One of my favorite things to do for Chicagoist is post stuff that wouldn't normally fall into my beat. In the past that's included music reviews, running around Lollapalooza talking to people that aren't from Chicago, and attending a debate between Ron Jeremy and a Pastor committed to helping people leave the porn industry. It also includes writing the about religious holidays and traditions, and the occasional reflection on an historically significant figure.
Since today is Martin Luther King Day, I did a quick rundown of events in the city today, and posted a video of Dr. King's final speech. While I was looking for information about Dr. King earlier today, I came across a nice set of "rare and unpublished photographs of the civil rights movement from the Life Magazine archive". Life magazine is a little before my time, but I remember looking at it when I was younger and being stunned at the powerful photography it presented.
The great thing about these photos is that they aren't about Martin Luther King. The few times that you see Dr. King, he looks very human, a man and a preacher, nothing more. Yet so often, I think that people lift up the man forgetting his message. The real reason the Civil Rights Movement succeeded is because they didn't lift up a single man, but rather people took his message as their own and carried it forward as their own.
Every third Monday in January the government closes down, the preachers get dressed up, and, like clockwork, the "I Have a Dream" speech makes the rounds in the public consciousness. That speech was not his most important, most courageous, or his most politically advanced. But it's what he's remembered for. As I was reading the unsigned letters the Reader's Whet Moser culled from the Chicago Tribune back in 1966, when King paid our city a visit, I wasn't shocked. It didn't bother me, or cause me to stop, shake my head and think of how far we've come. Maybe I'm cynical. But after watching the immigration debate, and the fury of anger and hysteria that it whips up whenever we start talking about legitimizing the people who have come here to work, I wonder if we've forgotten the dream that so many want to remind up of each January.
Here's hoping the next election changes things.
