Blacks have made significant strides in education in the 40 years since the death of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., but most have not achieved his dream of economic equality, according to a study released this week by the Institute for Policy Studies.
“It would take more than 537 years for blacks to reach income equality with whites if the income gap continues to close at the same rate it has since Dr. King was assassinated,” stated the report, produced by the Washington, D.C.-based think tank that addresses social justice movements.
Throughout the country today, special events mark the day King was gunned down by an assassin as he prepared to leave the Lorraine Motel in Memphis on April 4, 1968.
The motel has since been developed into the National Civil Rights Museum to continue educating people on the causes for which King stood.
At the time of his death, King was in Memphis to support striking sanitation workers who were protesting working conditions, low wages and job discrimination. Today, King is remembered as one who sought to uplift the poor and disenfranchised and to work through nonviolent means to gain civil rights.
“In 1967, blacks in American made 54 cents for every dollar made by whites,” said Dedrick Muhammad, author of the study. “In 2005, blacks made 57 cents for every dollar made by whites,” Muhammad told BlackAmericaWeb.com.
Charles Steele, national president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, found the results of the study alarming. King and several others founded the SCLC in 1957 as a regional organization coordinating protest activities across the South.
“We must use the same forces to address economic concerns that we used to rectify the social ills and concerns,” Steele told BlackAmericaWeb.com.
The SCLC strategically used marches, protests and economic boycotts to get the attention of white power brokers and break the back of legal segregation in the 1950s and 1960s.
Steele said the hip-hop generation will be the black community’s salvation for economic healing.
“We can’t alienate the hip-hop community; we have to embrace them,” he said. “You have to realize, Dr. King was only 26 at the start of the Montgomery bus boycott.”
“We have lost our moral compass,” said the Rev. Jesse Jackson, the Rainbow Push founder who was with King on the day he was assassinated. “Today, we are in a nation that favors incarceration over education. In California, they spend more money on incarceration than they do on education,” Jackson told BlackAmericaWeb.com.
Jackson said America must adopt King’s theory of lifting the poor if it wants to find solutions to economic problems.
In his famous “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech, delivered at Mason Temple on April 3rd, the day before his assassination 40 years ago, King encouraged the use of economic boycotts to get the attention of mainstream America.
“We don’t have to argue with anybody. We don’t have to curse and go around acting bad with our words. We don’t need any bricks and bottles, we don’t need any Molotov cocktails. We just need to go around to these stores, and to these massive industries in our country, and say, “God sent us by here to say to you that you’re not treating his children right,” King said. “And we’ve come by here to ask you to make the first item on your agenda fair treatment, where God’s children are concerned. Now, if you are not prepared to do that, we do have an agenda that we must follow. And our agenda calls for withdrawing economic support from you.”
That night, King called for boycotting Coca-Cola in Memphis and asked blacks not to buy Sealtest milk, Wonder bread or Hart’s bread.
“As Jesse Jackson has said, up to now, only the garbage men have been feeling pain; now we must kind of redistribute the pain. We are choosing these companies because they haven’t been fair in their hiring policies, and we are choosing them because they can begin the process of saying, they are going to support the needs and the rights of these men who are on strike,” King said in his speech.
Today, 40 years later, a coalition of about 100 black leaders have come together to produce an open letter published in newspapers across the country and calling for presidential candidates to commit to addressing issues facing blacks.
“We share with all Americans a call for the prompt ending of the war in Iraq, universal health care, access to quality health care, affordable housing free from predatory lending, quality jobs and economic stability,” the letter states.
The list supporting the letter includes prominent politicians, authors and actresses such as Cicely Tyson, Maya Angelou and Terry McMillan, national civil rights leaders such as C.T. Vivan, Julian Bond and Martin Luther King III and civic leaders such as Dr. Dorothy Height, Dr. E. Faye Williams and Melanie Campbell.
“We wanted to say to the candidates — all three of them — these are the issues we see for all Americans. We want you to commit to addressing them,” said Campbell, executive director of the National Coalition for Black Civic Participation.
“You have to understand that ‘the dream’ was an action plan,” Campbell said referring to King’s speech on his vision for a better America free of racial prejudice and discrimination. “When Dr. King talked about the dream, he was talking about the ability to take people and lift them up out of poverty.”
America still is divided on race, Campbell said. “We must do better and expand the opportunities for all people.”
