Under the Same Sun

Published 4/2/08

By: Kasey Henricks

It was 6:05 p.m. Thurs., April 4, 1968. One shot rang out in Memphis at the Lorraine Motel. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot. Rev. Ralph Abernathy, of Birmingham, bent down to cradle King’s head as Jesse Jackson and other members of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference pointed across the street towards where the shot was fired. Soon after, King was rushed to St. Joseph’s hospital where he was pronounced dead.

King has meant many things to many people. However, he is not remembered for his silence. As the reverend once said, “A time comes when silence is betrayal.” No one has changed history by remaining silent. King was a man whose words put truth to power. A bullet may have ended King’s life, but his dream lives on. Forty years after his death, his legacy remains.

Many conservatives remember the King who marched on Washington, D.C. to deliver his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. King shared: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

And many liberals recall the King who criticized the Vietnam War and declared that “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” In a speech entitled “Beyond Vietnam” given at Riverside Church in New York City, King preached: “It should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America’s soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam.”

Others remember the more radical King who argued for policies like reparations and affirmative action. In his work “Why We Can’t Wait,” King wrote, “Whenever this issue of compensatory or preferential treatment is raised, some of our friends recoil in horror. The Negro should be granted equality, they agree, but should ask for nothing more. On the surface, this appears reasonable, but it is not realistic. For it is obvious that if a man enters the starting line of a race 300 years after another man, the first would have to perform some incredible feat to catch up.”

And King is also remembered for his strong words against the evils of capitalism. In his 1967 SCLC Presidential Address, King said: “We honestly face the fact that the movement must address itself to the question of restructuring the whole of American society. There are forty million poor people here. And one day we must ask the question, ‘Why are there forty million poor people in America?’ And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. And I’m simply saying that more and more, we’ve got to begin to ask questions about the whole society.”

King was all of these things, and more. One sentence, one paragraph, one book cannot encapsulate the meaning of what Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. has meant to people. King is a symbol, but he’s more than that.

His image represents inarguably one of the greatest struggles for liberation throughout history. King was not one to advocate silence, because as he saw it, social injustice was not continued by overt actions of bad people, but the disturbing silence of all the good.

And today, injustice remains. When disparities (such as political representation, healthcare access, home ownership, incarceration rates, education, poverty, accumulated wealth, earned income, unemployment, and many other issues) are further examined, King’s struggle remains imminent.

As bell hooks once wrote, “When we speak out in a liberated voice and break the silence, we connect with anyone anywhere living in silence.”

Forty years later, remember King. Break the silence.