Professor Explores American Landscape 'After King'

By ARIENNE THOMPSON, USA Today

Posted: 2008-04-03 13:26:24

Filed Under: Top News

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April 4 marks the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Michael Eric Dyson, sociology professor at Georgetown University, Baptist minister and TV commentator, is the author of the new book April 4, 1968: Martin Luther King Jr.'s Death and How It Changed America. Read his USA TODAY interview.

Q: This is your second book on Dr. King. Why is he such an important touchstone for you?

A: When Dr. King was murdered, I had no idea who he was. But as soon as I heard his words on television that night when I was 9 years old, I was dumbstruck, awestruck by their power. Dr. King was indeed the intellectual and rhetorical model for me and has continued to inform not only me but millions of others in our quest for the best route to racial redemption.

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Q: Your book's subtitle is "Martin Luther King Jr.'s Death and How It Changed America." How did it change America?

A: It split America into "before King" and "after King." In his lifetime, and as a result of his struggles, black people were able to finally reach into the deep reservoirs of American freedom and withdraw huge buckets of equality and justice. And after his death, the landscape totally changed. White people began to speak differently about black people; black people began to aspire to greater things as a result of the language he spoke. In my estimation, King is the greatest American to have ever lived.

Q: You ask in your book if we are any closer to King's Promised Land. Are we?

A: For the black elite, yes. They're much closer; we're much closer. The black middle class is closer. But the black poor, the black working poor, the black working classes are far, far from the Promised Land. I think it's incumbent upon those of us who have been privileged and blessed to reach out, to reach over and to reach down and to give a hand of assistance, encouragement and love to our brothers and sisters who are stuck and mired in poverty, in persistent inequality and in dramatic social injustice. I think Martin Luther King Jr.'s memory causes us to do that.

Q: Why did you dedicate your book to Oprah Winfrey?

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A: Oprah Winfrey represents the most ingenious and creative expression of black spiritual genius in the public mainstream that we've had in quite a long time, if ever. And, I discovered that her plot of land in California is called the "Promised Land" in recognition of Dr. King's struggle for her to achieve what she could as a great communicator, so I chose to dedicate the book to her.

Q: You are a preacher yourself. Do you agree with the controversial comments the Rev. Jeremiah Wright has made about America?

A: Jeremiah Wright is one of the greatest prophetic preachers that black America has produced. What I find striking is that many white brothers and sisters miss the fact that there would be no black church if the white church wasn't political and racist in refusing to worship with us.

If YouTube were around when Martin Luther King Jr. preached to black churches, I'm afraid he would be as viciously condemned as Jeremiah Wright, for he said the following to black congregations: "America was founded on genocide, and a nation that is founded on genocide is destructive."

If you take a sermon out of context and extract those words, as people have unfortunately done with Rev. Jeremiah Wright, they end up with a caricature of a profoundly brilliant preacher whose nearly 40 years of ministry have now been unfortunately and unfairly reduced to a sound bite and a blip on the YouTube screen.

Q: Barack Obama's speech about race in Philadelphia was heralded by many as the most important on the subject since MLK. Do you agree?

A: I would say that that speech, along with Jesse Jackson's convention speech (in 1984), are two of the greatest. Throughout a long and vastly eloquent career, the Rev. Jesse Jackson has offered some of the most prophetic statements on race, but there's no question that Barack Obama's race speech was one of the great landmarks in American rhetoric and in African-American eloquence in the last half-century.

Q: You are an Obama supporter. What would his election mean to black Americans? To the rest of the country?

A: It would mean to America an extraordinarily vibrant and vital young man at the height of his powers able to conjure the best tradition of freedom, democracy and liberty. For African-American people, how amazing it would be to see a member of our race rise to the heights of power, to become the most powerful figure on the planet Earth.

2008-04-02 10:03:11

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