PHOTO COURTESY "BLACK RESISTANCE: ERNEST C. WITHERS AND THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT," MEMPHIS BROOKS MUSEUM OF ART
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would have celebrated his 91st birthday on January 15th. On the day dedicated to him, positioned on the calendar to mark his birth, I wonder what the world might be if we did not think of Dr. King’s death almost in the same synapse-twitch as we think of his birth. What progress he would have wrested from these intervening almost 52 years, since April 4, 1968. What of his dreams would have manifested in our collective and ongoing awakening.
Not quite two years ago, to commemorate the half-century since Dr. King was assassinated in Memphis, this magazine assembled a special issue in which we not only revisited his time in Memphis and the aftermath of his death here, but also listened to area leaders and thinkers who shared how they have navigated issues of equity and justice in a post-MLK Memphis — in the “after.” There are a few things I would change about that issue if we assembled it today; one thing I would not change is the emphasis on listening more than talking.
Today, we pay tribute to the fact of his 39 transformative years on this earth. Our city and the country surrounding it still carry many broken places within ourselves. But unlike at so many other moments in human memory, we know now that change, once it has been imagined, can be made real.
The MLK50 Commemorative Issue / Memphis Magazine / April 2018
