Letter to Martin 2023

Following MLK Day: Hope springs eternal…

My dearest Martin,

As I look back and reminisce, I can remember how passionate you were about our people and uniting us all. Today, I am grasping the hope that what is happening is leading us to a positive outcome. I am grasping. I am wishing. I am praying.

 I weep now because it seems like all the you did, and that your dying, were in vain. I weep at the hatred and hostility that is prevalent today. You believed in human nature, that people were innately good, and that we could overcome oppression by appealing to the good in everyone. You could not have known, just as we didn’t realize, that in white supremacist culture, in the white supremacist Christian religion, and even in the white supremacist bible, the only people who matter are white people and the god they worship the only god they know, is money. They serve their god by gaining power, not the power of the one true God, but the power to control and manipulate people and situations to what they believe is their greater good. The most disappointing thing about the world we now live in is something you consistently warned us about, something you described as “Man’s inhumanity to man”, and we see it daily as more and more Black and brown people become disenfranchised, homeless, helpless, unemployed, hungry, and angry. Because of their misguided beliefs, they believe they are doing what is right, and they have no way of knowing they are headed for eternal destruction. We try to warn them, but it doesn’t seem to do any good. Divine providence will indeed catch up to them, so we just work, watch, pray, and wait.

We have, in all the years since you were taken from us, been trying to combat the blatant racism that plagues every day. We have tried to get everyone to work together for the common good, to work toward a better world, while white supremacists have been spreading their hatred and vitriol. “The appalling silence of the good (white) people” has turned into denial and neglecting to correct and redirect their own people. We find ourselves now caught up under the leadership of people who are racist, hateful, and, more than anything else, dumb and ignorant, and even though we try to lead people to the peace and harmony that you spoke of, they have the belief that even the worst white people are far better than the best Black and brown people.

Dear Martin, they have spent years, and loads of money, trying to wipe us out, trying to make our children bend to their wishes by making certain they are distracted, undereducated, rude, hateful and resentful. In many ways they have succeeded, but the white supremacists have ignored the fact that we have passed on the knowledge you reinforced to us, the knowledge that we are KINGS. They accuse us of “grooming” the children, but they think we are ignorant enough to teach our children the attitude of servitude. We have “groomed” our children to understand that, although the odds seem to be against them, they must be prepared with knowledge, wisdom and common sense, and intelligently “best” them in order achieve our rightful position in the world. Because of the rules white supremacists have set, our children have become more educationally prepared than theirs, a condition that makes their children, their young, hate-filled offspring kill their parents, their children… mass shootings of people who have done nothing to deserve their wrath. They have filled their homes with weapons of mass destruction, and they have been diligent in teaching their children, and some of our children, that violence solves all of their problems, that they can conquer the world by spreading terror.

Oh, Martin, we truly believed that you and God sent Barack Obama, forty years later, to lead us to the Promised Land, and we were disappointed that, though he tried his best to help heal the nation, he was thwarted at every turn. He achieved many good things, but he was not able to overcome the prejudice and bias of the country. We knew, Martin, that you sent him, because Barack Obama knew and understood the audacity of our calling… the Audacity of Hope. We now know that his mission was a reconnaissance mission, a fact-finding, deep dive into the madness of their culture. Now, even with the odds against us, we have made strides toward having the leadership we need, to beat them at their own games, to steer us away from the foolish and deadly path we have had to walk for years. Our young leaders know now the boldness it will take for them to truly take the lead, to make our way out of the “pit” that is the way of white supremacists, truly Satan’s minions. Our young leaders are armed with knowledge and fired up, ready to go.   

In the fifty-five years since you were taken from us, we have had dynamic leaders and passive leaders; we have made advances and we have had setbacks; we have had positive results and we have had failures. Above all WE HAVE LEARNED, and WE ARE TEACHING the young ones. Please, Martin, keep inspiring us to greatness, keep encouraging us, keep sending us messages of HOPE AND PEACE AND LOVE. Even though we cannot see you, all these years later, we still feel your presence.