What a Wonderful World? A Student Reflects on Justice and Nonviolence
What a Wonderful World? Ohio Northern University
The Washington Center
Peace Studies
Colman McCarthy
November 7, 2002
Every Tuesday morning while I was in Washington, D.C., I spent an hour talking with four sixth grade boys from River Terrace Elementary School. Some people would call this tutoring, but I would call it being a friend. Sure, we read from books and wrote down our words of the week, but our time together was so much more than that. The stories we read came from Chicken Soup for the Teenagers Soul. The stories had a strong, moral point that we could talk about and discuss. After we read our story for the week we spent time discussing what the story was all about and how we could apply it to our lives. Notice I said OUR lives. This statement is true because just as they were learning a valuable lesson of life, so was I. Then there was the time that we spent every week talking about what they did over the weekend. It was almost as if no one had ever asked them that question before. Every week they waited in eager anticipation just to be able to share what they had done the past weekend. Although I was only able to meet with them for a few short weeks, I feel as if our time together could not have been any more well spent.
There are two major events coming out of the civil rights movement of the 1960's that are an important piece of this area’s history. During one of his visits to Washington, Dr. Martin Luther King led a group of activists over the bridge on H Street leading into the downtown area of DC. From 1965-1967, race riots ripped through several areas around the country. During this time period, the riots came alive in this particular area of DC. Buildings along H Street were burned and gutted. The effects of those riots can still be seen on the boarded up buildings that line the street today. This is the path that we take on our Tuesday morning visits at River Terrace Elementary School. We go over the bridge that King marched on and we drive past the buildings that are left barely standing and nowhere near inhabitable. On our first journey to the school I was faced with a matter of great irony. As we drove from downtown Washington, over the bridge on H Street, and into the ghetto that lay before us, I heard the radio in the van turn on. Coming from the radio I heard the most familiar lyrics of What a Wonderful World by Louis Armstrong:
I see trees of green, red roses too I watch 'em bloom, for me and for you And I think to myself, what a wonderful world.
I see skies of blue, clouds of white Bright blessed days, warm sacred nights And I think to myself , what a wonderful world.
The colors of a rainbow, so pretty in the sky Are there on the faces of people going by. I see friends shaking hands.....sayin’ how do you do They're really sayin' I love you....
But what I saw before me was not trees of green, red roses, skies of blue, or clouds of white...and I definitely didn’t see any rainbows. To me, what was so ironic was that Dr. King saw the “wonderful world” that was in store for places such as Washington. But as Louis Armstrong’s words reminded me of Dr. King’s world, the world that I saw was exactly the opposite.
Dr. King was a man that saw the world in a much different light. He saw society for what it could be as well as how it currently was. He also the road that needed to be taken in order for society to get to where it could be. Although this road could have been a path of bloody revolts and barbaric uprisings, Kings movement endeavored to run the course in a nonviolent manner. I am not naive enough to believe that there was no bloodshed, but this was not because of aggressive, physical motions made by King and his followers. Through reading the writings of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., I have come up with two statements he made that are key values that he sought to uphold in his daily life.
“You see, equality is not only a matter of mathematics and geometry, but it’s a matter of psychology. It’s not only a quantitative something but it is a qualitative something; and it is possible to have quantitative equality and qualitative equality. The doctrine of separate but equal can never be.” Martin Luther King, Jr. September 1956
From the beginning of the civil rights movement, movement leaders were told, segregation is alright because although we are not together, blacks have everything that whites have. We may be separate, but we are equal. Separate but equal is never possible though. The very statement of separate but equal is an oxymoron. If two groups are separated, the very act of separating them makes them unequal. Although I may be given everything I could ever want, just as the other group has everything they could want, there is still an unequal balance when I try and communicate with the members of the other group. In Dr. King’s terms, although Negro children may be given access to the same amount of school buildings and academic standards as White children (although they weren’t), the mere fact that my Negro children can’t communicate with your White children makes us unequal.
In one of his writings, Dr. King tells the story of one of his trips to Virginia. Along the way they stopped in Atlanta for lunch. One of the waiters escorted Dr. King into a separate area of the restaurant. He was assured that he would be given the same food and service as all of the other customers. Although he would be separated from the rest of the restaurant he would still be given equal treatment. However, Dr. King retorted back to the waiter that the equality he was speaking of was impossible. By being separated from the entire restaurant, he said that he was confronted with aesthetic inequality-there were no pictures or paintings in this other part of the restaurant as there were in the main sections of the restaurant; he was confronted with the sense of greater potential for the accumulation of bitterness-sitting by himself in a closed-in compartment made him start to feel angry and bitter; and finally he was being confronted with inequality in the sense that he could not communicate with the man with whom he had been sharing a seat on his trip. Although the restaurant was following the law concerning separate but equal, it was very evident that Dr. King was facing inequality on at least three different levels.
"Love must be at the forefront of our movement if it is to be a successful movement. And when we speak of love, we speak of understanding, good will toward all men. We speak of a creative, a redemptive sort of love, so that as we look at the problem, we see that the real tension is not between Negro citizens and the white citizens of Montgomery, but it is a conflict between justice and injustice, between the forces of light and the forces of darkness, and if there is a victory--and there will be a victory--the victory will not be merely for the Negro citizens and a defeat for the white citizens, but it will be a victory for justice and a defeat for injustice. It will be a victory for goodness in its long struggle with the forces of evil." Martin Luther King, Jr. May 1956
It is said throughout many spiritual texts that love conquers all. By loving all, especially those who seek to harm and destroy, peace can truly be attained. That answer may seem to be very socialist in meaning, but I would argue that Dr. King fought for very socialistic gains. And the gains he sought were not merely based on civil rights. King spoke strongly against the government, war, and poverty. In his many sermons, speeches and lectures King gives voice to those of society that have no voice with which to speak. He didn’t just speak on the behalf of those who were struggling to gain their rights afforded to them by the founding fathers, but he prided himself on speaking on behalf of those who had fallen through the cracks of our society. He was fighting to unite a nation on the premise of justice. His premise of justice was justice for all-not just for those that could afford justice or those that were ethnically, religiously, or culturally “able” to receive justice. The “battle” between light and dark forces is the battle between justice and injustice. Our society must strive to fight for the causes that Dr. King and others have sought to uphold. Failure to do so will most definitely keep us on the path to darkness. If an entire society lies in darkness, that society is blind and motionless. A society that is blind is a society of injustice and insensibility.
On January 11, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave what would be his final speech on a college campus at Ohio Northern University. The visit was arranged by the then-current chaplain of the university, Chaplain James Udy. During his introduction of Dr. King to those in attendance, Chaplain Udy made the comment, “Following the announcement that Dr. King would speak on our campus, the Ada local paper last week contained an interesting letter. At the end of it was this question: "Which flag will I fly in Dr. King's honor, the dove of peace or the dragon of disobedience?" I would suggest that at Ohio Northern University today we fly the hammer of justice.” The “hammer of justice” implies movement. This analogy does not imply sitting by and watching the world go by, hoping that justice will be given to us. No, the rich do not just merely hand over what they own and share it with the poor out of the goodness of their heart. There must be a driving force behind the changes. That movement does not necessitate violence, but rather it only necessitates passion. To be a part of this movement of justice, one must fully apply Gandhi’s principles of Satyagraha. Satygraha is the philosophy of truth force. Resistance is not merely sitting on the side and watching, but it is an active movement of nonviolence.
I find that an appropriate ending to a paper on the thoughts and philosophies of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is a quotation from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: “It must be remembered that genuine peace is not the absence of tension, but the presence of justice.”