Perspective:
By Andy Porras
In the Spring of 1963, seeking support for the March on Washington, Dr. Martin Luther King came to an L.A. civil rights rally at old Wrigley Field, now Jackie Robinson Park. More than 20,000 had gathered to hear him speak. Sharing the stage with Dr. King was a special guest speaker from Texas – Juan Cornejo.
Most Americans, Latinos specifically, are not fully aware of how closely related events regarding Dr. King’s Civil Rights Movement and the Chicano Movement were.
The Tejano guest, Cornejo, had recently become one of the early Chicano mayors of a town in modern America, thanks to assistance from the Teamsters Union at that city’s Del Monte Cannery and the Political Association of Spanish-speaking Organizations (PASSO). Both groups succeeded in getting more Chicanos to pay the poll tax that states in the South used to charge for the right to vote.
As the date for Dr. King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech neared, he reached out to the evolving Chicano Movement figures and begin meeting with leaders like Bert Corona, Corky Gonzales and Reies Tijerina. He wanted to ensure that Chicanos were heavily involved in the grassroots formation of the Poor People’s Movement. Dr. King also knew Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta as colleagues and privately encouraged them to continue their resistance with their work at the fledgling union, the UFW. Dr. King’s idea was to spearheaded a movement that addressed economic inequality during the presidential campaign of 1968 and he needed his Chicano compadres to help cement his plan.
“Dr. King wanted a movement to unite poor people of all colors and nationalities,” said longtime Dr. King admirer, Linda White, of Sacramento.
From 1957 until his death in 1968, Dr. King covered more than 6 million miles of this earth. He gave over 2,500 speeches during his travels and found time to author five books and write countless numbers of articles that were published in newspapers and magazines.
In 1964, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. At 35, he was the youngest person to receive the coveted award. That same year, he became the first black American to be honored as Time magazine’s Man of the Year.
Dr. King responded to the honor in a letter to the magazine’s founder, Henry R. Luce.
‘‘The fact that Time took such cognizance of the social revolution in which we are engaged is an indication that the conscience of America has been reached and that the old order which has embraced bigotry and discrimination must now yield to what we know to be right and just,’’ King wrote. ‘‘This image of the Negro is certainly one that many of us like to see carried in the pages of our national periodicals, for it does much to help grind away the granite-like notions that have obtained for so long that the Negro is not able to take his place in all fields of endeavor and that he is lazy, shiftless and without ambition.’’
Those in the know and close to Dr. King shared a different view of the cover honor. Years later they would relate that Dr. King “ was privately incensed by some of the comments in the story.” He disliked the fact that “his clothing style was described as ‘funereal conservatism,’ and that “he had no sense of humor.”
Even though Dr. King had garnered considerable fame from his speeches and oratorical skills, he was criticized for his use of metaphors, which the Time writer called ‘‘downright embarrassing.’’
Dr. King, however, had the last word as he “maintained that it was not just a personal honor but a tribute bestowed upon the entire civil rights movement.”
For all Dr. King did to free his brothers and sisters from the yoke of segregation, it is white America who owes him the greatest debt: liberating the country from the appalling load of centuries-old hypocrisies regarding race. Thanks to Dr. King and the movement that he inspired, the U.S. finally qualified to call itself the leader of “the free world.” As a testament to his greatness, nearly every major city in the U.S. has a street or school named after him.
At the time of his end in Memphis, Dr. Martin Luther King was 39 years old.