The Question: The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated 40 years ago. What are your memories of that day? What impact did it have on you? How is King relevant to you and to us today?
To turn into a sainted memory is a poor memorial for a man of action. I was in medical school in India in 1968 and therefore saw the murder of Martin Luther King as a blurry image from a faraway land. Moving to America was still three years off. But unlike other foreigners who self-righteously decried the level of guns and violence in the U.S., Indians were keenly aware of what an assassination can do. It can end an era of idealism, which is what happened when Gandhi was killed in 1948 by a Hindu extremist while taking his evening stroll. In both cases the ideal that died was the same: Satyagraha, or active non-violent resistance. Dr. King was consciously a descendant of Gandhi as well as of Thoreau and his philosophy of civil disobedience.
The most appropriate memorial to Dr. King is a rebirth of idealism. 1968 was a fateful year for idealism in America, its death throes having begun with the assassination of Pres. Kennedy five years before. After the double murders of Robert Kennedy and Dr. King, followed by the chaotic election that ushered in the Nixon era, a right-wing revolution was well underway, culminating in the rise to power of Reaganism and later the Bush neocons. For 40 years the vacuum of hope has been filled by its very opposite: entrenched power, reactionary religious movements, unchecked militarism, middle-class apathy, and a feeling of resignation toward de facto segregation.
It's disheartening that America would heed a manipulative slogan like "Are you better off today than you were four years ago?" without asking, "Is your soul better off today than it was four years ago?" But the retreat into selfishness and partisan ideology occurred. Now we have a chance to do something about it. The implicit hopelessness that fell like a shroud over America in 1968 has affected us all. Human beings adapt, of course, but some adaptations are too hard on the spirit. If he could speak today, I think Dr. King would ask for racial equality and the end of poverty, as he did in life. But first he would ask for a revival of spirit, without which every social reform is little more than bickering over entitlement while hiding the heart from view.
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