Informed in 1960 that the Rev. Martin Luther King,
Senior would be voting for the Protestant Richard Nixon,
Sen. Jack Kennedy smiled and said: “We all have fathers.” It was
typical of his wit. Kennedy’s own father was a notorious
anti-Semite and appeaser. Young Jack would never
repudiate Old Joe, or fail to cash Joe’s hefty checks. Kennedy
would win that election and go on to present Congress with the
most far-reaching civil rights legislation in a century.
We celebrate this month the life and legacy of Rev. Martin
Luther King, Junior. He kept his eyes on the prize: civil
rights for millions of black Americans suffering under unjust Jim
Crow laws.
Racial segregation was approved by the U.S. Supreme Court
in one of the worst rulings in history, Plessy v. Ferguson
(1896). In that case that the former Kentucky slave owner, Justice
John Marshall Harlan, wrote this powerful dissent:
The law regards man as man, and takes no account of his
surroundings or of his color when his civil rights as guaranteed by
the supreme law of the land are involved.…
…We boast of the freedom enjoyed by our people above all
other peoples. But it is difficult to reconcile that boast with a
state of the law which, practically, puts the brand of servitude
and degradation upon a large class of our fellow-citizens, our
equals before the law. The thin disguise of “equal” accommodations
for passengers in railroad coaches will not mislead any one, nor
atone for the wrong this day done.
The wrong of that day of Plessy lasted into the
1960s. Justice Harlan, a Republican appointee, ringingly proclaimed
that the Constitution must be “color-blind.” Let’s honor his
memory, too.
Dr. King made his point in biblical cadences. He cried out
from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial: “Let justice
roll down like a river, and righteousness like an ever-flowing
stream” (Amos 5:24). Following the peaceful conclusion of that
great March on Washington in August 1963, President Kennedy invited
Dr. King and the leaders of the civil rights movement to a meeting
in the Oval Office.
It was not Dr. King’s first time there. President
Eisenhower had made a point of inviting Dr. King to meet with him
to discuss civil rights when King emerged as the leader of the
Montgomery (Alabama) bus boycott in 1957. Dr. King and his
followers refused to ride in the back of the buses that their tax
dollars supported.
Ike had used his appointive powers to name Supreme Court
justices who would correct the injustice of Plessy. Barely
a year into Eisenhower’s first term, the high court unanimously
ruled against segregation in public schools in Brown v. Board
of Education (1954). And Republican
Eisenhower sent federal troops into Little Rock, Arkansas, when the
Democratic Gov. Orval Faubus defied federal court orders to
de-segregate that city’s schools.
Eisenhower was criticized endlessly by liberal elites for
his emphasis on massive federal highway construction and for
encouraging American prosperity. “A vast wasteland,” they dubbed TV
in what all now see as its golden age. Still, it was over Ike’s new
Interstate highways that the Freedom Riders of the early sixties
blazed a trail to end segregation. And those
TV news cameras let all Americans see, for the first time, the
police dogs and fire hoses necessary to maintain segregation.
Political reform followed quickly on the heels of Ike’s
achievements.
When Democratic Sen. Hubert Humphrey led the fight for the
Civil Rights Act of 1964, he had no stronger ally than Republican
Leader Everett Dirksen. Minority Republicans in the
Senate gave even stronger support, proportionately, than Democrats
did to push through that historic legislation.
Dr. King was willing to lay down his life. His
assassination by a white racist on April 4, 1968, was the
culmination of King’s lifelong advocacy of full equality under
law.
“I have been to the mountain top,” Dr. King told his
worried supporters in the days before his murder. He had indeed. He
saw the promised land of equal justice under law. He had that
vision because he kept his eyes on the prize. All Americans can be
grateful for his legacy.
