Monday, January 18, 2016

Shedding some light on MLK Day

Was the Civil Rights Movement just a dream Baby Boomers like me have never woken up from? After getting into an inadvertent philosophical debate with my daughter, I had to pinch myself.

Yesterday I sent my daughter, a college junior, a link to a multi racial a cappella performance of “Shed a Little Light” in honor of Martin Luther King Day. The video made me nostalgic for the days when my children were young. Every year on the King holiday I would read to them from his letters, sermons and his epic “I Have a Dream” speech.

Sending the link was my way of connecting with my little girl over the miles that separate us on what I consider a pretty significant day.

“Thanks momma,” she texted me back as millennials do.

Then she went on to tell me, “. . . let's not forget that there's a reason this is MLK day and not Malcolm X day!! Mainstream America loves Martin Luther King because his activism was respectable (ie. palatable to middle class liberal white ppl) and fairly conservative. By all means take tomorrow to honor a man who did so much work to mobilize and empower black people but don't blindly accept him as the face of the civil rights movement.”

Then she added, “In conclusion, stay woke.”

Huh? Did I just get schooled by my 21-year-old?

Not so fast little girl.

“One raised consciousness with militancy, the other moved mountains with consciousness,” I answered her, “What would the world tolerate today?”

I grew up in Philadelphia just north of the Mason Dixon line in the 1960s where as a young girl I experienced a kind of racism my children will never know. There were stores and restaurants we simply couldn’t go to. There were children I wasn’t allowed to play with, names I was called that still hurt me to this day. Evaluating my daughter’s assertion through my lens of life experience I can assure you there was nothing palatable about King’s activism. More Gandhi than Genghis Khan, King was no less a warrior for social justice. I’m afraid this generation may never understand the kind of courage it took to wage the Birmingham campaign in the face of the most entrenched and defiant pool of racists in the country. But they might listen more openly to Malcolm X.

Both King and Malcolm X took a courageous stand against racial segregation and for social justice at great personal sacrifice and risk. And yes both men paid the ultimate price at the hands of an assassin.

The charismatic leader of the Nation of Islam began his campaign rejecting King’s nonviolence stance and featuring hateful rhetoric against the white race, Jews and even blacks that didn’t agree with him. Especially those who questioned whether black supremacy was a responsible answer to the Ku Klux Klan. He was, in a word, divisive.

But he was also a seeker of truth and unafraid to alter his thought process when he found it, even if that truth was in conflict with what he believed in before. His brilliance could not be contained in a place, a time or an ideology vulnerable to extinction. He grew to embrace multiculturalism as the answer to the racial woes of this nation and the world. He was indeed a great warrior for justice and deserves to be recognized.

Sadly, what the nation remembers of Malcolm X is his militancy, which was probably the biggest hurdle to a proposed act of Congress in 1993 to establish a national holiday in his name.

But in San Francisco, San Jose and Berkley in California they have marked the Malcolm X holiday each year on May 19 since 1979. Observances including conferences and heritage festivals are held throughout the country and at the Malcolm X Elementary School in Washington DC where the day is recognized as an annual day of peace.


I am awake now Savannah, and while you won’t likely convince me that MLK is any less worthy of this day, let us turn our thoughts today to Malcolm X.



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