[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 1 (Tuesday, January 20, 2004)] [Extensions of Remarks] [Pages E11-E12] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov] HONORING DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING ______ HON. RUSH D. HOLT of new jersey in the house of representatives Tuesday, January 20, 2004 Mr. HOLT. Mr. Speaker, I rise to revise and extend my remarks. I submit to the Record the remarks of Dr. Valerie Smith, the Woodrow Wilson Professor of Literature and director of the Program in African- American Studies at Princeton University. Dr. Smith delivered this speech yesterday, January 19, 2004, in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. As you will see, the speech draws heavily on the words of Dr. King himself. I venture to say that Dr. King's words will continue have more lasting value than anything we say here on the House floor today. [Keynote Speech, Jan. 19, 2004] In Memory of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. PRINCETON UNIVERSITY MARTIN LUTHER KING DAY CELEBRATION (By Valerie Smith) On December 10, 1964, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. accepted the Nobel Prize for Peace. In the speech he delivered on that occasion, he was careful to acknowledge that he accepted the award not on his own behalf, but in the name of all who made the Civil Rights Movement, and thus his leadership, possible. ``From the depths of my heart [he said] I am aware that this prize is much more than an honor to me personally. ``Every time I take a flight I am always mindful of the many people who make a successful journey possible, the known pilots and the unknown ground crew. ``So you honor the dedicated pilots of our struggle who have sat at the controls as the freedom movement soared into orbit. . . . ``You honor the ground crew without whose labor and sacrifices the jet flights to freedom could never have left the earth ``Most of these people will never make the headlines and their names will not appear in Who's Who. Yet the years have rolled past and when the blazing light of truth is focused on this marvelous age in which we live--men and women will know and children will be taught that we have a finer land, a better people, a more noble civilization--because these humble children of God were willing to suffer for righteousness' sake.'' On February 9, 1968, Dr. King preached what we might consider to be his own eulogy from the pulpit of Ebenezer Baptist. Ebenezer is, of course, the prominent black church in Atlanta in which he grew up, which his grandfather and father had pastored, and which Dr. King co-pastored with his father, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Sr. This sermon, entitled ``The Drum Major Instinct,'' was, like so many of his sermons, speeches and writings, at once reflective and prophetic. In it, Dr. King analyzes the human desire for greatness and recognition. He explores various manifestations of this compulsion, from the personal and insignificant to the national and cataclysmic. For from his perspective, the desire among individuals ``to be important, to surpass others, to achieve distinction,'' is linked to the struggle among nations ``engaged in a bitter, colossal contest for supremacy.'' As he puts it: ``. . . Nations are caught up with the drum major instinct. I must be first. I must be supreme. Our nation must rule the world. And I am sad to say [he continues] that the nation in which we live is the supreme culprit. And I'm going to continue to say it to America, because I love this country too much to see the drift that it has taken.'' This sermon culminates in Dr. King's eloquent and heartbreaking reflection on how he would like to be remembered. He tells his congregants: ``If any of you are around when I have to meet my day, I don't want a long funeral. And if you get somebody to deliver the eulogy, tell them not to talk too long. Every now and then I wonder what I want them to say. Tell them not to mention that I have a Nobel Peace Prize, that isn't important. Tell them not to mention that I have three or four hundred other awards, that's not important. Tell him [sic] not to mention where I went to school. I'd like somebody to mention that day, that Martin Luther King, Jr. tried to give his life serving others. I'd like for somebody to say that day, that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to love somebody. I want you to say that day, that I tried to be right on the war question. I want you to be able to say that day, that I did try to feed the hungry. And I want you to be able to say that day, that I did try, in my life, to visit those who were in prison. I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity. ``If you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice; say that I was a drum major for peace; I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter.'' Two months later, these words were broadcast at his funeral. Each year at this time, as a nation we pause to remember and to honor the life and legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. We typically recall the highlights of his remarkable and all-too-brief career: his leadership of the triumphant Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955-56; his climactic speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom; his receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964; his assassination in Memphis in 1968. Furthermore, typically, we replay the most familiar sentences from his most famous speech, a speech we have all come to know as his ``I Have a Dream'' speech. Those words, of course, include the following: ``I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.'' Without a doubt, the achievements that mark the high points of Dr. King's career are extraordinary. And without a doubt, his words on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on August 22, 1963, are some of the most eloquent uttered by one of the preeminent orators of his generation or indeed, any other. But by focusing on the same moments in Dr. King's life, and on a few words from one speech in particular, we, paradoxically, reduce him to the status of an icon. We do a disservice to his memory, to the movement to which he gave so much and in the service of which he died, and to the legacy we seek to honor. For the struggle for freedom and equality preceded and extends beyond what we commonly call the Civil Rights Movement. As he suggests so eloquently in his Nobel acceptance speech, The Movement was and is larger than his leadership. And of course, Dr. King was much, much more than these phrases and these moments. To limit him to a few words denies the boldness, the complexities and the contradictions of his vision for humanity. To freeze Dr. King at these moments of his greatest visibility is to ignore his frailty, his vulnerability, and his transformations. By seizing upon the image of Dr. King at the pinnacle of his success or at the moment of his martyrdom, we risk allowing him to stand in for the Civil Rights struggle in its entirety, thereby rendering invisible the less well-known or indeed unknown foot soldiers without whom there would have been no Movement. To restrict him to these few representations deprives him of the power to inspire us to action. For if we believe that he was somehow fundamentally and essentially greater than or different from who we are, then we render ourselves unable to follow his example. In other words, to limit Dr. King to a few phrases and a few moments makes us complicit with an act of cultural amnesia, perpetuated in the name of memorialization. Today I ask us to consider how we commemorate Dr. King not to suggest that we as a nation dispense with such ceremonies and celebrations. Rather, I raise these concerns in order to challenge us to work out the most meaningful way to honor his legacy. I want to suggest that as we remember Dr. King, we commit ourselves to a vision of memory as a critical function. Let us draw [[Page E12]] inspiration from ``The Drum Major Instinct,'' look beyond the prizes and the fanfare, and seek to explore the deeper, more profound meanings of his life and ministry. We might use this occasion to question why certain moments in Dr. King's magnificent body of sermons, speeches and writings have achieved canonical status while others are all but forgotten. We might seize this as the opportunity to ask whose interests are served when Dr. King is remembered as the champion of a color blind society and not, for example, as an advocate for the poor or an outspoken opponent of war. Indeed, we might take this opportunity to restore Dr. King's notion of a color blind society to its original meaning. For Dr. King used the term to refer to a society free of racial subordination. Yet various political leaders and pundits have appropriated the notion to justify their opposition to any intervention by the state to eliminate racial subordination. In the spirit of Dr. King's Nobel Prize acceptance speech, we might use this occasion as a time to commit ourselves to learning more about the lesser-known activists associated with the struggle, men and women such as Septima Clark, E. D. Nixon, the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, Bob Moses, Diane Nash, Ella Baker, Fannie Lou Homer, Bayard Rustin, as well as the many, many others without whom there would have been no Movement. Perhaps most importantly, we might commit ourselves to a critical, productive engagement with his words and his actions so that we will be able to make his vision come alive for us as we face the challenges of the present moment. For the poverty, inadequate access to education, employment, and health care, discrimination and military aggression against which he struggled are still with us. They may have assumed different forms, but we face them nevertheless. What should we do in our daily lives to honor this drum major for justice, peace and righteousness? During his lifetime, Dr. King was often criticized for stepping outside the categories into which others sought to confine him, his message and his mission. When, for example, a group of Birmingham clergymen accused him of being an outside agitator, he responded in his 1963 ``Letter from Birmingham Jail,'' that ``Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.'' When he was criticized for speaking out against the Vietnam War, and told that ``peace and civil rights don't mix,'' he responded in a sermon entitled ``A Time to Break Silence,'' delivered at the Riverside Church in New York City on March 25,1967 that he had ``a calling . . . beyond national allegiances.'' ``To me [he continued] the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I am speaking against the war. Could it be that they do not know that the good news was meant for all men--for Communist and capitalist, for their children and ours, for black and for white, for revolutionary and conservative? Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the one who loved his enemies so fully that he died for them? What then can I say to the `Vietcong' or to Castro or to Mao as a faithful minister if this one? Can I threaten them with death or must I not share with them my life?'' As we seek appropriate ways to remember Dr. King, we ought be certain not to limit him in death as his critics sought to limit him in life. He saw the interconnectedness of diverse struggles against racism, imperialism and economic exploitation. Our tributes to him must draw inspiration from that vision, they must enable us to see beyond our local interests and personal investments, and they must require us to recognize our place in the network of mutuality within which we are inescapably placed. The brilliant 2001 film Boycott, offers a compelling example of memory as a critical function. In Boycott, the director Clark Johnson expands our conventional understandings of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. This film works to disabuse us of the notion that the Movement began with the boycott by drawing a connection between the segregation of public accommodations and the terror of rural lynch law. It complicates our understanding of the leadership of the Movement by pointing to the significant roles of figures such as Joann Gibson Robinson, E.D. Nixon, and Bayard Rustin. Moreover, it captures Dr. King's youth and vulnerability--at the time the boycott began he was only 26 years old--thus suggesting that he grew into the powerful, charismatic presence we so commonly associate with him. What I find so impressive about Boycott is that it contradicts the notion that memory need be static or fixed. Rather, through its deliberate use of anachronism, it exemplifies how memory can be made pliable, dynamic, active. For example, it contains a dizzying array of visual images from both earlier and later moments in history that subtly link the boycott to previous and subsequent acts of struggle and resistance. It incorporates diverse musical tracks--rock, hip hop, gospel, jazz, alternative--from the '60s, through the '90s--a technique that pulls the boycott out of the safe past in which it has been enshrined. This compelling and imaginative use of the soundtrack prompts viewers to consider the enduring legacy of the boycott for the present. The film ends with a striking image that dramatizes the kind of critical use of memory to which I've been alluding. The closing credits roll over a shot of Dr. King, played by the actor Jeffrey Wright, walking in 21st century Atlanta. Looking somewhat bemused by the people he passes--a young man carrying a boom box, someone else speaking on a cell phone-- he stops to speak with a group of young African American men. A police car approaches, slowing to check out this group of men. The two officers, a Latina and an African American man, wave somewhat ambiguously at King and his associates before they move on. At one level this final scene would seem to evoke a powerful, nostalgic longing for the martyred King. It might seem to prompt viewers to wonder how different the world would be if Dr. King were still here. But I believe that something else is going on here. I believe that this final scene is meant to inspire us to reflect upon the politics and the act of remembering. The exchange of glances between the officers and the black men on the street conjures up the familiar iconography of the tense relationship between the police and African American communities. In the context of a film about the end of Jim Crow seating on buses in Montgomery, this closing image links the protocols of segregation to the violence and terror communities of color continue to associate with law enforcement and the criminal justice system. This gesture positions the boycott, and by extension the Civil Rights Movement, within a broader history of oppression and resistance. The deliberately anachronistic shot of King speaking to the young men on the corner might thus be read as a figure for the possibility of a critical dialogue between the examples of history and the exigencies of the contemporary cultural and political scene. I want to close with a passage from the end of King's Nobel Prize speech that speaks powerfully to the present moment. For even as he honors the men and women with whom he struggled so tirelessly in the Movement, he denounces military aggression and articulates a vision of global peace: I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into a hell of thermonuclear destruction. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. That is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. I believe that even amid today's mortar bursts and whining bullets, there is still hope for a brighter tomorrow. I believe that wounded justice, lying prostrate on the blood- flowing streets of our nations, can be lifted from this dust of shame to reign supreme among the children of men. I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits. I believe that what self-centered men have torn down men other-centered can build up. . . . This faith can give us courage to face the uncertainties of the future. It will give our tired feet new strength as we continue our forward stride toward the city of freedom. When our days become dreary with low-hovering clouds and our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, we will know that we are living in the creative turmoil of a genuine civilization struggling to be born. ____________________