(TriceEdneyWire.com) - If one checks out all the platitudes made by many people over the age of 60 during annual King Day celebrations, one would be led to believe that all or at least a huge majority of them were actively involved in the campaign led by Dr. King against White supremacy\racism. That is not so, wrote Dr. King in his conveniently ignored 1967 book, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos and Community?
Wrote Dr. King; “In assessing the results of the Negro Revolution so far, it can be concluded that Negroes have established a foot hold….The hard truth is that neither Negro nor white has yet done enough to expect the dawn of a new day. While much has been done, it has been accomplished by too few and on a scale too limited for the breadth of the goal….The brunt of the Negro’s past battles was borne by a very small striking force.
Though millions of Negroes were ardent and passionate supporters, only a modest number were actively engaged and these were relatively too few for a broad war against racism, poverty and discrimination. Negroes fought and won, but our engagements were skirmishes not climatic battles. No great victories are won in a war for the transformation of a whole people without total participation. Less than this will not create a new society; it will only evoke more sophisticated token amelioration….”
As for those Black folks who today like to brag about how they have achieved success mainly because the society has changed and because they are willing, to work hard, Dr. King asks a couple of very pertinent questions in his book. “...How many Negroes who have achieved educational and economic security have forgotten that they are what they are because of the support of faceless, unlettered and unheralded Negroes who did ordinary jobs in an extraordinary way?
How many successful Negroes have forgotten that uneducated and poverty-stricken mothers and fathers often worked until their eyebrows were scorched and their hand bruised so that their children could get an education? For any middle class Negro to forget the masses is an act not only of neglect but of shameless ingratitude…. It is time for the Negro middle class to rise up from its stool of indifference, to retreat from its flight into unreality and to bring its full resources- - its heart, its mind and its check book—to the aid of the less fortunate brother…. The salvation of the Negro middle class is ultimately dependent upon the salvation of the Negro masses.”
These are two examples of very perceptive and powerful commentary and observations made by Dr. King in his book. They clearly demonstrate that he was much much more than the Martin Luther “I Have a Dream” King, Jr, people have reduced him to in an annual birthday celebrations. In doing so they have done Dr. King a major historical injustice.