(3) Dream + 50 | untamed king

"But as a practical matter it cannot be 'Now!'....."

- Post-Bulletin, August 26, 1963

"They were on the right side of history," concludes a recent Post-Bulletin editorial about an editorial on a civil rights march that took place in Rochester, MN fifty years ago. [ "Eric Atherton: P-B erred with 'go-slow' approach to civil rights" http://bit.ly/17av5mu ].

We seem to have made a kind of peace with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr's calling to civil rights. At least it is a portion of his message we have managed to tame. Yet, there was much more over on his side of history, much we choose not to recall. Dr. King also called upon us to embrace what he called a "dangerous unselfishness". His message of equality and justice was more than the dream. Five years later he would still call forth to the "promises of democracy". He would say in Memphis in March, 1968:

Now our struggle is for genuine equality, which means economic equality. For we know now, that it isn't enough to integrate lunch counters. What does it profit a man to be able to eat at an integrated lunch counter if he doesn't have enough money to buy a hamburger? What does it profit a ...man to be able to eat at the swankest integrated restaurant when he doesn't even earn enough money to take his wife out to dine? What does it profit one to have access to the hotels of our cities, and the hotels of our highways, when we don't earn enough money to take our family on a vacation? What does it profit one to be able to attend an integrated school, when he doesn't earn enough money to buy his children school clothes?

...We are saying, 'Now is the time.' Get the word across to everybody in power in this town that now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to make an adequate income a reality for all of God's children, now is the time to make the real promises of democracy. Now is the time to make an adequate income a reality for all of God's children, now is the time for city hall to take a position for that which is just and honest. Now is the time for justice to roll down like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream. Now is the time.

History will simply not let us be. Dr. King's time is still our time. Forty-five years later his "now" remains present. This portion of his message we have yet to tame, so it is mostly overlooked. But it is timely. Shall we step back into that "now", choose differently, regarding economic inclusiveness? Or, will we in city hall hear the echo of those words from an editorial 50 years ago, "...as a practical matter it cannot be 'Now!'....."?

Half a century later, Dr. King still calls to us from the mountain top. Half a century from now, will an editorial again lament he was unheeded?