Words of social justice still echo from 'the mountaintop'

Sean Patrick O'Rourke

and Ron Manuto

write about communication and legal issues

Some words still echo where they were spoken. At Mason Temple in Memphis, Tenn., the echo is strong - that's where, 40 years ago today, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his last speech.

He was in Memphis for the sanitation workers' strike, but he was not meant to speak that night. Ralph Abernathy, whom King described as "the best friend that I have in the world," had begun to speak. But he recognized immediately that it was not his crowd and called for Martin.

King was exhausted. But he agreed, in part because that was how they worked and in part because the sanitation workers' strike was important.

It had begun when two black sanitation workers, Robert Walker and Echol Cole, had sought shelter from rain in the only place they could - the back of a compacting garbage truck. When the truck was activated, they were crushed to death.

The strike began Feb. 12, and by Feb. 20 a loose coalition of union leaders, civil rights activists, and churches worked to support and sustain the nearly 1,300 striking workers.

The strikers' requests were basic: The right to form a union. A livable wage. Safe working conditions. But the mayor and city council refused.

After a disastrous march during which violence erupted, King entered the Mason Temple amid dissension and FBI-instigated rumors that he had abandoned the movement.

And yet the speech was extraordinary.

King took a "mental flight," tracing the struggle for freedom and dignity from ancient Egypt to that night in Memphis.

He connected the struggle in Memphis to the larger struggle of oppressed people everywhere. From Accra, Ghana, and Johannesburg, South Africa, to Memphis, he said, "the cry is always the same: 'We want to be free!' "

All knew that King was their Moses, their prophet.

Like Moses, King had changed over the course of his public life. In his last years, King had become a far more radical critic of American hypocrisy than he was in 1963 when he delivered his famous "I have a Dream" speech. He opposed the war in Vietnam and criticized the American creed of wealth and exclusive power - and the rank inequities it bred.

In Memphis that night, King drew on the most revolutionary elements of the Christian gospel of social justice - love that corrects "that which revolts against love"; self-sacrifice; a deep concern for the poor, the disenfranchised and the downtrodden - and called for the Good Samaritan's "dangerous unselfishness." As King taught, "The question is not, 'If I stop to help this man in need, what will happen to me?' The question is, 'If I do not stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to them?' "

Most remarkable was the speech's eerily prophetic voice. King often quoted the prophets of the Hebrew Bible. But this time, he spoke as a prophet, thundering against the pharaohs of Memphis and painting a vivid history of the struggle, one that included premonitions of his own death.

From a knife wound in 1958 to a bomb scare that day, King took his audience through "the threats" on his life. "Like anybody," he told them, "I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not worried about that now. I just want to do God's will."

This prophecy, the vision of his death, was realized the very next day.

But not before he shared the vision - the view from "the mountaintop": "And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land," he said. "I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will get to the promised land."

Are we there yet?

Black income increased at three times the nation's average in the 1990s. And for the first time in our history, a black American is contending for the presidency by speaking candidly about race.

But the housing projects just outside the Mason Temple tell a different story - a story where the national median income of black households still trails that of all other ethnic groups, and black-on-black crime destroys a generation.

That's why we must strive to "make America what it ought to be" - because some words still echo where they were spoken.