I think of this song often. That’s been the case for a very long time in fact, but especially as time has passed and I’ve become an old fart who can look back on life. Remembering flashes of memory from when I was very, very young of Bull Connor’s releasing dogs and turning on fire hoses to attack peaceful protesters. Of Blood Sunday and the subsequent march from Selma to Montgomery (including looking for our own white preacher who answered Dr. King’s call on the evening news footage in the crowd shots of marchers), of King himself speaking and of the unrest and violence around the country, some of which took place in my small midwestern home town. Of my homestate Senator Everett Dirksen being one of LBJ’s allies in getting the Civil and Voting Rights Acts that Dr. King pushed so hard for through Congress.
I think of his assassination on the very day where earlier something hopeful, the successful launch of an unmanned Saturn V rocket to move along Project Apollo. And that night RFK’s speech to a stunned and angry crowd in Indianapolis, one which led to (relative) calm in that city. I think of the struggles then and that have taken place in the six decades since those first memories were seared into my mind. The progress and the setbacks.
I think about his dream of a country and a world where even people who disagreed could sit down and work together to solve problems that affected all people, especially poor and working class people. People tend to forget that while Dr. King was the face of Civil Rights he also knew that white people were subjected to economic unfairness by the powered and moneyed elites. He was in Memphis the day he was assassinated to support workers there. Had he not been cut down by an assassin’s bullet he’d have kept on pushing. For us all.
On this day of all days, it seems this particular song is an appropriate way to honor the life and work of the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King.
Anyone who votes against voting rights should be slapped for mentioning anything about Dr. King. YOU are evil. Let me repeat since these asshats are blind men & women headed for the ditch of history; YOU ARE EVIL HYPOCRITES!!!!! At 68 & counting, I also was a first hand witness to the Civil rights movement & know evil when I see or hear it. A wolf in sheep’s clothing I believe it has been noted.
There is a quote in the video – “In the end we will remember not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends.” I referenced it in messages to both Sinema and Manchin today, noting both their silence at crucial moments and also what they’ve said. That they have NOT been friends, and have become overt enemies. Again I note that while Dr. King’s work emphasized Civil Rights and especially non-whites being allowed to vote, his message and efforts were on behalf of not just people of color, but poor and working class whites and that while Voting Rights is front and center BBB and their obstinance to something that can provide economic empowerment to all people is another crucial matter on which they have chosen to be enemies.
As someone who is also now an old fart, it’s disheartening to see how far we have fallen. Voting rights were something we thought we had solved, and we had until this SCOTUS decided to decimate the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Every election matters!
Beautiful piece D. Very powerful. Clearly one needn’t be black, or even American, to appreciate your powerful words here. Thank you. And may Sinema and Manchin grows testicles and a conscience between now and tomorrow and do something right. If only we could get Mitt, Murkowski and another one or two of them who used to have consciences to vote “Yes” tomorrow as well. Alas, those were the days. Dark and sad times, friends. Dark and sad times.
I don’t know that I’ve ever heard that song, but it and the pictures were wonderful. I forgot how young he was when he died. He still looked young. A tragedy, both him and RFK. It’s as if the rat-fuckers were determined to give us Nixon and his lies and corruption. There seems to be a force intent on undermining the good people and their good works, JFK, RFK, MLK. ‘How long shall they kill our prophets while we stand aside and look?’–Bob Marley. Many of us lived with a background fear that the evils ones would take out Obama too. Thank god that didn’t happen. It would have ripped a hole in this country, which is what will happen if tRump gets ‘elected’/selected again. And may happen if he doesn’t.
I’ve been a James Taylor fan since I was a kid growing up in the 1960s. Shed A Little Light is a tribute he created that came out several decades ago. It’s always made me think back another two and a half decades prior to that and another song which affected me deeply – Dion’s Abraham, Martin & John.
Me, too, delliott; this is one of my favorite Taylor songs, along with Dion’s Abraham, Martin and John. I don’t know how we’ve lost so much in the past five years; I pray and need to work to right what needs to be righted. I fear that we’ve lost too much, but we can’t give in.
d, that was one beautiful montage, thank you for the gift to us of putting it together. We are of an age, and you took me back to my Southern childhood, too, I remember the day King was murdered. Many of my schoolmates were running through the halls; not in grief and shock (that was me, crying in the bathroom), but cheering, “We got the king!” Yes, I grew up in Klan Kountry and our school had not yet been de-segregated. God still blesses my parents who didn’t raise us like that. And my brother, only 10 months younger than me (he died in ’20, not yet two years ago) was a huge JT fan. And I love “Abraham, Martin, and John” too, it always got me where I live. It breaks my heart to see how far we’ve fallen. I remember my mom’s and my long talks in the nursing home the last couple years of her life, talking about Obama and hoping he had good protection; we were always afraid for him. One of her last acts just a few weeks before she died at 92, was to sign her ballot for Hillary. I’m glad her last years weren’t spent with that POS in the White House. And now we’re one of the most gerrymandered states in the country.