Wisconsin Public Television University Place History Sandwiched In  Michael Hecht, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr: A Personal Perspective  March 1, 2011 UP558     cc >> Beth Lemke: Welcome, ladies and gentlemen. We're very happy to have you all here today at the Wisconsin Historical Museum. Today it's our pleasure to have our local artist Michael Hecht here to present. He is going to be presenting Martin Luther King, in his perspectives, and it's an exciting afternoon because we have some music accompanying with it. So please help me welcome Michael to our program. [APPLAUSE] § §  § How many roads § § Must a man walk down § § Before you call him a man? § >> Michael Hecht: Good afternoon everybody. I want to thank everybody for making the effort. Thoreau had a great line that for artists, do what you know. So about 10-15 years ago, my artwork, I cut paper, but without my books and reading and life experiences, I wouldn't have the triggers for my art. I learned about 40 years ago from a teacher. 

He asked me how many times did I see Vincent van Gogh's "Starry Night." So I said, Bruce, I must have seen it three times or more every year. He says, so that's quite a lot. He says, so now you're about in your 20s, so every decade "Starry Night" changed because you brought something different to it. And I never forgot it. 40 years later, one of the heroes that I wanted to look at again is Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. When I was in my high school years I attended all the marches in Washington. I was fortunate enough to do silk screen artwork to raise money for the Black Panthers. I met quite a few people who are now in the history books for that time. But at that time I only saw Dr. King as something on TV or at the marches, long distance, a political person. I didn't give him the dimensions of just a human being. 

It's important, I gave out this photo and it's a photo of him Coretta sitting at a kitchen table like any other couple, and you can see the weight of the struggle on them. And I love it for that fact. And that's what my program today is really about. You can see their faces. Dr. King and Coretta gave up comfortable lifestyles for him to assume the mantle for the civil rights and they both knew it. One of the things early on that struck me about Dr. King is that both him and his wife knew the moment he said yes to being the leader for the movement, down the road he most likely would never see his children graduate high school, college, marriages. He knew his life was shortened. And that had a tremendous affect on me when I was going back over material about Dr. King. And you'll see the photos and some of the headlines from local papers here. Dr. King was guarded. 

He said history is ultimately guarded by spirit and not matter. And he held that true. When I look at a certain artist or if I come across and book that I want to use as far as my artwork, I say where did he or she come from? Where did they get that? And I want to get out of the way and let Dr. King talk. This is from his autobiography. And let's go back to certain moments in his childhood. And this is one with his father. They're going into a shoe store, and the father wants to buy his son shoes. And the shoe clerk comes up to Dr. King and his dad, and he's a young boy, and the clerk says, "I'll be happy to wait on you if you'll just move to those seats in the rear." Dad immediately retorted, "There's nothing wrong with these seats. We're quite comfortable here." "Sorry," said the clerk, "But you'll have to move." "We'll either buy shoes sitting here," my father retorted, "Or we won't buy shoes at all." Where upon he took me by the hand and walked out of the store. This was the first time I had seen dad so furious. 

That experience revealed to me at a very early age that my father had not adjusted to the system, and he played a great part in shaping my conscience. I still remember walking down the street beside him as he muttered, "I don't care how long I have to live with this system, I will never accept it." And he never has. I remember riding with him another day when he accidentally drove past a stop sign. A policeman pulled up to the car and said, "All right, boy, pull over and let me see your license."  My father instantly retorted, "Let me make it clear to you that you aren't talking to a boy. If you persist in referring to me as a boy, I will be forced to act as if I don't hear a word you are saying." The policeman was so shocked in hearing a Negro talk to him so forthrightly that he didn't quite know how to respond. He nervously wrote the ticket and left the scene as quickly as possible. Dr. King goes on and talks, he's getting a little older now. "There was a pretty strict system of segregation at Atlanta. For a long, long time I could not go swimming until there was a Negro YMCA. A Negro child in Atlanta could not go to any public park. 

I could not go to the so-called white schools. In many of the stores downtown I couldn't go to the lunch counter to buy a hamburger or a cup of coffee. I could not attend any of the theatres. There were one or two Negro theatres, but they didn't get any of the main pictures. If they did get them, they got them two or three years later." He's now in high school. "I remember another experience I used to have in Atlanta. I went to high school on the other side of town to the Booker T Washington High School. I had to get the bus in what was known as the Fourth Ward and ride over to the west side. In those days rigid patterns of segregation existed on the buses so that Negroes had to sit in the back of buses. Whites were seated in the front, and often if whites didn't get on the buses, those seats were still reserved for whites only. 

So Negroes had to stand over empty seats. I would end up having to go to the back of that bus with my body, but every time I got on that bus I left my mind up on the front seat. And I said to myself, one of these days I'm going to put my body up there where my mind is. When I was 14, I traveled from Atlanta to Dublin, Georgia, with a dear teacher of mine, Mrs. Bradley. I participated in an oratorical contest there, and I succeeded in winning the contest. My subject, ironically enough, was the Negro and the Constitution. That night, Mrs. Bradley and I were on a bus returning to Atlanta. Along the way some white passengers boarded the bus, and the white driver ordered us to get up and give the whites our seats. We didn't move quickly enough to suit him so he began cursing us. I intended to stay right in that seat. 

But Mrs. Bradley urged me up saying we had to obey the law. We stood up in the aisle for 90 miles to Atlanta. That night will never leave my memory. It was the angriest I had ever been in my life." Before I go, just one of the things I also learned about Dr. King, he says that his daughter was watching TV one day and there was an advertisement about an amusement park. And he knew at the time that Negroes weren't allowed to go to the amusement park, and it reaffirmed his willingness to be in the movement, but as a father he sat her down on the bed and had to explain to her why she could not go to the amusement park. This is February 24, 1956, quoted in the New York Times. "There are those who would try to make of this a hate campaign. This is not war between the white and the Negro, but a conflict between justice and injustice. This is bigger than the Negro race revolting against the white. We are seeking to improve not the Negro of Montgomery, but the whole of Montgomery. 

If we are arrested every day, if we are exploited every day, if we are trampled over every day, don't ever let anyone pull you so low as to hate them. We must use the weapon of love. We must have compassion and understanding for those who hate us. We must realize so many people are taught to hate us that they are not totally responsible for their hate. But we stand in life at midnight. We are always on the threshold of a new dawn." 1956. We jump to 1963. Driving to work during the week, I'm pretty much my 5:30, 6:00 in the morning, and the one thing that really gets me, and this next excerpt I always think of, is the guy coming towards me with his brights on and I can't tell you how many times I'm like holding back on, hey, I got to remember what Dr. King said. And this is a statement he made at the 16th Street Baptist church. And he's talking to his brother. 

"The reason I can't follow the old eye for an eye philosophy is that it ends up leaving everybody blind. Somebody must have sense and somebody must have religion. I remember some years ago my brother and I were driving from Atlanta to Chattanooga, Tennessee, and for some reason the drivers that night were very discourteous or they were forgetting to dim their lights. And finally AD looked over at me and he said, 'I'm tired of this now, and the next car that comes by here and refuses to dim the lights, I'm going to refuse to dim mine.' I said to him, 'Wait a minute, don't do that. Somebody has to have some sense on this highway, and if somebody doesn't have sense enough to dim the lights, we'll all end up destroyed on this highway.' And I'm saying the same thing for us here in Birmingham. We are moving up a mighty highway toward the city of freedom. There will be meandering points. There will be curves and difficult moments and we will be tempted to retaliate with the same kind of force that the opposition will use, but I'm going to say, wait a minute Birmingham, somebody has got to have some sense in Birmingham." And my Brooklyn, New York City, mouth gets in the way, so I'm going to take some water. This is a genuine accent.  The Montgomery bus boycott is the pivotal moment for the Civil Rights Movement. 

And I'd like to read you a little bit longer excerpt from "The Days of Martin Luther King," Jim Bishop. "The evening was raw, the sunset early and the twin eyes of cars and buses were a cold flame against the wind on Cleveland Avenue. The bus would be along any minute. The people, mostly black, waited along the curb at strategic places to be first aboard, first to get a seat. The slender, middle-aged woman holding the bag in front of her with both hands was cold and irritable. She was Mrs. Rosa Parks, a seamstress, a neat person with glasses and a nice manner of speech, but that day had been a bit too much. Behind the rimless glasses she watched for that bus. Her feet ached, ached like a sore tooth. She was not complaining even to herself, but it seemed that life consisted of nothing more than crouching on her toes with a mouth full of pins before white women who thought that the hem was too long or too short, or it hadn't been sewn straight, or the neckline was too high, too low, too revealing, or not revealing enough. Besides, Mrs. Parks had done some Christmas shopping. 

Had she been less intelligent, phlegmatic perhaps, she would have been more content. But she was intelligent, sensitive, a woman who devoured books and was politically conscious. This can be a dangerous combination when the feet hurt and the stomach doesn't have a hot dinner to look forward to, just a seat on a bus. Mrs. parks followed the rule for colored folks and found a seat in the fifth row left directly behind the first four rows for the white folks. When she sat, the soreness of her feet eased a bit and she looked out the window. She didn't care how long the bus took to get her to her street. Brakes sighed and the bus started forward, fat and indolent, and then it stopped again. More people got on, mostly black. Rosa Parks could hardly bear to watch them run up the two steps, drop their coins and run back down, bumping into others to get to that rear door before it closed. The bus started, moved a little and stopped. 

More blacks got aboard, plus a few whites. Mrs. Parks didn't look up to note that all the seats were now filled. Her interest was in her feet. The driver looked. All the seats were filled. A few whites stood up front. 'All right, all right,' the bus driver said looking at Mrs. Parks and two other blacks. 'Come on, get in the back.' Rosa Parks looked up at the strong white man at her side waiting. Three blacks got up and walked to the back. 'Get out of that seat,' the driver said pointing at Mrs. Parks. 

All he saw was a small dark woman with a circle of braids and a glint of light from her glasses. 'No,' she said, 'I won't.' Rosa Parks was not frightened. She had been secretary of the local NAACP chapter for years, and she was attuned to race relations and knew the difference between the loud and the ominous. This threat was ominous. Conversely, the bus driver seemed to understand that this black woman was one who was going to sit there just to defy him. So he yanked the ratchet on the emergency break, ducked under the steel bar, and left to look for a policeman. Suddenly the chattered stopped. All the birds, dark and light inside that bus, fell silent. They knew what he had said. They knew what she had said. 

There was seldom a confrontation except once in a while between an intoxicated Negro and a surly driver. This was different. An apparently gentle person, one who might wear gloves as a habit, had given the driver a flat 'no.' And there was nothing he could do except call a policeman. If the word got around Montgomery that a small woman had successfully defied a big white brute of a man on the Cleveland Avenue bus, well this would not be December 1, 1955, it would be hallelujah day all over the city. § §  September 15, 1963, there was a bombing in an Alabama Baptist church. Four young girls died in the bombing. This is Dr. King, his eulogy. "Yet they died nobly. They are the martyred heroines of a holy crusade for freedom and human dignity. So they have something to say to us in their death. 

They have something to say to every minister of the gospel who has remained silent beyond the safe security of stained-glass windows. They have something to say to every politician who has fed his constituents the stale bread of hatred and the spoiled meat of racism. They have something to say to a federal government that has compromised with the undemocratic practices of southern Dixiecrats and the blatant hypocrisy of right-wing northern Republicans. They have something to say to every Negro who passively accepts the evil system of segregation and stands on the sidelines in the midst of a mighty struggle for justice. They say to each of us, black and white alike, that we must substitute courage for caution. They say to us that we must be concerned not merely about who murdered them, but about the system, the way of life, and the philosophy which produced the murderers. Their death says to us that we must work passionately and unrelentingly to make the American dream a reality. So they did not die in vain. God still has a way of wringing good out of evil. History has proven over and over again that unmerited suffering is redemptive. 

The innocent blood of these little girls may well serve as the redemptive force that will bring new light to this dark city. The Holy Scripture says a little child shall lead them. The death of these little children may lead our whole Southland from the low road of man's inhumanity to man to the high road of peace and brotherhood. These tragic deaths may lead our nation to substitute an aristocracy of character for an aristocracy of color. The spilled blood of these innocent girls may cause the whole citizenry of Birmingham to transform the negative extremes of a dark past into the positive extremes of a bright future. Indeed this tragic event may cause the white south to come to terms with its conscience. So in spite of the darkness of this hour, we must not despair. We must not become bitter, nor must we harbor the desire to retaliate with violence. We must not lose faith in our white brothers. Somehow we must believe that the most misguided among them can learn to respect the dignity and the worth of all human personality. 

May I now say a word to you, the members of the bereaved families? It is almost impossible to say anything that can console you at this difficult hour and remove the deep clouds of disappointment which are floating in your mental skies. But I hope you can find a little consolation from the universality of this experience. Death comes to every individual. There is an amazing democracy about death. It is not aristocracy for some of the people, but a democracy for all of the people. Kids die and beggars die. Rich men die and poor men die. Old people die and young people die. Rich men die and poor men die. Old people die. 

Death is the irreducible common denominator of all men. I hope you can find some consolation from Christianity's affirmation that death is not the end. Death is not a period that ends the great sentence of life, but a comma that punctuates it to more lofty significance. Death is not a blind alley that leads the human race into a state of nothingness, but an open door which leads man into life eternal. Let this daring faith, this great invincible surmise, be your sustaining power during these trying days." Dr. King is signing books in a book store in New York City. And he looks up and the woman had said to him, "Are you Dr. King?" And he goes, "Yes." And at that moment, he's stabbed in the heart with a letter opener. "He looked up from a book. 'Yes I am.' The expression on the woman's face changed swiftly. 'You son...' she screamed and she took a long Japanese letter opener from her purse. 'Luther King,' she shouted, 'I've been after you for years.' The blade came down hard. 

Tore through the white shirt and into his ribs. Only the handle was sticking from his chest. Martin Luther King sat quietly knowing what danger there was in moving. The others waiting in line began to scream. His attacker ran for the front door, but was stopped by employees." He knew, Dr. King, even at the moment as he's sitting there that if someone went and tried to pull the letter opener out, the chances are he would die. And so what happened is he's taken to the hospital with the letter opener remaining in his heart. The doctors start to work on Dr. King, and they realize that even if he coughs or if he sneezes, the chances are he can burst everything. And what they're able to do is remove the letter opener successfully from him, and so, of course, Dr. King survives this attack. We jump to Memphis, Tennessee. Originally Dr. King had gone down there for a March 28th march in support of the sanitation workers. 

And what happened is, it was a failed march. There was violence occurring. People were injured. He's very depressed about it. Dr. King was heavily influenced by Mahatma Gandhi. Believed the utmost in nonviolence, and when this occurred he was almost, Reverend Abernathy says, inconsolable. Of course, a week later, in the meantime, they're asked to come back and do another march and prove to the nation and the world that there could be a successful march. And so Dr. King comes down to Memphis and many of his, Reverend Abernathy, other members that had been with him through all the Civil Rights Movement had said he never felt good about being in Memphis. He had nothing against the city or people, but it was almost similar, years ago I had done a program on President Lincoln, Dr. King had premonitions. One of the things that struck me about it that Andrew Young and Reverend Abernathy would talk about is that when we would march the streets and maybe there was a backfire of a car, Dr. King would bend over. 

He was always expecting the bullet. He was always expecting somewhere someone was going to assassinate him. A firecracker going off. That day in Memphis he goes to the church, he's going to speak that night. And, again, Reverend Abernathy and other people say that he wasn't in his best of spirits. Besides his own premonitions about being in Memphis, the failed march weighed heavily on him, the violence that occurred, and they could just tell from the way he was talking. During the day, in fact, one of the members, as he was talking, was kind of off beat and he was banging his bible in reinforcing the statements that Dr. King was saying and his close associate Billy -- noticed that even that loud sound on the bible was making Dr. King nervous up there. So what happens is there's a heavy thunderstorm that night in this mason church, and he's asked to come and talk. And Dr. King turns to his great friend, his best friend, Reverend Abernathy, and he says, "I can't do it." I cannot do it, you'll have to go in my stead. And Reverend Abernathy says, "Dr. King." He says, I just, I can't do it. 

So Reverend Abernathy recognizes that his friend is in need and he says, "I'll go." It's a tremendous thunderstorm. Reverend Abernathy is driving  there, and he figures the nation is going to be there, the media is going to be there, we're not going to have that many people, the failed march, the heavy thunderstorm, it's going to look like our Civil Rights Movement is starting to wane. As the car approaches the church, hundreds if not thousands of people are outside the church. They had to put loud speakers outside the church because the church was packed. Reverend Abernathy tells that he runs to the nearest phone, calls up Dr. King and says, Martin, you have to come. They're not here to hear me; they're here to hear you. And you could just picture him, and I kind of get a picture from the readings, Dr. King is in a rumpled suit, sport jacket of some kind he throws on. He's convinced his great friend wouldn't have asked him if he didn't need him to come. So Reverend Abernathy tosses on some kind of a rain coat, and I can just picture, here's Dr. King in his wrinkled clothing and he comes to the church and it's noted in writings that as he walks down the aisle, here's Dr. King again just looking totally disheveled. And people are reaching out similar to this from the pews to touch any part of him. 

To touch any part of his clothing, and, if they're lucky enough, to touch something flesh. So Dr. King comes up to the podium. They made sure that the fans were on because the shutters in the church made a lot of sounds. And, again, his close friends didn't want him to be unnerved by these loud sounds. And this is what Dr. King-- "In the New York Times the next morning, they had if I had merely sneezed, I would have died. Well, about four days later, they allowed me, after the operation, after my chest had been opened, and the blade had been taken out, to move around in the wheel chair in the hospital. They allowed me to read some of the mail that came in, and from all over the states and the world, kind letters came in. I read a few, but one of them I will never forget. I had received one from the President and the Vice-President. I've forgotten what those telegrams said. 

I'd received a visit and a letter from the Governor of New York, but I've forgotten what that letter said. But there was another letter that came from a little girl, a young girl who was a student at the White Plains High School. And I looked at the letter, and I'll never forget it. It said simply, 'Dear Dr. King, I am a ninth grade student at the White Plains High School,' she said. 'While it should not matter, I would like to mention that I'm a white girl. I read in the paper of your misfortune and of your suffering and I read that if you would have sneezed you would have died, and I'm simply writing to you to say that I'm so happy that didn't sneeze.' I want to say that I too am happy that I didn't sneeze. Because if I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been around here in 1960, when students all over the south started sitting-in at lunch counters. And I knew that as they were sitting in, they were really standing up for the best in the American dream, and taking the whole nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the Founding Fathers in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been around here in 1961, when we decided to take a ride for freedom and ended segregation in interstate travel. If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been around in 1962, when Negroes in Albany, Georgia, decided to straighten their backs up, and whenever men and women straighten their backs up, they're going somewhere because a man can't ride your back unless it is bent. 

If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been around in 1963 when the people of Birmingham, Alabama, aroused the conscience of this nation and brought into being the Civil Rights Bill. If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have had a chance to later that year in August to try to tell America about a dream that I had had. If I sneezed, I wouldn't have been down in Selma, Alabama, to see the great movement there. If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been in Memphis to see a community rally around those brothers and sisters who are suffering. I'm so happy that I didn't sneeze. I left Atlanta this morning, and as we got started on the plane, there were six of us. The pilot said over the public address system, 'We are sorry for the delay, but we have Dr. Martin Luther King on the plane. And to be sure that all of the bags were checked, and to be sure that nothing would be wrong on the plane, we had to check out everything carefully. We've had the plane protected and guarded all night.' And then I got into Memphis. And some began to say the threats, or talk about the threats that were out, or what would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers. 

Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And he's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. 

And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And I'm happy tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the lord." § §  April 3, everything goes fine, he gives his speech. April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King is assassinated. My favorite speech is a real short one, but I think it really, for me, it defines the man. I'll just take a drink. 

Of course, with apologies, I can't do justice to the man. This is called "A Drum Major for Righteousness." And I think it's good with the pictures that you have in front of you, maybe you can look at that while I read this last speech. "Every now and then I guess we all think realistically about that day when we will be victimized with what is life's final common denominator, that something that we call death. We all think about it. And every now and then I think about my own death, and I think about my own funeral. And I don't think of it in a morbid sense. Every now and then I ask myself, what is it that I would want said? And I leave the word to you this morning. I'd like somebody to mention that day that Martin Luther King, Jr, tried to give his life serving others. I'd like for somebody to say that day that Martin Luther King, Jr, tried to love somebody. I want you to say that day that I tried to be right on the war question. 

I want you to be able to say that day that I did try to feed the hungry. I want you to be able to say that day that I did try in my life to clothe those who were naked. I want you to say on that day that I did try in my life to visit those who were in prison. I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity. Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter. I won't have any money to leave behind. I won't have the fine and luxurious things of life to leave behind. 

But I just want to leave a committed life behind. And that's all I wanted to say. If I can help somebody as I pass along, if I can cheer somebody with a word or song, if I can show somebody he's traveling wrong, then my living will not be in vain. If I can do my duty as a Christian ought, if I can bring salvation to a world once wrought, if I can spread the message as the master taught, then my living will not be in vain." § §  And in closing, I'd just like to have everybody-- Okay, this is high tech, as you see, but this is the only high tech I know.  >> Thank you very kindly, my friends. As I listen to Ralph Abernathy and his eloquent and generous introduction, and then thought about myself, I wondered who he was talking about. [LAUGHTER]  It's always good to have your closest friend and associate to say something good about you, and Ralph Abernathy is the best friend that I have in the world. I'm delighted to see each of you here tonight in spite of a storm warning. You reveal that you are determined to go on anyhow. >> I just wanted us to have a little, to hear Dr. King. 

In closing, I would like to thank Beth Lemke and the Wisconsin Historical Museum for having us here. A special thanks to my friend Linda Schwartz for accompanying. And thanks again for your efforts in coming to hear the program. [APPLAUSE]