The occasion was nothing we were interested in — the Illinois Speech and Theater convention, or something of that nature. My parents dragged me and my brother to Chicago and settled us into a hotel full of adults from the academic world. One of our few breaks from this tedium was the day mom chaperoned us on an excursion to the city’s museums.
It was April 4, 1968.
Something happened late in the day that lent an unsettled aspect to the tour. People cast worried looks. Voices rose and quavered, pinched by uncertainty. A cab driver — a black gentleman — refused to drive us all the way back to the downtown hotel, despite my mom’s desperate pleas. He appeared frightened by the prospect of carting a white family into what might be a violent melee.
We ended up at the Museum of Science and Industry, where the staff agreed to shelter us even though they were frantically barring all doors.
Really there was little cause for alarm, at least that evening. Word that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated in Memphis sunk in the next day, sparking a series of destructive riots in Chicago and many other cities across the country.
The fiery display was antithetical to that spirit of determined, unrelenting, yet nonviolent popular protest King advocated. He countered ingrained, institutional racism with resolve and hope. There was a better America to be gained by overcoming the long chords of inequality, and a movement by the people — from the bottom up — must eventually prevail.
At the time my dad taught a course on African-American rhetoric at the university. Yes, by 1968 faith in the nonviolent approach to change was beginning to fray. Yet the words were all new and fresh, much of it with an eye toward the future. And the change most people advocated was a positive one.
Of course, those involved in the civil rights movement understood the enemy clearly. They also knew — for the most part — they had support across racial lines, as well as from religious institutions, universities and some notable politicians.
For anxious Americans of 2016, the face of the enemy is not as easy to distinguish. Police appear to be gunning down young black men at an alarming rate, yet the Black Lives Matter movement draws little more than rejection from some on the right. The middle class is vanishing, wages for workers remain stagnant even as corporate profits and executive compensation soars. Any mention of hiking the minimum wage is met with stiff opposition, however, and the phrase “income inequality” barely stirs the popular imagination. We blame institutions, liberals, conservatives, congress, the supposed war on Christianity, the supposed power of the Christian right, W., Obama …
Voters on both sides have a notion that someone or something to blame. They sense that many politicians are merely puppets to this force. So they rally to angry conservatives like Donald Trump and Ted Cruz or the anti-establishment liberal cries of Bernie Sanders.
Unfortunately, these grass roots gatherings turn shrill, blaming each other or outsiders for the perceived plight of this nation. Other movements — the tea partiers, for example — falter as people become aware that the same force naysaying positive change is directing their zeal. In other words, both politicians and popular movements merely mouth words fed to them through electronic and social media channels from the featureless face of this enemy.
Case in point, the debate over extending background checks for the purchase of weapons. An overwhelming majority of Americans — just over 90 percent of Democrats, just under 90 percent of Republicans and more than half of NRA members — favor more thorough checks. Politicians can dig in their heels against any hint of a wise solution to this because that majority in favor also heeds the message, even though it runs counter to their beliefs. A nod from behind the curtain and the discussion turns from strengthening background checks to fear of a government crackdown on guns. We end up with legislation tilted in favor of extending open carry laws instead.
Meanwhile the enemy smirks, extending its control. Dismantled voting rights, unexamined trade deals, Supreme Court decisions opening personal rights to corporate entities — we find it difficult to decipher. So we shrug helplessly at Citizens United, even knowing it allows a few wealthy sorts (158 in all) to contribute more than half of all presidential campaign monies. We forget that Dick Cheney, as Secretary of Defense, welcomed the privatization of military logistics, which benefitted such firms as Halliburton. We grudgingly accept a bailout of financial institutions “too big to fail” and fall well short of demanding comeuppance for the executives largely responsible for an economic fiasco.
It’s just so easy for those with the power to manipulate the debate, distracting us by pointing the finger at — well, government regulation or deregulation, it hardly seems to matter.
It’s a frustrating time.
Oddly enough, those rallying to Sanders and to the conservative call share many of the same instincts. They know the rich are getting richer, and that the trend may be to our detriment. They despise the refusal of their elected officials to act. They wish for an end to police violence (and the violent response). They want to bring an endless war to a successful close. They desire government spending in a manner that helps those striving for something better and willing to put in an effort to achieve it. They sense that few in power heed their complaints.
Dr. King at least understood the enemy. And he wielded a voice that carried across many boundaries, inspiring hope for positive change. His words caused us to dream, and then to reach.
Trump, Cruz and others in this generation seem content only to build on the frustration, to bring it to a fever pitch, to strengten walls that really should not even divide us.
Dr. King had a very rare power, indeed.
