he-ro. 1. In mythology and legend, a person, often born of one mortal and one divine parent, who is endowed with great courage and strength, celebrated for bold exploits, and favored by the gods. 2. Anyone noted for feats of courage or nobility of purpose; especially one who has risked or sacrificed his or her life.
Somewhere in the midst of the endless wisdom of the Buddhists this encouraging, disciplining promise stands forth: "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear." For years these simple words and their profound message have been a source of great hope for me, a way to deal with much unreadiness, an opening to many appearings. Then, late last fall, the promise returned in another form and spoke to me as I wrestled with the possible meanings of the imminent appearance of my friend Martin Luther King Jr. in the pantheon of our nation's official heroes.
Playing with the ancient wisdom, preparing for January 20, 1986, remembering his public lifetime—13 explosive years that became a generation of transformation—two variations on the Buddhist theme emerged: "When the nation is ready, the hero will appear." Or, equally appealing to me: "When the hero is ready, the nation will appear." Taking off from such meandering thoughts, the wondering/wandering began, moving across the serrated surfaces of our wounded, immature, and dangerous nation, probing into the painful, magnificent depths of our broken, beautiful country, my country, Martin's country, still-being-born country.
It may just be, brother, as the old folks used to sing, "We didn't know who you were." Or did we? And did we also know that we really weren't ready for any hero like you, and decided that instead of getting ready, we'd get comfortable?
Of course, some of us tried to get ready for a while, finding a taste of Birmingham and Greenwood and Selma and even a bit of "Black Power, Baby!" to be exciting; but Chicago and Cleveland and Harlem and Detroit and Watts and everywhere North and Black and urban, and everywhere poor, unrepresented, exploited and unemployed, and all the unpronounceable Asian places where women and children and "gooks" were being burned—and all that unromantic, un-American, unglamorous, untelevised, untidy, unsafe, unclear, unsouthern, unpaid-for organizing stuff was just too much for us.
Could it be that some of us did suspect who you were but decided that we first needed to get our piece of the pie, of the rock, of the action—of whatever it is that pieces come off/in?
So it looks like you appeared before we were ready, Brother Martin, and threw us off balance, and we tried to hold on to rocks and pies and sweet, gentle, unchallenging Jesus. Is it too late to get ready? Or should we just smooth you off, and cut you down, and fit you with blinders, and quiet your sound, so that you can crawl into our gilded prison, and be a hero who won't run around with gods—or God?
"WHEN THE HERO is ready...." Were you ready, Martin, to be the hero with a thousand faces for us? Pastor and political leader; seeker and teacher; Moses and Messiah; mystic and mobilizer; husband and lonely traveller; father and world deliverer; child of the Black church and satisfier of all the spiritual hunger endemic to white America; adviser to presidents and friend of the unkempt poor; Martin-of-the-March-on-Washington, eloquent, apparently undemanding dreamer, and Martin-after-the-child-killing-bombings, after the Mississippi murders, after the assassination of beautiful Malcolm, after the funerals for Jimmy Jackson, for James Reeb, for Viola Luizzo, after-Harlem-Martin, after Watts, after Chicago, after Detroit, after Newark, after the flames engulfing monks and naked children in Vietnam? After nightmares?
Were you ready, brother, even though you knew it was coming, for the criticism from black folks, from deep in the ancestral community? Were you ready for those of us who didn't want to upset the tantrum-tending president, who didn't want to be uncomfortable just when things were beginning to look good—for us—who didn't want to lose our jobs, who were aching for the rock, the pie, the action, the mainstream? Were you ready for all of us who turned back when you started holding hands with the poor, with the peacemakers, with the Vietnamese "enemies"? Were you ready for all of us who sang the old refrain, "It's bad enough to be Black without being Red too"? Dear Martin, dear hero, were you ready for all that pain?
And what about all the other folks "of good will" who were eager to set the white South straight, to use troops if necessary to show those "rednecks" what this country is all about—they said—but who didn't think there were any such problems in their community, north and white, and comfortable, and far from all those people whose hands you insisted on holding, and who might just have to get the troops on you if you got out of hand—in the North? Were you ready when they stopped holding and singing and giving and backed away and wondered out loud if you were qualified (meaning ready) to discuss foreign policy and national budgets and militarism and institutional racism and all the things only qualified white experts (and crazy "militant" people) talked about. Does it still hurt in the place where they/we backed off and left you exposed to the coming of the night?
Sometimes I wonder, can you tell us now who was it working in you in those last years, Martin? To get you talking like that and holding hands like that, daring to feel, trying to express the anger, the anguish and the stumbling words of the poor, all the poor, everywhere, standing up to presidents, FBI directors, wealthy donors and death-dealing military and corporate systems like that, calling for new systems and values, acting like you really meant it when you sang the song, "Ain't gonna let NOBODY turn me round, keep on walking, keep on talking, marching up to freedom land." Was it old Dr. DuBois? Luthuli? Lumumba? Gandhi? Claudia Jones? Or just Malcolm sneaking back around and doing it to you, to us? Or could it be that heroes' Daddys and Mommas do play with gods—or God? If so, then maybe the ashes in Atlanta, and everywhere, are still getting themselves ready for your rising, Martin "Phoenix" King. Are you ready? Are we? Are you getting ready? Are we?
WHILE PLAYING, PRAYING, weeping, and laughing through such clearly un-Buddhist thoughts, I came across a slim volume of poetry titled Drum Major for a Dream. Published in India, it consisted of a group of poems by black and white North American authors, expressing their responses to the assassination of Martin King—before he was proclaimed hero. The poets ranged in age from schoolchildren to a retired minister, and their work varied much in quality. But almost all were written within the immediate period of King's death and bear an authenticity based on their fundamental honesty and intentionality.
The key which opened them to my wrestling with the National Hero and with his country was found in the words of Gwendolyn Brooks, that magnificent black mother artist, in the last poem in the book. She said of Martin,
A man went forth with gifts.
He was a prose poem.
He was a tragic grace.
He was a warm music.
He tried to heal the vivid volcanoes.
His ashes are
reading the world.
And in her verses on the living prose poem, on the grace, on the music, she opened up to me permission to inhabit the poetry, to dance in the songs, in the grace of the gods, in the amazing grace of God, and allowed me to stand in volcanic ash and sing. She offered—thank you, Sister Gwen—a possible way to see my friend, the hero, and his nation, our nation, again. So I entered this book of poems and let them pierce me and recognized that though they speak of death, none of them is the end of a conversation.
Indeed, they are now my companions on the endless journey to January 20, 1986, and I share my responses to them simply as an invitation to others, many others—black, white, brown, all others—to join the conversation, bring improvisations to the song, song of death, song of life, getting ready.
CARL WENDELL HINES JR. was in his late 20s when the bullet came, expected, yet never quite prepared for. And he wrote his sorrow in the words:
Now that he is safely dead
let us praise him
build monuments to his glory
sing hosannas to his name.
Dead men make
such convenient heroes; They
cannot rise
to challenge the images
we would fashion from their lives.
And besides,
it is easier to build monuments
than to make a better world.
So, now that he is safely dead
we, with eased consciences
will teach our children
that he was a great man ... knowing
that the cause for which he lived
is still a cause
and the dream for which he died
is still a dream,
a dead man's dream.
Safely? This man who was called by the FBI "the most dangerous Negro ... in this nation"? When will he be safely dead? Listen for him in January. Feel the tremors beneath the monuments. Hear the voices from the black past (and future) singing, beyond "Hosannas," singing with Martin, for Martin, "Ain't no grave can hold my body down."
Perhaps the youngest children will hear best, will receive the voices and the songs through ears and hearts not yet filled with the "Top Forty," through eyes that see beyond MTV and other diversions from getting ready. Perhaps they will sense that great men and women do not really die. Perhaps they will ask about his dream, his cause, suspecting that he lives, somewhere, nearby. Perhaps we will have the wisdom, the knowledge, and the courage to introduce them to the hero who, by the end of his life, was totally committed to the cause of the poor—in Mississippi, in Chicago, in Appalachia, in Vietnam, in Central America, in South Africa, in Memphis.
Perhaps we will tell them that the older dream, the famous, easier-to-handle dream, the forever-quoted dream of 1963 was no longer sufficient for him. Let them know that at the end, when the bullet finally came, he was dreaming of marching on Washington again, but this time to stay there, not just for speeches and for singing, but for audacious, challenging, divinely obedient action—to engage in a campaign of massive civil disobedience to try to stop the functioning of the national government. Tell them he planned to do this, calling on thousands and hundreds of thousands of lovers of justice until the cause of the poor became the nation's first priority, until all people were guaranteed jobs or honest income, until our nation stopped killing Asians abroad and turned to tend to the desperate needs of its people at home.
Tell them that was the last dream. Then perhaps they will understand the bullet, why it came, from whom it came, and why neither the dream nor the dreamer can die in places where women and men and children give themselves to the building of "a better world" as the best monument to the hero. Wasn't that what our unsafe, lively brother kept saying toward the end: "... let us re-dedicate ourselves to the long and bitter—but beautiful—struggle for a new world." Tell the children. Invite them to walk with the hero, with us, in the cause, in the dream, building, always building.
FACING OURSELVES, facing the hero, we listen, developing one of the disciplines of those who are getting ready. We listen to Edith Lovejoy Pierce—and more:
Above the shouts and the shots,
The roaring flames and the siren's blare,
Listen for the stilled voice of the man
Who is no longer there.
Above the tramping of the endless line
Of marchers along the street,
Listen for the silent step
Of the dead man's invisible feet.
Lock doors, put troops at the gate,
Guard the legislative halls,
But tremble when the dead man comes,
Whose spirit walks through walls.
Maybe he's still getting ready, too. Maybe that overwhelming sadness in Washington, D.C., in the sodden spring of 1968, that attempt to carry forward Martin's last great, incomplete dream in the face of endless rain and despair and fear and massive disarray, was only the prelude to the coming Poor People's Campaign. In a nation with almost 40 million persons existing below the poverty level today (18 years later); with thousands of men and women sleeping on the streets of our cities today (trillions of wasted military dollars later); with millions of unemployed and underemployed and no prospects in sight for real humanizing work for an entire generation of young people today (thousands of promises later)—it may be that the rising and the walking of the poor are still to come. It may be that only assassins and their keepers have really heard Martin's words from 18 years ago: "The dispossessed of this nation—the poor, both white and Negro—live in a cruelly unjust society. They must organize a revolution against that injustice, not against the lives of their fellow citizens, but against the structures through which the society is refusing to lift the load of poverty."
Listen. That was the voice of our hero in the last year of his life. That was his revolutionary spirit on behalf of the poor, on behalf of the nation. Are we ready for him? Can that living spirit really walk through walls? Walk through walls? Walk through walls! Like the barricades of our fears, the insistent shelters of our self-centeredness, the barriers of our great need for respectability, security, and safety?
Such walls! Powerful, surrounding us, devouring us, crushing us, filling us, each, all. Can you walk through, Martin? Are you ready? Am I? Are we? "Oh, sometimes it causes me to tremble...."
When the hero appears, will we be ready for the walls to fall?
SOMETIMES THE POET'S VOICE is louder than dear Edith Pierce's measured, church-hymn tones. Another woman, Ruth Howard, coming from another place, shouts from the pages to us (the way Martin could shout, and almost get down into his back-home, Baptist, revival-preacher thing):
O nation of greatness
And of fools—
Hearken, hypocrites
Who mock democracy:
You are as guilty
As that gutless coward
Who held the gun.
Martin Luther King:
Symbol of peace and love,
Voice of human rights and justice.
You could not silence him
Behind prison walls,
By obscene threats—
So you fashioned the bullet.
Dug the grave—
The voice is stilled.
But you will hear him,
For he will live in those
Who loved this man—
A man whose valour
Outshone an army of heroes.
Getting ready is letting the shouts, the accusations, the condemnations cascade over us, enter deep, breaking through the walls, getting under the skin, flaming up the cool. Getting ready, for some of us, is especially hard sometimes, for sometimes it is being black and understanding that poetry is timeless. It is facing the possibility that now, 18 years later, years of "progress" and "equal opportunity" and getting our piece, and swimming in the main one, and sitting paralyzed in front of television for hours at a stretch every impressionable childhood day—that now the screaming, revival-time words might be not just for white folks, but also for us, for us, to warn us of how fearful we are now, today (18 years after the Memphis balcony). How terrified, how guarded we have become against all that Martin King was called then in his last, beleagured years: "Agitator," "Troublemaker," "Radical," "Communist Sympathizer," "Fanatic," "Unpatriotic," "Un-American," "Naive," "Dangerous" to the status quo.
Do we dare fantasize about what we would do now, if he came to our black-administered city, to challenge our leaders; if he tried to question our values, and our bank accounts, and our political machine; if he dared to undermine the morale and question the Christian faith of our soldiers, of our officers, of our chaplains—as they landed in Grenada, as they poise themselves on the borders of Nicaragua, as they enjoy equality of opportunity to press the buttons of nuclear destruction, as they prepare for possible duty fighting "the communists" on behalf of the government of South Africa?
Are we, too, now frightened by people who organize unkempt and unrespectable folks to struggle for peace and justice here and abroad, who now take risks to do for escaping Central Americans what the Underground Railroad did for us—while we stand back, as far back as possible? Are we, too, now frightened in our respectable blackness by all the strange folks who, with King, really believe the way of love is more faithful to Jesus of Nazareth than the well-paid "defense" occupations of war-making, war-thinking, war-threatening, and death? Do we, too, mock democracy each time we back away, each time we fail to participate actively in the struggles for the transformation of our institutions and of this nation, in the defense of the poor, in the protection of the environment, in the questioning of our political leaders, in the teaching of ourselves and our children who the hero really was—and who he, and we, may yet become?
Can we still hear him? "Beautiful voice," we said. But did we hear what he was saying as the bullet smashed its way to our heart? Listening is getting ready. Has he penetrated beyond the messages of the mainstream, into our piece of the rock, to let us know that he was killed because he loved us, because he wanted us to discover our greatness, wanted us to see the task of working for human rights and justice as more crucial than our private agendas of "making it"?
If we listen, we may well hear him. Right at the beginning, back in Montgomery time he dreamed us a great dream when he said to us, "If you will protest courageously, and with dignity and Christian love, when the history books are written in future generations, the historians will have to pause and say, 'There lived a great people—a black people—who injected new meaning and dignity into the veins of civilization.' This is our challenge and our overwhelming responsibility."
He was 26 years old when he saw that, said that, at the very first meeting of the Montgomery bus boycott. What a vision for that child/man! Seeing black folks, the stones the builders had rejected, seeing us, not floating contentedly in the mainstream, but challenging, standing, speaking, acting in such a way that new life, new meaning, new dignity are brought to an entire civilization? Oh Martin, did you mean it? Did you really love us so?
Are we ready? What will it mean to become our best selves, his best dream, "an army of heroes" for peace, for healing, for justice, for the poor, for life-giving rather than life-taking? Does it begin to feel good yet?
When the people are ready....Did we think being black meant automatically being ready for the hero? Did we forget that we now know how to build and maintain prisons, to fashion bullets and missiles and bombs and dig the graves of the human race? Lord, what would Sojourner and Harriet think about such equal opportunity for death? Maybe, just maybe, they'll help their young brother Martin walk through our walls. Help him, sisters. Help us.
Getting ready, getting ready
for the King's walk through.
Sometimes,
Sometimes,
It causes me to tremble.
What about you?
AND WHO KNOWS how much time we have to deal with the trembling walls—white walls, black walls, brown walls, fear walls, respectability walls, personal and national security walls, "my country-right-or-wrong" walls. Who knows? Poet Frank Carmody said:
We have too little time to mourn the dead
Bandage black around our hearts and
arms
Less time yet to build a dream
Of what the living might become.
No matter what the time, we take it, use it, and see the dream. It was grand, it was magnificent, constantly expanding, enlarging his heart and mind, encompassing more than most of us could bear, this dream "of what the living might become."
This was the dream that haunted, besieged, exalted him, that would not let him go. He dreamed a world where all were free to serve their sisters and brothers in compassion and hope, where fear had no dominion, where the resources of the nation were redistributed to meet the needs of the overwhelming majority of its people, where no one had to fear old age, or sickness, or being left alone.
Oh yes, he saw the rest, the other. Couldn't you tell it in his eyes? Didn't we feel the pain of what he saw, this brother from another planet? At all the funerals of his adopted children, sisters, brothers, mommas and daddys, in all the jails, at every confrontation with dogs and guns and frightened, narrowed, brutal men, he had seen us humans, plumbed the depths of our terror, our cruelty, and our fear, he had seen our selfishness and our blind ambition. But he never stopped looking there.
Always the dream pressed him on, inward, outward, deeper. In the depths of our eyes, roaming even then beyond the walls, he had found the fugitive hope, crouching in corners; he had seen the compassion, gnarled and unused, felt the love, unnamed, unrecognized, unclaimed; he had grasped the oneness, denied and bombed to shreds.
Something in this man saw the sister, brother, momma, fearful child in all the strangest places, faces, and he sang to us of what we might become, beyond walls. He sang in the night, sang the old Negro songs, sang the strong black songs, sang the African-sun-soaked songs, and beckoned us, red, white, brown, black, toward ourselves, told us, like Langston—dear brother Langston Hughes—told us, "America is a dream." And we of every hue and cry, we are the dreamers, creating, dreaming with him, singing with him, dancing with him, to Native American songs, Mexican songs, Scotch-Irish songs, German songs, African songs, Vietnamese songs, Puerto Rican songs, Appalachian songs.
Organizing, marching, singing the songs, standing unflinching before the blows, going to jail, challenging all the killers of the dreams, he called us to sing, dream and sing and build—and stand our ground, creating a new reality, a new nation, a new world, ready for the hero. He saw us dancing before we knew we could move. He recognized what we had not seen and was ready to live and die for it, for us.
Early in his movement toward us, back in the '50s, he was sensing what he saw, saying, "I still believe that standing up for the truth of God is the greatest thing in the world ... come what may." And for those of us who are getting ready, what truth of God could be greater than the truth of our rich, unexplored human possibilities, our fundamental oneness, our essential union with all life, and our responsibility to live out that truth, politically, economically, socially, spiritually, ecologically, culturally—come what may—against all the systems of separation, dehumanization, and exploitation which deny "what the living may become."
Are we ready to be what we may become? Oh nation of greatness, do we know who we are, really are, getting ready for our hero, and ourselves?
LONG BEFORE THE bullet struck, Martin was getting ready, moving toward our rendezvous. In the little book of poetry, John Dixon caught a glimpse of the hero becoming, and shared his insight with us:
In an age when courage is measured by destruction, his courage was the courage of love. In an age when men are commodities with a price, he believed in the reality of persons. In an age afraid to believe, his faith was as innocent as a child's. In an age when subtlety of intelligence serves profit or power, his mind sought the liberations of peace.
What embarrassing words: courage, faith, love, liberation, peace. Haven't they been outlawed yet? Lock doors, put troops at the gate, guard the legislative halls against courage and faith, against liberation, love, and peace! But here comes the dead man, living, walking, still becoming. He comes piercing our walls, planting courage, planting faith, planting love and peace toward the center of our hearts, reminding us that "intelligence" was not meant to be another word for espionage, spying, and dirty tricks, that doctorates do not have to be sold to the highest bidders, that there is another way, a liberating way, to be shared, as he used to say "by no D's and PhD's." Are we ready? Is this implacable lover really our hero? Hero of a nation not yet born, but borning. God, are those the pangs we feel?
The poet continues:
He was never perfect in wisdom nor ever pretended to be. He was never perfect in conduct, nor free from temptations nor ever pretended to be. But holiness is not perfection; it is transparency to the grace of God. This great, good man has shattered the pride, the selfishness of millions of men and women. If we now have the courage to begin anew, to remake what his life exposed, then he will be one of those chosen of God to be an instrument of grace.
My flawed and wounded brother-hero, who knew grace better than you? Battered, tossed, and sometimes possessed by your own powerful weaknesses, how did you go on, how did you stand, how did you begin again and again your struggle toward getting ready?
The poet says grace, amazing grace— how sweet, so sweet the sound—lost/found brother-hero, the poet says grace. Depending on it, immersed in it, forever opened to it, by it, you now walk through our walls of guilt and fear and take our battered hands and broken lives and hold us, gently strong, as we rise, again, and again. For we, like you, are chosen to choose, to become what we might be— means of grace, sacraments of life for each other, rainbow warriors, peacemaking de-fenders of the earth, creators of a new world. Is that you, Brother Martin, singing, shouting:
"Rise, shine, give God the glory!"
Getting ready for the hero,
Rise, shine, our light is come.
ARE YOU GETTING READY, Charlotte Nuby, you and your children? Who are you? Where are you now? The note in the book says only, "Charlotte Nuby was a ninth grade student at Haynes Junior High School, Nashville, Tennessee, when she wrote her poem on King's dream."
Growing up around Freedom Rides, sit-ins, wade-ins, kneel-ins, watching marchers wind through Nashville's streets, singing freedom songs in reverberating churches, hearing folks testify about jail and dogs and hoses and billy clubs and Jesus and grace and the beloved community beyond race, you must have known something. Coming of age near Jim Lawson and Diane Nash, near Jim Bevel and Jim Zwerg, listening to Kelly Miller Smith and John Lewis and all the hosts of Nashville's valiant, crucial army of freedom fighters, your child heart had its own understanding of liberation heroes. So when the word from Memphis erupted within us all, you were already becoming woman, writing:
There was a man who loved this land.
But hated discrimination
And took his stand...
He was shunned and criticized by some;
But he always said
'We Shall Overcome.'
He fought for all to see the light
And in their hearts they knew he was
right.
He fought for equality; he fought for peace
And knew that someday
All prejudice would cease.
He fought against war; he fought against
strife
Until a sniper's bullet took his life.
And when we say our prayers of silence
Remember he died for non-violence.
Some things are very clear in the ninth grade, aren't they, Charlotte? Our hero loved us, loved this land, kept seeing beyond our walls, kept tugging at our consciences and our hearts, kept urging us toward what we might become. And took his stand, yes, sometimes against the gates of hell, took his stand. Fought hard, didn't he, Charlotte, fought hard for those he loved. Fought against our mistreatment of black folks, napalmed folks, missile-targeted folks. Took his stand, Charlotte.
Tell it to your children. (Do you have some? What are their names?) Tell it to your nieces and nephews, tell it to your Sunday school children, tell it to your public school children, tell it to your Afrikan Free School children, tell it to your many-manicured-acres-private-school children, tell it to your welfare children, Charlotte.
This was no "nice Christian minister," only; no "great orator," primarily; no "civil rights leader," alone; this was more than a dreamer of black and white children holding hands. Tell them, Sister Charlotte, wherever you are, that he fought for the poor, that he fought against greed, that he was against war, that he was ready to give his life for the way of nonviolence in the struggle for truth and justice.
When you were in the seventh grade, my young sister, and Brother Martin was hemmed up against the wall by all the understandable fires of rage exploding in black communities across the nation, he declared again and again, "I still believe in nonviolence, and no one is going to turn me around on that. If every Negro in the United States turns to violence, I am going to stand up and be the only voice to say that it is wrong."
When he said it, Charlotte, he made it clear that he meant it for Vietnam as well as Chicago, for poor people and for generals. Then he spent the rest of his life, a brief life, trying to fashion creative, audacious modes of nonviolent resistance, trying to transform the values and structures of this nation toward compassionate, radical commitment to the poor, toward a new vision of democratic participation and decision making for us all, moving toward what we might become.
Remind the children that this man with a doctorate died in the midst of a struggle for garbage workers. Tell them, Charlotte, that he was calling black and white young people to refuse to serve in a U.S. military force that is so readily used to suppress poor people and their revolutions. Let them hear Brother Martin calling for another service, a more constructive, creative way of standing up for this land that he loved.
When you say your silent prayers, Charlotte, pray for the children—yours, mine, all—for the courage, the wisdom, and the strength they need to take their heroic stand in the midst of a land that romanticizes violence everywhere. When you enter the silence, dear sister, pray for us older ones—you, me, all—that we may remember who our hero really was, and how he loved us, and what he was calling us to do, to be, to become. Find someone, Charlotte, wherever you are, and hold hands with them, and work with them, and take your stand together.
It's easier when you're holding hands, Charlotte. Martin, though often surrounded by crowds, too often walked alone, with no covenanted community of sharing, seeking, bonded folks. Find what he didn't have, daughter. Get ready. Take your stand, Charlotte Nuby, wherever you've gone from Haynes Junior High. Take your stand. There's a hero waiting. Teach the children. There's a new nation to be born. Getting ready.
TO TEACH THE CHILDREN is to get ready. To rescue them from the slick appeals of militarism, materialism, hedonism, and social irresponsibility is to get ready. For without such nurturing care we allow the poet N. Ellsworth Bunce no space for his vision:
Where one dies thousands rise
For Martyrs are made to
multiply
The stars catch the sound
The wind carries the word...
In the silence
Where he once stood
The children grow
The poor gather
And those now mourning know
They shall be comforted
—Comforted—and fulfilled.
Poets and sweepers, mothers and teachers, deacons and barbers, cashiers and fathers, pastors and nurses, teach the children, everyone, for they are the thousands (and we are the thousands) who must rise to meet the hero. They are the catchers of the falling stars, the riders on the rising wind. Teach the children, let them grow, knowing the hero as a strong man, hearing his voice, seeing his face as lover of this nation, as implacable foe of injustice and exploitation, as courageous speaker of the truth to senators and streetboys, as dreamer of a land where the weak, the sick, the old, the poor, and the tender young become the center of our attention, the focus of our "defense," the apple of our eye.
Gather with others to teach the children, by word and by deed. Conspire, band together in communities of resistance, healing, and hope. Wean them and us from the terrible thought that they become men—or women—by becoming uniformed killers of people and dreams. There is a better way. The brother hero was on pilgrimage toward that way, searching for that way, creating that way. He was obsessed by a voice that would not let him go, drawing him, pressing him on the way, saying, "Blessed are the peacemakers...."
Is it too late to teach the children? Can the churches, with whom he carried on so fierce a lover's quarrel, still get ready, committing themselves to explore alternative ways for the children to become women and men by working with the poor, gathering with the Native Americans in their struggles for survival and renewal, building armies of heroes in the inner cities, developing new links of compassionate solidarity overseas?
Is it too late for us, any, all, to walk through the official hero walls around King and enter into the last years of his life, dance imaginatively into his dream process, open beyond it to the dreams of saints and lovers over generations of struggle and create new realities, take our stand, teaching the children, with and without words, that there is another way, a better way than the way of weapons and war, to be all they can be?
Too late to get ready? Can't be. Late, but not too late, for we are here in this now, and it is ours. And the poor are gathering, and there is much mourning, and the thousands and the tens of thousands (are the faces familiar, hero faces, our faces?) are being called to comfort and fulfill.
ful-fill . To bring into actuality.
ON APRIL 6,1968, two days after the bullet of fear and greed, of racism and militarism, and of ignorance and blindness had finally caught up with her husband, Coretta Scott King offered her own prose poem to the world:
He knew that at any moment his physical life could be cut short, and we faced this possibility squarely and honestly ... with-out bitterness or hatred...He gave his life for the poor of the world—the garbage workers of Memphis and the peasants of Vietnam. Nothing hurt him more than that humankind could find no way to solve problems except through violence. He gave his life in search of a more excellent way, a creative rather than a destructive way. We intend to go on in search of that way, and I hope that you who loved and admired him would join us in fulfilling his dream.
The invitation remains. Clear, precise, direct: Fulfill the dream, fulfill the dreamer, fulfill the people, fulfill the nation. Bring it into actuality. Let it be born. Let us be born.
Calling all friends, lovers, and admirers. The invitation is here, still here. R.S.V.P. Now. It's getting late, and Charlotte is waiting with her children, to stand and walk and struggle and fly with all who will go with the hero, continuing the search, life-long search, soul-deep struggle, for the "more excellent way."
R.S.V.P. Get ready, if you please.
RETURNING TO THE SOURCE, the last half of Gwendolyn Brooks' poem closes the small book and opens the great path:
His Dream still wishes to anoint
the barricades of faith and of control.
His word still burns the center of the sun,
above the thousands and the
hundred thousands.
The word was Justice. It was spoken.
So it shall be spoken.
So it shall be done.
Getting ready. The balm in Gilead flows, and we are anointed, sanctified, rescued from the mainstream, delivered to the ancient river. And the dream expands, explodes around, within, like a burning, rising sun filling every crevice of our trembling, yearning hearts. Justice. Compassion. Peace. Liberation. Love. Let them be spoken, let them be done, in us, in me. Getting ready.
Martin, Fannie Lou, Dorothy, Amzie, Bapu, A.J., Mickey, Sojourner, Clarence—all of you, we're getting ready. Charlotte's getting ready. The children are getting ready, to catch stars, to ride winds, to do the word, to fulfill the dream. Don't know about the nation, Martin, but some justice-loving, people-serving, peace-making folks of every color and condition are getting ready. I see them, feel them, carry them in my bones. Rainbow warriors, anointed, burning bright, getting ready.
Walk through our walls. It's an invitation. R.S.V.P. Soon. 'Cause it's late, and we've found ourselves: We too are the heroes, singing, dancing, unrelenting heroes. And ain' no grave can hold our body down. Are you ready?
Vincent Harding was most recently the author of There Is a River: The Black Struggle for Freedom in America (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981) when this article appeared. He was also the Lang Visiting Professor at Swarthmore College in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, and a Sojourners contributing editor. Drum Major for a Dream (Writers Workshop, Inter Culture Associates, Box 277, Thompson, CT 06277; 1977) is edited by Ira G. Zepp and Melvyn D. Palmer.

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