MLK, Jr.: Reweaving the Dreams —by Jinny Batterson
While he was alive, I knew little about him.
The mainstream press in Baltimore barely mentioned
This Negro preacher who’d helped marshal a yearlong bus
Boycott and in the mid-1960’s won a Nobel Peace Prize.
There were rumors he might be a Communist.
I was in high school, with other concerns—
Who could I get to take me to the prom?
Would my SAT scores help me get into a good college?
Would my parents take away my driving privileges
After an accident that I at least partially caused?
By the time I got to college, his star was waning,
Eclipsed by rising black militancy and a war in Southeast Asia
That dragged on and on. His tactics and pronouncements were
Less influential, less obviously successful in northern cities than in
Earlier Southern-based campaigns. Non-violence and preaching peace
Didn’t appear to work against big-city political machines and war contractors.
At first it seemed his dreams had come unraveled when his life ended.
As riots broke out in many American cities following his assassination,
I sat distracted in a secluded dating parlor on a small college campus,
My boyfriend’s bent-kneed proposal and diamond ring a pale foreground
To a muted television backdrop of Baltimore and Washington, D.C.,
Two bookends of my youth, engulfed in flames, sirens, and riot police.
By the time his birthday was declared a national holiday
In November, 1983, I was attempting to learn and implement
Parts of his dream in rural central Africa. My efforts met with
Little success in a country whose few rich and many poor lived in vastly
Different worlds, with a minuscule middle partly made up of expatriates
Like me. I had lots of time to read the contents of a USAID library.
Martin Luther King, Jr., I learned, was a middle child, born just before
The Great Depression. His family lived in a relatively prosperous black enclave
In segregated Atlanta. During his early studies, he drifted, but partway through
High school he was inspired toward the ministry. He went north and completed
An impressive formal education, earning a doctorate by age twenty-five.
The parts we now recite in school start in Montgomery, Alabama,
Where he was nominated, as a young, little-known preacher, to give voice to the
Aspirations of people who had for too long been shunted to the back of the bus.
After the successful conclusion of the bus boycott, sixty civil rights leaders met
In Atlanta, founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and elected
MLK as its first president. Then came sit-ins, Freedom Summer, Albany,
Birmingham, Selma, Chicago, a Poor People’s Campaign, a sniper’s bullet.
Those of us who call ourselves progressives winced at subsequent American
Foreign and domestic policy, wrote letters, attended rallies and marches,
Wondered what else we might do to stop, or at least reduce, the madness.
For a while, we thought we had found an answer in another young,
Eloquent brown-skinned man. Twice we elected him national president,
Allowing complacency to creep into our ongoing efforts.
Our current national administration is more nightmare than dream.
It wants us to forget that our deepest dreams are inclusive rather
Than exclusionary, spiritual as well as material. MLK knew this.
He tried to tell us, over and over again, but we rarely listened.
We know MLK had flaws—infidelity, sometimes neglecting his family,
Carrying too much of the movement’s burden by himself.
We do not need another plaster saint, of whatever skin hue,
But Coretta was right to insist that we honor MLK with a holiday.
Though not free from sin or error, he was also a prophet
Who recalled us to our best selves. May we remember
His efforts as we redouble ours, reweaving stronger dreams.
Jinny's Occasional Poems 