John Whitehead's Commentary

I may not get there with you, but I know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land.--Martin Luther King, Jr., Macon Temple, April 3, 1968

In 1968, the attention of the nation was focused on the tiny Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn., where an assassin's bullet had ripped a three-inch hole through the head of Martin Luther King, Jr.

It was April 4th, and King had come to Memphis in support of striking sanitation workers. There was much turmoil surrounding his appearance in Memphis. But in a climate of racial hatred, suspicion and paranoia, King knew what to expect. In a somewhat prophetic tone, he had proclaimed the night before to a capacity audience at Memphis' Macon Temple that his time may indeed have been at an end. Less than 24 hours later, King was dead.

When King was martyred, America lost its most effective prophet. Indeed, oppressed people, both at home and abroad, lost their most articulate spokesman. His prophetic voice mirrored a 20th century America that had become a global power but also one that had sacrificed some of its most treasured values on the altar of institutionalized racism, economic injustice and international influence.

King was like most other men except that he had a rare, distinguishing quality: a willingness, almost a compulsion, to take moral stands even in the face of disagreements with other black leaders--such as his stand against the Vietnam War--and even in the face of death threats. Because of this, King, like few before him, was resurrected as a national icon and a symbol of freedom for the downtrodden.

The after-shock of King's assassination would plunge the Lorraine Motel, a minority-owned business in the south end of downtown Memphis, into a long, steep decline. By 1982, the motel was a foreclosed property.

Fortunately, a group of Memphis citizens grew concerned that the historic Lorraine Motel would be destroyed through continued neglect and indifference. They joined together and formed the Martin Luther King Memorial Foundation to save the Lorraine. The outcome was the opening of the National Civil Rights Museum in 1991, which now adjoins the Lorraine Motel.

I recently had the pleasure of touring this fascinating museum. Filled with artifacts and replicas of the African-American struggle for freedom, this is a must-see for anyone with even a remote interest in the intense civil rights struggles faced by African-Americans. In fact, a visit to the museum should be a requirement for school-aged children.

Growing up in the 1950s and '60s, I remember watching on television the beatings and other brutalities that were heaped on black Americans who dared to seek equal treatment. Walking through the museum brought back the ugliness of those years but also stressed how far this race of people has come since those days.

The museum is no small venture. The exhibits cover the struggle for civil rights from 1619 to the present day. Here you can learn about abolitionists William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass and other early beacons for freedom. The Jim Crow or Black Code laws that limited the freedom of black Americans are highlighted. The legendary 1954 U.S. Supreme Court case, Brown v. Board of Education, leads into the struggle that focused on Central High School in Little Rock. Black students simply wanted to attend the same school as whites but were prohibited.

There is the Montgomery bus boycott, where Rosa Parks entered history by sitting where she didn't belong. This set off the first of many demonstrations and introduced the nation to the leadership of 26-year-old Martin Luther King.

You learn about James Meredith, who in 1961 sought and was denied admission to the University of Mississippi. That same year, seven African-Americans and six whites joined forces on freedom rides to expose the continuing segregation on buses and trains. They vowed to ride a Greyhound bus from Washington, DC, to New Orleans. Although they were beaten and jailed, and thus never made it, they became a symbol for the continuing struggle for equal rights.

This and much more is found at the National Civil Rights Museum (some of which is available on the museum's website: www.civilrightsmuseum.org). But the most chilling and disturbing part of the museum is preserved across the street from the Lorraine, where the story of King's assassin is told. You can peer out the window to the second story of the Lorraine and see Room 306, where King stayed. From there, you actually have the same vantage point as the murderer. A wreath now hangs on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel.

As with most national holidays, there is little one can do to participate in history. The National Civil Rights Museum, however, changes all that. There the dream still lives. As Dr. King proclaimed on the night before he was murdered, "We've got to give ourselves to this struggle until the end. Nothing would be more tragic than to stop at this point in Memphis. We've got to see it through."

No truer words were ever spoken.

ABOUT JOHN W. WHITEHEAD

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His most recent books are the best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, and a debut dystopian fiction novel, The Erik Blair Diaries. Whitehead can be contacted at staff@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.

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