Celebrating Dr Martin Luther King Day

I searched the house for my beat up copy of the Dr Martin Luther King’s ‘Stride Toward Freedom. The Montgomery Story’ .

What did I do with it? Did I lend to someone, or have I simple lost it?

I wanted to use it to share with you some of the quotes written by Dr King in this truly remarkable story. First, we all broadly know the history of the bus boycott started by the unassuming heroine, Rosa Parks, who refused to give up her seat for a white person on the local Montgomery public buses.

What you may be unaware of until you read Dr King’s account of what occurred over an 18-month period, is not just what Dr King and Parks did, but what a Black community collectively did. Because what they did, endured and ultimately achieved, I promise you, will make you weep, smile and above all learn what it takes to be an activist and win a David and Goliath battle that can change the world.

I’ll try and put this in perspective for you: I’ve begun the process -the threat- of three boycotts – with companies that have either insulted Black people or treated them badly or both: Mars ltd, Pizza hut and Cadbury’s . None of the actions lasted for longer two weeks. A change of policy and an apology quickly ended what might have been my own mini ‘David and Goliath battle’.

But when Rosa Parks was arrested, the recently arrived Pastor Dr Martin Luther King was called to a meeting to see how they might challenge the illegal segregation rules. No-one could have foreseen the enormity of their challenge, and how it would in essence change the world.

As an activist you hope that a bit of scaremongering and brinkmanship -who’s going to blink first- will be enough to win the day. But what if they call your bluff? What if they don’t blink? When Dr King and the other pastors informed the bus company that some 17 thousand workers would not use the only public transport open available to them, they hoped that if they could pull this boycott off for a week or two - enough time to show the Bus company that they meant business - that would be enough to bring the bus company to the table of justice.

Achieving a two-week bus boycott was in of itself a truly remarkable feat. First they had to convince a whole community that to spend a week or two walking long distances to work in order to show the community meant business. But what if the community as a whole didn’t agree? What if for too many people who relied on white employers the task was too great? Or if they physically needed transport to get about? Dr King and his team of activists set about first politically convincing people it was the right thing to do, then they organised self-help transport to ferry literally thousands of individuals around twice a day by any means- a car, horse and cart, bikes etc. And they pulled off the impossible. But after two weeks the company still wouldn’t budge, so they carried on. Weeks went into months, months passed to over one year.

Dr King and his team faced two gargantuan challenges. First, divide and rule - sound familiar? Dr King was relatively new to Montgomery, so his decorators quickly characterised him as a trouble maker. The bus bosses and the local authorities sort to find Black pastors and others who would denounce Dr King as an outsider and trouble maker. Some Black people denounced him, some went even further and were paid to say that Dr King was an embezzler and fraudster. One betrayer –whose name I can’t remember –was a key member of Dr King’s team. But the unity withstood the colonial dictate of divide and rule. When that failed, the decorators reverted to their old-fashioned response to the ‘negro problem’, by firebombing homes of organisers. Several homes were bombed including Dr King’s. They stood up to the fear of losing your life and won that battle too.

Their final battle was in the courts, which at a local level they could never win, but on a national platform they might force biding change. After 18 months of literally putting their lives on the line on a daily basis, the bus boycott was won. Dr King told his supporters not to be jubilant, or triumphant, but to show good manners and humility whilst being resolute when they began taking the buses again.

From a back water Southern city of little significance King was catapulted onto the global stage. And as we celebrate his birthday we do him no justice unless we learn the lessons that brought him and his vision for Civil Rights and social justice to prominence.

For me as an activist, and in many ways a humble disciple of Dr King, the lesson of unity and collective action demands particular attention. We are free to ride the buses and go wherever we want, but we are a long way from being equal in areas such as jobs, education, and health.

A new spirit of Dr King is needed if we are to effectively confront these persistent race inequalities that blight our communities.

Let us celebrate his birthday but let’s organise to defeat racism.

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Happy Birthday Dr King.

Simon Woolley