Peggy
R. Wright
“SPEECH”
Martin Luther King Jr. Brunch
January 16, 2004
Fowler Center
Thank you Josh for the introduction, I would also like to thank the members of the Student Activities Board sponsors of this Martin Luther King Jr. Brunch and planners of this event for the invitation and the opportunity to address you this morning.
The theme for this years celebration “Near the Mountaintop: Making the Dream a Reality” offers both a sense of hope as well as a sense of challenge. Just before his assassination in Memphis in April of 1968 in his final impassioned speech I see the promise land. Dr. King used the now famous “Mountaintop” metaphor to symbolize the progress made and to come in American race relations. This sense of progress gave hope. As we look around this room, this campus, it is clear that Dr. King’s symbolic reference to the “Mountaintop” to the “Mountain Peek” was accurate. Yet, many challenges remain. When Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke, people listened. His courage and the power of his message galvanized the civil rights movement. Challenged the course of race relations in the United States and redefined democracy.
Dr. King was an artist in his use of the language of the people. Consequently, Dr. King couldn’t evoke an enduring sense of hope as he did with the “Mountaintop” symbolism in his last address while giving and equal sense of the challenge the reality of things still to come. In a way, Dr. King’s preaching was his artistry. Because he was such a skilled and powerful orator a great deal of attention in times of recognition and celebration of Dr. King’s enduring legacy as this celebration today. And activities during the remainder of this month represent and focus on Dr. King’s sermons and his speeches.
But there was another dimension to Dr. King clearly during his lifetime. Dr. King justifiably received numerous citations and recognitions for his accomplishments and skill as an orator. Yet this acclaim seems to overwhelm and equally deserving consideration namely the significance of Dr. King’s written works. In this respect, Dr. King’s 1968 book, his last book, “Where Do We Go From Here: Ciaos or Community.” Where Do We Go From Here: Caucus or Community constitutes one of the most significant landmark or our times. In this, again his last book, Dr. King wrote on the triple evils of racism, militarism, and poverty again racism, militarism, and poverty. In the concluding paragraph to “Where Do We Go From Here,” Dr. King warned of the fierce urgency of now. That time will not wait for us to address racism, militarism, and poverty.
Thirty-six years later, after Dr. King’s death, race relations have clearly improved somewhat. But the necessity and reality of militarism clearly remains as a challenge even in today’s public eye. But this countries enduring legacy of poverty remains as a monumental challenge. In some ways ignored, as we engaged in this Martin Luther King Jr. celebration today. As we celebrate in comfort, well fed, warm, secure, poverty remains a reality for many Arkansans today. Currently, according to a recent children’s defense fund report Arkansas ranks 46 in the nation in child poverty with 21.8% of our children poor. Our state performs poorly in relationship to other poverty indicators as well. In a January 1995 article, the Martin Luther King you don’t see on TV, syndicated columnist Jeff Coen, and I know you see him in the Jonesboro Sun, wrote the following passage. “It becomes a TV ritual every year in mid January around the time of Martin Luther King’s birthday we get news reports about the slain civil rights leader. The remarkable thing about this annual review of Kings life is that several years, his last years, are totally missing. What TV viewers see is a closed loop of familiar film footage. King battling segregation in Birmingham, 1963. Reciting his dream of racial harmony at the rally in Washington, 1963. Marching for voting rights in Selma, Alabama, 1965. And finally lying dead on the Loraine Motel balcony in Memphis in 1968.”
An alert listener like, Jerrod, might notice that Coen’s concluding chronology of events jump from 1965 to 1968. Yet, during the three year span near the end of his life Dr. King did not take a vacation, extended leave, or spring break, Dr. Smith. In fact he was organizing and speaking just as widely as ever. In the early 1960’s when Dr. King focused his challenge on legalize racial discrimination in the South most major media covered these events. But after the passage of the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965, when Dr. King began challenging the nations fundamental priorities this coverage waned, Greg.
Dr. King maintained that civil rights were empty without human rights including economic rights, Dr. Wyatt. To Dr. King for people to be poor, like I say poor like I was poor. To eat at a restaurant or to afford a decent home anti discrimination laws were hollow. Dr. King pointed out a reality of poverty then, as now that in the treatment of poverty nationally one fact stands out there are twice as many white poor as Negro poor in the United States. Therefore I will not dwell on the experiences of poverty that derive from racial discrimination. But will discuss the poverty that effects white and Negro alike. In his last months, Dr. King was organizing the most militant project of his life the poor peoples campaign. He crisscrossed the county to assemble a multi-racial army of the poor that would descend on Washington engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience until Congress enacted a poor peoples bill of rights.
Dr. King’s efforts were cut short by an assassin’s bullet in 1968. When we celebrate Dr. King’s enduring legacy please don’t forget and I say this again please don’t forget that Dr. King was more than just a champion of improved race relations. And much progress has been made in race relations we can’t deny that. But please remember this also; Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was also an anti-poverty hero. A vital personality of the modern era whose lectures, speeches, and sermons stirs the concern and sparks the conscious of a generation and hopefully this generation.
Dr. King was an American prophet. His nonviolent ideas and metaphors of hope continue to inform hope for social economic justice in the United States and around the world. As we as a university community, join to celebrate Dr. King’s enduring legacy. I would like to challenge to implore this university community to become more involved in the visually yet more significantly as a united community to confront the ongoing challenge through ongoing engagement of the reality of poverty in Arkansas today.
Thank you again for the opportunity to share this important event in time with each of you. Thank you.