Note: This month’s column is excerpted from a speech Dr. McTeer gave in Sulphur Springs on Martin Luther King Day.
This
photo was taken during my remarks at the 15th annual "Crystal" Anniversary
celebrating Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in Sulphur Springs Jan 16. Texas
A&M University-Commerce President Keith McFarland, who hosted my visit,
is on the left. (A&M-Commerce photo/Craig Buck)
I greatly admired Martin Luther King, especially in the early years of the civil rights movement.
I was on his side: for desegregation, for an end to discrimination based on race and for equal rights. I was against separate public bathrooms, separate water fountains and separate and unequal schools—the most visible signs of discrimination at the time.
I was a supporter, but I watched the civil rights movement on television, as a spectator.
There were no marches or sit-ins in my little town in the foothills of north Georgia. In Ranger, population about 100, we only had poor whites. And no blacks at all.
Martin Luther King Jr. was born in Atlanta, about 75 miles south of Ranger, in 1929. He attended Morehouse College in Atlanta and studied theology at Boston University. Like his father and grandfather before him, he became a Baptist preacher.
On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks—who died last October at age 92—refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus to whites. Twenty-six-year-old Martin Luther King was drawn into the ensuing bus boycott and, as they say, the rest is history. I was barely 13.
He became the founding president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957. He was arrested in October 1960, during an Atlanta sit-in. By then, I was a freshman at the University of Georgia. That January—on Jan. 9, 1961—the university got its first two black students: Hamilton Holmes and Charlayne Hunter. He later became a doctor in Atlanta, and she made it big in journalism on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.
Hamilton Holmes registered for the psychology class I was taking. As I recall, he sat apart from the other students, and they (that is, we) pretty much ignored him. I wish I could report that I went out of my way to make him welcome, but honestly, I felt like I was just barely hanging on myself as a freshman from a tiny rural town in a big university. I didn’t do anything ugly. I just didn’t do anything, and I was typical. If I was feeling overwhelmed, think how he must have felt.
I sat next to Harold Black, UGA’s third black student, in a class two years later, and we became friends of sorts. I stayed at Georgia and got a Ph.D. in economics. He got a Ph.D. in economics from Ohio State and in recent years has been a professor of finance at the University of Tennessee. He’d told me he’d been subjected to some minor harassment early in his freshman year—people banging on his dorm room door and so on—but it was not too bad.
At one point, I thought I’d probably lost his friendship when he asked me to sign a petition to bar the ROTC from campus. I declined to do so, but he didn’t take it personally. Harold’s asking me to sign the ROTC petition created quite a moral dilemma. I wanted to support him as a friend, and, frankly, as a black student in a white school. But I didn’t see the connection with ROTC, one way or another. Later on, Martin Luther King presented the country with the same dilemma by bringing Vietnam into the civil rights movement.
Charlayne
Hunter and Hamilton Holmes, the first black students to enroll at the University
of Georgia, are pictured here on their first day on campus in January 1961. Reprinted
with permission from “Charlayne Hunter-Galt,” New
Georgia Encyclopedia. Retrieved Jan. 18, 2006
Charlayne Hunter had a rougher start. One night during her first or second week, Georgia lost a basketball game, and as the upset fans piled out of the arena, someone yelled out, “Let’s go to Center Myers”— her dormitory.
A crowd gathered there, threw some rocks, broke some windows and made news acting like the redneck idiots they were. My roommate and I were in our room, listening to it on my portable radio. He wanted to go over there and watch—just watch, he promised. I wouldn’t go. So he called me a bad name.
After the first couple of weeks, I don’t recall much fuss about race or desegregation on the Georgia campus. I graduated in 1963 and won a fellowship to stay for graduate school.
When my fellowship ran out in 1966, I stayed on as an instructor until August 1968, about four months after King’s assassination. So his remarkable civil rights career began when I was roughly 13 and ended just before I was 26. Where I was and what I was doing are not important, but it helps me keep track.
Dr. King had failures as well as successes. He achieved a great victory in Birmingham in 1963 when his organization, the SCLC, orchestrated a series of clashes with the police. Remember Bull Connor? The use of police dogs and fire hoses on peaceful protestors attracted much media attention and national sympathy and prompted President Kennedy to introduce major civil rights legislation in June 1963. Kennedy was assassinated that November, and it was left to Lyndon Johnson to get the legislation through Congress the following year.
King’s most famous writing, his letter
from the Birmingham jail came in 1963, as did his “I
Have a Dream” speech. Time magazine
named him “Man of the Year” for 1963. The next year he became
the youngest person to win the Nobel
Peace Prize,
at age 35.
Voting rights protests and the march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, came
in 1965. That August, President Johnson signed the Voting
Rights Act.
King took a major turn in 1966, moving into a Chicago ghetto and launching a
campaign against poverty. He also became increasingly vocal against U.S. involvement
in Vietnam. Dr. King became involved in a Memphis sanitation workers’ strike
in April 1968.
He was murdered the next day, April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee. He was only
39 years old.
It goes without saying that I was, and still am, a great admirer of Martin Luther
King, especially in the early years of the civil rights movement. What I mean
is that in the early years, he was trying to right clear wrongs, to end racial
discrimination and promote equal opportunity.
His message was accepted not only because it was right, but also because it was
unencumbered by extraneous issues.
I personally thought it was a mistake for him to later mix messages by putting
our Vietnam efforts and fighting poverty on the same plane with ending racial
discrimination. Similarly, I thought it was a mistake for him to take on some
of the economic issues that he made part of his movement.
Make no mistake about it: People of goodwill have always been against poverty
and unemployment. The problem comes with the means of achieving these goals.
Those who care the most don’t necessarily have the best answers. Some well-intentioned
remedies end up doing more harm than good.
President Kennedy’s assassination left it to President Johnson to get most
of the civil rights program through Congress. Having been Senate majority leader,
Johnson was good at that, perhaps too good.
The Civil Rights
Act and
the Voting Rights Act were
needed.
But laws have their limits. You can’t eliminate poverty by making it illegal,
and you can’t achieve prosperity by voting for it.
Economists generally agree, for example, that legislating higher minimum wages
can raise wages for a few while contributing to the unemployment of many. Getting
the incentives right can create a needed safety net, while getting the incentives
wrong can lead to welfare dependency. The drive to end discrimination is probably
more successful if it’s not part of a larger ideology with unrelated features.
I don’t know what 77-year-old Martin Luther King would say about some of
today’s major issues. But I believe his thinking would have evolved with
the times, with changing facts and circumstances, and with our better understanding
of economic issues.
I think he would say the job is not finished, but would recognize the enormous
progress to date. I think he would caution his people against considering themselves
as victims—even though they have been victims—and urge them to take
responsibility for their progress and prosperity.
With more eloquence than I could ever muster, I think Martin Luther King would
say something like the following to his people:
“Don’t forget the past, but don’t dwell on it.
Continue to seek justice, but look inward and to God for the strength to move
onward and upward.
Don’t use the past as an excuse. Use it as an incentive to break the cycle
of poverty through education, dedication and hard work.
Take responsibility for your own progress and success.”
I believe that we in The Texas A&M University System are helping in this
noble quest. With nine universities, we’ve got Texas covered. We are proud
that a high percentage of our students are first-generation college students,
just as I was. We want to help.
I can’t think of a better way to celebrate Martin Luther King’s birthday
than to reflect on his legacy as we continue sharing in his dream of equal opportunity
for all.
