From the Waste Land to the Promised Land

April 4, 2008 marked 40 years since Martin Luther King, Jr., arguably the most important figure of the 1960's Civil Rights Movement, was shot to death on a hotel balcony. In March of 1968, Dr. King, in what would be his final mission,traveled to the aid of Memphis sanitation workers in the midst of a battle for higher wages. The detestable mistreatment of these sanitation workers culminated with the deaths of Echol Cole and Robert Walker who were crushed in the back of an old garbage truck; compacted like the trash they collected.

An article by Miami Herald columnist, Leonard Pitts, ran in the Dallas Morning News on April 6 detailing the events leading up to Dr. King's final breath. King's last campaign thoroughly described the rarely-discussed, highly-volatile situation into which King marched. According to Pitts, "MLK helped these men turn their demand for higher wages into a demand for something more". From the march Dr. King led that erupted into violence, to the infamous speech in which he declared "I've seen the Promised Land", Pitts walks his readers through some of the less-publicized thoughts and plans that plagued King in his final days.

In the days surrounding this momentous occasion, television specials and public service announcements permeated the channels of our television sets. News channels, such as CNN, aired specials that spanned several days as they covered the life Dr. King and attempted to unveil little known facts surrounding his murder. A common thread that repeatedly appeared in these tributes was the speculation that King foresaw his own death. Writers and reporters alike (including Pitts) sited sections of speeches King gave in February and March during which he mentioned his own death. In each of these orations, King appears to come to grips with the escalating danger facing him on a daily basis and talks of accepting the fact that his death may come earlier than many may have hoped. I find myself questioning when and why the focus shifted to such a topic. Is there an underlying attempt to attach a sort of mystical or angelic quality to Dr. King? To place Dr. King somewhere between a man and a spiritual being in touch with things we could never see?

Not to dampen the beautiful tributes and well-written articles reminding us of Dr. King's legacy, but let us not take the focus off of the objective of Dr. King's life's work. While it is enlightening to learn of King's very real reckoning with mortality, let us instead focus on allowing his memory to re-spark that fervor for striving towards social and economic equality.