Why There Will Never Be Another Dr. King
By Eric L. Hinton
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A sniper's bullet ended Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s life 39 years ago today—and the world changed.
To see DiversityInc's video interview with Soledad O'Brien on the King papers, click here.
I wasn't officially a part of that world yet. My mother would have been about three months pregnant with me at the time of Dr. King's assassination.
I never thought to ask her what she must have felt at the time. I can only imagine the fear and doubt that she must have had in bringing a black child into a world where someone like Dr. King could be gunned down in cold blood, where women—and women who looked like my mother—were being hosed on the street and attacked by police dogs. She must have been at a loss, wondering why rules of logic, decency and empathy didn't apply because of the color of her skin.
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Our images of Dr. King now are from grainy news reels that depict his marches and speeches. We remember him as the civil-rights leader who launched the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1956. We know him because he was instrumental in organizing the March on Washington in 1963. He's deified because of the inspiring "I Have a Dream" speech he delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and because of the poignant letter he wrote from a jail cell in Birmingham, Ala. Dr. King has long since gone from being a man. He's now a mythic figure.
But that's a lie. To transform Dr. King into a larger-than-life figure takes away from the courage a real man had to muster with every breath he took. He lived his final years being wiretapped by the FBI and as a target of the Ku Klux Klan and countless other extremists who wanted his life ended. This man—a husband to Coretta Scott and father to Yolanda, Martin Luther III, Dexter and Bernice—knew that continuing to espouse his views likely meant he wouldn't live to see those children grow to adulthood.
He carried on.
How much progress has been made in the 39 years since a sniper fatally shot Dr. King from a hotel balcony in Memphis, Tenn., is a matter of debate. Barack Obama is running for president of the United States, Dick Parsons and Ken Chenault are CEOs of the nation's largest companies and Denzel Washington and Will Smith are among the most bankable stars in Hollywood.
So no, it's not 1968. But inequities still exist. Too often, access to opportunity is determined by the color of one's skin. And black mothers across the nation still are fearful of letting their black sons walk the streets after dark for fear of them becoming the next Sean Bell, Abner Louima or Amadou Diallo.
Ever since Dr. King's death, there's been this call for black leaders to fill the gaping void left by his absence. With each subsequent generation, from Jesse Jackson to Al Sharpton to Barack Obama, someone has attempted to lay claim to the mantle of the next "black leader." But there will never be another Dr. King. He was shaped by the times in which he grew to prominence. The best we can hope for is for each of us to muster some measure of the courage he displayed. Sometimes that's as simple as calling a wrong a wrong and having the nerve to try and bring about change.
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