Remarks at the Service of Song and Celebration of the Life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
January, 18, 2010
More Than A Song
From a thousand and eight hundred miles away, we see the human face of fear; we listen to the anguished cry of the afraid; we witness the collision of historical and natural forces against the powerless and impoverished. The groaning of the deep earth is upon its surface.
Who can live as confidently as we do and not be affected by such an enormous scale of suffering? Who among us can imagine or comprehend the undoing of a city, a people of nine million souls who are born of long tribulation to mothers and fathers no less loving of life than are we? How are we to live unafraid in a world that can change in a catastrophic instant? Why shall we sing of freedom this night while others of our common humanity remain choked by fear?
Almost five hundred years ago, an Augustinian monk in a German university gave song to these unabated questions based on an ancient poem: “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear though the earth should change, though the mountains shake… though the mountains tremble with its tumult.” (Psalm 46:1-3). Martin Luther’s renowned hymn “A Mighty Fortress” carries us to our own day of the devastating earthquake in the island nation of Haiti, which, like America, was once a land worked by African slaves. The damage done by slavery there continues to pass the cup of sorrow.
The great-grandson of an American slave was the namesake, as was his father, of a theologian whom historians have often said sang a people into the Reformation. When you study history, it is important to pay attention to the songs because they will tell you more about a society than almost anything else about it. Martin Luther King whose life we honor, in whose memory we gather and sing, would undoubtedly give us a particular perspective today were he alive, albeit a very different point of view from many of the reporters who attempt to make sense of Haiti’s place in our day.
Too often, it seems to me, the observance of Martin Luther King’s birthday replays only the music, the soaring arias of church oratory and the heart-felt cadences of thunderous rhetoric, without proper attention to the prose thoughts underneath the tunes and words. We hear the songs, but perhaps we neglect the narrative. We love the inspiration, but we shorten the analysis of a history shaped by Dr. King’s life and legacy.
There are numerous intellectual sources embedded in the ideas expressed so poetically by Dr. King, but one barely mentioned is that of James Weldon Johnson, author of the song “Lift Every Voice.” Johnson’s autobiography is a window on American literature, society, and politics made up of Theodore Roosevelt, W. E. B. DuBois, Booker T. Washington, Paul Robeson, Marcus Garvey, Jack Johnson, and Clarence Darrow. Today, however, we remember mostly Johnson’s music, especially his work “God’s Trombones.” But he was also a close, honest observer of the larger world of hardship and injustice.
In 1920, Johnson spent two months in Haiti, investigating the aftermath of an American military occupation begun in 1915. His report glows with enthusiasm about the beauty of the country and the spirit of the people, particularly in his description of one of the greatest wonders of human construction in the Western hemisphere, Henri Christophe’s Citadel, a mighty fortress protecting the liberation of a formerly enslaved people in Haiti during the time of Napoleon. But ninety years ago, as one of Dr. King’s forerunners, James Weldon Johnson, pulled no punches as he summarized his tour of Haiti that “…of this unfairness, this unreasonableness, this cruelty, the American people as a whole” have a responsibility. Behind the song, there is more to the story; there is careful study and deep learning; and there is a gripping logic and a strong argument.
When Dr. King went to Oslo and accepted the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1964, he spoke in song words similar to those Handel chose for “Messiah,” “And the lion and the lamb shall lie down together… and none shall be afraid” (Isaiah 11:6 and Micah 4:4). He sang “we shall overcome.” He implored his listeners to “transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood.” The music of his words that day was beautiful.
And yet, in his day as in ours, the song has more than just music behind the words. There are serious questions we are called to consider; there are abiding issues demanding our response. Often the disasters of history, such as the earthquake in Haiti, require an answer that would otherwise be impossible to give in ordinary times. But before we sing our way into action, we need to think our way clear of what to ask and what is being asked.
Much of the analysis and policy-making in our moment is and will soon be framed by economics, arguably a very important liberal discipline to study. We look upon the trouble of the world and quickly suggest reasonable remedies that follow questions such as, Will it be efficient? How productive and how measurable are the results? Does it benefit growth and GDP? Thinking in the exclusive terms of profit and loss, however, is to limit the reach of good effect; it creates a tendency to avoid moral considerations, which is perhaps its own unnatural state of human experience.
Dr. King would silence the singing if emotional catharsis, self-interest, or cost-benefit were the only ideas in back of the music. The question of what really matters to you and why, must shape your first principles for the hour when your reactions must depend upon your second nature.
Millions of people will need your help years from now, whether in Haiti or the city neighborhoods of America or the small places of the North Country. Your business at St. Lawrence is to get ready, to understand that your ideals precede your songs. What will you say yes to? What will you sacrifice in order to achieve a higher purpose and to belong to something larger than yourself? What will you contribute your best to? What will you do to make a difference wherever you are? In a word, you must think about these things before you join the chorus. You must make sure the song is right for you, because if you only mouth the words, you will risk a particular irony captured in the observation
Not all the glory of your pride,
Preserved in story and in song,
Can from the judging future hide,
Through all the coming ages long,
That though you bravely fought and died,
You fought and died for what was wrong. (James Weldon Johnson, “Fragment”)
If, however, you get this right, you have earned the right to “Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us, / Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us.”
