Forty years

Forty years ago today, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. was gunned down in Memphis, Tennessee by James Earl Ray. The King assassination is, and will remain, one of the seminal moments in American history. Simply put, the man was a giant, the likes of which we may never see again. It is hard to underestimate the effect of his murder on the African-American community. We are nearly two generations removed from King but I have seen no shortage of remarks from African-Americans wondering whether or not someone would do in Senator Obama. It does not take much to see the genesis of the fears. King and Obama are of course very different men and any comparison of the two, beyond the obvious, does a disservice to both. At the same time, it is not difficult to understand why so many see a man striving to be the first black President and perceive at least shades of a fallen hero that broke down so many other barriers.

In that vein, without King, there would be no Obama. The civil rights movement was not just about equality before the law. It was also about changing white attitudes towards race and what the words “equally” and “freedom” actually meant to people. In that respect, I believe that MLK would look upon the Senator’s candidacy as an extraordinary triumph for the civil rights movement. Forty years after King’s death, the nation is prepared to elect a black man as President, heretofore, the single whitest job in America. That fact alone signals a tidal shift in our country and one that, despite its mean origins, is something for which we should be proud. This may not the “promised land’ of which the late Reverend spoke so eloquently, but damn if it is not a significant milestone on the path to it.