(This is a re-post of a previously published page on 8/28/2013)
August 28, 1963 and the march on Washington, where was I then? I don’t even remember hearing Martin Luther King’s speech when it was delivered. Did I miss the broadcast? Or was I too involved with preparations for my junior year of college to notice? I remember being intimidated by the course of study facing me in my chosen major. The subsequent two years would be consumed with the Greek philosophers and their successors in modern times from Descartes and Kant to the existentialists. My brain would be tasked as well by the syllogisms of Thomas Aquinas and the theological contemplations of Thomas Merton, men truly mindful and lofty of soul. But was my mind grounded by exposure to ideas that seemed as expansive as galaxies flying apart? Upon my eventual graduation from college, I toured Europe with my favorite aunt, a beautiful woman only 14 years older than myself and far wiser. During that time together, she began the process of deconstructing everything I thought I had learned. After that jolting experience, I returned home less sure of the academic template I assumed would guide me in the world. And then I met a sweet and charming young black woman who slammed the last bolt in my coffin of lifeless ideas. She startled me with her half-playful remark, “What you lack is soul.”
Listening to Dr. King’s most famous speech today reminded me of what we have all gained in the last 50 years. At that time, he urged non-blacks to view his people differently, recognizing that “their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom” and “their destiny is part of our destiny.” Referring to his people, he called them “veterans of creative suffering” and the black man, “an exile in his own land.” He wasn’t Moses leading his tribe to the Promised Land somewhere else. Most blacks have more tenure on this continent than any other group, except for Native Americans. But they did not come here by choice, but in chains. Their suffering under those conditions could be called “creative” in the sense that it brought forth the dignity of their human spirit and its capability to rise above pain and oppression—what came to be called “soul.” Today, we now call black people African-Americans; for they did indeed bring something from Africa very integral to contemporary America. We have all benefited not only from their excellence in the arts and athletics, but also in the awakening they affected in the conscience of all Americans. The President referred to the “coalition of conscience,” and rightly so. With the slaves’ freedom came the beginning of freedom for the persecutor from the dehumanizing bondage to injustice. The march on Washington 50 years ago helped extend our moral boundaries along a new trajectory that would eventually include peoples of all colors, race, gender and sexual orientation. That trajectory is our new shared destiny. When Dr. King spoke of brotherhood and non-violent change, he was motivated by compassion and the spiritual impetus of an oppressed but soulful people. Like all suppressed groups through history, blacks could either unite around vindicated rage or pull together in goodwill to oppose injustice with courage and faith in the goodness of their fellow human beings. Truly, it wasn’t just “soul” music that African-Americans brought to all Americans, but a new collective consciousness.
Two women rescued me from the literate idiocy of purposeless ideas. The younger woman, a passionate African-American, touched my heart with her own and seeded it with compassion. What we have all gained from the “veterans of creative suffering” is a renewed awareness of the brotherhood and sisterhood we all share—our common soulfulness.