The next series of essays, in keeping with the section title
of “Recovering From The Sixties: Heroes, Criminals & Iconic Clowns,” will
be commentary on people from the era that fit each of these categories…the
first, MLK.
“Culture Heroes (1):
Dr. King, Who Made Connections and Waves”
More than anything, this piece is a lament to the loss of
“luster” that heroes like Dr. King brought to thee country and President’s like
Regan tarnished. A great quote from the essay:
Had he lived to this birthday [20 years after his
death], Dr. King would still be causing trouble. That’s why they murdered him
in Memphis. What he did was make connections between, say, poverty and racism,
and then make waves.
Leonard makes a good point that as the movement progressed
from a struggle for 14th Amendment Rights to the racism of poverty
(or the poverty of racism?), from “Freedom Now” to “Black Power”, from “gospel”
to “rock”, it began to fail. King found that “Economic injustice in the North
was harder to beat than Jim Crow in the South.”
Always a fan of Regan, Leonard calls him, “…this rutabaga,
in the last spasms of his gerontocracy” and later “Howdy Doody” and “President
Emeritus Babar.” He suggests reading Taylor Branch’s “brilliant account” of the
King years “Parting the Water” as a way to “…wash out our mouths of the aspirin
taste of Regan [low dose aspirin?].” I think my favorite is the Babar one.
New word: afflatus = a strong creative impulse, usually of
divine inspiration.
New
learning: Black voters went 60-40 for Eisenhower but than 70-30 for Kennedy
over Nixon after the Kennedys intervened to get Dr. King released from a
Georgia Jail. Of course, MLK did some of his best writing from jail…sixty years
ago this year.
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