One day at a time

 

By Michael Levine
Daily Bruin Contributor

At the height of his national popularity and influence, Martin
Luther King Jr. paid a visit to the UCLA campus. Speaking at the
bottom of Janss Steps to an audience of about 5,000 on April 28,
1965, King said “for civil rights, the time is always
right.”

By all accounts, it was a thrilling, though overheated,
occasion. Students and faculty, many arriving an hour before the
speech was scheduled, carried parasols to shield themselves from
the sun. There was also a large police presence.

“We have come a long way, but we have a long, long way to
go,” King said. “The concept that time will heal the
wounds and solve the problems must be put down. Time is neutral and
may act constructively or destructively, the latter in the area of
civil rights.”

At a luncheon following the address, three students gave King a
paper bag containing the $747.98 they collected on campus for
King’s movement.

On that hot Tuesday afternoon King brought what he called his
“struggle for honesty and human integrity in the south”
to the UCLA community. King spoke of the need for strong
legislation to dismantle voting discrimination and lower
unemployment in the segregated South.

Months later in 1965, Congress would enact sweeping voting
rights legislation.

Born in Atlanta on January 15, 1929, the son of a Baptist
minister, Martin Luther King Jr. first rose to national prominence
by leading the 1955 Montgomery, Ala., Bus Boycott.

A student of Mahatma Gandhi’s philosophy, King maintained
his belief in nonviolent protest even as other civil rights
activists such as Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael urged violence
to overcome America’s history of slavery, segregation and
oppression.

In 1964 King won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work to integrate
American society. In March 1965, in what historians view as the
culmination of the Civil Rights movement, King led a march from
Selma to Montgomery, Ala., to draw attention voting inequalities.
National television broadcasts of segregationists turning on the
marchers with fierce dogs and fire hoses helped galvanize public
opinion against segregation.

Although King is known mainly for his accomplishments in civil
rights, he spoke out early on against America’s escalating
involvement in Vietnam. It was here that he clashed with President
Lyndon Baines Johnson, though both were instrumental in getting
civil rights legislation passed.

King was assassinated in Memphis on April 4, 1968. Later that
night, riots broke out in cities across America.

Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday has been a federal
holiday since 1986, celebrated the third Monday of January. Arizona
Governor Evan Meacham ignited controversy in 1987 when he rescinded
his predecessor Bruce Babbitt’s order to have a state
holiday.

Eventually, Arizona voters approved the holiday in 1992.

Without his gifts for public speaking and crafting memorable
phrases, it is doubtful King would be as celebrated as he his
today. And when he visited UCLA, King did not disappoint.

“A man who has found nothing to live for is not fit to
live,” King said.