By Vincent L. Hall
“What does it profit a man to be able to eat at an integrated lunch counter if he doesn’t have enough money to buy a hamburger?” -MLK to striking workers in Memphis Tennessee, March 1968
Here we go again.
It’s Martin Luther King Day again, and since American capitalists don’t sponsor “White Sales” in his honor, some of you are lost. Let me explain what a “White Sale” is for my millennial peeps.
Back in the day, major department stores celebrated holidays by deeply discounting sheets, tablecloths, and bedding. White sales aren’t as big in Dallas and the South as they once were. Klansmen traded sheets for suits and ties and the need for three-holed pillow cases dropped considerably.
But early in the year and especially on President’s Day, major stores would plop down big money for full-page newspaper ads.
The “White Sale” was the bait to get you on the hook and in the store.
These days, millions go to different malls to pay homage to Dr. Martin Luther King and to look into the pool where the 1963 “Dream” was delivered. However, the greatest disservice we can do to his memory is to leave him on the Washington Mall, dreaming!
To leave Dr. King at that lectern is tantamount to memorializing Muhammad Ali in his dressing room. It wasn’t the oratorical elegance or striking black-and-white photos that made either man great; the fights they waged for justice won them prominence and regard.
Ali became famous for naming the round his opponent would fall. Dr. King predicted in 1968 that we would have a Black president within 40 years, and voila, Obama. But both men were haunted and hunted for what they did and what they said.
James Earl Ray was an avid reader, and George Wallace convinced him that King was the White man’s enemy. But Ray did not merely level his Remington Gamemaster .30-06 on Dr. King because he was dreaming.
For Ray and many other Whites, including FBI Chief J. Edgar Hoover, King’s social justice stance beckoned them to warfare. It was King’s work and not some speech or utopian hallucination that called for his assassination.
Before the ink could dry on the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Dr. King was already training for the next battlefront. After beating back the legal tentacles of Jim Crow in the South, King looked northward and led “People to People” for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
Shortly after enlisting other Freedom fighters, King moved into an apartment at 1550 South Hamlin Avenue on Chicago’s West Side.
King lived part-time in Chicago but beat the streets often in his new ‘hood” to meet his neighbors and assess the conditions of Chicago’s slums.
Somewhere along the line, King realized that slum living had a direct tethering to slum wages.
By March 1968, Dr. King sent a telegram to Cesar Chavez, who was fasting on behalf of farm workers in California:
“As brothers in the fight for equality, I extend the hand of fellowship and goodwill and wish continuing success to you and your members. …You and your valiant fellow workers have demonstrated your commitment to righting grievous wrongs forced upon exploited people. We are together with you in spirit and in determination that our dreams for a better tomorrow will be realized.”
Dr. King’s 1963 manifesto demanded fairness in employment, so he fought for changes in labor laws and practices. Here is what he said to organizers and striking workers in Memphis just days before his death.
“Now our struggle is for genuine equality, which means economic equality, for we know now that it isn’t enough to integrate lunch counters. What does it profit a man to be able to eat at the swankiest integrated restaurant when he doesn’t even earn enough money to take his wife out to dine? What does it profit one to have access to the hotels of our cities, and the hotels of our highways, when we don’t earn enough money to take our family on a vacation? What does it profit one to be able to attend an integrated school when he doesn’t earn enough money to buy his children school clothes?”
So I ask; what does it profit you to have a King Holiday if you ain’t fightin’? Don’t just talk about Dr. King, fight for what he believed in.
Where is your fight?
A long-time Texas Metro News columnist, Dallas native Vincent L. Hall is an author, writer, award-winning writer, and a lifelong Drapetomaniac.
