Martin Luther King, Jr. | Thinking About...

“I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councillor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says, “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically feels that he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by the myth of time; and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”

Reposting these photos of the MLK memorial in Washington DC. While we were there in November, a park ranger told us that that MLK’s legs and feet are not complete, to symbolize that his work is not yet finished. I am glad for how far we have come, but discouraged that we have not come farther in all this time.

Side note, Maya told me this morning that Anne Frank, Martin Luther King, and Barbara Walters are all the same age. Of course I mean, would be the same, had two of them not been murdered. But an interesting thought regarding time and loss.

3 Comments

Ally Bean

January 20, 2020 at 5:40 am

“the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice”

That’s the line that calls out to me the most. I find, like you said, that lukewarm acceptance is the bane of many a situation I’ve found myself in. I didn’t know that Anne Frank, Martin Luther King, and Barbara Walters were born in the same year, but it’s an amazing thing to note.

J

January 20, 2020 at 9:18 am

That’s the line that gets me, too. And regarding the 3 born in the same year, yeah, MLK and AF are stuck in our minds as the age they were when they died. What a different world we would be in had they (and so many like them) not been killed.

OmbudsBen

January 22, 2020 at 5:55 am

I like the Frank, King, Walters note, too, for how it connects three such different lives and contexts and has you thinking of them as schoolchildren at the same time; the loss of one while the other two became young adults, and of how only one lived to be a senior.

Philip Roth has a novel, “The Ghost Writer,” where the protagonist wonders if a mysterious young woman staying in the same home he visits is Anne Frank, grown up. That she had actually survived the Holocaust and made it to the USA.

Ally Bean

January 20, 2020 at 5:40 am

“the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice”

That’s the line that calls out to me the most. I find, like you said, that lukewarm acceptance is the bane of many a situation I’ve found myself in. I didn’t know that Anne Frank, Martin Luther King, and Barbara Walters were born in the same year, but it’s an amazing thing to note.
- J
  
  January 20, 2020 at 9:18 am
  
  That’s the line that gets me, too. And regarding the 3 born in the same year, yeah, MLK and AF are stuck in our minds as the age they were when they died. What a different world we would be in had they (and so many like them) not been killed.
OmbudsBen

January 22, 2020 at 5:55 am

I like the Frank, King, Walters note, too, for how it connects three such different lives and contexts and has you thinking of them as schoolchildren at the same time; the loss of one while the other two became young adults, and of how only one lived to be a senior.

Philip Roth has a novel, “The Ghost Writer,” where the protagonist wonders if a mysterious young woman staying in the same home he visits is Anne Frank, grown up. That she had actually survived the Holocaust and made it to the USA.