Martin Luther King's final speech remembered in Memphis
Commemorations are 'not just to honour our history, but to seize our future,' labour activist says
Half a century ago, an enthusiastic crowd was so eager to hear from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., they roused him from his bed at the Lorraine Motel across town in a thunderstorm to Mason Temple Church of God in Christ in Memphis, Tenn.
Tuesday night, King's words rang anew during a program before his youngest child, Bernice King, addressed the audience. Calling her older brother, Martin Luther King III, to join her in the pulpit, she discussed the difficulty of publicly mourning their father — a man hated during his lifetime, now beloved around the world.
"It's important to see two of the children who lost their daddy 50 years ago to an assassin's bullet," said Bernice King, now 55. "But we kept going."
As the world prepares to mark the 50th anniversary of King's murder, the milestone coincides with a resurgence of white supremacy, the shootings of unarmed black men and a parade of discouraging statistics on the lack of progress among black Americans on issues from housing to education to wealth.
But rather than despair, the resounding message repeated in the building Tuesday night was one of resilience, resolve, and a renewed commitment to King's legacy and unfinished work.
Just as it was on King's last night in Memphis, the forecast Tuesday called for a storm to again rattle the church walls, evoking the memory of King's pronouncement that he had "been to the mountaintop," his thunderous remarks only outdone by the evening's weather.
A gospel singer led a rousing rendition of Lift Every Voice and Sing, and the gathering took on the air of a mass meeting, as if the crowd could again will King from his hotel bed. The commemoration was part of a week of events celebrating King's legacy.
Lee Saunders, a national labour leader, recounted how that night in 1968, King made an unplanned appearance to deliver the famous Mountaintop speech without notes after his aides saw how passionate the crowd was: "There was one man they wanted to hear from."
But Saunders stressed that the purpose of the week's commemorations was not just to look to the past.
"Dr. King's work — our work — isn't done. We must still struggle; we must still sacrifice. We must still educate and organize and mobilize. That's why we're here in Memphis. Not just to honour our history, but to seize our future," he said.
Saunders was among the first speakers, taking the pulpit just after a video message from former president Barack Obama.
"As long as we're still trying, Dr. King's soul is still rejoicing," Obama said on the video.
Some of the sanitation workers who participated with King in a 1968 strike sat in the front row and treated like celebrities, with audience members stopping to take photos with them before the event started. Contemporaries of King's including the Rev. Jesse Jackson were also in attendance.
The commemoration of the Mountaintop speech followed an announcement earlier in the day by civil rights leaders who are reviving an economic justice campaign first planned by King. The organizers of a new Poor People's Campaign are planning 40 days of marches, sit-ins and other peaceful protests.
The original Poor People's Campaign was carried out in 1968 after King's death by other civil rights leaders.
King had envisioned the Poor People's Campaign in Washington as a way to speak out against economic injustice, as he shifted his focus from civil rights to human rights.
But before he could finish those plans, he came to Memphis in 1968 to support a strike by black sanitation workers who were tired of low pay and dangerous working conditions.
King led a march in Memphis that turned violent on March 28, and he went back home to Atlanta. Seeking to prove that non-violent protests still worked, King vowed to lead a peaceful march and returned to Memphis days later.
The civil rights leader was standing on the balcony of the old Lorraine Motel when he was shot on April 4, 1968. He died at a hospital at age 39.
