We have come a long way – many miles left

Like most teachers, I longed for this three-day weekend with all my cells this week. It’s been a busy couple of weeks in the classroom and the January through mid-March push is unrelenting in the school world. But even with the thought of rest and relaxation on the horizon, I generally try hard not to forget why we educators get the day off.

I’ve spent this Martin Luther King, Jr. Day doing what I do most years. I generally re-read “Letter from Birmingham Jail” or his Nobel Peace Prize speech. In January during this week every year, my tenth graders complete a unit on social justice in which they read and analyze several speeches and writings by Martin Luther King, Jr. and poetry of the Civil Rights Movement. They create a class definition of social justice, and the unit culminates with students researching and writing about people who have inspired them by influencing some aspect of social justice in America. In analyzing this literature and talking with their peers, my students give me so much hope for what our country could be.

This morning, while scrolling through Facebook, I saw an exchange between one of my former student’s fathers (a Black male) and a White male pastor in his community. The former had commented that the Black community still has much to overcome while the latter asked what he thinks is left to overcome. The exchange was a very respectful one, with both parties seeming to come from places of mutual respect and curiosity. But in the midst of the quote after quote shared on the platform all day by people who never seem to quote MLK on any other day, it made me think.

I chose to review his Nobel Peace Prize speech again today, as we will read it together in class on Wednesday anyway. In December of 1964, Dr. King was honored with the Nobel Peace Prize. He went to Oslo, Sweden to accept the award, though his heart was not as joyful as one might think. You see, just before he made that speech, peaceful protesters in Birmingham were met with snarling dogs and fire hoses. Voting rights advocates in Philadelphia, Mississippi were brutally murdered for trying to help black people secure the right to vote. And more than 40 churches in the state of Mississippi alone were burned because they offered sanctuary to segregation protesters. And on the hot heels of these events, he was expected to accept an award for helping to create peace in the world. In the shadow of these events, he wearily said, “I must ask why this prize is awarded to a movement which is beleaguered and committed to unrelenting struggle; to a movement which has not won the very peace and brotherhood which is the essence of the Nobel Prize.” If you listen to this speech, you will hear the exhaustion and deep sadness in a voice that should have been energized and so proud. Even still, he accepted the award with “an abiding faith in America and an audacious faith in the future of mankind.” Have we achieved his vision? Is this the finer land, the more noble civilization he envisioned?

I think about this speech a lot. I thought about it two weeks ago as I stood in the room where he slept for his last night on earth. I thought about it as I looked out the window from which James Earl Ray pointed a gun and shot him dead on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. I think about it as I move through my classroom daily, as I teach about concepts like love and acceptance and unity and justice in the literature we analyze every day. And I thought about it today on his national day of remembrance as I reread it one more time, marking it for potential unknown vocabulary and thinking up new guiding questions. And I don’t think we are there yet. Working in a poverty-level public school and living in Mississippi, I see how much further we must still go to achieve this noble civilization. I want to have an audacious faith, too, but it gets harder the older I get. I am a few years older than Dr. King was when he died. He seems older to me, more grown, wearier and more tired.

And when I re-watch the video of this speech with my students every year, I hear that weariness in his voice. What a great weight was on his shoulders. How heavy that burden.

But in the heaviness of that re-read, I think back to the conversation about race I saw on Facebook earlier today. After a series of exchanges between a White man and a Black one, the final message said, “I love you, too, brother.” And I just have to think that we have come a long, long way. Though there remain many miles to travel, we have come a long way.

Sarah Taylor resides in Holly Springs and teaches at Blue Mountain High School.