Fifty years ago, 250,000 people gathered in Washington, D.C., to demand human rights for all and to hear Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. speak. As a nation we stood tall.
Five years later, Bobby Kennedy announced Dr. King’s death before a street crowd. I cried that day as the world wept. We were never the same.
A man,
cursed with family violence
Announces
deadly violence
taking a moral man —
the leader
of the best in us.
He preached peace
in the ravaged face of violence
A preacher,
love, non-violence preaching
at Bull Conner’s whip.
The moral godfather
of four little girls
Their lives stilled
their innocence crushed
by terrorist bombs,
white indifference.
The voice of peace killed
The crier for the innocent of war —
the soother for victims of racial hatred
Hushed.
The man,
announces the saddest of news
Soon —n
too soon
to join his friend —
Our moral leader
Our preacher
time before religion divided,
condemned the different,
condoned war.
A man,
A preacher,
warriors of peace
Before shock and awe inspired
Time before fear peddled —
our new national creed.
Two men,
man enough
to embrace love,
talk of peace
insist on justice for those without.
Two men gunned down
Manhood now measured by
the devil’s tools —
AK47s
M16s
30 bullet clips
weapons of national destruction.
It all went so wrong
Now King on a pedestal
message sanitized
rendered safe
Bobby forgotten
Violence glorified
The warrior mythicized,
ignored once home
Culture dehumanized.
We are less now
Our moral judgers
eat out of trash cans
sleep with concrete quilts
Haunting cries more plentiful now
but simply echoes in the wilderness now
If a tree falls —
is a cry in the wilderness
heard.
The powerful once again safe.
— Ken Williams has been a social worker for the homeless for the past 30 years, and is the author of China White, Shattered Dreams: A Story of the Streets and his first nonfiction book, There Must Be Honor. Click here to read previous columns. The opinions expressed are his own.