 |
| April 3 |
 |
| April 3 |
 |
| April 20 |
 |
| April 25 |
Monday, April 30, 2018
Requiem for a Department Store
I had to immediately reconsider something I wrote back in 2011 after reading a comment to one of my posts. My statement was that because the old Carson Pirie Scott store on State Street was a poor step child to Marshall Fields just up the street, more than likely no one missed it when it closed back in 2007. The reader's comment was this:
I won't go into justifying that claim here, you can either take or leave it.
In early 2006, lovers of Chicago architecture were thrilled when Carsons announced it would begin a significant restoration of the building, including the re-creation of the original cornice which was removed in the 1940s. But that enthusiasm was short lived when later that year, the company announced that despite the restoration, it could no longer justify keeping its flagship store, which would close after the Christmas season of that year. That announcement came right on the heels of the announcement that Chicago's venerable restaurant The Berghoff, at least the old joint as we knew it, would also close. The announcements were a big blow not only to the city and to the Loop Chamber of Commerce, but also to the city's architectural community who was about to see its most important asset unoccupied and facing an uncertain future. Fortunately the new owners, Joseph Freed & Associates , and the City of Chicago continued the restoration.
As I pointed out in the above mentioned post written in response to the announcement of Target opening up a store on the first two levels, the restoration made the building look as good if not better than it ever did. And seven years after it opened, the addition of the Target store, has brought new life to the great building. No, it's not a grand old department store, that era has passed us by and is very unlikely to ever come back.
Sadly we've been reminded of that fact twice this month after the announcement that the last Sears store in Chicago, the city that company called home for over a century, would close shortly, as would the last of the Carson Pirie Scott stores, which were scattered in shopping malls throughout the Midwest.
Given that mid-level brick and mortar retail businesses like Carsons and Sears have been supplanted by online shopping, plus the fact that neither business seemed to keep up at all with the times, it's a minor miracle that they held on for so long.
While we bemoan their loss, all of us who buy stuff online carry a share of the burden for their demise. There is definitely a price to pay for new technology, for all its wonder and marvels, it giveth and it taketh away.
It's been that way for hundreds of years and shows no signs of letting up. In other words, good luck bringing back all those coal jobs Mr. President. Maybe you can add department store jobs to your long list of jobs in moribund industries to bring back, along with telephone operator, blacksmith and steam train engineer
Still it's a sad day when two long standing Chicago institutions bite the dust. We will mourn their loss and hope for better times ahead for the people whose livelihoods depended on them, hopefully in industres with a future.
Are you lietening Mr. President?
I found it strange that with all the fuss over Fields changing to Macy's, you barely heard a peep when Carsons closed. Carsons has always been just as much a part of the fabric of the city as Fields (with both also suffering from the indifference of their out-of-town owners) but for some reason Carsons never gained the iconic status that Fields enjoyed.He was right. While the lives and names Samuel Carson, John Pirie and John Edwin Scott are not as well known nor intrinsically tied to Chicago history as the name Marshall Field and the progeny that bore his name, their mighty flagship store on Chicago's most important street will forever be tied to the building in which it inhabited. Designed by Louis Sullivan, the building, now named the Sullivan Center in his honor, is the architect's masterpiece, and if I may be allowed to dabble in a bit of hyperbole, arguably Chicago's greatest artistic contribution to the world.
I won't go into justifying that claim here, you can either take or leave it.
In early 2006, lovers of Chicago architecture were thrilled when Carsons announced it would begin a significant restoration of the building, including the re-creation of the original cornice which was removed in the 1940s. But that enthusiasm was short lived when later that year, the company announced that despite the restoration, it could no longer justify keeping its flagship store, which would close after the Christmas season of that year. That announcement came right on the heels of the announcement that Chicago's venerable restaurant The Berghoff, at least the old joint as we knew it, would also close. The announcements were a big blow not only to the city and to the Loop Chamber of Commerce, but also to the city's architectural community who was about to see its most important asset unoccupied and facing an uncertain future. Fortunately the new owners, Joseph Freed & Associates , and the City of Chicago continued the restoration.
As I pointed out in the above mentioned post written in response to the announcement of Target opening up a store on the first two levels, the restoration made the building look as good if not better than it ever did. And seven years after it opened, the addition of the Target store, has brought new life to the great building. No, it's not a grand old department store, that era has passed us by and is very unlikely to ever come back.
Sadly we've been reminded of that fact twice this month after the announcement that the last Sears store in Chicago, the city that company called home for over a century, would close shortly, as would the last of the Carson Pirie Scott stores, which were scattered in shopping malls throughout the Midwest.
Given that mid-level brick and mortar retail businesses like Carsons and Sears have been supplanted by online shopping, plus the fact that neither business seemed to keep up at all with the times, it's a minor miracle that they held on for so long.
While we bemoan their loss, all of us who buy stuff online carry a share of the burden for their demise. There is definitely a price to pay for new technology, for all its wonder and marvels, it giveth and it taketh away.
It's been that way for hundreds of years and shows no signs of letting up. In other words, good luck bringing back all those coal jobs Mr. President. Maybe you can add department store jobs to your long list of jobs in moribund industries to bring back, along with telephone operator, blacksmith and steam train engineer
Still it's a sad day when two long standing Chicago institutions bite the dust. We will mourn their loss and hope for better times ahead for the people whose livelihoods depended on them, hopefully in industres with a future.
Are you lietening Mr. President?
Sunday, April 29, 2018
Dead Icons
April is the month where we recognize two significant events in the history of the American Civil Rights movement, one positive, the other devastating:
On April 15, 1947, Jackie Robinson made his first appearance with the Brooklyn Dodgers, marking the end of the enforced segregation in major league baseball.
On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King was assassinated.
I noticed something interesting on both April 4th and April 15th this month. Not surprisingly, on those two days, many folks took to social media to honor the two American icons. Among those posts were comments that considering their source, seemed a trifle ironic.
On the morning of April 4th, President Trump tweeted the following:
Despite that, Trump has had numerous opportunities as president to bring this country together in terms of race, When the issue of removing Confederate monuments in the South came up, the president could have made a very reasonable argument that while he was not particularly in favor of removing monuments that have stood in place for over a century, he undertood the concerns African American people have about their communities memorializing the people who led the battle to enslave their ancestors. Trump then could and should have urged both sides to get together and compromise. Instead, he took a rigid stance against the removal of the statues while completely failing to even acknowledge the argument of the other side.
When Nazis. Klansmen and other white supremacist groups descended upon Charlottesville to protest the removal of one of those monuments, and incited the violence that led to the death of a young woman, the president could have done what any reasonable leader would have done and what the Governor of Virginia did do, denounce in no uncertain terms those hate groups, Instead Trump punted, insisting that "both sides" were wrong for what took place in Thomas Jefferson's home town.
Then just last week, a white mass murderer walked into a Nashville retaurant and killed four African American people, before being subdued by an un-armed man who saved countless lives. Despite going out of his way to publicly display sympathy for the victims of a truck attack in Toronto that happened the following day, the President of the United States remained silent about the tragic loss of four of his fellow countrymen, and the indesputable heroism of another.
One could argue these are sins of omission, in no way displaying any real intent to divide the country along racial lines or express any animous to African American people. To that I would bring up Trump's famous stance against African American football players who chose to kneel during the national anthem out of protest for numerous police killings of African American men in this country. Again, like the issue of the Confederate statues, Trump could have easily formed a nuanced response saying that while he didn't apporve of players not standing for the anthem, he understood their concerns and would work to help address the issue they were protesting against. Or he could have simply left the issue alone as at the time only a small handful of athletes participated in the protest and were it not for him, the issue would have been all but forgotten.
.
Instead, at a rally in Huntsville, Alabama in front of a bunch of hootin' and hollerin' supporters, Trump of his own free will chose to say this: "fire those sonsofbitches!"
All of that makes Donald Trump's words in praise of Dr. King. and his bemoaning of the division of this country, sound quite hollow.
Trump wasn't alone among Americans not particularly known for their concern about civil rights, to pay lip service to Martin Luther King and Jackie Robinson this month. I read numerous posts from folks who are openly hostile toward current day activist groups and leaders, particularly the Black lives Matter movement and the kneeling NFL players, who couldn't say enough good things about Robinson and Dr. King. When pressed about the seeming contradiction of prasing those two dead icons while condemning living people fighting exactly the same battles today, these folks insist that King and Robinson would not approve of today's crop of activists. One commentator, responding to the question what would MLK think of the current president's zealous concern about protecting our borders at the expense of human rights, said this: "Dr. King fought for the rights of American citizens, not for those who were here illegally."
Interesting.
As for Jackie Robinson, I read countless posts speculating about how horrified Robinson, himself a WWII veteran, would feel about football players kneeling during the anthem. Well in fact, Robinson told us exactly how he'd feel in his autobiography:
On April 15, 1947, Jackie Robinson made his first appearance with the Brooklyn Dodgers, marking the end of the enforced segregation in major league baseball.
On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King was assassinated.
On the morning of April 4th, President Trump tweeted the following:
Today we honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on the 50th anniversary of his assassination. Earlier this year I spoke about Dr. King’s legacy of justice and peace, and his impact on uniting Americans.Accompanying the tweet is a brief video of Trump espousing King's contributions to this country, summarizing the words of his official proclamation recognizing the anniversary of King's assassination as a day to "honor Dr. King's legacy" (whatever that means). In the words of the proclamation, Trump speaks of the injustice of racial inequality and division:#MLK50Proclamation: http://45.wh.gov/DrKing50th
We must learn to live together as brothers and sisters lest we perish together as fools... As a united people, we must see Dr. King’s life mission through and denounce racism, inhumanity, and all those things that seek to divide us.If not original, those words are all well and good, they're hard to argue with, yet they seem to run counter to just about everything Donald Trump has said and done as president. Say what you will about whether the man is a bigot or not, but it's no secret that a good number of his supporters are dyed-in-the-wool racists, and proud of it. It's also no secret that Donald Trump will bend over backwards to avoid offending that reliable, but less than admirable base.
Despite that, Trump has had numerous opportunities as president to bring this country together in terms of race, When the issue of removing Confederate monuments in the South came up, the president could have made a very reasonable argument that while he was not particularly in favor of removing monuments that have stood in place for over a century, he undertood the concerns African American people have about their communities memorializing the people who led the battle to enslave their ancestors. Trump then could and should have urged both sides to get together and compromise. Instead, he took a rigid stance against the removal of the statues while completely failing to even acknowledge the argument of the other side.
When Nazis. Klansmen and other white supremacist groups descended upon Charlottesville to protest the removal of one of those monuments, and incited the violence that led to the death of a young woman, the president could have done what any reasonable leader would have done and what the Governor of Virginia did do, denounce in no uncertain terms those hate groups, Instead Trump punted, insisting that "both sides" were wrong for what took place in Thomas Jefferson's home town.
Then just last week, a white mass murderer walked into a Nashville retaurant and killed four African American people, before being subdued by an un-armed man who saved countless lives. Despite going out of his way to publicly display sympathy for the victims of a truck attack in Toronto that happened the following day, the President of the United States remained silent about the tragic loss of four of his fellow countrymen, and the indesputable heroism of another.
One could argue these are sins of omission, in no way displaying any real intent to divide the country along racial lines or express any animous to African American people. To that I would bring up Trump's famous stance against African American football players who chose to kneel during the national anthem out of protest for numerous police killings of African American men in this country. Again, like the issue of the Confederate statues, Trump could have easily formed a nuanced response saying that while he didn't apporve of players not standing for the anthem, he understood their concerns and would work to help address the issue they were protesting against. Or he could have simply left the issue alone as at the time only a small handful of athletes participated in the protest and were it not for him, the issue would have been all but forgotten.
.
Instead, at a rally in Huntsville, Alabama in front of a bunch of hootin' and hollerin' supporters, Trump of his own free will chose to say this: "fire those sonsofbitches!"
All of that makes Donald Trump's words in praise of Dr. King. and his bemoaning of the division of this country, sound quite hollow.
Trump wasn't alone among Americans not particularly known for their concern about civil rights, to pay lip service to Martin Luther King and Jackie Robinson this month. I read numerous posts from folks who are openly hostile toward current day activist groups and leaders, particularly the Black lives Matter movement and the kneeling NFL players, who couldn't say enough good things about Robinson and Dr. King. When pressed about the seeming contradiction of prasing those two dead icons while condemning living people fighting exactly the same battles today, these folks insist that King and Robinson would not approve of today's crop of activists. One commentator, responding to the question what would MLK think of the current president's zealous concern about protecting our borders at the expense of human rights, said this: "Dr. King fought for the rights of American citizens, not for those who were here illegally."
Interesting.
As for Jackie Robinson, I read countless posts speculating about how horrified Robinson, himself a WWII veteran, would feel about football players kneeling during the anthem. Well in fact, Robinson told us exactly how he'd feel in his autobiography:
There I was, the black grandson of a slave, the son of a black sharecropper, part of a historic occasion, a symbolic hero to my people. The air was sparkling. The sunlight was warm. The band struck up the national anthem. The flag billowed in the wind. It should have been a glorious moment for me as the stirring words of the national anthem poured from the stands. Perhaps, it was, but then again, perhaps, the anthem could be called the theme song for a drama called The Noble Experiment. Today, as I look back on that opening game of my first World Series, I must tell you that it was Mr. Rickey’s drama and that I was only a principal actor. As I write this twenty years later, I cannot stand and sing the anthem. I cannot salute the flag; I know that I am a black man in a white world.
I have a very strong feeling that if Dr. King and Jackie Robinson were still alive, many of the people who wrote so eloquently about them this month would despise them today, much as they and their ancestors did when they were alive. One could say that it is the height of hypocrisy to praise dead icons while condemning the living who follow in their footsteps. Then again, one could say it is human nature that compels us to do so. After all, April is also the month that we recognize a momentous event in the life of another controversial figure who was despised in life and revered in death far more than King and Robinson combined.
Like King and Robinson, his followers today, make him in their own image so to speak, as an advocate for what they believe to be right, all the while forgetting his life was devoted to challenging their beliefs, and especially their self-righteousness. When Jesus of Nazareth told a wealthy young man who was interested in follwoing him to sell all his possessions and give the proceeds to the poor., the man walked away dejected. This led to the comment, "it's harder for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle." The funny thing is, you seldom hear well-off white, evangelical Christians relate that story, just as you won't find many liberal, pacifist, Beatitude reciting Christians relating this quote:
The fact is, trouble makers like Jesus, Jackie Robinson and Martin Luther King, are seldom appreciated in life when they constantly remind us of our own shortcomings.
Once they're killed off and can no longer threaten us, they become convenient symbols of our self righteousness and vanity. In the case of Martin Luther King, lavishing praise upon him without truly understanding what he stood for, is a convenient way of saying hey, I'm ok, I'm not a racist. It's the modern day equivalent of the statement: "some of my best friends are Negros."
Michael Harriot wrote this scathing article called "What to Say When 'WYPIPO' (White young people of influence, privledge and opportunity) Bring Up MLK." His contention is that we white folks:
Unless we're willing to to stand up and support groups like Black Lives Matter, and take a knee during the anthem in protest of police violence, if we white folks really want to honor Dr. King's legacy, perhaps the best thing we can do is not mention his name at all.
Like King and Robinson, his followers today, make him in their own image so to speak, as an advocate for what they believe to be right, all the while forgetting his life was devoted to challenging their beliefs, and especially their self-righteousness. When Jesus of Nazareth told a wealthy young man who was interested in follwoing him to sell all his possessions and give the proceeds to the poor., the man walked away dejected. This led to the comment, "it's harder for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle." The funny thing is, you seldom hear well-off white, evangelical Christians relate that story, just as you won't find many liberal, pacifist, Beatitude reciting Christians relating this quote:
Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.When Jesus turned over the tables of the merchants in the Temple in Jerusalem, even his own people truned against him. In much the same way, during their own lives. Jackie Robinson as I wrote here, and Martin Luther King, as I wrote here, were also rejected by members of their own community.
The fact is, trouble makers like Jesus, Jackie Robinson and Martin Luther King, are seldom appreciated in life when they constantly remind us of our own shortcomings.
Once they're killed off and can no longer threaten us, they become convenient symbols of our self righteousness and vanity. In the case of Martin Luther King, lavishing praise upon him without truly understanding what he stood for, is a convenient way of saying hey, I'm ok, I'm not a racist. It's the modern day equivalent of the statement: "some of my best friends are Negros."
Michael Harriot wrote this scathing article called "What to Say When 'WYPIPO' (White young people of influence, privledge and opportunity) Bring Up MLK." His contention is that we white folks:
have managed to whitewash (King's) legacy and transform him from a revolutionary willing to bleed and die for what he believed in, to a meek, milquetoast orator who fits their narrative of the sweet, submissive hero who begged them for a seat at the table.The truth is, the real Martin Luther King was so radical in his beliefs and his actions, that by comparison, today's leaders of the civil rights movement look like Reagan Republicans.
Unless we're willing to to stand up and support groups like Black Lives Matter, and take a knee during the anthem in protest of police violence, if we white folks really want to honor Dr. King's legacy, perhaps the best thing we can do is not mention his name at all.
Sunday, April 8, 2018
His Finest Moment
Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget-Aeschylus
falls drop by drop upon the heart,
until, in our own despair,
against our will,
comes wisdom
through the awful grace of God.
It was a cold early April evening as hundreds of people gathered to hear a political stump speech to be held in an open space at 17th and Broadway, in the heart of the African American community of Indianapolis. The site for the speech was approved by John Lewis who had been working on the candidate's campaign. Many of the folks in the crowd had been waiting for hours, just to get close to the speaker's platform. Unfortunately for them, as these things usually go, the scheduled day's worth of events backed up, and the candidate was running late.
I suspect many in the crowd figured they were about to witness history of some sort, but little did they know how much they themselves would be a part of that history. If you've been paying attention to the news this past week, you probably know where I'm going with this.
As he was about to board a plane in Muncie, Indiana that would take him to his next scheduled stop, the candidate, Robert Kennedy learned that Martin Luther King had been shot. Not many details were provided but Kennedy feared the worst, which was confirmed when his plane landed in Indianapolis. Meanwhile the crowd where the speech was scheduled had swollen to a couple thousand, and many of those who arrived later and stood around the periphery, already knew about Dr. King.
There were some waiting for the candidate who were not intimidated to be among a handful of white folks within a crowd that was predominantly black, in a predominantly black neighborhood where not even the white mayor and some members of the police would dare set foot. The white folks there later reported that the welcoming climate of the crowd when they first arrived at the site of the speech, changed precipitously after the news of Dr. King's death began to circulate. One woman was heard to say: "Dr. King is dead and a white man did it, why does he (Kennedy) have to come here?" It was less than an hour after Dr. King's death, and some people in the crowd already began to call for vengeance.
The mayor and the chief of police told Kennedy that they could not guarantee his safety. Most of the people in Kennedy's entourage, including his wife Ethel, strongly objected to him going ahead with the speech. John Lewis disagreed; he believed Kennedy would have a calming influence on the crowd.
None of that mattered, there was no question in Robert Kennedy's mind that he would go ahead with the appearance, without the presence of the police no less. Rejecting a hastily written speech put together by his staff, Kennedy spent his time riding from the airport to 17th and Broadway figuring out what to say.
He arrived at the site greeted by taunts, jeers and catcalls asking him what the hell he was doing there. Some of the black folks present feared for his life. Undaunted, Kennedy, clutching his notes and wearing one of his late brother's overcoats, climbed up to the speaker's platform, the back of a flat bed truck. In recordings of the event you can hear him asking the event organizers if the crowd already knew about Dr. King. "No, we're saving that for you" was the response.
Kennedy began his remarks by asking his supporters to put down their signs with his name on them, because he had very sad news to tell them. It's clear from the collective screams and gasps that many in the crowd still had not heard the dreadful news until Robert Kennedy broke it to them.
Without once referring to his notes, Kennedy spoke extemporaneously for about six minutes.
After some laudatory words eulogizing Dr. King, Kennedy cut to the chase:
For those of you who are black--considering the evidence there evidently is that there were white people who were responsible--you can be filled with bitterness, with hatred, and a desire for revenge. We can move in that direction as a country, in great polarization--black people amongst black, white people amongst white, filled with hatred toward one another.
Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand and to comprehend, and to replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand with compassion and love.One could dismiss these words as an attempt by a powerful, rich white guy telling poor black people to keep calm and carry on, and above all to remember their place and not make too much mischief.
But then Robert Kennedy reminded the crowd that he actually had some skin in the game:
For those of you who are black and are tempted to be filled with hatred and distrust at the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I can only say that I feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man. But we have to make an effort in the United States, we have to make an effort to understand, to go beyond these rather difficult times.It would mark the only time Robert Kennedy would ever publicly speak of the death of his brother the president.
Now it must be mentioned that there were few white people in America at that time who could have pulled off any kind of speech to black people at that moment. President Kennedy, although not a passionate supporter of civil rights during his life, did confront racist governors who prevented black students form attending state universities, a fact that African Americans never forgot. It was not uncommon to find JFK's portrait hanging in black households after his assassination in 1963. Bobby Kennedy who himself didn't have a stellar civil rights record until late in his life, and was not at all close with Dr. King, was able to ride on his late brother's coattails before he convinced the African American community of his own sincerity on the issues of human rights, equality, and the eradication of poverty in this nation.
Unlike his brother the president, Bobby Kennedy was a man of relatively small frame and stature. Also unlike JFK and certainly Dr. King, while a good public speaker, he was not a powerful orator. Standing on the back of that truck, dwarfed inside his borther's oversized coat, clearly shaken by the news and speaking from the heart in an unsteady voice, he humbled himself in front of a shocked and potentially hostile audience.
And he won them over.
Kennedy next quoted Aeschylus, whose words from the play Agamemon (found at the top of this post), served him well during his period of profound grief over his brother's death.
Today in our "enlightened" era, one whose academia downplays the significance of "dead white males", quoting a white guy who'd been dead for 25 centuries at a tribute to a recently martyred hero of color, murdered by a white man no less, would certanly raise a few eyebrows.
One commentator, going the other direction, backhandedly justified the use of the quote, suggesting that while most of those present likely had no clue who Aeschylus was, they certainly could pick out words in the quote that would speak to them like "pain", "despair", "wisdom" and "grace".
The comment I found on Kennedy's use of the quote that sums up my own feelings about it was written by Joe Sommerlad in the Independent:
The reference was inspired. In the wrong hands, citing antiquity might have appeared pretentious or vainglorious but Kennedy respected his audience's intelligence and handed down the gift of a noble thought that had brought him much comfort in his own time of trial.After the quote Kennedy went on:
What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness; but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or they be black.They say one of the most important ingredients of making a successful speech is knowing your audience. We'll never know how much Bobby Kennedy truly understood his audience that night save for one thing, the common bonds that connect all human beings. He knew suffering as they did. He understood compassion and love, and he counted on his audience to understand those things as well. It was the core vaules all of us of good will share, that enabled Kennedy to touch the hearts and souls of the people gathered together in Indianapolis that terrible night. He went on:
... the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings who abide in our land.In his comments that night, Kennedy laid it out pure and simple, we human beings have more things in common, than things that would separate us. He kept asking rhetorically, what kind of nation do we want to live in, and the people of that community responded.
Much has been written about Indianapolis being one of the few major American cities that did not experience violence after the death of Martin Luther King. One might be skeptical that Bobby Kennedy's speech alone had anything to do with that, but the fact is this: prresent at his speech that night were members of a street gang known as the Ten Percenters, cans filled with gasoline in hand, openly recruiting members of the audience to join them in violence. Years later, one man from the group would say: “After he spoke we couldn’t get nowhere,”
Indianapolis may have been one of the few, but it wasn't the only city in the country with a significant African American population that did not erupt in violence, The Black Panther organization in Oakland helped prevent the burning of that city. And while the west side of Chicago was decimated by riots, the south side neighborhood of Woodlawn was spared the same fate, largely due to the intervention of the Blackstone Rangers, a group who had ties to Martin Luther King, It was the intervention of groups such as the Watoto Wa Simba, College Room, the Black Radical Action Project, the Black Panthers and yes the Ten Percenters, all of whom were represented at Kennedy's speech, that made sure cooler heads prevailed and kept Indianapolis from burning. Virtually everyone from those groups attributes their actions to the speech.
Robert Kennedy's speech made the late night news that evening, among dozens of other stories about King's assassination. It came too late to make the deadline for the morning papers and it may very well have been forgotten had fate not stepped in. My first memories of hearing the speech are from seeing it two months later, re-broadcast after Kennedy's own assassination. Even as a nine year old child, I couldn't help being moved by the poignance of a man who called for love, compassion, and an end to violence, to swept up in that same violence such a short time later. It's ironic that were it not for his own tragic death, Robert Kennedy's finest moment may have been as one writer described it, merely a footnote in history. As it stands today that speech is considered one of this country's most important.
Michael Rosenwald's Washington Post's article last week on the speech mentions a 2006 book called Politics Lost by Joe Klein. Klein begins his book with the story of that speech:
Kennedy’s words stand as a sublime example of the substance and music of politics in its grandest form, for its highest purpose — to heal, to educate, to lead.They say that talk is cheap, but not that night. Kennedy's words and actions on the night of Martin Luther King's assasination, and the results from it, proved that we're a much better and stronger nation when we set aside our fears, our prejudices, our hatred and division, heal old wounds, and work together toward the greater good. He stood before an angry crowd, not as their guardian angel sent from above to lead them down the path righteousness, but simply as himself, speaking form the heart as a fellow human being.
Fifty years late Kennedy's words and actions that night still heal, educate, and if we choose to take them to heart, might help lead us to a better world.
If only.
Wednesday, April 4, 2018
What If?
Martin Luther King was assassinated fifty years ago today. In a year that saw many tumultuous events, perhaps none in 1968, at least here in the United States, was as devastating, as gut wrenching, and had as many far reaching consequences, as the murder of Dr. King in Memphis.
Five years ago on the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Preident Kennedy, I wrote this piece that raised the question: what would have happened had JFK not been assassinated? Contemplating that question, I had little trouble coming to the conclusion that most of the earth-shattering events that took place in the sixties after his assassination, would have taken place with or without a President Kennedy. For example I disagree with many historians who claim that had Kennedy lived, the Vietnam War would not have escalated to the extent it did. Because of that, and my firm belief that Kennedy had little impact on the Civil Rights movement, his death I reckoned, while a great tragedy to this country, was not as earth-shattering and life-altering as many folks make it out to be.
The impact of Robert F. Kennedy's assassination, two months after Dr. King's, is a little more difficult to assess. Had Bobby Kennedy not been shot in Los Angeles, he might have (and it's a big might) become president. For the sake of argument, this piece in Newsweek from ten years ago asks the question, how would the theoretical presidency of Robert F. Kennedy been different from that of the man who won the 1968 election, Richard M. Nixon. On the most contentious issue of the day, the author is on the fence about Kennedy potentially being more successful in extricating the Untied States from Vietnam than Nixon. Of course, Nixon had Watergate, whose ramifications in every aspect, not the least of which being the general public's cynicism toward government, exists to this day. The Kennedys were no strangers to ignominious behavior, so one could argue there might have been a Watergate-like scandal in the RFK administration as well, but that would be only wild speculation.
Unlike the Kennedys, it would also be wild speculation to answer the question of what would have happened had Martin Luther King not been assassinated, as there are just too many what ifs on the table.
Because of his tragic demise, Martin Luther King will always be grouped together with the Kennedy brothers as one of the trio of tragic American heroes of the 1960s. If anyone had the gumption to re-create Mt. Rushmore in the likenesses of the most revered Americans of the second half of the twentieth century, I'm sure those three would be on the short list of subjects.
It's also true that the stock value of all three men soared after their assassinations. John and Robert Kennedy had detractors on both sides of the political spectrum during their lifetimes. President Kennedy was ambivalent about the issue of civil rights, something he was taken to task for by Martin Luther King. He took concrete action only after the reprehensible treatment of black protesters in Birmingham in 1963 and the refusal of southern governors including George Wallace to allow black students to enter state universities.
Robert Kennedy had a chameleon-like career, having first worked for the communist-baiting Senator Joseph McCarthy in the fifties. As attorney general in his brother's administration, and the president's closest advisor, RFK had a mixed record on civil rights, being at first openly critical of the actions of Freedom Riders who attempted to ride integrated busses from Washington DC to New Orleans in 1961. The younger Kennedy was at one time a hawk who supported this country's early involvement in Vietnam. After his brother's death, RFK had an epiphany of sorts, joining forces with Martin Luther King in the struggle for human rights, justice and equality in this country, and also in his opposition to our involvement in Vietnam. Between his new found left wing politics as well as for literally letting his hair grow out (by mid-sixties standards), Bobby Kennedy became the guy dyed-in-the-wool American conservatives loved to hate.
However you could combine the Kennedy brothers' detractors (even counting those who disliked both brothers twice), and you still wouldn't come close to the number of Dr. King's detractors. In a poll taken in 1966, King had an approval rating of about one out of every three Americans. It's not hard to understand those Trumpian numbers when you consider the state of race relations in America at the time. Despite that, in the sixties, blacks constituted only about ten percent of the population, so given those numbers, it stands to reason that a good number of whites supported Dr. King. That was my experience as a child. I'm proud to say that both my parents, not always the most tolerant people when it came to race relations, were admirers of Dr. King while he was still alive.
It would also be a mistake to assume that all blacks were squarely behind him. The truth is, in the last few years of his life, Martin Luther King began to lose his luster and became irrelevant in the eyes of many African Americans who were unconvinced that his philosophy of non-violence as a means to impact change in this country, was any longer effective. King's criticism of the behavior of black youths in the urban riots that took place in the mid-sixties, made some African Americans see him as haughty and self-righteous. Part of Dr. King's fading standing in the African American community may also come from the fact that Dr. King was not only acceptable to, but deeply admired by many whites, where other leaders in the movement, especially those who espoused the term "black power", were not.
As for the reasons why so many white folks hated him, well, you name it. To Southern whites he was an uppity negro (not the word they would have used), who didn't know his place. To northern whites, he was a trouble maker for marching through their neighborhoods demanding that they open their communities to black folks. To other whites, his advocacy of the drastic re-distribution of wealth in this country, made him virtually a communist in their eyes. Finally to the government, run by whites, King's vocal opposition to the war, long before it became a popular stand, was unacceptable. The ancient, but still powerful FBI Tzar, J. Edgar Hoover, compiled a vast dossier on King, chronicling his sexual indiscretions among other things, which was ready at a moment's notice to be sprung upon the public if need be.
There were so many people out for Martin Luther King's hide, that thinking back upon it, in a decade that not only saw the assassinations of the tragic trio, but also those of many other civil rights leaders including Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Fred Hampton, it's almost inconceivable that Dr. King could have escaped the sixties alive. That point wasn't lost on King himself who on the night of April 3, 1968, delivered this bone-chillingly prophetic speech in Memphis:
If Dr. King had become irrelevant to some black people by that night, he would no longer be irrelevant the following evening, around 6PM Memphis time.
It was a Thursday and as was our custom, my mother, grandmother and I were returning home after eating out, as that was the day of the week my father kept his paint shop open late. The news came over the car radio that Dr. King had been shot. As I mentioned so often in this space, I had been through public figures being shot before and sadly this would not be the last time. We got home and turned on the TV for further developments.
Dr. King was pronounced dead about one hour after he had been shot.
The next day, much of my city was in flames.
Chicago played an important part in the legacy of Martin Luther King. He and his family moved into an apartment 1550 S. Hamlin in the city's blighted North Lawndale neighborhood as a part of his "campaign to end slums." Protesting for fair housing and integration in this city, King led marches in the all white suburb of Cicero (where my father's shop was), and the neighborhood of Marquette Park where he got hit in the head with a brick. He famously said of that experience:
Here are two posts, one from the Chicago Tribune, the other from Chicago's National Public Radio station, WBEZ, that chronicle the events that took place in Chicago after the assassination of Martin Luther King, including many first hand accounts.
The riots, or rebellions if you prefer, following the assassination of Martin Luther King in Chicago did not set into motion the phenomenon known as "white flight" in Chicago, but greatly exacerbated it. Tensions between white and black people may have very well reached their all time high in the years following Dr. King's death.
There were white people who found it ironic that black people would choose to commit acts of violence in protest of the death of a man who spent his life preaching against violence.
Then there were black people who found it ironic that a white man killed the one black leader who was respected by black and white people alike. If there was no hope for Martin Luther King, how could there be hope for anybody else?
In the first post I wrote on Dr. King, a few years ago, I finally understood that it was that sense of hopelessness that fueled the rage that follwed his death, and came to the conclusion that regretfully, the violence that ensued, well at least some of it, was justified. Unfortunately, most of the neighborhoods that were destroyed by the violence following Dr. King's death never recovered. Vacant lots continue to mark the spots of the buildings that were destroyed fifty years ago. As bad as the conditions of the west side were when King and his family, in many respects, the people who live there are worse off today.
From the WBEZ article I posted above, there is a fascinating conversation between two residents of North Lawndale. Both have a connection to Marshall High School in that community. Rev. Donald McFadden was a student at Marshall when Dr. King was killed. He recalls his participation in the violence after King's death, including walking out of Marshall during school and taking part in the commandeering of a couple of CTA busses which were driven by kids, chauffeuring a bunch of fellow students to Austin High School, for the sole purpose of starting a "rumble" with the white students at that school. The other member of the conversation is a current student at Marshall, Damontae Warren, who lost his twin brother in a shooting last year, and participated in that school's recent walkout in reaction to gun violence.In the interview, young Mr. Warren expresses shock at the brazen actions of Rev. McFadden, who is now a minister in the neighborhood, and his fellow students. In response, Rev. McFadden looked back at the devastating consequences of their actions fifty years ago, which are still very visible in the community, expressing some regret that they "tossed out the window" the non-violent teachings of Martin Luther King, and expresses admiration to the young students' commitment to King's teachings. Here is their entire recorded conversation:
One could rush to judgement that had Martin Luther King not been killed, at least the riots in Chicago and many other American cities would not have taken place. However, riots had occurred in many other cities in previous years, so there is no reason to believe that Chicago would not have had its turn. If Dr. King had lived, we have to ask would he have continued to lose standing in the African American community in his message of non-violence, or would the pendulum have eventually swung back in his favor. If that were the case, would the moral authority and respectability of a living Dr. King, (rather than a revered dead icon) helped serve as a role model for young people in this country. There is simply no way of knowing. His death certainly left a huge void in the movement for equal rights and opportunity in this country, one that has never been filled. Would his real presense and influence have made a difference in the economic struggles of poor people in this country? Once again, we'll never know.
Dr. King spoke the truth when he said in his final speech that he was only fighting so that all Americans might experience the fulfillment of the the promises made in this country's original mission statement, our constitution. Quoting myself:
It is impossible to imagine what would have become of our country and our world had Martin Luther King been granted a few more years, or even the gift of longevity. We've come a long way since his death, and in so many ways the memory of his life has served as a beacon. But as our difficult times keep reminding us, clearly we still have a long way to go.
Maybe we'll see a flicker of that light rekindling in our young who have shown quite recently that they will not stand by and watch helplessly and hopelessly as those in power try to reap the seeds of hatred, anger, distrust and division they have so eagerly planted among us.
And maybe just maybe our next generation who are about to become voting age, will help pave for us the path to the promised land that Dr. King viewed with his own eyes, but was not allowed to experience himself.
That flicker of light is all we have right now. It should be incumbent upon those of us of good will to keep it burning.
Five years ago on the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Preident Kennedy, I wrote this piece that raised the question: what would have happened had JFK not been assassinated? Contemplating that question, I had little trouble coming to the conclusion that most of the earth-shattering events that took place in the sixties after his assassination, would have taken place with or without a President Kennedy. For example I disagree with many historians who claim that had Kennedy lived, the Vietnam War would not have escalated to the extent it did. Because of that, and my firm belief that Kennedy had little impact on the Civil Rights movement, his death I reckoned, while a great tragedy to this country, was not as earth-shattering and life-altering as many folks make it out to be.
The impact of Robert F. Kennedy's assassination, two months after Dr. King's, is a little more difficult to assess. Had Bobby Kennedy not been shot in Los Angeles, he might have (and it's a big might) become president. For the sake of argument, this piece in Newsweek from ten years ago asks the question, how would the theoretical presidency of Robert F. Kennedy been different from that of the man who won the 1968 election, Richard M. Nixon. On the most contentious issue of the day, the author is on the fence about Kennedy potentially being more successful in extricating the Untied States from Vietnam than Nixon. Of course, Nixon had Watergate, whose ramifications in every aspect, not the least of which being the general public's cynicism toward government, exists to this day. The Kennedys were no strangers to ignominious behavior, so one could argue there might have been a Watergate-like scandal in the RFK administration as well, but that would be only wild speculation.
Unlike the Kennedys, it would also be wild speculation to answer the question of what would have happened had Martin Luther King not been assassinated, as there are just too many what ifs on the table.
Because of his tragic demise, Martin Luther King will always be grouped together with the Kennedy brothers as one of the trio of tragic American heroes of the 1960s. If anyone had the gumption to re-create Mt. Rushmore in the likenesses of the most revered Americans of the second half of the twentieth century, I'm sure those three would be on the short list of subjects.
It's also true that the stock value of all three men soared after their assassinations. John and Robert Kennedy had detractors on both sides of the political spectrum during their lifetimes. President Kennedy was ambivalent about the issue of civil rights, something he was taken to task for by Martin Luther King. He took concrete action only after the reprehensible treatment of black protesters in Birmingham in 1963 and the refusal of southern governors including George Wallace to allow black students to enter state universities.
Robert Kennedy had a chameleon-like career, having first worked for the communist-baiting Senator Joseph McCarthy in the fifties. As attorney general in his brother's administration, and the president's closest advisor, RFK had a mixed record on civil rights, being at first openly critical of the actions of Freedom Riders who attempted to ride integrated busses from Washington DC to New Orleans in 1961. The younger Kennedy was at one time a hawk who supported this country's early involvement in Vietnam. After his brother's death, RFK had an epiphany of sorts, joining forces with Martin Luther King in the struggle for human rights, justice and equality in this country, and also in his opposition to our involvement in Vietnam. Between his new found left wing politics as well as for literally letting his hair grow out (by mid-sixties standards), Bobby Kennedy became the guy dyed-in-the-wool American conservatives loved to hate.
However you could combine the Kennedy brothers' detractors (even counting those who disliked both brothers twice), and you still wouldn't come close to the number of Dr. King's detractors. In a poll taken in 1966, King had an approval rating of about one out of every three Americans. It's not hard to understand those Trumpian numbers when you consider the state of race relations in America at the time. Despite that, in the sixties, blacks constituted only about ten percent of the population, so given those numbers, it stands to reason that a good number of whites supported Dr. King. That was my experience as a child. I'm proud to say that both my parents, not always the most tolerant people when it came to race relations, were admirers of Dr. King while he was still alive.
It would also be a mistake to assume that all blacks were squarely behind him. The truth is, in the last few years of his life, Martin Luther King began to lose his luster and became irrelevant in the eyes of many African Americans who were unconvinced that his philosophy of non-violence as a means to impact change in this country, was any longer effective. King's criticism of the behavior of black youths in the urban riots that took place in the mid-sixties, made some African Americans see him as haughty and self-righteous. Part of Dr. King's fading standing in the African American community may also come from the fact that Dr. King was not only acceptable to, but deeply admired by many whites, where other leaders in the movement, especially those who espoused the term "black power", were not.
As for the reasons why so many white folks hated him, well, you name it. To Southern whites he was an uppity negro (not the word they would have used), who didn't know his place. To northern whites, he was a trouble maker for marching through their neighborhoods demanding that they open their communities to black folks. To other whites, his advocacy of the drastic re-distribution of wealth in this country, made him virtually a communist in their eyes. Finally to the government, run by whites, King's vocal opposition to the war, long before it became a popular stand, was unacceptable. The ancient, but still powerful FBI Tzar, J. Edgar Hoover, compiled a vast dossier on King, chronicling his sexual indiscretions among other things, which was ready at a moment's notice to be sprung upon the public if need be.
There were so many people out for Martin Luther King's hide, that thinking back upon it, in a decade that not only saw the assassinations of the tragic trio, but also those of many other civil rights leaders including Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Fred Hampton, it's almost inconceivable that Dr. King could have escaped the sixties alive. That point wasn't lost on King himself who on the night of April 3, 1968, delivered this bone-chillingly prophetic speech in Memphis:
If Dr. King had become irrelevant to some black people by that night, he would no longer be irrelevant the following evening, around 6PM Memphis time.
It was a Thursday and as was our custom, my mother, grandmother and I were returning home after eating out, as that was the day of the week my father kept his paint shop open late. The news came over the car radio that Dr. King had been shot. As I mentioned so often in this space, I had been through public figures being shot before and sadly this would not be the last time. We got home and turned on the TV for further developments.
Dr. King was pronounced dead about one hour after he had been shot.
The next day, much of my city was in flames.
Chicago played an important part in the legacy of Martin Luther King. He and his family moved into an apartment 1550 S. Hamlin in the city's blighted North Lawndale neighborhood as a part of his "campaign to end slums." Protesting for fair housing and integration in this city, King led marches in the all white suburb of Cicero (where my father's shop was), and the neighborhood of Marquette Park where he got hit in the head with a brick. He famously said of that experience:
I have seen many demonstrations in the South, but I have never seen anything so hostile and so hateful as I've seen here today.The day after Martin Luther King died, conflicts sprung up in African American neighborhoods all over the city. It is said that street gangs like the Blackstone Rangers who operated out of the Woodlawn neighborhood, managed to keep tensioins to a minimum on the south side. The same cannot be said about the more recently transitioining communities on the west side, where in the afternoon of April 5th, groups of angry teenagers began began throwing rocks into the windows of white owned businesses. The violence escalated rapidly as adults joined in what became a free-for-all including the torching of businesses and residences, shooting, looting, rock throwing at firemen trying to put out the fires, the calling in of the National Guard, and orders from the mayor to them to shoot to kill all arsonists. The chaos lasted about 48 hours and destroyed hundreds of homes, businesses and institutions over a large swath of the west side.
Here are two posts, one from the Chicago Tribune, the other from Chicago's National Public Radio station, WBEZ, that chronicle the events that took place in Chicago after the assassination of Martin Luther King, including many first hand accounts.
The riots, or rebellions if you prefer, following the assassination of Martin Luther King in Chicago did not set into motion the phenomenon known as "white flight" in Chicago, but greatly exacerbated it. Tensions between white and black people may have very well reached their all time high in the years following Dr. King's death.
There were white people who found it ironic that black people would choose to commit acts of violence in protest of the death of a man who spent his life preaching against violence.
Then there were black people who found it ironic that a white man killed the one black leader who was respected by black and white people alike. If there was no hope for Martin Luther King, how could there be hope for anybody else?
In the first post I wrote on Dr. King, a few years ago, I finally understood that it was that sense of hopelessness that fueled the rage that follwed his death, and came to the conclusion that regretfully, the violence that ensued, well at least some of it, was justified. Unfortunately, most of the neighborhoods that were destroyed by the violence following Dr. King's death never recovered. Vacant lots continue to mark the spots of the buildings that were destroyed fifty years ago. As bad as the conditions of the west side were when King and his family, in many respects, the people who live there are worse off today.
From the WBEZ article I posted above, there is a fascinating conversation between two residents of North Lawndale. Both have a connection to Marshall High School in that community. Rev. Donald McFadden was a student at Marshall when Dr. King was killed. He recalls his participation in the violence after King's death, including walking out of Marshall during school and taking part in the commandeering of a couple of CTA busses which were driven by kids, chauffeuring a bunch of fellow students to Austin High School, for the sole purpose of starting a "rumble" with the white students at that school. The other member of the conversation is a current student at Marshall, Damontae Warren, who lost his twin brother in a shooting last year, and participated in that school's recent walkout in reaction to gun violence.In the interview, young Mr. Warren expresses shock at the brazen actions of Rev. McFadden, who is now a minister in the neighborhood, and his fellow students. In response, Rev. McFadden looked back at the devastating consequences of their actions fifty years ago, which are still very visible in the community, expressing some regret that they "tossed out the window" the non-violent teachings of Martin Luther King, and expresses admiration to the young students' commitment to King's teachings. Here is their entire recorded conversation:
One could rush to judgement that had Martin Luther King not been killed, at least the riots in Chicago and many other American cities would not have taken place. However, riots had occurred in many other cities in previous years, so there is no reason to believe that Chicago would not have had its turn. If Dr. King had lived, we have to ask would he have continued to lose standing in the African American community in his message of non-violence, or would the pendulum have eventually swung back in his favor. If that were the case, would the moral authority and respectability of a living Dr. King, (rather than a revered dead icon) helped serve as a role model for young people in this country. There is simply no way of knowing. His death certainly left a huge void in the movement for equal rights and opportunity in this country, one that has never been filled. Would his real presense and influence have made a difference in the economic struggles of poor people in this country? Once again, we'll never know.
Dr. King spoke the truth when he said in his final speech that he was only fighting so that all Americans might experience the fulfillment of the the promises made in this country's original mission statement, our constitution. Quoting myself:
For that noble cause he went to jail in Birmingham. For that bricks were thrown at him in Chicago. For that he was killed in Memphis.Martin Luther King was fond of saying: "Only light can extinguish the darkness, you cannot extinguish it with more darkness." Dr. King himself was the light, and today we recognize the half century mark of that light being extinguished.
It is impossible to imagine what would have become of our country and our world had Martin Luther King been granted a few more years, or even the gift of longevity. We've come a long way since his death, and in so many ways the memory of his life has served as a beacon. But as our difficult times keep reminding us, clearly we still have a long way to go.
Maybe we'll see a flicker of that light rekindling in our young who have shown quite recently that they will not stand by and watch helplessly and hopelessly as those in power try to reap the seeds of hatred, anger, distrust and division they have so eagerly planted among us.
And maybe just maybe our next generation who are about to become voting age, will help pave for us the path to the promised land that Dr. King viewed with his own eyes, but was not allowed to experience himself.
That flicker of light is all we have right now. It should be incumbent upon those of us of good will to keep it burning.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
,