criminal violence escalated for years, but for a quarter-century, its rate declined. State-enforced segregation is lost in a misty past. So many have been integrated into educational and political attainments. Poverty’s persistence continues to dog too many of our fellow citizens. The environment is so much cleaner. the Promised Land beckons, but it dawns closer for us all.