THIRTY YEARS AFTER MEMPHIS

If Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Were Alive Today, What Would He Say?

By Congressman Jesse L. Jackson, Jr.

February 20, 1998

In 1963, the so-called \"I Have A Dream\" speech was actually the
beginning of a transition for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a transition
from civil rights to [silver]{.underline} rights or
[economic]{.underline} equality to accompany racial justice. Thus, after
the 1964 Civil Rights Act (public accommodations) and the 1965 Voting
Rights Act, he was assassinated organizing a multi-racial Poor Peoples\'
Campaign around an economic and a peace issue \-- jobs and economic
justice at home and peace abroad in Vietnam.

The race does not go to the swift or the strong, but to those who endure
to the end. Ours is a protracted struggle. The long night of slavery
that began in 1619 and formally came to an end with the Emancipation
Proclamation (1863) and the addition of the 13th Amendment to the
Constitution (1865). President Abraham Lincoln\'s Gettysburg Address
strategically overlooked the U.S. Constitution because it supported
slavery, and redefined what it meant to be an American by appealing to
the Declaration of Independence.

The Civil War settled the [slavery]{.underline} [questio]{.underline}n,
but it left unfinished two other important questions: (1)
[Reconstruction]{.underline} \-- or closing the gap between the
newly-freed slaves and whites in terms of education, job skills and
more; and (2) [Political]{.underline} [Suffrage]{.underline} for former
slaves \-- i.e., how to bring them fully into the political mainstream.
Seen in its historical context then, affirmative action is a
continuation of the unfinished business of Reconstruction following the
Civil War in the long journey by African Americans for full equality in
America. The 1965 Voting Rights Act and its proper interpretation \--
now before the public and the Supreme Court \-- is a continuation of the
struggle for full political suffrage, the second unfinished task still
pending from the American Civil War.

While education, moral improvement, civic and economic uplift, direct
action and even civil disobedience are all valid methods of social
action, political action is the single greatest lever of social
liberation.

Why politics? Politics because political rights are preservative and
protective of all other rights!

Politics because it is the distribution system for the economic system!!
Politics determines who, gets what, when, where, how, how much, and what
it is called!

Politics because more democracy is necessary if we are to have greater
equality in this country and around the world!

Politics because it is the only path of protection against growing
national and global financial and corporate power that, left unto
itself, is undemocratic, anti-worker, anti-worker rights and
anti-environment.

The struggle for racial, gender, political and economic justice is not a
straight or unencumbered line. The road has twists and turns, peaks and
valleys in it. Thus, a big part of the struggle is to keep our eyes on
the prize. We must interpret our movement in the broadest possible
[economic]{.underline} context so as to attract the broadest possible
coalition of supporters. The economy is the hearing aid through which
Americans will hear and deal with the race question.

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