Martin Luther King Jr. walked this Earth for only 39 years.
Then it ended. It was 50 years ago. A single rifle shot struck down the great man.
We are going to see a lot of tributes to Dr. King in the next day or two … or maybe beyond as the nation reignites its grief over this monumental loss.
I’ll watch them and wonder: How in the name of soaring rhetoric does someone so young speak with such wisdom? Dr. King did that. He spoke to all Americans on behalf of “my people.” He told us about that dream he had, of how “little black children” would one day walk with “little white children,” how his own children would be judged only by the “content of their character.”
Do you remember the August 1963 speech, his “I Have a Dream” speech, delivered to hundreds of thousands of people on the Washington, D.C. Mall? He was less than five years away from his own death. He also was just 34 years of age when he stirred our souls.
He led a non-violent movement. He preached “civil disobedience” in the strictest definition of the term. Those who marched with him paid heavy prices in blood, sadly. Dr. King himself spent time in jail, where he penned even more words of wisdom that will live for the ages.
I want to add a disturbing note to this tribute to Dr. King, and it has next to nothing to do with the great man himself.
It is that the individual who changed history with a rifle shot at that Memphis, Tenn., motel balcony was just another in a big crowd of losers. James Earl Ray would die in prison. The hateful, spiteful individual sought notoriety. Damn, he got it!
The 50-year commemorations no doubt are going to wonder: What if Martin Luther King Jr. had lived? Would we be a different nation today? I am not smart or prescient enough to know with certainty, but I believe Dr. King could have shaped the national discussion toward achieving “a more perfect Union.”
The ultimate tragedy — beyond the obvious grief that came to one man’s family and the nation he sought to inspire — is that we cannot know the path we would have taken had Dr. King been allowed more than just 39 years.