In Black America; Tribute To MLK

From the University of Texas at Austin, KUT Radio, this is In Black America. I want to say tonight that I too am happy that I didn't sneeze because of I had sneezed. I wouldn't have been around here in 1960 and students all over the South started sitting in as lunch count. And I knew that as they were sitting in they were really standing up for the best in the American dreams, taking the whole nation back to those great welds of democracy, which were dug deep by the pounding fathers in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution if I had sneezed.

I wouldn't have been around here in 1961 and we decided to take a ride for freedom and end its segregation in interstate travel. If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been around here in 1962 and it rose and all been at Georgia, decided to straighten that box up. And when all the men and women straighten that box up, they're going somewhere because a man had lodged a back unless it has been. If I had sneezed. The late Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would have been 83 this year had he lived down his dream for racial equality in his country. He was a man who walked him under the oppressed and poor, a man who questioned unfair laws and went to jail rather than submit to them. King was a passionate fighter for civil rights and although he died by violence, his life and teachings were dedicated to a deep disrespect for violence and his consequences.

He won a Nobel Prize for a Peace, his lectures and dialogue served the conscience of a nation. In November 1983, legislation was signed, creating Martin Luther King Jr. Day, making it only the third national holiday born in the 20th century. In fall 1991, the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was assassinated, was dedicated to his remembers. On October 16, 2011, the MLK Memorial was dedicated on the National Mall. I'm John L. Hanson Jr. and welcome to another edition of In Black America. On this week's program, a tribute to the late Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. In Black America. On this week's program, a tribute to the late Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is considered by many as the father of the civil rights movement, born on Tuesday January

15, 1929, at the family home in Atlanta, Georgia. He was Chris at Michael Luther King, but in 1934, Daddy King changed his name after a young Martin experienced racial prejudice. In 1944, at the age of 15, he graduated high school and ended Morehouse College in Atlanta with the intention of becoming a medical doctor, but changed his mind in his junior year. In April 1948, King received his bachelor's degree in sociology and in a crosure theological seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania. In May 1951, he graduated with a bachelor's of the vending degree and his valedictorian

and student body president. In 1955, he earned his doctorate in systematic theology from Boston University. In March 1967, King led his first anti-war march in Chicago, studying the bombs in Vietnam exploded at home. They destroyed the dream and possibility for decent America. The following month on April 4, he made his most public and comprehensive statement against the war, addressing a crowd of 3,000 at Riverside Church in New York City, King delivered a speech entitled Beyond Vietnam. Not addressed to China or to Russia, nor is it an attempt to overlook the ambiguity of the results of the effects of the pandemic.

Life and history give eloquent testimony to the fact that conflicts are never resolved without trustful give and take on both sides, tonight I wish not to speak with Hanoi the National Liberation Front, but rather to my fellow Americans, that is, at the outset of our obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I and others had been waging in America. A few years ago, there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor, both black and white through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the build up in Vietnam, and I watched this program broken and eviscerated as if

it was some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war. And I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor, so long as adventures like Vietnam continue to draw men and skills and money, like some demonic destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such. Perhaps some more tragic recognition of reality took place, and it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight, and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. We were

taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them 8,000 miles away to guarantee liberties in South East Asia, which they had not found in South West Georgia and East Harlem. So we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching the grown white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. So we watched them in brutal solidarity, burning the huts of a poor village, but we realized that they would hardly live on the same block in Chicago. And I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor. In 1957 in New Orleans, seeking to build upon the success of the Montgomery

Bus Boycott, and with the hope of upgrading the status of Southern Blacks and America's poor, King Summoned together a number of Black leaders to lay the foundation for the organization now known as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. King was elected as first president, and he soon began helping other communities organize their own protests against discrimination. The Honorable Andrew Young, former Mayor of Atlanta and U.S. Ambassador was one of the Black leaders summoned. Looking back on it, we think of those as the best days of our lives. Actually, at the time, we really didn't know what we were doing, we knew things were wrong, and that somebody had to do something about it, and we just stumbled along from one thing to the other, too. We found a way to make it work. And fortunately, most of us had read a lot about India, and we understood some of the nonviolent methods of Gandhi. And we just experimented until we found out how to organize people. Nobody

was trained as an organizer. We knew the Black community, we knew the cities that we were working in fairly well, and we learned gradually over a period of time how to get things done. What type of impact did the late Dr. Martin of the King have on you at that time? Well, Martin was an amazing young man. He had been sort of thrust in the leadership. He never really wanted it, and yet he couldn't get away from it. And he was essentially trying to do something for other people. That kind of dedication and the sort of things that he said matter of factly. If a person hadn't found something that they were willing to die for, they probably would not fit to live anyway. Somebody dropped that on you in a joking kind of friendly conversation. It makes you think, what is it that I'm willing to die for? And you begin to think about your life and think about other people in a new way. I mean, he was amazing that all of the things that he did and he never lived to be 40 years old.

And yet in the midst of it all, he was still privately a very easygoing, friendly, joking, clowning, you know, lovable guy. In 1953, King completed his doctorate and was granted a degree two years later upon a completion of his dissertation. Married at the time, he returned to the South, become pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. There, he made his first mark on the civil rights movement. King's fight for justice and equal rights began on December 5, 1955. Five days after the late Rosa Park refused to obey the city rules, manned 80 segregation on buses. In 1956, as the boycott continued, King gained national prominence as the result of the exceptional speaking skills and personal courage. Although increasingly betrayed as the pre-eminent black spokesperson, King did not mobilize mass pro-text activities during the first five years, after the Montgomery boatcott had ended. On August 28, 1963, King

led a massive march on Washington DC and delivered one of the most passionate addresses of his career. I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation. Five score years ago, a great American in whose symbolic shadow we stand today signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night

of their captivity. But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an

exile in his own land. And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition. In a sense, we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promise or a note to which every American was to fall out. This note was a promise at all men. Yes, black men as well as white men would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promise or a note in so far as her citizens of color

are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check. A check which has come back, Mark Insufficient Fund. But we refuse to believe that the Bank of Justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that our insufficient funds and the great bolts of opportunity of this nation. And so we've come to cash this check. A check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hell of spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or

to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quick sands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time. In 1963, time magazine named him is the person of the year. A few months later in December 1964, he was reception of a Nobel Peace Prize. After his return from Norway, King took on new challenges in Selma, Alabama, led a voter registration campaign that ended in

the Selma to Montgomery Freedom March. King brought his crusade to Chicago where he started programs to rehabilitate the slums and provide housing. In April 1968, King lent his support to the Memphis sanitation workers. He wanted to discourage violence and wanted to focus national attention on the plight of the poor and organized workers of the city. The men were barging for basic union representation and long overdue raises. The strike became the new testing ground for the new direction the poor people's campaign was taking, which merged civil rights issues with economic concerns. On the eve of the assassination, this was King and SCLC's second attempt at a nonviolent protest march. I just want to do God's will and he's allowed me to go up to the mountain and I've looked over and I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you, but I want you to know the night that we as a people will get to the Promised Land. So I'm happy tonight,

I'm not worried about anything. I'm not feeling in a man. My eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. Civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot in the head and is now in critical condition in a Memphis Tennessee hospital. The latest reports from Memphis say Dr. King was hit by gunfire while standing on the balcony of his hotel room just before seven o'clock Eastern Standard Time. Police say a man wearing a dark suit dropped the weapon about a block from the shooting scene and jumped into a late model white car.

Police and gentlemen may I have your attention please. At 710 this evening Martin Luther King was shot in Tennessee. Martin Luther King 20 minutes ago died. For those of you who are black and are tempted to be filled with hatred and mistrust of the injustice of such an act against all white people I would only say that I can also feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed but he was killed by a white man. But we commit his body to the ground. The grave is too narrow for his soul but we commit

his body to the ground. No coffin, no crypt, no vault, no stone can hold his greatness. But we commit his body to the ground. On Sunday morning October 16, 2011 some 10,000 spectators and dignitaries gathered on the national mar for the dedication of the memorial for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Among the speakers were who's who of civil rights leaders, King's children as well as President Obama. President Obama earned the nation that day to celebrate the dedication of the memorial by continuing to press for the goals and hopes of the black preacher with no official rank or title who

somehow gave voice to our deepest dreams and helped make the nation more perfect. An earthquake and a hurricane may have delayed this day but this is a day that would not be denied. For this day we celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s return to the national mall. His life, his story tells us that change can come if you don't give up. He would not give up no matter how long it took because in the smallest hamlets and the darkest slums he had witnessed the highest reaches of the human spirit because in those moments when the struggle seemed most hopeless he had seen men and women and children conquer their fear because he had seen hills and mountains made low and rough places made plain and the crooked places made straight and God make a way out of no way. That is why we honor this

man because he had faith in us and that is why he belongs on this mall because he saw what we might become. That is why Dr. King was so quintessentially American because for all the hardships we've endured, for all our sometimes tragic history, ours is a story of optimism and achievement and constant striving that is unique upon this earth and that is why the rest of the world still looks to us to lead. This is a country where ordinary people find in their hearts the courage to do extraordinary things. The courage to stand up in the face of the fiercest resistance and to spare and say, this is wrong and this is right, we will not settle for what the cynics tell us we have to accept and we will reach again and again no matter the odds for what we know is possible. That is the conviction that we must carry now in our hearts as tough as times may be. I know we will overcome.

I know there are better days ahead. I know this because of the man towering over us. I know this because all he and his generation endured. We are here today in a country that dedicated a monument to that legacy. And so with our eyes on the horizon and our faith squarely placed in one another, let us keep striving. Let us keep struggling. Let us keep climbing toward that promised land of a nation in the world that is more fair and more just and more equal for every single child of God. Thank you God bless you and God bless the United States of America. In September 1991, the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel was dedicated. The museum traces the history of the civil rights movement from its beginning to the present. The museum has been built around the motel Wat King stayed while in Memphis. His room and that of his AIDS has been kept the way it was at faithful evening in April 1968.

Dr. King had been in Memphis prior to the assassination and prior to the coming in March for the march that broke out in violence. He'd come here before one. He'd stayed at the Lorraine and this was the room that he'd usually stay in. It's a nice room, a nice king-size bed even for that time. That would have been nice. So he stayed here and we have kept the original furniture that was in the room at the time and it's been redone to look as it did in 1968. But this is where he was the night of the assassination. That's Room 307. Now of course here is Room 306 and this is the room that was been occupied by some of Dr. King's AIDS with the two beds in here. But this is the room that he walked out of just prior to being shot. He had been in here with Reverend Abinathy and some others and they were, as you can see, having some food. There's some catfish on the plate over there and dishes and the glasses and milk and the light. And this room has been recreated

to appear as it did on the evening of the assassination. And again, the furniture in the room is all the furniture that was here at the time. One other thing that I like about this room as the visitor stands in here and reflects and reads these display lines and they light up, you know, when it acts up. You also hear Mahaya Jackson softly singing precious Lord and that was Dr. King's favorite song. So it's just, it brings tears to your eyes when it all is operating. I was just so struck by that last little line there. I just, with them putting the casket on the plane there, that just tells it all. Somebody said, it's just some ordinary person. I said, we really lost somebody, didn't we? Let me stand. I am tired. I am weak. I am warm. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was 39 at the time of his death. He was shot while standing

on the balcony of the rain motaled in Memphis, Tennessee. This has been attributed to the late Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who would have been 83 this week. If you have questions, comments or suggestions asked your future in Black America programs, email us at lowercase J. Hanson, H-A-N-S-O-N at kut.org. Also let us know what radio station you heard us of. The views and opinions expressed on this program are not necessarily those of this station or of the University of Texas at Austin. You can hear previous programs online at kut.org. Until we have the opportunity again for technical producer David Alvarez, I'm John L. Hanson Jr. Thank you for joining us today. Please join us again next week. CD copies of this program are available and may be purchased by writing in Black America

CDs, KUT Radio, one university station, Austin, Texas, 78712. That's in Black America CDs, KUT Radio, one university station, Austin, Texas, 78712. This has been a production of KUT Radio.