By Chris Satullo

Of late, when driving around, my wife and I have taken to listening to the podcast Armchair Expert.   The host is Dax Shepard, the comic actor and husband of Kristen Bell, who turns out to be a surprisingly deft interviewer, by turns earnest and goofy, precise and garrulous, perceptive and naïve.  The conversations at times go to deep places.

The other day, as we hit the road, Eileen said, “Oh, here’s one with Leslie Odom Jr.” We’re both Hamilton nerds, so we were all in on hearing what “Burr, sir” had to say.

About 15 minutes in, I confess, I turned it off, frustrated and upset.  It was a weak moment. Let me explain. 

Odom and Shepard were talking Black Lives Matter. Odom was distilling the lessons he took from the life of Martin Luther King Jr.: Non-violence is futile; King had a few fragile successes, then “they killed him”; white people want Blacks to emulate King’s non-violent strategy because “that way they can always see us coming.”

No doubt, I should’ve listened to the rest of the podcast, but I was literally stricken with grief – not because Odom’s view is some shocking outlier, but because it is not. It’s common. It’s understandable. For many in this moment, it gleams like jewel-hard, pragmatic wisdom.

But I still want to suggest that it’s wrong, that its misreads the history, the man and this amazing moment of opportunity, which none of us wants to squander.

Just to be clear, I’m vividly aware I’ve got no right to tell anyone how to feel about bearing the weight of four centuries of oppression on their weary shoulders. I’m not lecturing. I’m just…pleading.

I desperately want this shit to end, too, this too-long, too-wide trail of deep, wounding injustice: the brutality, the redlining, the shabby schools, the dead ends and the naked theft, the double standards and the phony history, the excuses and the lies, the loud crack of the Billy club and soft, cruel whoosh of extinguished hopes.

That said, it seems to me Dr. King’s way – not the way of the tossed rock, the profane chant and the spray can – is how to make this happen. King can still teach us how to do something big with the astonishing fact that 63 percent of Americans – a huge majority for anything in this divided nation – tell pollsters they support the goals of Black Lives Matter, that at long last, in some dawning way, they get it, at least a little.

First off, I’m certain that, beyond the catalytic effect of the agonizing 8-minute tape of George Floyd’s murder, what swelled that poll number was the non-violent dignity and power of the ensuing Black Lives Matter marches and protests.

Somehow, I doubt it was the sporadic smashing of store windows or the provocative antics of privileged white kids play-acting at revolution with their unearned rage and borrowed righteousness.

Second, I do share Odom’s exasperation with the safe, plaster-saint version of Dr. King, which some people duly genuflect towards one day a year to reassure themselves that they, too, are on the right side of history.

MLK was not some meek and mild apostle of the idea of “service.” He was effing angry, man. Just as Gandhi was before him. And Jesus before them both.

He was impatient, consumed by “the fierce urgency of now.” Just as Gandhi was before him. And Jesus before them both.

He was a radical, hungry for revolution, just like Gandhi and Jesus.

And MLK was not feckless. He was effective (in concert with so many others, men and women both, of course). Isn’t it ahistorical and self-defeating to dismiss as minor such titanic achievements as the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act, to pretend that because a movement didn’t solve everything it accomplished nothing?

MLK’s way moved mountains, just as Gandhi obliterated the Raj without casting one stone. Just as an itinerant preacher in a dusty corner of the Roman Empire still inspires millions two millennia later, while the names of the two-bit armed rebels of his time disappeared long ago beneath the rubble of history.

And, by 1968, King was by no means done, just getting started. He didn’t just bask in what he’d achieved; it made him angrier, more impatient, more ambitious for his people.

He was in Memphis that awful day taking aim at the very structures of economic oppression that BLM begs us to finally see clearly and eradicate today. He was only 38. Imagine what could have come next.

Yes, “then they killed him.” Well, not “they” exactly. A sorry excuse for a human being named James Earl Ray. I don’t dismiss out of hand the theories that Ray had help. But I also would urge us to recall the scale of carnage that sick loners with powerful guns have been able to wreak, unaided, in our time from Parkland to Charleston to Las Vegas to Pittsburgh. Granted, these killers do not spring from nowhere; they emerge from America’s toxic stew of hate and gun worship. But that’s a different point from claiming some shadowy network of “they” always pulls their strings and aims their rifles.

So, no: King was not sweet Martin, meek and mild, just waiting for his victimhood.

He – along with John Lewis, Fannie Lou Hamer, Bayard Rustin and all the other underappreciated heroes – was angry, impatient, with eyes on huge prizes.

But he was also – and this is the point I would implore Leslie Odom Jr. and all the great young activists of today to consider – effective.  He got things done precisely because he was disciplined and strategic, as well as generous and brave. So, so brave.

To feel righteous rage is one thing. But to be able to channel that impatient anger into patient, far-sighted strategy that gives you the best chance of success both in the near term and the long haul, that is wisdom.

And if you can pair that wisdom with the courage to stay the course, even when it means being lied about, spied and spat upon, sprayed with hoses, beaten with flaying clubs and tossed unjustly into cold, stone cells, that is the rare combination that moves multitudes, shatters systems, bends the arc of history.

What’s more, if you can somehow bear all this while summoning the generosity of spirit to grasp that freeing your people also means freeing their oppressors from the prison of their own hate, to offer a vision of the beloved community, then you will provide an example not just for your times, but for all times, and very much for this time of ours.

Martin Luther King Jr. did not fail. In his time, America failed him. In our time, let us redeem that failure. Let us not spend this righteous rage merely on the smashed window, the simplistic slogan, the tweeted insult. 

Let us at long last do the hard, patient, disciplined, brave work of weaving justice. Let us do more than glimpse the beloved community. Let us build it.

—

Chris Satullo, a civic engagement consultant, is a former editorial page editor/columnist at The Philadelphia Inquirer, and a former vice president/news at WHYY public media in Philadelphia.