Annual Martin Luther King Day Address - Anthony Brown

Annual Martin Luther King Day Address
To the Maryland House of Delegates
January 16, 2006
Delegate Anthony G. Brown

Mr. Speaker, tonight we honor the memory and the legacy of a man who was once introduced as “the moral leader of the nation.� A man who established himself as the preeminent voice in the quest for human rights during his era; who reached more African Americans—more Americans, more citizens of the world—than any other United States reform leader in his century.

Madam Speaker Pro Tem, this evening it is my distinct honor to speak to the achievements of a great American, who at the age of 35 was the youngest recipient ever of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Mr. Majority Leader and Mr. Minority Leader, today I am humbled to stand before you as we commemorate a visionary civil rights leader who taught and told us “human progress never rolls in on the wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and persistent work of men [and women] willing to be co-workers with God.�

Mr. Chairman of the Maryland Legislative Black Caucus, thank you for conferring upon me this year the privilege to share with our colleagues a few thoughts about a man who did more than any other leader in his generation to help make President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation a political and social fact in the racially troubled times in which he lived.

And fellow colleagues, distinguished guests, and friends, welcome to the annual Martin Luther King Day address to the Maryland House of Delegates.

Tonight I am joined by my wife Patty and our daughter Rebecca. And my family is accompanied by my good friend, Martin O’Malley. Thank you for being here.

Before I begin, please let me first apologize at the outset. In the time that I have allotted to me this evening, I won’t be able to fully recognize the contributions made by so many other participants in the civil rights movement—such as A. Philip Randolph, Ralph Abernathy, Ella Baker, Marian Wright Edelman, Rosa Parks. And the list goes on.

And let me also apologize for not fully acknowledging those who Dr. King recognized as the real heroes of the civil rights movement—the James Merediths, whose courage led to the integration of the University of Mississippi law school in 1961; the old, battered, and brave women of the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955 and 1956; the Freedom Riders of the early 1960s who dealt a death blow to Jim Crow bus facilities; the students and young ministers of the sit-ins who had struggled for the best in the American Dream; the Medgar Evers, who was shot in front of his house in Jackson, Mississippi in 1963, the night that President Kennedy announced to the nation that he would send a civil rights bill to Congress; and 11 year old Denise McNair and the three other little girl, who were killed by a bomb as they were putting on choir robes during Sunday school at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. These were Dr. King’s heroes and Dr. King was their leader.

The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was born on January 16, 1929.

He was born in a quiet neighborhood in a middle-class section of black Atlanta, three blocks from the Ebenezer Baptist Church where his father, known in the family as Daddy King, was the senior pastor. Martin greatly admired his father. His life, and that of his family, centered on worship.

As a child, ML, as Martin was affectionately called, played baseball, flew kites and model airplanes, and enjoyed pedaling his bicycle around the neighborhood. He loved the game of Monopoly. He was a talkative child, yet greatly enjoyed his time alone. He often read alone in his room. He liked to study how authors and orators put words together. Dr. King stated later in his life that his “greatest talent, strongest tradition, and most constant interest was the eloquent statement of ideas.� And nobody stated them better than Dr. King.

Martin was a bright young man. So bright that his parents enrolled him in grade school a year early. And in school, he sailed through his years, skipping grades as he went. He entered Booker T. Washington High School at age 13.

By age 14, it was obvious that Martin enjoyed the arts. He played violin and liked opera.

Physically, Martin was small and plump-faced, with almond-shaped eyes, and a mahogany complexion. He had expressive hands, but the most memorable feature about him as a youth, which did not fade during his lifetime, was his voice. Martin had a rich and resonant baritone that commanded attention when he spoke in class or held forth around the neighborhood.

Dr. King was a leader and his preaching was the touchstone of that leadership. He excited and motivated people of all colors and conditions with his unique mixture of southern Negro evangelism and theological erudition. He could make audiences in a country church say amen to a quotation from St. Thomas Aquinas, just as easily as he could make university professors and students applaud a quotation from an unlettered slave. Dr. King conveyed the sense that he believed deeply in the potential of the human spirit.

Yet his motivating oratory was not the only quality that set Dr. King apart. His sense of history enabled him to perceive the broad historical canvas on which the civil-rights movement was taking place. It convinced him that the progress of America was forward, not backward; that during his life he was better off than his forebears; that thousands of people in the past had struggled to enlarge his own freedom.

His historical perspective made him an optimist; it contributed to the calm under fire that became his trademark. And it strengthened his belief that the mission of the American Negro was to introduce a new moral standard into the United States and the world.

Dr. King believed that this new moral standard could only be achieved through nonviolent, direct action. Dr. King stated so eloquently, “to meet hate with retaliatory hate would do nothing but intensify the existence of evil in the universe. Hate begets hate, violence begets violence; toughness begets a greater toughness. We must meet the forces of hate with the power of love; we must meet physical force with soul force.�

Dr. King was an activist who also had an enormous understanding of theory; he was a protagonist at the center stage of a great historical struggle. He identified with the poor, the forgotten and the disinherited. He walked among the black masses, philosophizing as he went, and he furnished African Americans with something that no other American Negro leader had been able to give. A tool, as one black scholar phrased it, “for removing the invisible shades of segregation.�

As his wife Coretta Scott King recently wrote, “Dr. King was not merely a great speaker but a passionately committed American patriot who repeatedly put his life on the line to make real the promise of democracy.�

Martin Luther King led an army to secure the democratic principles of a free nation. Dr. King summoned volunteers “to serve in [what he called a] nonviolent army� in which going to jail was the badge of honor. Dr. King did not hesitate to call the movements—whether those movements were in Montgomery; Albany, Georgia; Birmingham; St. Augustine, Florida; or Chicago—he called the movements an army.

Dr. King would say, “it was a special army, with no supplies but its sincerity, no uniform but its determination, no arsenal except its faith, no currency but its conscience. It was an army that would move but not maul. It was an army that would sing but not slay. It was an army to storm bastions of hatred, to lay siege to the fortress of segregation, to surround symbols of discrimination.�

Ralph Abernathy styled King, “The peaceful warrior� who called his people to nonviolent battle, to march against segregation and racial injustice.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the federal holiday honoring the memory and legacy of Dr. King. And undoubtedly throughout the day, as in the past 20 years, there were many high-toned official pronouncements that Dr. King’s legacy of fighting for racial equality and social justice lives on. However, as Michael Hill wrote in yesterday’s newspaper, “the civil rights movement provides fodder for an array of potential portrayals – from the anger of those who see the current state of racial inequality in America and say that its fundamental missions are unfulfilled, to the opposite, those who say that the movement met its goals.â€?

Each year we praise Dr. King’s “dream� and we tend to focus a great deal on 1963. It’s easy to do. Dr. King himself believed that 1963 “was the most decisive year in the Negro’s fight for equality.� In 1963, Dr. King was Time Magazine’s “Man of the Year.�

That year, Dr. King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference waged the battle of Birmingham. They demanded the desegregation of all lunch counters, restrooms, and drinking fountains, and that Negroes be hired in local business, and that a committee be established to work out a schedule for desegregation throughout the city.

Birmingham was a success. By May 1963, Birmingham rescinded its segregation ordinances and desegregated its public facilities and—under tremendous pressure by the ever larger and more dramatic demonstrations by grade schoolers and high schoolers, parents and children, old and young together—even local merchants removed the “whites only� and “coloreds only� signs around the city.

However, Birmingham’s success did not come easy. Bull Connor, the city’s vicious police chief, turned fire hoses and police dogs on demonstrators and had them brutally beaten and arrested. And scenes of the cruel treatment of black demonstrators were shown around the world on the evening news.

Yet, as a direct result of Birmingham, the nonviolent movement swept across the South like a tidal wave. In the summer of 1963, there were nonviolent, direct-action campaigns in nearly 900 cities, with an estimated one million Americans participating in solidarity demonstrations from New York to Los Angeles. The results were spectacular, as 261 cities desegregated their public facilities.

And on August 28, 1963, Dr. King delivered the most well-known and most often quoted speech, “I Have a Dream.� Dr. King delivered the speech before a gathering of 250,000 people and a world-wide television audience at the Lincoln Memorial. It was a speech that moved a nation.

We all have our favorite passage from that magnificent speech. My favorite, and one that captures my aspirations for our country, is this:

“I have a dream today! I have a dream my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today!

“I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, that one day, right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today!�

1963. It was a good year. It’s the year that we focus on when we think about Dr. King’s legacy of equality and justice.

And I’m certain that just as in 1959 when Dr. King spoke to 26,000 students at a rally in Washington D.C.—where he stated, “As I stand here and look out upon the thousands of Negro faces, and the thousands of white faces, intermingled like the waters of a river, I see only one face—the face of the future.� So too Dr. King could have stood here this evening in jubilation while looking upon this great body—the Maryland House of Delegates—to see us, freely-elected public servants, men and women, of all colors, from all walks of life, committed to a One Maryland and a better future for all of our neighbors.

But the tributes to Dr. King’s legacy, whose chief goal at the time of his death was to end poverty, are disturbingly ironic when viewed alongside the harsh facts about the growing number of poor in this country.

Nearly 37 million Americans lived in poverty in 2004, an increase of 11.6 million since 1968.

But even more troubling is the growing disparity in America between who is rich and who is poor.

This month also marks the 40th anniversary of the beginning of what some historians consider to be Dr. King’s most difficult years. By January 1966, Dr. King was beginning to speak out against the war in Vietnam and began to announce plans for a protracted, nonviolent poor people’s campaign in Washington, D.C.

Dr. King declared that the slow, silent violence of poverty was so brutal that it justified a march designed to cause “major, massive dislocations� in the nation’s capital. Dr. King turned to fighting for economic justice and social equality not only for blacks, but also for all of America’s poor.

Each year that we celebrate Dr. King’s birthday, we should remember the true nature of his most difficult work, the economic opportunity and social equality for all Americans.

So today, we should ask, “How are we doing, Dr. King?�

Unfortunately, I believe he would say, in America genuine equality of opportunity is not true today:

When those left behind to face the ravages of Hurricane Katrina without means of escape or assistance from the government were overwhelmingly African-American.

Genuine equality of opportunity is not true today:

When a black boy born in Washington, D.C., has less of a chance of surviving to his first birthday than a child born in urban parts of Kerala, India, and when that child is twice as likely to die before reaching age 20 than a white child.

Genuine equality of opportunity is not true today:

When one third of black men in their 20s are incarcerated, on probation, or on parole – when more African Americans are in prison than in higher education.

Not true today:

When the typical African-American family earns just 60% of what the typical white family does.

Not today:

When African Americans are less likely to have health insurance, be vaccinated, or receive prenatal care. When a black man is 40% more likely to die of cancer than a similarly diagnosed white man. When the black-white health care gap costs the lives of more than 83,000 African Americans each year.

I believe Dr. King would tell us, we will only do our part if we meet the central civil rights challenge of this day and go far beyond questions of access to institutions and the ballot—by assuring not just equality under the law, but genuine equality of opportunity and genuinely equal participation in American society.

During his life, Dr. King spoke of a new age in America and the new challenges for African Americans of his time. He spoke of these challenges as early as 1956, and they are equally relevant today, 50 years later, to all of us, not just African Americans.

Dr. King challenged us to rise above the narrow confines of our individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of humanity. He said, “Through our scientific genius we have made of the world a neighborhood; now through our moral and spiritual genius we must make of it a brotherhood.�

Dr. King challenged us to achieve excellence in our various fields of endeavor. “Whatever your life’s work is [he said], do it well. If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, like Shakespeare wrote poetry, like Beethoven composed music; sweep streets so well that all the host of Heaven and earth will have to pause and say, ‘Here lived a great street sweeper, who swept his job well.’�

And Dr. King challenged us to maintain an understanding and good will toward all men and women.

And these are the challenges that we must meet as public servants. The only way in which we will be able to address the problems of the achievement gap and the health gap and all the other ways in which racial gaps persist in our society will be through the pooling of knowledge, of energy and of conviction to develop new ideas and strategies for tackling these problems.

At the time of his murder, on April 4, 1968, Dr. King was still young, radical, and, more than at any other time in his career, a thorn in the side of the establishment.

His fiery oratory emphasized urgency and immediacy and his focus was on closing the gap between black and white, between rich and poor, between the haves and the have nots.

I want to close this evening with a reading from what many believe was Dr. King’s prophetic self-eulogy. As I share with you Dr. King’s words, I ask that you reflect on your own life and your own commitment to what you do as public servants. And ask yourself what it is that you would want said about your life.

“If any of you are around when I have to meet my day, I don’t want a long funeral. And if you get somebody to deliver the eulogy, tell them not to talk too long. Every now and then I wonder what I want them to say. Tell them not to mention that I have a Nobel Peace Prize, that isn’t important. Tell them not to mention that I have three or four hundred other awards, that’s not important. Tell him not to mention where I went to school.

“I’d like somebody to mention that day, that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to give his life serving others. I’d like for somebody to say that day, that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to love somebody. I want you to say that day, that I tried to be right on the war question. I want you to be able to say that day, that I did try to feed the hungry. And I want you to be able to say that day, that I did try, in my life, to clothe those who were naked. I want you to say, on that day, that I did try, in my life, to visit those who were in prison. I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity.

“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 want to say . . .�

Acknowledgments:

Most quotes are either from Dr. King’s speeches and writings, as printed in James Washington’s edited compilation I Have a Dream, Writings and Speeches that Changed the World, or from Stephen Oates’ Let the Trumpet Sound. Also, many of the facts and ideas conveyed in this speech are from a variety of sources, including an address delivered by L. Summers to the Harvard Law School Black Alumni in September 2005.

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