MLK: Catalyst of civil rights to human rights

The birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. was a good time to pause and look back. The most powerful yet little recognized element in the civil rights movement was television.

Before Rosa didn’t go to the back of the bus, there had been 150 years of civil rights activity, beginning with the early abolitionists and permeating numerous areas: education, economics, religion, the arts, politics. But without TV, word of this movement traveled slowly; there was little public knowledge of it and it was not taught in schools.

But when the bus driver threatened to have Rosa arrested, she said the four powerful, one-syllable words: “You can do that,” and he did, and through television it was seen around the world.

That was the incendiary event that exploded into what became known as the modern civil rights movement.

Days later, the Montgomery Improvement Association decided to organize the bus boycott and elected MLK, Jr. to head the effort as chief organizer and group leader. For the following 13 years he led the organization, mobilizing thousands of advocates, volunteers and trainers of non-violent protest. His four primary contributions, those that made him famous, were:

1. The March on the Capitol, culminating in the “I Have a Dream” speech on Aug. 28, 1963, solidifying thousands into a powerful, nationwide movement.
2. MLK’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail, which the AFSC published. They called it the “Most eloquent expression of Quaker Peace Testimony," although he was not a Quaker. Many of his organizers, advisers and former teachers were.
3. King’s anti-war speech, Beyond Vietnam, challenging President Johnson’s war policies. That was in May of 1966 at the Riverside Church, one month after leading 5,000 in an anti-war march in Chicago. This event catapulted what had been a civil rights movement into an international human rights movement.
4. The assassination of MLK one year later. The collective national grief and shock translated into solidarity of activism and legalism that gave people recourse against discrimination in housing, education and employment and still continues.

Regarding death, MLK had this to say:

“Death is the irreducible common denominator of all people. Death is not a blind alley that leads the human race into a state of nothingness, but an open door that leads man into Life Eternal. Let this daring faith be your sustaining power through these trying days.”

Marian Breckenridge is a Coeur d'Alene resident.