by: Jenni Vinson
January 18, 2001
I was moved to tears this week by an editorial written in the Alice Echo News under the column, The Issue, which was entitled: “Blacks Should Have Been In The Front Ranks Of Monday’s MLK March”. They were tears of ANGER.
To suggest that those Alice citizens who showed up to march should have been “politically correct” and should have spent time in assessing where it would be “appropriate” to stand and who it would be “appropriate” to walk next to invalidates the very premise and foundation of Martin Luther King’s dream of someday living in a world where it would not be necessary for anyone to make notice of the color of a person’s skin or the gender of a human being.
His dream was that one day, no one would make notice of the station of a person within a community, but rather that they would be measured by the character and content of the individual.
It was his dream that one day we would all march along side each other as a united country, not making note of our differences, but instead celebrating them.
America and apparently Alice, Texas has bought into so many misconceptions about the Civil Rights Movement. These misconceptions and ignorance of history have actually kept the Movement from going foward and have caused bitterness and divisiveness to grow among the races.
The rising tide has no choice but to raise the entire ship. It cannot choose to elevate only a part of the ship. Martin Luther King knew that.
He was a man commissioned by God as a Moses to free his people. Slavery was a gross injustice and so were the weak and half-hearted laws that were inacted by an American government, before the Civil Rights Movement, that were meant to keep Black people from achieving social equality.
Martin Luther King, the man of God, knew that America would need to experience a change of heart if the Black community was to be free of the constraints placed upon them.
The message and the miracle that was performed through Dr. King was that he changed the minds and hearts of so many White Americans. If you go back and look at the crowds assembled to march in the “front ranks” (as was set forth by the Alice Echo Editors) with Dr. King, you will see a whole lot of White people.
Going back a little further in the history of the Movement, the “front rank” for the Civil War was fought by a whole lot of White people as well.
Walking on to a Civil War battle field is a spiritual and very emotional experience. Inches below the ground one steps on, the soil is saturated with the blood of our countrymen who died battling against each another over the issue of slavery.
Ironically, their blood did not segregate as it fell. North and South, Black and White- their collective blood will remain, for all time, merged as a single pool.
After the Civil War, emotions ran deep. So many lives had been lost and there was an established loser- the South. The experience splintered and divided America.
Dr. King’s quest was to restore that division, to unite the races, not just to elevate the Black community. Without the unity America has put forth to date, the Black Community could not have accomplished the strides it has made.
When Dr. King was killed, the Movement should have been solidified. Everyone should have rallied around this horrific tragedy and pledged to see Dr. King’s quest through to the end.
Instead, Jesse Jackson accused the White people of having collectively killed Dr. King. He allowed the event to embitter the Black community and has worked diligently ever since to keep the division between the races. There appears to be no white color in Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition.
This was NOT Dr. King’s dream. He knew America would rise- together , or would fall- apart.
It’s so much easier to use the topic of Race Relations as a tool for taking jabs at
people and groups we don’t like or who may not agree with us.
This need of “Dividers” to rally the troops and keep them angry has gotten
ridiculous.
Liberals put forth that because of his state of being, he should be disqualified
from serving as this nation’s Attorney General, regardless of the decades of
faithful service he has carried out for his state of Missouri and for his country.
If Dr. King had lived or if his dream had been allowed to flourish, none of these
individuals would have been subject to being scrutinized and discriminated
against because of their convictions.
If Dr. King had lived and if his dream was still being embraced as he meant it to
be, no newpaper editors from across this country would feel a “politically correct”
need to chastise citizens who dared to, out of an emotional zeal, manage to
place themselves in the formation of “an unusual pattern” in a Martin Luther King
Celebration March.
When I looked the picture of the MLK March, I saw a picture of people who were
happy to be there.
I ask of the Editors of the Alice Echo News: “What were YOU thinking?”