I read this piece earlier, on my iPhone during the drive home from Temecula. It's from 1968 at the New York Review:
In the march and at the funeral of Martin Luther King, the mood of the earlier Civil Rights days in Alabama and Mississippi returned—a reunion of the family at the grave. And no one could doubt that there had been a longing for the reunion among the white ministers and students, the liberals from the large cities. The “love”—locked arms, songs, comradeship—all of that was remembered with nostalgia and feeling, like Irish Revolutionaries remembering Easter Sunday. This love, if not actually refused, was seldom forthcoming in relations with new black militants, who were determined to break the dependency of the black people even on the cooperation, energy, and checkbooks of the guilty, longing, loving whiteys. Everything separated the old Civil Rights people from the new militants, even the use of language. The harsh, obscene style, the unforgiving stares, the insulting accusations and refusal to make distinctions between bad whites and good—this was humbling and perplexing. Many of the white people had created their very self-identity out of issues and distinctions. They felt cast off, ill at ease with the new street rhetoric of “self-defense” and “self-determination.”....
The murder of Martin Luther King was a national disgrace. This we said over and over and it would be cynical to hint at fraudulent feelings in the scramble for suitable acts of penance. Levittowns would henceforth not abide by local rulings, but would practice open housing; Walter Reuther offered $50,000 to the poor sanitation workers of Memphis, the Field Foundation gave a million to the Southern Christian Leadership movement; New England boarding schools offered scholarships to the King children; Congress acted on the open housing bill. Nevertheless, the mundane continued to nudge the eternal. In 125 cities there was burning and looting; smoke rose over Washington.
RELATED: From Joel Pollak, at Big Government, "
The Left Has Been Undermining Dr. King's Legacy for Decades."
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