I have to confess I don’t know what kind of cars Martin Luther King Jr. drove. I know that he had a car, because he spent a lot of time driving people to work during the famous Montgomery bus boycott following Rosa Parks’ refusal to give up her seat.
By the way, he was harassed and stopped more than 30 times by the cops for going, oh, two or three miles over the speed limit. In the end, black folks won, though it took more than a year, and whites retaliated in ways both violent and petty.
Dr. King was not an admirer of ostentatious vehicles either; if he were here at the auto show with us, I don’t think he would be lingering over the Porsches and Bentleys.
He was taken to his grave, not in a Lincoln or a Cadillac, but on a farm wagon drawn by two mules. The only thing he ever said in public about cars, to my knowledge, is that too many people were buying ones they really couldn’t afford.
“You know economists tell us that your automobiles should not cost more than half of your annual income. That’s just good economics,” he scolded one audience.
Well, okay. He might never have been chosen to open the North American International Auto Show. But he opened a lot of doors and hearts instead.
Martin Luther King Jr., was all that – one of the greatest figures of our age –and yet, he was a human being too. He suffered fear. He tried to kill himself once. He clearly plagiarized parts of his doctoral dissertation. He may have liked women too much.
But to me, his very human failings make his greatness both more human and more incredible. He knew he wasn’t perfect. He told his congregation that he indeed made mistakes tactically and morally, and said he asked God to forgive him.
He wanted to live, but knew he might be murdered, and hinted that he expected to die a martyr’s death. The day before he died, in his famous “I’ve been to the mountaintop” speech, he showed that he knew how precarious his life was.
Speaking of the constant threats, he said he wondered “What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers?” he said, adding with a sort of verbal shrug,
“We’ve got some difficult days ahead…I may not get there with you, but I want you to know that we, as a people will get to the promised land.”
But he also knew that would be no walk in the park, and that a thousand steps forward often meant 999 back. Ten years ago, I used to fantasize about how Dr. King would react if he could have come back to life to find a fellow black man in the White House. I don’t like to think about how he would feel about what came after President Obama, beginning with Charlottesville.
Somehow, however, I don’t think he would be surprised. Had Dr. King lived, the establishment would today be much less comfortable with him.
He intended to demand a guaranteed annual income for everyone, and was more and more concerned about economic inequality. “This is no time for romantic illusions. This is a time for action,” he said in his last address to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
King didn’t want to make us feel good. He wanted us to be dissatisfied. He really did die to make his people free. If you really want to honor his memory, don’t take the day off. Get outraged, and do something positive about it. It’s pretty clear that would make him smile.
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