On April 3, 1968 the weather in Memphis, Tennessee was frightful, thunderstorms and heavy rain was playing havoc with the attendance at the major meeting of the sanitation workers rally. This meeting was scheduled because the initial march for the Memphis sanitation workers lead by Dr. Martin Luther King has been disrupted by violence. This meeting was to ensure that the next march would follow the guidelines of direct nonviolent action. The weather was so bad that initially Dr. King had told Reverend Ralph Abernathy to give the main speech. However, the emotion of those in attendance that night was so strong that a call was placed to the Lorraine Motel for Dr. King to come and speak. There was no other choice but for Dr. King but to honor the crowd. What followed was the final speech in the life of the Prince of Hope, the Messenger of Love, and the moral center of this nation. The speech came to be known at the Mountain Top Speech but I am highlighting the aspect of the speech that focused on wealth redistribution in this nation. The fact of the matter it wasn’t the peace and civil rights aspect of Dr. King’s works that lead to his assassination. It was Dr. King’s work towards economic equality and his proposed Poor People’s Campaign that frightened the powers in this country. For if King could coalesce all the poor white, brown, red, yellow, and black it could shake the foundations of white economic supremacy at its core. Let’s spend a moment thinking about that possibility as we still experience the multiple aspects of disparity in this nation.

In 1963 on the Mall in Washington DC on a sweltering hot August afternoon, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had hope that America was ready for a truly bi-racial antiracist society. He hope that the pending bills for civil rights and voting rights would bring a change in the attitudes of white Americans related to its black citizens. He spoke of his dream, that speech echoed hope and became his trumpet call for a new America. However, 4 1/2 years later the dream he had on the Mall in 1963 had turned into a nightmare. For the racism he thought ended at the borders of the Mason Dixon line was just as pervasive in the northern, eastern and western states of America. He told Harry Belafonte and Andrew Young that in 1968. He also hadn’t given up hope because he added the solution was that those who sought change become firefighters. Dr. King never got that chance to become a firefighter for a couple of weeks later he was murdered in Memphis, Tennessee. America, well it is still that kinder box of racist flames 52 years later. On April 2, 1968, Dr. King had 2 more days to live and America’s flames of unrest would ignite with his death.

In 1850, the United States Congress and the President approved the Fugitive Slave Act. This law in essence made every white citizen of this nation responsible for ensuring that every escaped slave be returned as property to his/her slave owners. The key word is that slaves weren’t human there were property with no inalienable rights to fight this unjust national edict. The following year in the city of Boston, many white and free black Bostonians rejected this law. However, in the eyes of the court the law was the law, any captive fugitive slave must be returned to his owner. One such escaped slave was Thomas Sims. As he pleaded his case to the courts he made this powerful point. Please, remember that our history is America’s history and every participant in that story has a right to have their history told.

THE WAR BEFORE THE WAR
FUGITIVE SLAVES AND THE STRUGGLE FOR AMERICA’S SOUL
FROM THE REVOLUTION TO THE CIVIL WAR

52 years ago on April 1, 1968, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was beginning the last 4 days of his life. He was seeking to find justice for black men in Memphis, Tennessee who were sanitation workers seeking to be seen as men not social and civil throwaways. Dr. King was also guiding his organization to a mass demonstration in our Nation’s Capitol to seek economic equality and a redistribution of how this nation treated its most vulnerable citizens. Today, sanitation workers are on the frontline in fighting the spread of a deadly virus that is sweeping the nation. The issue of economic wealth redistribution is still problematic. The most vulnerable citizens are still subject to facing society’s ills and barriers. Still we fight for those who need our assistance the most while the wealthiest of us seemingly ignore the issues for the collection of more wealth. The bullet may have silenced the dreamers voice but his dream of a collective redistribution of society’s wealth must never die until that dream is made into this nation’s reality.

On March 23 1849, Henry Brown, an enslaved Virginia tobacco worker, had himself shipped from Richmond to the office of the Pennsylvania Anti-slavery Society in Philadelphia in a twelve-cubic-foot crate labeled “dry goods,” from which he emerged after twenty-six hours of confinement. Henry “Box” Brown became an instant celebrity. He toured New England as a speaker and singer specializing in hymns of thanksgiving, his story was published as a book ghostwritten by the abolitionist Charles Stearns, and he was featured in a painted panorama depicting slavery scenes that opened to public view in several northern cities.*