and frustrations of the moment I still have a dream.
It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. . . .
Some tributes for MLK Day.
Charles Krauthammer - Jew and wheelchair user - understands what was unique and compelling about King's vision.
Martin Luther King succeeded in taking a liberation movement that could easily have turned irredeemably divisive and deeply anti-American--note the bitter endemic conflicts engendered by other liberation movements around the world--and dedicated it instead to a reaffirmation of American principles. The point is not just what King and his followers did for African-Americans, but what they did--by validating America's original promise of freedom and legal equality--for the rest of America.
. . . the civil rights movement forever set the standard for social transformation in America. We owe to King--his vision, his courage and his discipline--the fact that every subsequent social movement from environmental to gay rights to antiwar has almost automatically embraced nonviolence. Political violence has, of course, not been abolished. But the nobility and success of the civil rights movement has delegitimized the very idea of political violence . . . .
Andrew Sullivan - gay man with AIDS - pays tribute to King's gay mentor and right-hand man, Bayard Rustin.
Rustin never wavered in his belief in true racial integration. He saw the civil rights movement not as a protest against America or an indictment of it but as a way for America to live up to its own principles. In stark contrast to Malcolm X, with whom he civilly debated, Rustin emphasized not what white Americans owed blacks or what blacks could do in a separatist ghetto but what blacks could contribute in a truly equal and integrated America. "I believe the great majority of the Negro people, black people, are not seeking anything from anyone," Rustin told Malcolm X in 1960. "They are seeking to become full-fledged citizens." The simplicity of that statement is as impressive as its moral clarity.Another tribute to Rustin.
Apparently, the famous "Letter to an Anti-Zionist Friend" is not authentic, but we know that King frequently spoke out against anti-semitism in the civil rights movement of his time.
Many progressive Jewish communities celebrate together with Dr. King's birth, the yahrzeit of Abraham Joshua Heschel, who marched with King and was a prophetic figure of social justice to many Jews in the anti-war movement. Professor at the Conservative seminary for 30 years as well as carefully nurtured scion of a Hassidic dynasty, Heschel brilliantly applied his Eastern European rabbinic training and lineage, and his secular education, to the malaise of American Jewry in the 50s and 60s, and subsequently had enormous influence outside that community as well. Says his daughter, noted Jewish feminist Susannah Heschel,
The famous photograph of my father marching with Martin Luther King, Jr. at Selma is now reprinted in children's Jewish history textbooks and the Jewish community today proudly declares that it was at the forefront of the civil rights movement. The campaign to free Soviet Jewry, which began with a speech my father delivered that was bitterly attacked in the Jewish press, eventually became one of the great success stories of modern Jewish history. Nostra Aetate, the declaration repudiating anti-Semitism that was issued by the Second Vatican Council, is hailed as a milestone in Christian-Jewish relations; it was my father who convinced Pope Paul VI to eliminate a call for the eventual conversion of the Jews from the final version of the declaration.
According to Susannah, Heschel's closeness with King was born from the similarities in their theologies.
The primacy of the Exodus and the prophets and the relative absence of references to Jesus lent the Civil Rights Movement an ecumenical, and even a philosemitic image in the eyes of major segments of the Jewish community. Heschel, for example, was particularly touched during the march from Selma to Montgomery by King's references to the Exodus in his sermon, describing three types among the Israelites who left Egypt and he viewed King's choice of the Exodus over Jesus as a significant moment in Christian-Jewish relations. Shortly after returning from the march, he wrote to King:Heschel later described the march in these words:The day we marched together out of Selma was a day of sanctification. That day I hope will never be past to me -- that day will continue to be this day. A great Hasidic sage compares the service of God to a battle being waged in war. An army consists of infantry, artillery, and cavalry. In critical moments cavalry and artillery may step aside from the battle-front. Infantry, however, carries the brunt. I am glad to belong to infantry!
For many of us the march from Selma to Montgomery was both protest and prayer. Legs are not lips, and walking is not kneeling. And yet our legs uttered songs. Even without words, our march was worship. I felt my legs were praying.
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