In his keynote speech at St. Louis Community College-Florissant Valley’s 2014 celebration of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. national holiday, Terrence L. Freeman – a venerated professor in engineering science at the college – speculated about what Dr. King would say today if confronted by our problems. “At a youthful 85, he would no doubt still be making commentary,” Freeman said. “What would he say today?” Freeman’s comments about our martyred leader are insightful – and a challenge to us.
Had he lived, Freeman speculated, Dr. King would have protested the needless deaths of children, as he protested the victims of the 1963 Birmingham church bombing. The children of today, Freeman acknowledged, are not dying at the hands of racist arsonists, but rather as collateral damage from drive-by shootings and at the hands of other children. “They say to us,” Dr. King said of the murdered children of his day, “that we must be concerned not merely about who murdered them, but about the system, the way of life, the philosophy which produced the murderers.” This suggests that a Dr. King of today would call for gun control and increased efforts in addressing behavioral health needs.
Had he lived, Freeman speculated, Dr. King would have protested the United States’ continued pursuit of wars of foreign aggression, as he protested the Vietnam War near the end of his life. Dr. King warned that if we did not end that war we would “be dragged down the long, dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion.” A Dr. King of today would find this country even further down those “long, dark and shameful corridors.”
Had he lived, Freeman speculated, Dr. King would have protested “the introduction of supply side economics, the cutting of food stamps and unemployment benefits, the growing economic disparity and the role of government in addressing those issues.” He recalled Dr. King’s passionate cry, “Let us be dissatisfied until the tragic walls that separate the outer city of wealth and comfort and the inner city of poverty and despair shall be crushed by the battering rams of the forces of justice.” The Dr. King of today would be disgusted with a Congress that refuses to extend long-term unemployment benefits and a state Legislature in Missouri that refuses to expand the Medicaid program.
Had he lived, Freeman speculated, Dr. King would have protested “voter suppression under the thinly veiled guise of guarding against a non-existent threat of voter impersonation fraud.” He remembered Dr. King protesting (in 1957) that “all types of conniving methods are still being used to prevent Negroes from becoming registered voters.” The term “Negroes” may be outdated in 2014, but “all types of conniving methods” to disenfranchise African Americans are still being pursued by the Republican Party, most persistently in Voter ID legislation.
Had he lived, Freeman speculated, Dr. King would have protested the state of education in this country. “Education,” he quoted Dr. King, “must enable one to sift and weigh evidence, to discern the true from the false, the real from the unreal, and the facts from the fiction.” Anyone subjected to the incessant barrage of misinformed opinion displayed in broadcast journalism and social media knows the frustration and rage that Dr. King would feel if he encountered the misuse of education today.
But Dr. King did not live, so it is left to the living to protest and act in his name. Freeman’s encouragement was stirring. “One of the great challenges in this new century is poverty,” Freeman said, “and not just the poverty that stings too many Americans through limited access to quality education, health care, positive role models, and economic opportunity; but the poverty of ideas, the poverty of commitment, the poverty of hope, and the poverty of coordinated effort directed at achieving social and economic justice. Being a change agent is not a part-time job – it is continual commitment.” We owe Dr. King, ourselves and our future this commitment.
