"If only we could learn to love - ourselves, based upon our love for other people like our spouses, our families - and things - like our work, our communities, our ability to create and produce (instead of worrying about how much we possess)..."
Dear friends,
About what was Martin Luther King really? Love.
Unfortunately, far too often, the emphasis, by the media and others, of Dr.King's vision rests more upon his call for non-violence as a passive response to injustice, than it (i.e., non-violence) does when it is used as a pro-active measure that citizens employ to share in community growth, democratically. After all, the quintessence of democracy is non-violent conflict resolution. Therefore, it is not only a contradiction in terms, but an enormous lie, for one sovereign nation to invade another such self-governing land, under the pretense that it is introducing "democracy" to the latter.
At any rate, back in 1965, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. returned to Boston for the first time since he'd graduated from BU (Boston University) almost ten years earlier. His main purpose for doing so was because the legendary singer and activist Harry Belafonte was giving Dr. King, who had already received the Nobel Peace Prize, a benefit concert at the historically-famous, Boston Gardens, in order to raise some funds for "the Movement", as it were.
As my Mom, Rhoda Vivian Olufemi Bumpus was one of many pioneers of the modern-day Civil Rights Movement, in Boston - and around the nation, she was given two tickets to the aformentioned program, not knowing that she would be seated with Dr. King. As fate would have it, and although I was next to the youngest of her six sons (no daughters), she took me along with her that night.
I was an incredibly precocious (very young but extremely vocal) , up-and-coming Black militant. Consequently, in spite of his constant attempts to strike up a conversation with me that night, over the next few hours, Dr. King was only able to recognize the anger and disgust of so many Black youth at the time. Yet, he had seen it before (the scoffs and scowls), as he revealed in his manifesto, the classic essay called "Letter from a Birmingham Jail".
If only we could learn to love - ourselves, based upon our love for other people like our spouses, our families - and things - like our work, our communities, our ability to create and produce (instead of worrying about how much we possess), we may realize what Dr. King talked about, but was unable to fully articulate at his point in history. For, ultimately, that was his message, as I now - some 43 (now 48) years after meeting him - understand.
G. Djata Bumpus
2 comments:
Priceless.
Yeah...Thanx
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