Martin and Malcolm

[ Via Beautiful, Also, Are The Souls Of My Black Sisters ]

Two of my greatest heroes, side by side and smiling; both gunned down for their struggles against white supremacism; and both subsequently reduced in today's pop-mainstream imagination to soul-shrinking soundbites about dreams and means, their images appropriated as cartoonish cardboard cut-outs by the shills and imbeciles of the corporate-political establishment.

Yet their legacies continue to burn with searing passion in my mind and in my life, and in all those who nurture and carry forward the flame of knowledge sparked by their words; the flame of action sparked by their deeds; the flame of hope and belief that there is something worth fighting for in this blighted upside-down wasteland of a world, something often hidden yet closer than our own breath, something beautiful and noble and real that no bullet or bomb can ever touch.

Comments

[Ann]

Beautiful, Kai, just beautiful.

I have often wondered what these two great men were saying to each other, in that photo.

Martin speaking, while Malcolm listened intently, and to me, approvingly.

Two men who loved black people, and therefore, ALL people. Two men who loved this country enough to endanger their lives for this country's sake.

Martin: "I have been to the mointaintop."

Malcolm: "By any means necessasy."

Two men who were not afraid to stand up for, live for---DIE for their beliefs.

How many of us today can say that?

How many of us are willing to be left, standing alone because we will not back down from our beliefs in the face of contempt, attack, derision, and annihilation?

It takes strength to go it alone when all around you jeer, taunt and deride your belief in right no matter how much the majority struggles to hold onto laws, customs and beliefs that are wrong---beliefs that go against the laws of God.

So many people sought (in their minds) to "pit" Martin and Malcolm against each other, but, no.

I believe they did not envy each other, but instead admired each other, however different their approach was to bring justice and equality to all black people who have put so much into this country.

This picture was taken at the only time they were able to meet each other.

Malcolm would die first, gunned down in the Audubon Ballroom, on February 21, 1964. Four years later, on April 4, 1968, Martin would be gunned down while standing on a balcony at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee.

Seeing them both standing there, laughing and smiling at each other, is a wonderful feeling. That after all those who sought to create enmity between them, these two men found their way to each other to bask in each other's presence----each other's respect.

I thank God he saw fit to allow us to have them in our lives, those of us who have living memory of them.

Thank you, Martin and Malcolm. Thank you for going the distance.

Forgive those of us who have faltered and trampled on your work and memory.

Watch over those of us who have never stopped nor forgotten the struggle both of you shouldered while here on Earth, those of us who strive to continue to carry on your dreams of a world of equality and acknowlegement of the humanity in all people.

Rest in peace my brothers.

Rest in Peace.

SALUTARE.

[Kai]

Ann, thank you.

You're so right about the wonderful feeling of looking at this photograph. The expression on Malcolm's face just delights me, the sharpness and joy, the brightness. And on Martin's face, a certain sober courage and openness, a sharing. What a moment.

I join you in your gratitude, your salute, and your prayer. Rest in peace, brothers, your work has benefited all of humanity, and has moved hearts from the deep south to the heights of the Himalayas. Namaste.

[nezua]

sing it, 'mano.

[Colin]

True, just completely true.
If I as a young man, could but devote myself to being one-tenth the man, the human they were...

[Kevin]

This is just what I needed today. Thank you, Kai.

And thank you as well, Ann, for a beautiful tribute to these two great men.

[Josiah]

They were both necessary. Their legacies have been so distorted by 40 years of commodification, politics and 'colorblind' anti-affirmative action (etc.) doublespeak, that's it's hard to remember the times in which they lived. I'm only 23, but just from talking to my parents and friends and researching the 1960s, it trips me out how volatile everything was, up to an including (and following) their assassinations. I mean, what a shit-storm of global violence, from the mass slaughters of World War II to revolutions in China and Cuba to murderous colonial counter- insurgency wars in most of Africa and South and East Asia in the 1950s, to the Soviet conquest of Hungary, to the continuation of colonialism by other means under the cloak of U.S. military might in the 1960s, to church bombings to fire hoses to riots to COINTELPRO to...It's almost too much to wrap your head around. Almost too intense to think about. I can't make sense of it all by a long shot, but I do know that King and Malcolm were products of both very similar and very, very different environments. They took the only paths they could, and they have been used symbolically to very different ends. But they were both necessary.

[Kai]

Nezua, Colin, Kevin, Josiah, thanks so much for your words! I'm just glad there are still many of us who feel as we do.