40 on 40

This April will mark the 40th anniversary of the death of Martin Luther King Jr. It’s been forty years since that tragic day in Memphis of which I still recall very vividly.

Forty years, so what has happened since then? Let’s us see, well outside of more folk like me on television and in movies, albeit still in the roles of tricksters and clowns, fewer African American farmers, lower literacy rates and easier access to guns, credit cards, and strip malls (and clubs), I would suggest very little.

This strikes me as strange, for although I can see some movement toward his vision, it seems wit each step we progress forward, we are either kicked back or worse, kicking ourselves back three or four more steps. Yes, we have seen four or five Presidential candidacies from the likes of Jackson, Chisom and recently, Obama. But outside of that, I can’t place my hand on any one tangible accomplishment other than the vote (BTW which my granny said they didn’t die and bleed in the streets for – in her words it was justice and liberty). She as the men in my family always told me that if you have to ask for freedom, then one must question if they are actually free.

I mean, never was this so clear, the divisiveness when I accidentally ran across the forum annual held by Tavis Smiley last week. Dr. Cornel West and another member of the panel ripped him apart, for less than petty reasons, one being that he had the audacity to announce his candidacy on the same weekend of the forum. They even had a problem with him announcing his candidacy at the birthplace of Abraham Lincoln, Springfield, Illinois. Never mind that it makes good sense, being that Senator Obama is the U.S. Senator from the State of Illinois, in which the State Capitol is SPRINGFIELD.

I guess folks like West and Smiley and even BET founder Jones feel that Obama has to kiss and wipe their ass for permission, or worse, that he aint black enough to stand for or represent black folk in America. Especially given his perspective regarding where Obama’s loot is coming from. Talking about "white” folk and “Jewish” folk money and all.

To me it shows that he is able to gather support from all folk not to mention that the astute scholar, who I met personally while in Ethiopia during an AIDS conference, doesn’t seem to recall that legal and tender notes we call dollars are green and have no religious affiliation. He called him the “skinny guy with the funny name.”

West himself, when invited to Chicago by Rev. Michael Pfleger to speak at his St. Sabina mass said himself that “We have been living for 40 years in a political, moral and spiritual ice age.”

Like I said, its been 40 years since that day an assassin murdered one of my idols, one of the men, regardless of color that spawned my mind to think freely, and critically. And what has happened since then, I would suggest little, now we enslave ourselves. But it took Moses 40 years, maybe now is really the time.