April 4th

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

I still remember as if it was yesterday. My mind goes back in time to that day every time I hear the lyrics:

Early morning, April 4
Shot rings out in the Memphis sky
Free at last, they took your life
They could not take your pride

YouTube – U2 "Pride (In The Name of Love)" 2009 Remix  for MLK Day and the Obama Inauguration by Rob Hoffman at playitandbedamned.blogspot.com. (Video redirect to You Tube).

And I can still hear the words of Robert F. Kennedy that fateful night, who would himself be felled by an assassin's bullet barely two months later. American Rhetoric: Robert F. Kennedy — Statement on the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.:

Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice between fellow human beings. He died in the cause of that effort. In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it's perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in. For those of you who are black — considering the evidence evidently is that there were white people who were responsible — you can be filled with bitterness, and with hatred, and a desire for revenge.

We can move in that direction as a country, in greater polarization — black people amongst blacks, and white amongst whites, filled with hatred toward one another. Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand, and to comprehend, and replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand, compassion, and love.

For those of you who are black and are tempted to fill with — be filled with hatred and mistrust of the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I would only say that I can also feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man.

But we have to make an effort in the United States. We have to make an effort to understand, to get beyond, or go beyond these rather difficult times.

My favorite poem, my — my favorite poet was Aeschylus. And he once wrote:

Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget
falls drop by drop upon the heart,
until, in our own despair,
against our will,
comes wisdom
through the awful grace of God.

What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love, and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black.

So I ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King — but more importantly to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us love — a prayer for understanding and that compassion of which I spoke.

We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times. We've had difficult times in the past, but we — and we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; and it's not the end of disorder.

But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings that abide in our land.

And let's dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world. Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people.

On March 25, 1965, having completed the third march to Montgomery, the city that gave birth to the civil rights movement, Dr. King spoke these words on the steps of the Alabama State Capitol:

"I know you are asking today, "How long will it take?"…. 

"I come to say to you this afternoon, however difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long, because truth crushed to earth will rise again.

"How long?  Not long, because no lie can live forever. 

"How long? Not long, because you shall reap what you sow…. 

"How long? Not long, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."