Me: “Good afternoon, Dr King.” MLK: “Good afternoon.” Me: “How was your journey?” MLK: “Fine, fine...” Me: “Good, good...” Then he disappeared into his hotel (he was in London for an Aldermaston march I was involved in organising) with his retinue of supporters, FBI agents and, perhaps, one or two of those women in his life whose bedroom meetings with King were taped by Hoover for his private delectation and for King’s public humiliation.
All right, our conversation was not all it might have been. I failed to seize the moment. I could have asked him where the American civil rights movement was going, what message he had for black men and women in Britain, or whether he really believed in a real God? I missed my chance and flunked it. That’s life.
Fortunately, what King had to say to the world wasn’t dependent on the conversational skills of those he met.
His articles, addresses and sermons have been collected, preserved, recycled. His “I have a dream!” address has probably been seen (on film) and heard (on audio) and read (in books and magazines in every major language) by more people than ever saw, heard or even read the sermon on the mount. And this book is the latest collection of his “greatest” pulpit hits, from the 1950s to his martyrdom.
The sermons here are transcribed from tape, which gives them life and immediacy. The editors, in a brilliant touch, have kept all the running interjections from King’s congregations, printing them in italics. Take this, from an early (1954) specimen: “We have adopted in the modern world a sort of relativistic ethic... We have accepted the attitude that right and wrong are merely relative... Most people can’t stand up for their convictions, because the majority of people might not be doing it. (Amen, yes). See, everybody’s not doing it, so it must be wrong. And since everybody is doing it, it must be right. (Yes, Lord help him). So it’s a sort of numerical interpretation of what’s right. But I’m here to say to you this morning that some things are right and some things are wrong. (Yes). Externally so, absolutely so. It’s wrong to hate. (Yes, that’s right). It always has been wrong and it always will be wrong. (Amen). [= met Martin Luther King. It was “The poetry, music, imagination of religious culture can still give us our mobilising dreams - and the strength to dream afresh when our dreams turn into nightmares.” It’s wrong in America, it’s wrong in Germany, it’s wrong in Russia, it’s wrong in China. (Lord help him). It was wrong in 2000 BC, and it’s wrong in 1954 AD. It always has been wrong, (That’s right) and it always will be wrong. (That’s right). It’s wrong to throw away our lives on riotous living. (Yeah)... It’s wrong in every age and it’s wrong in every nation... Some things in this universe are absolute. The God of the universe has made it so. And as long as we adopt this relative attitude towards right and wrong we’re revolting against the very laws of God himself. (Amen).” I quote this passage not to make the point that King was just about as unSoFish and pre-postmodern as you can get (which he was), but because it (and those interjections) wonderfully convey the power and the passion of those rythmical, repetitive, biblical sentences. King belonged to, and spoke to, an American black South permeated by black Southern Baptist bible-belt culture. He talked their language. They responded in his.
But his genius surely lay in the fact that, when, in the later fifties and sixties, he moved beyond the boundaries of his home-culture into the sophisticated milieu of Washington and the wider world, he found ways of ringing the same biblical bells, sounding the same prophecies, telling the same stories, in the larger language of a wider American culture, and particularly in the great myth of the American Dream.
Half the western world now knows at least the central part of his “I have a dream!” speech almost by heart. Those grainy, black-and-white pictures of his face, the stirring music of his magnificent voice, have permanently anchored themselves in our neural connections. But King knew that dreams fade, die, turn into nightmares. Listen to him again, two years after that Lincoln Memorial epic address: “I must confess to you this morning that since that sweltering August afternoon in 1963, my dream has often turned into a nightmare. (Lord)... I saw it shattered one night on Highway 80 in Alabama when Mrs Viola Liuzzo was shot down. (Lord, Lord). I had a nightmare and saw my dream shattered one night in Marion, Alabama, when Jimmie Lee Jackson was shot down. (Lord)... And I continue to see it shattered as I walk through the Harlems of our nation (Yes) and see ten and fifteen Negroes trying to live in one room (Yes)... I’ve seen my dream shattered as I’ve walked the streets of Chicago (Make it plain) and seen Negroes, young men and women, with a sense of utter hopelessness because they can’t find any jobs... I’ve seen my dream shattered because I’ve been through Appalachia, and I’ve seen my white brothers along with Negroes living in poverty (Yeah)... “But I tell you this morning once more that I haven’t lost the faith. (No, sir). I still have a dream (A dream. Yes, sir) that one day all of God’s children will have food and clothing and material well-being for their bodies, culture and education for their minds, and freedom for their spirits (Yes)...
And when this day comes the morning stars will sing together (Yes) and the sons of God will shout for joy.” Michael Tippett, in his Third Symphony, ponders on the human capacity to dream dreams - and to dream on, even as the dream dies. He looks back at Beethoven’s dream of joy and freedom in the Ninth Symphony, and knows that joy and freedom for millions have proved illusory. He looks at the dream of nineteenth century progress, and sees it turn into the nightmare of twentieth century world war and holocausts. He recalls King’s own Dream, and knows that it too must fade. And he addresses us, his inert listeners in the concert hall or by our CD players, and asks “What if the dream cracks?” And he offers the only answer there is: “Re-make it!” Dream on!
That has to be what on earth religion is about, if it is about anything that matters. The poetry, music, imagination of religious culture can still give us our mobilising dreams - and the strength to dream afresh when our dreams turn into nightmares. We dreamt, with King, that the divisions of race and ethnic culture might dissolve. They have not dissolved - but we dream on. We dreamt that a new Government might give us an ethical foreign policy. It gave us the folly of Nato bombing - but we dream on. And I can only add Yes! Make it plain! A dream, yes sir!