Well, class, here’s my book report for
today…
About a
week ago, I was returning some items to the public library when a book at the
front desk caught my attention. The first thing I noticed was Dr. Martin Luther
King Jr.’s face on the cover. The title: Death
of a King: The Real Story of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Final Year. I was
intrigued. Not being an expert on Dr. King, never having read a book about his
life, it seemed a bit unorthodox for me to start at the end. However, with
everything that’s going on in America right now, it seemed as if King was
calling me. I thought of checking the book out; not just to feed my appetite
for biography (and nothing gives me greater pleasure than reading the lives of
great men and women,) but also to gain a deeper, more critical perspective on
the issue of race in America. Ultimately, however, I knew that I was already in
the middle of too many books to really give it any time. As I mature I am
learning that I can’t react to every literary or intellectual impulse that
presents itself: I simply don’t have the time. Then I glanced down and read the
name of the author.
Tavis
Smiley is one of the most incredible men in television today. Scratch that; he
is the number one television
personality, in my book. (Charlie Rose is #2.) When Tavis interviews a guest on
his PBS show, he doesn’t just smooch or hype up their latest promotional
campaign. Tavis is certainly the congenial host; in fact, he gives the
impression that he’s good friends with his guest, be they prince or pauper,
rockstar or politician, intellectual or down-to-earth Joe Schmo. He doesn’t
neglect his duty to inform the viewer of the guest’s latest project, either:
but he broaches their story, their professional achievement, in such a personal
way that it is as if we all, guest, host and audience, are longtime
acquaintances reminiscing the glory days of our youth. On page 137 of your book, Tavis might say, you mention an incident that occurred when you were seven-and-a-half,
while you and your sister were staying with your maternal grandfather…can you
tell us why that experience had such a profound impact on your life, and how it
has shaped your career, and how it has been reflected in your work? I’m
making this question up, but I have heard Mr. Smiley ask similarly acute and
intimate questions of many guests. Suffice it to say, I was more than curious
to see how Tavis would bring this penetrating insight to the subject of Dr.
King, whose life and work, and above all, passion (and compassion) are so necessary and, sadly, so lacking on the world
stage today.
I checked
the book out, went to work, and cracked it open as soon as I had the
opportunity for a coffee break. Immediately I knew I had made the right choice.
Tavis’s writing, even more than his television show, is brilliant, both
analytically and stylistically, yet also deeply personal and movingly
impassioned, without becoming preachy or resorting to histrionics or
sensationalism. I urge you to read the book yourself, to experience what I
mean; my intent now is to help emphasize some of the points he made, some of
the points Dr. King was making, some of the points that so desperately demand
our attention today, perhaps more than ever before.
As the
subtitle makes explicit, the book outlines the events, both external and, as
much as possible through consultation with those who were there, and Smiley’s
own poetic conjecture, the internal,
of the last year of his life. King gave a speech in April of 1967, condemning
America’s involvement in the Vietnam War and connecting such rampant militarism
with racism and the all-pervasive scourge of poverty. Exactly one year later,
to the day, King was assassinated in what was part of a series of tragedies
that seemed to usher in the symbolic death of an era of turbulent innocence and
optimistic resistance. By the end of the sixties, protestors did not march
through the streets unaccompanied; blood marched with them. But it wasn’t just
that the civil rights movement lost a leader that day; it was not the black
community alone that had cause to mourn. The United States of America lost one
of the greatest heroes of its history, the likes of which have not been seen
since.
Despite
Smiley’s almost palpable adulation for this majestic figure, the book is
refreshingly honest. The author does not take sides but shows how everyone
around King was taking sides,
increasingly not his own, at a time when, as King himself admonished, not to
take a side was to be on the worst side of all. Why were MLK’s followers,
supporters, aides and friends turning against him in the struggle? Many of them
asked the same question of Martin. Insolently provoking the Johnson
Administration, which had so fervently backed King’s agenda of civil rights up
to then, by radically opposing American militarism and questioning the moral
integrity of American Democracy itself, appeared to be suicide for the movement
so many had worked so hard to make a reality. Stirring up grand protests
against war and poverty would court the risk of inciting more violence and destruction,
many who still held to King’s ideal of non-violence warned him. In the other
camp were a new generation of black activists, who were tired of the Christian
practice of turning the other cheek and wanted to fight fire with fire, bitterly
and to the end, if it meant burning the house down. But Dr. King made no
concessions.
How could
we decry violence in our own communities while allowing it to continue unabated
in Southeast Asia? How could we win equality for Americans of color while
dropping bombs on dark-skinned farmers? How could we represent democracy to the
world if we resorted to force in order to ensure our own dominance, at home and
abroad? How could black Americans stand for a war that was being waged at the
expense of a disproportionate amount of black lives? How could the professed
ministers of Christ hide in their churches and remain silent about the evil
that was being unleashed on the world?
Part of the
problem, which King refused to compromise with, is that these are all, in
practical terms, separate questions, which demanded separate answers. King
refused to see it that way. To him, it was all-or-nothing. He was on a moral
crusade to cleanse the world of evil, of inequality, of tyranny. It is
mind-rackingly ironic that King failed to acknowledge these to be the same
values for which, ostensibly, we were waging war in Vietnam. But King was a man
of wisdom and intelligence, not only passion and conviction: he knew that the
ends did not always justify the
means. A scientist would not arrive at objective truths without adhering to the
scientific method; likewise, a freedom-fighter could not bring peace through
methods that were anything but peaceful.
If I had
lived during the sixties, I probably would have opposed the war. When I was younger
I held the conviction that war was wrong, and like so many of my generation, I
came to view our government with mistrust and cynicism. This is in part due to
the dubious actions our leaders have taken. It is also due to the overarching criticism
of the United States that radical liberals, artists and intellectuals espoused
during those dark days. In the absence of a conciliator like Dr. King, America
has become increasingly polarized, socially, even as we become more and more
culturally homogenized.
Nowhere is
this more evident than in the growing divide between rich and poor in this
nation of wealth and freedom that allows the tyranny of poverty-for-profit to
go unheeded. It is telling that King was murdered on the anniversary of his
speech against the war in Vietnam; it is perhaps even more significant that his
life was cut short just before he was set to lead an enormous march on
Washington to protest the impoverished conditions that so many Americans, and
an overwhelming number of blacks, faced in their daily lives. As an adult, I
see now that global conflict is far more complicated than can be reduced to the
idealistic stance of the pacifist, just as the leaders of America have learned
that even the most powerful nation on Earth does not have unlimited resources,
and not every conflict can be won, even if it should be. Vietnam is a clear
example of how there are no winners in war (except Hades and his organization
of weapons contractors, who all turn a substantial profit no matter whose
bodies pile up – Pluto, epithet of
the God of Death, means literally, “the rich.”) In a striking parallel, King’s
death shows how dissention in the ranks of the progressive movement ultimately
defeated the liberal causes that spawned it. By failing to unite, these splintered
factions, all seeking their own idea of justice, were overpowered by a
stronger, more cohesive adversary.
The
conservative backlash, at odds and yet somehow in collusion with our new,
morally unchecked liberalism, has only perpetuated the class divide; meanwhile,
race relations, while taking a backseat, were thought to have become innocuous,
if not settled. The events in recent months, though they be just a handful of
cases that give example of a continued problem countless Americans have
confronted every single day since King left us, have brought to the forefront
of our national consciousness the inescapable questions of racial
discrimination, of institutional brutality, and of biased, partial judiciaries
and blood-thirsty media outlets ready to profit equally from the tears of the
innocent and the crimes of the wicked.
In the year
to come, whence will come the voice of reason? Who will stand tall, as proud
leader of these American people, a shepherd to his flock; while the wolves
gather ‘round us all? Tavis does not ask these questions explicitly. But to
read this book in these times, is to hear these questions asked, loudly and
unavoidably. Christianity is losing its sway, in a nation dominated by the
secular cult of technology and financial speculation. It is dubious whether a
minister can gain such appeal and influence over our country as Dr. King once
achieved. However, there are plenty among the black community who would perhaps
heed such a voice, were he (or she) to speak directly to the spiritual
dimension of their experience, without neglecting to advocate for those social
and material adjustments that were necessary to offer the promise of life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to all our brothers and sisters, in every
nook and corner of this Union, as Jesus was able to feed a crowd of thousands
with five meager loaves of bread and two small fish. Perhaps the working poor
of all races, nationalities and religions could put aside their arbitrarily
embittered differences, which only serve to keep them impoverished through
socio-political tactics of divide-and-conquer, to follow a new prophet who
stood tall in the tradition of the great Abrahamic faiths and challenged the
economic and cultural idolatry that is, like some potent soporific, lulling
vast segments of the American people into a heavy torpor, the likes of which
even the most terrible dictators of history have failed to accomplish.
Dr. King is
dead. Although I was anticipating the conclusion to the book, knowing with
certainty the final outcome, even when it would arrive, somehow Tavis succeeded
in capturing the suddenness and shock of that fatal moment. Rarely has a book,
or even a film, been able to end with such powerful drama, restrained and yet
explosive, an exclamation point, and a question mark upon the pages of human
history. No other book save Voltaire’s Candide
has caused me to weep openly upon finishing it. I repeat, King is dead…but what
of King’s dream? Does a dream die, with the dreamer? Does the dreamer live on,
inside that dream itself? Sometimes at night, a child will wish fervently to
return to a pleasant dream they had the night before. The only way I see for
America to dream Dr. King’s dream once more, is to wake up.
No comments:
Post a Comment