There is an unforgettable photograph of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and President Lyndon B. Johnson on July 2, 1964. It was taken immediately after the signing into law the Civil Rights Act. Later, Dr. King put that historic moment in context in his autobiography. “In 1964 the meaning of the so-called negro revolution became clear for all to see and was given legislative recognition in the civil rights law,” he wrote. “Yet, immediately following the passage of this law, a series of events shook the nation, compelling the grim realization that the revolution would continue inexorably until total slavery had been replaced by total freedom.”
What the ever-prescient Dr. King envisioned was the necessity for an ongoing struggle for freedom and equality, and the revolution of 1964 was far from over. Even then, as it is now, democratic rights were threatened, and the battle for the White House between Johnson and the Republican Party’s Barry Goldwater, who in Dr. King’s opinion “advocated a narrow nationalism, a crippling isolationism, and a trigger-happy attitude,” was just a harbinger of the injustices on the horizon.
Dr. King’s prognostication bore fruit in the events at the Republican Convention held in San Francisco, the triple lynchings in Mississippi, and the urban riots in several major cities. Sixty years later, the great leader’s dream is far from reality and as several social scientists and agencies have noted, the nation is more segregated than it was in 1964.
It would appear that some of the forces, the rallies, and massive marches that brought about the relative change back then are necessary today, a strategy that has for years been part of the Dr. King celebrations and activities of the Rev. Al Sharpton and the National Action Network.
The systemic racism that Dr. King challenged is at the very core of a segregated America, and this fact was underscored by several studies, to say nothing of the heartfelt reactions of people in the vortex of poverty and discrimination. Rev. Sharpton reminded the nation that the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as well as the Voting Rights Act of 1965, are being assailed and under relentless attack “and diversity in Corporate America is on the brink.”
Most Americans are familiar with Dr. King’s last words about his dream which continues to resonate without any notion of fulfillment, and for all the hope and promise folks instilled in his commitment and leadership, he insisted he was only one man in the struggle for justice, and that thousands had to join the fight. “Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter. I won’t have any money to leave behind. I won’t have the fine and luxurious things of life to leave behind. But I just want to leave a committed life behind. And that’s all I wanted to say.”
Leaving a committed life behind is all any of us can offer.