Reviews

The Day I Watched Dr. King – and the Mets

8/15/2013

The networks and the papers are gearing up for the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington on Aug. 28. I saw the saintly John Lewis on television the other night.

Memories kick in.

I was covering the Mets in Pittsburgh, and watched the march on television during the day, captivated by the mood, the words, the faces.

Then I got on the bus from the Hilton, down by the famed confluence, to funky old Forbes Field up on the hill. At some point I got into a conversation with Maury Allen of the Post and Jesse Gonder and Alvin Jackson of the Mets, who had all been watching in their rooms.

I’ve always treasured this memory of four people standing around the clubhouse, so enthused about Martin Luther King and the other speakers, and the people who had come so far, the joy and hope we felt.

I’d forgotten that Jackson was the starting pitcher that night, lasting four and two-thirds innings against his old club, taking the loss in a 7-2 defeat. Gonder pinch-hit for Choo Choo Coleman with two on and no out in the ninth and hit into a force play. Roberto Clemente went 3-for-4 and drove in 3 runs. I can’t remember if we asked him about the march after the game. I’d like to think we did.

Throughout the bad times and the good times, the memory remains of that march. The four of us had been sure, as the Sam Cooke song would say a few months later, a change was gonna come.

Nowadays, the sour faces on Cantor, McConnell, Paul and Boehner seem straight from the bad old days. And we are assured by Chief Justice John Roberts that things are so good that we do not need a voting rights law anymore. Governors and legislatures do their best to deny access to voting. Fifty years ago I stood around a clubhouse with three friends and talked about the March on Washington.

The box score from that game:

http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1963/B08280PIT1963.htm

The history of the Sam Cooke song:

http://www.americansongwriter.com/2009/07/behind-the-song-a-change-is-gonna-come/

A more recent story about the March on Washington:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/28/us/politics/28race.html?_r=0

Ladies and gentlemen, the late, great Sam Cooke:

Gene Palumbo

8/15/2013 07:34:35 am

A fine post, George. Thank you for it.

I listened to the Sam Cooke song. It said, in part,

I go to the movie and I go downtown
Somebody keep telling me, "Don't hang around"

Somebody like, for example, the N.Y. police, with their stop-and-frisk policy. The following, from today’s N.Y. Times, shows how the police were telling young black and Hispanic men, “Don’t hang around:”

Judge Scheindlin noted that [Police Commissioner Raymond] Kelly had said, according to a state senator who was present for the conversation, that young black and Hispanic men were the focus of the stops because the commissioner "wanted to instill fear in them, every time they leave their home, they could be stopped by the police.”

Brian Savin

8/15/2013 01:38:38 pm

Dear George,
I'm going to take you to task for partisan political claptrap going beyond the acumen we (I, at least) love you for. This particular blog entry is not a Democrat or Republican thing although you try to make it so. The Democrats today bear as little resemblance to those you admire as do the Republicans today resemble the Republicans that I admire.

William Bennett is a conservative Republican, and a flawed man, as is Martin Luther King. But In Bennett's Book of Virtues, he includes King's letter from the Birmingham City jail, and, to me, that is an epistle about human dignity that Saul of Tarsus can't compete with. You won't find that letter in many places. A "Republican" exposed it -- uniquely -- to the modern reader.

The political landscape today is disgusting. And one of the interesting consequences is that it breeds "extremism" that isn't as extreme as made out in the media. If you want to solve some problems, I'd suggest putting Al Franken and Rand Paul in the same room. They should be refereed by an "extreme" Democrat -- take your pick, either Elizabeth Warren, or my own Senator Richard Blumenthal. I bet you'd get some useful proposals from that meeting that no one else in the Senate would vote for -- and the reason is that most are motivated either by ideological stupidity or corruption.

George Vecsey

8/16/2013 01:01:06 am

Brian, thanks for your critique. I think there is a direct line from 1963 to today. The people I cite remind me of the old guard (yes, many of them Democrats) who resisted the changes that King and others sought. It may be more racial than political. The people I cite seem very disturbed by a very smart president who is African-American. They have tried to wreck this administration from the beginning by total inert non-cooperation. Is it political? Ideological? Or something deeper -- and worse? GV

Brian Savin

8/15/2013 02:03:09 pm

One of the Great Reads of our history:

"Letter from a Birmingham Jail [King, Jr.]"

16 April 1963
My Dear Fellow Clergymen:
While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling my present activities "unwise and untimely." Seldom do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas. If I sought to answer all the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would have little time for anything other than such correspondence in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work. But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and that your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I want to try to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms.

I think I should indicate why I am here in Birmingham, since you have been influenced by the view which argues against "outsiders coming in." I have the honor of serving as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization operating in every southern state, with headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. We have some eighty five affiliated organizations across the South, and one of them is the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. Frequently we share staff, educational and financial resources with our affiliates. Several months ago the affiliate here in Birmingham asked us to be on call to engage in a nonviolent direct action program if such were deemed necessary. We readily consented, and when the hour came we lived up to our promise. So I, along with several members of my staff, am here because I was invited here. I am here because I have organizational ties here.

But more basically, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the prophets of the eighth century B.C. left their villages and carried their "thus saith the Lord" far beyond the boundaries of their home towns, and just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco Roman world, so am I compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.

Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.

You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations. I am sure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. It is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that the city's white power structure left the Negro community with no alternative.

In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self purification; and direct action. We have gone through all these steps in Birmingham. There can be no gainsaying the fact that racial injustice engulfs this community. Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States. Its ugly record of brutality is widely known. Negroes have experienced grossly unjust treatment in the courts. There have been more unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches in Birmingham than in any other city in the nation. These are the hard, brutal facts of the case. On the basis of these conditions, Negro leaders sought to negotiate with the city fathers. But the latter consistently refused to engage in good faith negotiation.

Then, last September, came the opportunity to talk with leaders of Birmingham's economic community. In the course of the negotiations, certain promises were made by the merchants--for example, to remove the stores' humiliating racial signs. On the basis of these promises, the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth and the leaders of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights agreed to a moratorium on all demonstrations. As the weeks and months went by, we realized that we were the victims of a broken promise. A few signs, briefly removed, returned; the others remained. As in so many past experiences, our hopes had been blasted, and the shadow of deep disappointment settled upon us. We had no alternative except to prepare for direct action, whereby we would present our very bodies as a means of laying our case before the conscience of the local and the national community. Mindful of the difficulties involved,

Brian Savin

8/15/2013 02:13:16 pm

[Part 2)...we decided to undertake a process of self purification. We began a series of workshops on nonviolence, and we repeatedly asked ourselves: "Are you able to accept blows without retaliating?" "Are you able to endure the ordeal of jail?" We decided to schedule our direct action program for the Easter season, realizing that except for Christmas, this is the main shopping period of the year. Knowing that a strong economic-withdrawal program would be the by product of direct action, we felt that this would be the best time to bring pressure to bear on the merchants for the needed change.

Then it occurred to us that Birmingham's mayoral election was coming up in March, and we speedily decided to postpone action until after election day. When we discovered that the Commissioner of Public Safety, Eugene "Bull" Connor, had piled up enough votes to be in the run off, we decided again to postpone action until the day after the run off so that the demonstrations could not be used to cloud the issues. Like many others, we waited to see Mr. Connor defeated, and to this end we endured postponement after postponement. Having aided in this community need, we felt that our direct action program could be delayed no longer.

You may well ask: "Why direct action? Why sit ins, marches and so forth? Isn't negotiation a better path?" You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word "tension." I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood. The purpose of our direct action program is to create a situation so crisis packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation. I therefore concur with you in your call for negotiation. Too long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in a tragic effort to live in monologue rather than dialogue.

One of the basic points in your statement is that the action that I and my associates have taken in Birmingham is untimely. Some have asked: "Why didn't you give the new city administration time to act?" The only answer that I can give to this query is that the new Birmingham administration must be prodded about as much as the outgoing one, before it will act. We are sadly mistaken if we feel that the election of Albert Boutwell as mayor will bring the millennium to Birmingham. While Mr. Boutwell is a much more gentle person than Mr. Connor, they are both segregationists, dedicated to maintenance of the status quo. I have hope that Mr. Boutwell will be reasonable enough to see the futility of massive resistance to desegregation. But he will not see this without pressure from devotees of civil rights. My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure. Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals.

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was "well timed" in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant "Never." We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."

We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we still creep at horse and buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at

Brian Savin

8/15/2013 02:19:59 pm

[Part 3]
whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five year old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness"--then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court's decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may well ask: "How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?" The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at all."

Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority. Segregation, to use the terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, substitutes an "I it" relationship for an "I thou" relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things. Hence segregation is not only politically, economically and sociologically unsound, it is morally wrong and sinful. Paul Tillich has said that sin is separation. Is not segregation an existential expression of man's tragic separation, his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness? Thus it is that I can urge men to obey the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court, for it is morally right; and I can urge them to disobey segregation ordinances, for they are morally wrong.

Let us consider a more concrete example of just and unjust laws. An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself. This is difference made legal. By the same token, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow and that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal. Let me give another explanation. A law is unjust if it is inflicted on a minority that, as a result of being denied the right to vote, had no part in enacting or devising the law. Who can say that the legislature of Alabama which set up that state's segregation laws was democratically elected? Throughout Alabama all sorts of devious methods are used to prevent Negroes from becoming registered voters, and there are some counties in which, even though Negroes constitute a majority of the population, not a single Negro is registered. Can any law enacted under such circumstances be considered democratically structured?

So

Brian Savin

8/15/2013 02:20:35 pm

brian savin

8/15/2013 02:26:09 pm

I apologize for trying to reproduce too much on this blog. More than it can take (but not by too much). Here is a citation for those possibly interest in the remainder.

http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html

Gene Palumbo

8/16/2013 05:09:32 am

Brian Savin:

You said, "You won't find [Letter from Birmingham Jail] in many places."

On the contrary: you'll find it all over the place, as proved by a quick check on Google, which lists 183,000 references to it.

You also said, "A 'Republican' exposed it -- uniquely -- to the modern reader. "

On the contrary: it had already been exposed, highly and often, to the modern reader during the 30 years before Bennett's book was published. To take just one example: Wikipedia notes that "A 1999 study found that the essay was highly anthologized in that it was reprinted 50 times in 325 editions of 58 readers published between 1964 and 1996 that were intended for use in college-level composition courses." Not to mention all the other places where it was published.

Brian Savin

8/17/2013 03:28:46 pm

Hi Gene,
Politics is controversial stuff, isn't it? OK, I stand my ground! Bennett's book came out before the Internet really took off. His book was aimed at parents and teachers to teach values to our young. It was a NYT best seller, sold millions of copies, appeared on the book shelves of caring parents across America, and was used by me, our local schools, and many of my contemporaries to teach our kids. It was bedtime reading in my home. And it illuminated Martin Luther King Day for our kids and their classmates. It really helped very many people appreciate what this man was all about. (And he wasn't about that damn Maoist statute of him in Washington that defames him, in my view!)

Brian Savin

8/17/2013 03:29:46 pm

Ed Martin

8/17/2013 07:18:50 am

Time for a change from this important and serious reelection on the greatest evolution in America since the Emancipation Proclamation?

To the trivial-- but baseball is also pert of this evolution, Jackie, Latinos, Japanese, and more.

Mets are arousing my hopes. A good, better than good, perhaps starting four: Harvey, Gee, Niese and Zack Wheeler, with Heffner a reasonable fifth, (DL). Relief is spotty.

Bird showing outfield power, Buck, Murphy and Wright next in RBIs
Davis is showing interesting on base pickup if it continues

Need a couple of improvements, power hitting outfielder, for example and bull pen.

What say?

Need another outfield hitter.

Brian SAvin

8/17/2013 03:33:29 pm

Oh Ed, please don't encourage our false hope....I'd rather you criticize our politics -- it's much less painful!

Charlie Accetta

8/18/2013 06:03:19 am

Thank you, George. My Jesse Gonder baseball card is long gone, but I remember it. I remember a lot of those faces - Johnny Lewis, Dan Napoleon, a young Cleon ... they stand out in my mind, even now. I viewed them then as bodies filling uniforms and roster spots. It takes years to inform us that lives were lived and sights were seen beyond what we imagined when gazing at those cardboard cards - pain and joy and relief and disbelief interposed with the at-bats and runs and strikeouts to comprise the whole of a man. Opening up a person's life is not like opening up a pack of trading cards. People don't really smell like bubblegum, no matter what the blowhards of today will have us believe.

George Vecsey

8/19/2013 02:12:57 am

Charlie, you are right. They were real people. Danny Napoleon hung around with some of the players (Swoboda? Yates? McGraw?) and a few young writers. I believe he passed young. Alvin Jackson and Larry Bearnarth played touch football with the Newsday sportswriters in the fall to keep in shape. Players and writers had the same economics. GV

Brian Savin

8/19/2013 01:04:20 am

Plunking A-Rod. One of the most interesting side shows I've ever seen in sport happened in last night's Yankees-Red sox game and I'm still scratching my head about what to conclude about it. Unquestionably, A-Rod was targeted. The Red Sox pitcher signaled his intent on the first pitch, throwing behind his knee: "I'm not going to bean you, but I'm going make you hurt before this at bat is over," he seemed to be saying. Two more inside, but not scary enough. So on ball four, square in the side. The umpire is complicit. He refuses to throw out the pitcher, and warns BOTH teams. The Yankee manager is furious about what he sees a breach of baseball protocol. Get's thrown out himself. The Yankees rally behind A-Rod and come back to win, with A-Rod screaming a homer to deep center later in the game. So, does the game of baseball win or lose?

The A-Rod situation is a horrible blot on the game. A cheat playing the system so he can continue to play and make a legal circus out of this great sport. His manager and team have his back; no apparent feelings beyond that and focus on winning. That seems proper somehow. Other teams' players seem to want the game cleaned up so they can feel more proud of what they do. That seems laudable and right. I think the Commissioner let baseball down. He should have had the nerve to ban the man they feel so strongly about...but not quite strongly enough.

Alan Rubin link

8/20/2013 09:30:34 am

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was the moral voice of the civil rights movement. Although he was often at odds with other groups and not considered militant enough, he never wavered in his belief in non-violence, even in the face of danger.

Of his many inspiring moments, three stand out for me: The letter from a Birmingham jail, the Mount speech and the “I have a dream” speech.

I have mixed feelings about racism in the United States today. Tolerance has increased with each successive generation since the 1960’s as more of our youth mixed with non-whites throughout society. However, the climate today has become more toxic as race and ethnicity are used for political purposes.

Two well documented books that deal with racism are: “Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How it Changed America” by John M. Barry and “Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama: The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution” by Diane McWhorter. Both cover racism in America, but “Rising Tide” details racism in the Mississippi Delta between 1850’s-1930’s and “Carry Me Home” covers Birmingham, AL in the 1960’s. Summaries are on;

http://www.historystudygroup.com/suggested-reading.html

Throughout history, many have shown the courage of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in doing what was right when it was not popular or even safe, but this trait appears to be in very short supply among today’s politicians.

Ed martin

8/20/2013 11:07:59 am

following the Dr. King theme, I think you will be interested in the obit of Albert Murray in today's Times. He was an important voice.

Brian Savin

8/21/2013 03:48:01 pm

Ed, I wish I knew of him before your post. I didn't, but I'm very, very grateful for your introduction. Mr. Murray had a music side, it seems, but I'm not sure it's vocal. I saw the Tuskegee Golden Voices (his Alma Mater) two years ago in New Haven on one of their rare stops north. If anyone has the opportunity to see that historic student group, and listen to the songs they (and director Barr) choose to highlight, make it a priority. It's an experience even better than the pizza you'll get on Wooster Street. Important and memorable stuff. I hope he sang with them.

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