It's up to Biden, Harris to move US in direction Martin Luther King dreamt of

Negroes of the United States, following the people of India, have demonstrated that non-violence is not sterile passivity, but a powerful moral force, which makes for social transformation. Sooner or later, all the peoples of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace, and thereby transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. If this is to be achieved, man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.

 — Martin Luther King, Jr., Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech, December 1964

Things have regressed since then. There is a movement driving an imagined civil war in the US that is arguably about race and anti-Semitism, and about rolling back the advances achieved by the Civil Rights Movement once headed by Martin Luther King, Jr. The MLK Memorial in Washington DC is closed because of threats by white supremacists.

Things are also changing in two days. A Black, Indian-descent woman will be sworn in as vice-president of the US on January 20. A Jewish man and a 51-year-old Baptist pastor—who inherited the pulpit held by King and his father and grandfather at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia—will also become the first Jew and the first black person, respectively, to represent the former Confederate state in the Senate.

Reverend Raphael Warnock spoke about his 82-year-old mother picking other people’s cotton in the field “and now with her vote has helped her youngest son become a senator in the United States — This is America,” said Warnock.

But it is also an America where there is no peaceful transfer of power in Washington DC. The capital is militarised like a war zone because of threats by President Donald Trump that his loyalists appear intent on carrying out. Some 25,000 military troops are being screened to ensure no insurgents are among them to avoid a scenario like what happened to Egypt’s Anwar Sadat, when his own troops turned on him during a parade, killing him.

“My father would be greatly disappointed, but he would also be hopeful,” said Martin III, son of Martin Luther King, Jr.,as he spoke on CNN about the Trump-incited events in the capital and the resulting militarisation of Washington DC and state capitals. “We are going to see the prospect set for a United States of America,” he added, looking forward to the work of a diverse, inclusive Biden-Harris administration.

That, of course, was his father’s dream.

In the same mall that is now a protected fortress to prevent a recurrence of the Trump-driven takeover of the Capitol on January 6, in 1963, Dr. King delivered his most memorable speech before 250,000 people.

“I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal’,” King said.

The violent insurrection this January 6, steeped in white supremacist regalia, did away with the coded speech and made itself shown as what it was: A real threat to the American belief that “all men are created equal”.

But non-violence has had a place of honour in America, thanks to the pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church and civil rights leader.

King gained moral authority by the force of the idea of non-violence, which he credited to Mahatma Gandhi.

“While the Montgomery boycott was going on, India’s Gandhi was the guiding light of our technique of non-violent social change. We spoke of him often. So as soon as our victory over bus segregation was won, some of my friends said: ‘Why don’t you go to India and see for yourself what the Mahatma, whom you so admire, has wrought’.”

In his 1959 book My Trip to the Land of Gandhi, King wrote, “The trip had a great impact upon me personally. It was wonderful to be in Gandhi’s land, to talk with his son, his grandsons, his cousin and other relatives; to share the reminiscences of his close comrades; to visit his ashrama, to see the countless memorials for him and finally to lay a wreath on his entombed ashes at Rajghat.”

“I left India more convinced than ever before that non-violent resistance is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom. It was a marvellous thing to see the amazing results of a non-violent campaign. The aftermath of hatred and bitterness that usually follows a violent campaign was found nowhere in India.”

King was thus imbued in non-violence.

“The way of acquiescence leads to moral and spiritual suicide. The way of violence leads to bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers. But, the way of non-violence leads to redemption and the creation of the beloved community. But any objective observer must report that Gandhi is not only the greatest figure in India’s history but that his influence is felt in almost every aspect of life and public policy today,” wrote King.

That optimism followed him to the last days of his life.

“However dark it is, however deep the angry feelings on the violent explosions are, I can still sing, We Shall Overcome,” said King in the last Sunday of his life, at a sermon he gave at Washington’s National Cathedral. “We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

On that same pulpit, this past Sunday, minister Michael Eric Dyson, a professor in the Divinity School at Vanderbilt University and author of Long Time Coming: Reckoning With Race In America, gave a sermon as carried by National Public Radio in which he envisaged a letter from the Apostle St. Paul to Americans about American exceptionalism — that the US is inherently different from other nations because it and its people are on a grand mission from God.

“American exceptionalism is really white supremacy on the sly. The man who founded your nation relished talk of God while holding Black flesh in chains. Many of those who say that God takes special pride in your nation seek to bless the blasphemy of white supremacy. The American church has sinned by portraying truth as white, facts as white, reality as white, beauty as white, normal as white, moral as white, righteousness as white, theology as white, Christ as white, God as white. And America as white.”

Wow.

Calling Dr. King.

Dyson has a point.

NPR’s Steve Inskeep put it into the perspective of a strong criticism of the situation in America today created by Trump and those who follow him.

It is time to reconcile.

America needs a turning point, another “I have a dream” day, an expression of a desire to unite instead of dividing the country into races and classes, an expression that can inspire and overcome this rising wave of a White America too exceptional to include the rest of America.

Is there enough in King’s legacy to tower over the pettiness and division on display today in America?

Is there in his legacy a path for the new Biden-Harris administration to follow to unite a divided country?

I have a dream…

“We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilising drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children,” King had said.

The “I Have a Dream” speech resonates even louder today.

King’s words have often been for the ages, and that is why this remembrance of him is also an inspiration and a hope for America.

On the night before he died, King was prophetic and optimistic about the fate of America and committed to the principle of non-violence.

“Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind.”

“Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land!” King had said.

In other words, there is an exceptional promise for America, but it is one for all its people. The country will get there, but it won’t be fast and it won't be easy, and it may not happen in our lifetime.

Now it is up in large part to a Black, Indian woman, working along with President Biden to move it forward in moral compass and direction.

They have a rich legacy to draw from.

Milan Sime Martinic is a writer and researcher. His debut novel, IRONWAY: Watching over Benjamin Hill, has been translated into five languages.