“In Martin Luther King’s last speech, people remember the mountaintop but ignore the poor”, USA Today

Clarence B. Jones, Opinion contributor, April 4, 2024

If I told my friend back from the dead of the 24/7 gun violence in America, Martin would know instinctively that it’s an outgrowth of our capitalist society ignoring poverty.

Martin Luther King Jr. had no way of knowing that his speech at the Mason Temple in Memphis on April 3, 1968, would be his last, so there is no real reason we should examine that text any differently than any of his others for meaning and message for the culture of the day.

However, humans are pattern-seeking animals, and it seems right that a final clue should be more telling than earlier ones. Having had a hand in helping Martin craft his speeches over the years, I can say with some authority that his final words on the subject of injustice in America were, in some ways, more prescient than many of his public statements.

People often focus on the “I may not get (to the mountaintop) with you” line, which is of course chilling in context, but I’d like to bring attention to an almost forgotten line: “The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to deal with the problems of the poor.”

Fifty-six years later – and I say this with all due respect to elected officials in counties, cities, states and even our U.S. Capitol who are trying to address these problems – but with Martin’s assassination the day after this Memphis speech, the true last leader with real concern over the poor was taken out of the game.

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How Martin Luther King would understand gun violence

If I told a Martin back from the dead of the 24/7 gun violence in the country – kids shooting each other in the streets of Chicago and Los Angeles and everywhere else, domestic disputes settled with pistol shots – he would assume it was the leading issue on the news and in the corridors of power. I’d tell him everyday shootings were the background noise these days, and only mass shootings get the headlines. Then I would have to describe what a mass shooting was.

And Martin would know instinctively that this violence is an outgrowth of our capitalist society ignoring the problems of the poor.

In a winner-take-all society, poverty is collateral damage. When we don’t worry about the have-nots, when we don’t offer real opportunity to solve their economic problems, they take things into their own hands. This involves gray and black markets, illicit dealings, self-policing and “street” justice. One of the “problems of the poor” is that crime (by necessity) and violence (by extension) permeates their world. This imbalance is injustice.

The Bible asks, What shall it profit a man to gain the whole world yet forfeit his soul? This appropriately describes the “American dilemma” of 2024. It’s easy to look away, or be distracted by shinier things.

Mass media and the internet would have us believe the preeminent issues confronting our nation are the contest for the presidency, the Russia-Ukraine War, illegal immigration, abortion or our public schools’ curriculum. All of these take a back seat to the epidemic of our citizens carelessly killing each other with cheap guns.https://www.usatodaynetworkservice.com/tangstatic/html/usat/sf-q1a2z330306dc3.min.html

MLK always knew there were just and unjust laws

What the Civil Rights Movement taught America was that even though something wasn’t happening in one part of the country, the fact that it was happening at all poisoned the integrity of the entire country. Northern elites saw the police dogs and fire hoses of the South’s racist policies and said, “This doesn’t represent my country!”

That’s not happening now with poverty and gun violence because the leadership is not in place. If those in power don’t care that the poor are culling themselves with bullets, why should the rest of us concern ourselves? Particularly when they have an enshrined “right” to have guns?

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Martin Luther King always knew there were just and unjust laws. In defying the unjust laws, the goal was to make them more just.

Is it impossible to believe that, like the legal code, our Constitution has some unjust features? Is it impossible to imagine that amendments can be repealed?

Standing up to the gun lobby, standing up to the defenders of a poorly written and terribly interpreted constitutional amendment, standing up to those who turn a blind eye to life and death matters – these are all a start at clearing out the poison in the American soul.

And maybe, preventing my friend Martin from having died in vain.

Is a presidential election more important than finding a way to stop our American killing fields, where blood is spilled by both illegal and constitutionally protected guns?

How we address this question is how Dr. King would define the “soul” of America in 2024.

Clarence B. Jones was personal attorney, adviser and speech writer for the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and credited as a co-author of King’s 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech. He is chairman of the board of the Spill the Honey Foundation and co-founder of the Clarence B. Jones Institute for Social Advocacy. His new memoir, written with Stuart Connelly, is “The Last of The Lions.”