A week before his assassination, King told performer and activist Harry Belafonte that he worried the civil rights movement was “integrating into a burning house.” But when Belafonte asked what they should do, King replied, “I guess we're just going to have to become firemen.”
He managed to not demonize those with whom he disagreed-- and at that time, the disagreements were as major as today. Putting out a crowd fire means being able to stick to the issues and show why they are better. Today too often a fire is exactly what some want with vitriol and name calling. We don't have the kind of leaders to start a movement that will solve problems. I guess those are rare :(
ReplyDeleteAnd then after leaving here, I read this. Maybe I've been forgetting MLK. Of course, the author, Cornel West, is a flamethrower ;) Martin Luther King.
ReplyDeleteThe journalist Gary Younge makes an observation that I think is important in our reflections about Dr. King: "Reputations forged in revolutionary periods can rarely be sustained through calmer times." Times change -- "new occasions teach new duties" as James Russell Lowell wrote in abolitionist times. A symptom of human greatness might be that people in different times keep finding something, even if a new something, in people who went before.
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