On March 14, 1968 Martin Luther King delivered one of his last speeches in what is now the gymnasium at Grosse Pointe South High School under such tense conditions that King said afterwards he had never received such vocal opposition at an indoor meeting.
The speech, titled “The Other America”, and the events leading to it are wonderfully captured on the Grosse Pointe Historical Society’s web site. A press clipping tells of months of school board meetings debating whether to allow the use of the gym. The Board relented (5-2) only after taking out a $1 million insurance policy to protect against expected damages. The police chief of Grosse Pointe Farms actually sat on King’s lap in the police escorted car ride for fear of assassination.
To truly appreciate its soaring rhetoric, the rousing response from the majority of the 2,700 in attendance, and King’s give and take with audible hecklers, I encourage you to listen to the speech on the Grosse Pointe Public School System’s web site.
Most would probably concur that civil rights and attitudes toward race relations are better now than in King’s day. Such a civil rights leader today would be quite unlikely to experience what one did in 1968. But a read of his courageous and righteously indignant speech, in light of conditions 42 years later, supports the idea that the Other America of which King spoke languishes to this day.
King lamented the 8.8% unemployment rate among Blacks in 1968 and a rate among Black youths between 40 to 45%. A little research showed the national unemployment rate in March 1968 was an incredibly low 3.7%.
Today the national unemployment rate is 9.1%, but 15.8% among African Americans and the same staggering 44% among Black youths. King would be further discouraged to know, 42 years later, that one of every four African Americans lives in poverty – a rate 174% higher than non-Hispanic Whites.
King decried the state of education for Blacks in the Other America: “Every year thousands finish high school reading at a seventh, eighth and sometimes ninth grade level. Not because they’re dumb, not because they don’t have the native intelligence, but because the schools are so inadequate, so over-crowded, so devoid of quality, so segregated if you will, that the best in these minds can never come out.”
Today we know that many students, indeed most in some of our larger urban school districts, do not even graduate. In Detroit Public Schools less than 1 of 4 students earn a diploma. And how sadly ironic that just last week one Robert Bobb proposed option to “fix” Detroit Public Schools would increase class sizes to as high as 62 students. Meanwhile student achievement among the de facto segregated DPS is the lowest in recorded history.
King called for a re-ordering of national priorities and lamented the consequences to “domestic destinies” as the result of the United States at that time “spending almost thirty-five billion dollars a year to fight what I consider an unjust, ill-considered, evil, costly, unwinnable war.” He spoke of Vietnam.
42 years later, as America to struggles with many of the same domestic social issues King detailed on that March day, we spend $12 billion a month to wage war in Iraq.
King warned “that there is no more dangerous development in our nation than the constant building up of predominantly negro central cities ringed by white suburbs. This will do nothing but invite social disaster.” I suspect his willingness to speak in Grosse Pointe at that time was not coincidental. The question is, if King were alive today, would he say we have averted disaster?
The Other America of King’s speech, that struck such a raw nerve all those years ago, is in some respects more discernible than ever. His words stand as strong , relevant and necessary today as they did then.
Befitting his famous vision, concluding his Grosse Pointe speech, King portended “however difficult it is during this period, however difficult it is to continue to live with the agony and the continued existence of racism, however difficult it is to live amidst the constant hurt, the constant insult and the constant disrespect, I can still sing we shall overcome.”
King met his cataclysmic end just three short weeks after leaving Grosse Pointe.
Martin Luther King, Jr. Day gives us cause to reflect on this. But King would urge more than reflection, just as he did in Grosse Pointe 42 years ago when he spoke of the “appalling silence and indifference of the good people who sit around and say wait on time.” But I also suspect the indefatigable King would enlist us all for persistent effort to address the problem of racism and the Other America because, like him, we “realize that the time is always right to do right.”
5 responses to “Martin Luther King, the Other America, and Grosse Pointe”
Thanks, Brendan, for an elegant tribute to a remarkable man. Growing up in the sixties, I remember those tumultuous times through the eyes of youth. Malcolm X, Robert and John Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. were gunned down in their prime on prime time TV. You point out worsened similarities to current times, but skim the violence and educational comparisons from then until now.
The failing DPS scores came with the advent of school reform: school choice and educated mobility had the unintended, but predictable, consequence of ironically leaving the children (with the least resources-the lesser privileged that King called the “other America”) behind. Our modern society is failing DPS, as our society once failed all people of color. We send kids to schools in need of physical repair, from homes where the children are under-nourished and under-parented. Those with the resources and means have left DPS, sadly. During those tumultuous sixties, that same system boasted some of the best schools in our state. The riots in Detroit that summer of 68 precipitated white flight to the suburbs. Now we see black flight from the city.
The violence during those years was specifically targeted at civil rights leaders or acted out with wanton destruction of property during mass riots in the hot summer months. Detroit will never be the same.
Now the violence seems unpredictable, directed at innocents. Contemporary war is random acts of suicide assassins: kamikaze-like airplanes flown into the World Trade Center, or ballistics-armed passengers on public transportation. Crazed young men open fire into innocents, gunning down random people for random reasons in sniper-like seclusion or media-blasted mass murders occurring in mere minutes.
I leave you and your readers to draw conclusions and make more predictions. Like you, I am hopeful that our racism has tempered. But I am also fearful that class-ism still runs rampant and wreaks as much emotional and systemic damage. I am ever more fearful that the gap between the privileged and King’s other America widens in our current times with our current politics in our current economy.
Thanks from New York as well. Ranae’s comment about classism is well taken. It’s ironic to hear the charge of “class warfare” used today against those seeking to protect America’s middle class — especially so given the concentration of wealth at the very top in recent decades.
By 1968, King had come to realize that racism was one facet of a more complex problem of equality: including class. His writing about the Vietnam War (which he ultimately opposed), for example, underscored the class-based draft system (exemptions for current college students), and the financial drain the war caused away from social spending. I suspect he’d have similar comments about the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars today.
King’s focus broadened in his last days, encompassing all people, black and white, rich and poor, developed and undeveloped countries. In fact, his “other America” phrase was likely a reference to Michael Harrington’s 1962 expose on poverty in America “The Other America” — a groundbreaking book that influenced JFK and LBJ: thus the “War on Poverty”.
We have made much progress in all these matters, I think. Let’s be sure not to forget, or take for granted, and lose those gains, helped along by thousands of our predecessors, including King.
Thanks, Brendan for a wonderful reflection on an American hero. We have made progress, to be sure, but as you make clear, we are not there, yet.
Recently a friend now retired frm teaching in Grosse Pointe asked me if I had seen this article because I was not only a yes vote for his coming but spoke out strongly on the subject. As a result I received numerous threatening calls. Most I let roll over me. However one 3:00 A.M. call said “You have two young kids dont you, Short?” This call concerned me. In discussing what I had gone through with Dr. King (apparently he had been told five of us prevailed said to me “Let it wash over you and keep your eye on the objective.” A short time later he was assassinated.
Jack,
Thanks for sharing your recollections on this historic event. You had to show real courage to do what you did. I remain in contact with Barbra Thompson, who I believe also served with you on the Board at that time. I am pretty well convinced there is no “easy time” to serve on a school board, and we have many challenges now, but those were turbulent, even violent times.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, but mores so thanks for your service and leadership. I would love to chat more with you.
Regards,
Brendan