As though he were a younger, much-loved, and menaced brother

In all the furor of the post-Zimmerman trial, with such striking departures from rationality and empiricism, it is easy to get frustrated with the twilight zone like discussions. Still, there are some interesting things that get washed up on the storm tossed shore.

In an article, Race, Politics and the Zimmerman Trial by Jason Riley, he concludes with:

"Do you know that Negroes are 10 percent of the population of St. Louis and are responsible for 58% of its crimes? We've got to face that. And we've got to do something about our moral standards," Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. told a congregation in 1961. "We know that there are many things wrong in the white world, but there are many things wrong in the black world, too. We can't keep on blaming the white man. There are things we must do for ourselves."

This caught my eye for two reasons. That disproportion between population and crime commission is still true today (national figures, not just St. Louis). My haphazard recollection was the national figures had been better back then and worsened in the intervening fifty years. And maybe that is true because King is referencing St. Louis figures and not national figures. None-the-less, it is striking the similarity between then and now despite the passage of two generations.

The second element I found striking was the congruence between King's position and that of those who are frustrated with the political manipulation of the system of justice. These observers are delighted that despite such machinations, the traditional jury system delivered an outcome consistent with the law. It is not clear to me just how the distant ideological progeny of King could have arrived at a position that justice should be delivered by the majority view, or even more cruelly, that justice should be dependent on the views of the privileged, and not via the dispassionate exercise of reason, logic, evidence and the clear exercise of laws applicable to all citizens. A position diametrically opposite the interests of any minority and the opposite of King's position.

This quotation of King's seemed so pat that I was inclined to believe it to be a misquote or an internet fabrication which had gained currency. So I went searching.

Well, it turns out to be true. James Baldwin wrote and article The Dangerous Road Before Martin Luther King in the February 1961 issue of Harper's Magazine. I cannot find a pdf of it anywhere. Here is the bulk of the text from The Portable Sixties Reader by Ann Charters via Google Books.

Baldwin is always fascinating as an author. Is he even taught in school anymore? The essay is full of telling and insightful passages.

. . . the fact that King really loves the people he represents and has - therefore - no hidden, interior need to hate the white people who oppose him has had and will, I think, continue to have the most far-reaching and unpredictable repercussions on our racial situation.

I suspect that absence of hatred is why King still commands such broad respect across the political spectrum. Is it possible to identify anyone comparable today that commands the national public attention? I can't think of anyone.

King is entirely right when he says segregation is dead. The real question which faces the Republic is just how long, how violent, and how expensive the funeral is going to be.

Longer, more violent and more expensive than we thought.

King is somewhat below what is called average height, he is sturdily built, but not quite as heavy or as stocky as he had seemed to me at first. I remember feeling, rather as though he were a younger, much-loved, and menaced brother, that he seemed very slight and vulnerable to be taking on such tremendous odds.

Iconic heroes take on the mantle of inevitability, Baldwin reminds us that contemporarily, it was otherwise. He was but a human.

King is a great speaker. The secret of his greatness does not lie in his voice or his presence or his manner, though it has something to do with all these; nor does it lie in his verbal range or felicity, which are not striking; nor does he have any capacity for those stunning, demagogic flights of the imagination which bring an audience cheering to its feet. The secret lies, I think, in his intimate knowledge of the people he is addressing, be they black or white, and in the forthrightness with which he speaks of those things which hurt and baffle them. He does not offer any easy comfort and this keeps his hearers absolutely tense. He allows them their self-respect—indeed, he insists on it.

Enough quoting. You get the picture. A great essay yielding insight on a great man.

The other striking thing? At the time of this essay, King had just turned 32 years old with a wife and three young children. I think I have discussed somewhere else the postponement of adulthood in our times. Again, the question, in the political realm, who is there today who is 32 and has had or even has the prospects of having such an impact on the nation?