OLD TRUTHS AND DR KING
Reading Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s last book, WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE: CHAOS OR COMMUNITY? (1967), I have detected in his writing, a palpable sense of despondent unease, in a few isolated places.
One such place of Rev. King's this :
"It is sometimes difficult to determine which are the deepest wounds, the physical or the psychological. Only a Negro understands the social leprosy that segregation inflicts upon him. Like a nagging ailment, it follows his every activity, leaving him tormented by day, and haunted by night. The suppressed fears and resentments and the expressed anxieties and sensitivities make each day a life of turmoil. Every confrontation with the restrictions against him is another emotional battle in a never-ending war. Nothing can be more diabolical than a deliberate attempt to destroy in any man his will to be a man and to withhold from him that something which constitutes his true essence ."
P. 116-117, "Racism and White Backlash."
"To withhold from him that something which constitutes his true essence," described above, is not man-made. It is God-given.
"The world didn't give it to me, and the world can't take it away." Thus sang Shirley Caesar in concert; so lived our forebears in concert with Shirley Caesar and she with them!
Even Dr. King could have benefited from relearning these old African American truths, as might we all!
Tuesday, October 25, 2016
OLD TRUTHS AND DR. KING
OLD TRUTHS AND DR KING
Reading Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s last book, WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE: CHAOS OR COMMUNITY? (1967), I have detected in his writing, a palpable sense of despondent unease, in a few isolated places.
One such place of Rev. King's this :
"It is sometimes difficult to determine which are the deepest wounds, the physical or the psychological. Only a Negro understands the social leprosy that segregation inflicts upon him. Like a nagging ailment, it follows his every activity, leaving him tormented by day, and haunted by night. The suppressed fears and resentments and the expressed anxieties and sensitivities make each day a life of turmoil. Every confrontation with the restrictions against him is another emotional battle in a never-ending war. Nothing can be more diabolical than a deliberate attempt to destroy in any man his will to be a man and to withhold from him that something which constitutes his true essence ."
P. 116-117, "Racism and White Backlash."
"To withhold from him that something which constitutes his true essence," described above, is not man-made. It is God-given.
"The world didn't give it to me, and the world can't take it away." Thus sang Shirley Caesar in concert; so lived our forebears in concert with Shirley Caesar and she with them!
Even Dr. King could have benefited from relearning these old African American truths, as might we all!