Fifty Years Since the Death of Martin Luther King

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"Let us rise up tonight with a greater readiness. Let us stand with a greater determination. And let us move on in these powerful days, these days of challenge to make America what it ought to be. We have an opportunity to make America a better nation."

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
April 3, 1968

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Today is the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis, Tenn.

Many articles have been written recapping that event for those not old enough to remember. It is not my intention to add to them. If the reader wants to know what brought King to Memphis, there are many sources for that information.

Nor is it necessary for me to discuss the aftermath of the assassination. Dr. King was the face of the civil rights movement. When that face was taken away, it sparked predictable violence across America — sadly, that violence also led to widespread looting, prompting Roy Wilkins, the executive secretary of the NAACP, to lament that "Martin's memory is being desecrated." It was more than that, really. It was a violation of the concept of home and the security that word implies.

"For home in America is as much home to blacks as to whites," historian Theodore H. White wrote at the time, "and violence menaces them as much as it does Americans of any color."

The night before he died, Dr. King said something that could just as easily have been said yesterday: "Trouble is in the land. Confusion all around. That's a strange statement. But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars."

Trouble is in the land today. One need look no further than San Bruno, Calif., or Austin, Texas, to see that.

Sometimes there is a racial aspect to the violence, but to focus on that alone is to miss the point; the truth is that race relations have improved in half a century. Segregated schools still existed in 1968. If they exist today, it is in the form of private schools to which only affluent families have access. Laws protect Americans from racial (and sexual) discrimination in the workplace.

Are there areas where improvement is needed? Of course. Wholesale change does not happen overnight — or even over decades. America has always been a work in progress. But there can be no denying that the America of 2018 is better than the America of 1968.

So on this day I would say that Dr. King's dream is partially fulfilled. Much work has been done, and much remains to be done.

The work will not be finished until all Americans, regardless of their color — or gender or age, for that matter — enjoy the same rights and privileges of citizenship.

Then the dream will be fulfilled.

The Work That Remains to be Done

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"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

Martin Luther King
Aug. 28, 1963

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The headline on a recent Pittsburgh Post–Gazette editorial read: "Fifty years ago common Americans made history."

I know what the headline writer was trying to say, but, if I had been there, I would have suggested changing "common" to a different word — "average," perhaps, or "ordinary." Because what happened 50 years ago today was extraordinary. There probably isn't a better word to describe it. (Uncommon may be appropriate, but it doesn't seem adequate.)

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial half a century ago today.

And, since last Friday or Saturday, there is no telling how many times portions of it have been cited by others — or, better still, the entire thing has been seen, thanks to the enduring miracle of film and video tape. There truly is a timeless quality to it.

Jenny Price of the University of Wisconsin–Madison News writes that "it still has an impact" on listeners today, and I'd have to agree with that. On several occasions, I have watched film of the speech with people who had never seen it before, and they never fail to be inspired by it.

It has been quoted countless times, probably most often on King's birthday but on other occasions as well — and I'm sure it will be quoted in hundreds, if not thousands, of commemorations of the speech's 50th anniversary.

Commemorations of King's speech have been under way at least since last weekend, and I am sure it already has been quoted many times in connection with that.

Thousands of people gathered to commemorate the occasion in Washington last weekend. I don't know if they listened to a recording of the speech or watched a video tape of it, but its message was very much on their minds.

On this day in 1963, King was the last of many speakers on what was a sweltering summer day in Washington, and he was introduced as "the moral leader of our nation." Most Americans probably knew who he was by the time he delivered that speech during the March on Washington. Those who didn't almost certainly knew who he was after he gave it.

I don't know how many people will be in Washington today. I do know that a lot will be going on there, and this milestone anniversary seems sure to draw a crowd at least as big as the one that heard King speak 50 years ago. As the Associated Press reported, "Marchers began arriving early Saturday. ... By midday, tens of thousands had gathered on the National Mall."

And that was more than four days ago.

The speech is known, as I say, as the "I Have a Dream" speech, and it is called that as if it was written and shaped and crafted lovingly for weeks, if not months, before it was given, which much of it was, but the truly remarkable thing about it is that the most frequently quoted portion of it was largely improvised. It was not part of the prepared text.

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"That part of his speech was an idea King had used in previous speeches," writes the Washington Post. "King, an experienced preacher by then, added it as he sensed the crowd's mood.

"As the final speaker on the long summer day, King wanted to leave the crowd revved up. To do that, he began repeating himself again."

That, the Post informs readers, is a speaker's device known as anaphora, and it can be effective. In the hands of a gifted orator, it can be very effective.

After all these years, the speech really needs no additional hype. In the last half century, it may have been quoted more frequently than any other speech from any period in American history — more often than John F. Kennedy's "Ask not what your country can do for you" or FDR's "nothing to fear but fear itself" or even Lincoln's "four score and seven years ago."

As the century drew to a close, the speech was voted the top speech of the 20th century.

"For King," wrote Theodore White, "1963 was the year to move. ... [B]ecause it was a century from the Emancipation Proclamation and Negroes were still held in servile condition; because it was almost a decade from the Supreme Court's 1954 decision on school desegregation and the glacial pace of desegregation had been tragically disappointing; because all over Africa in the previous decade black men had reached self–expression under their own leadership; because ... the movement he led as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference had found, as he call[ed] it, 'its undergirding philosophy' of nonviolence."

There was an interesting dynamic that could be seen at work in the black community in those days. Part of black America believed that patience really is a virtue, and patience would yield lasting results, but there were those who said patience had produced nothing, and they urged violence as a way of achieving what nonviolence seemed to have failed to achieve.

But King did not advocate violence when he spoke from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial 50 years ago today — or at any other time in his life. His towering oratory, both 50 years ago today and throughout his life, sought to elevate all who heard it.

And his words continued to elevate, even after, about five years later, violence took King's life.

That was a truly dark time in America's history — a time when, ironically, King's message of nonviolent protest was briefly eclipsed by greater violence in America's cities as black Americans, even many who had supported a nonviolent approach, reacted to King's murder by lashing out in a blind rage.

But, in many ways in the last half–century, things have changed. Probably not as quickly as many hoped, but that is simply human nature, which King understood. Change comes slowly but surely — or, as King himself put it, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."

Historians disagree over whether King or someone else said that first, but it probably does not matter. It was a reflection of what King believed and consistently advocated.

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I grew up in the South, and, in my then–small Arkansas hometown, I remember seeing segregation. It wasn't as pervasive in Arkansas as it was in states in the Deep South, but it was there.

I was too young to read so I don't know if there were signs that said "white only" or "colored only" above drinking fountains or on restroom doors, but I remember seeing blacks confined to a single section in the balcony of the town's only movie theater, and, when I started school, my first–grade class was the first incoming group in the history of my hometown to be integrated, even though it was much more than a decade after the Brown v. Board of Education ruling.

Change does come slowly; nevertheless, as the New York Post wrote in a recent editorial on the anniversary of King's speech, "There's no denying the progress that has been made since 1963 — beginning with the fact that a black man is now president of the United States, something King himself likely never expected to see."

With reservations, I agree with that, but I also believe that one of the great failings of the Obama presidency — and I think history ultimately will agree with me — is that he has been preoccupied with electoral success and has used race primarily for political gain rather than to unite alienated groups.

Perhaps that would have been an unintended consequence of electing the first black president, no matter who he/she turned out to be. Maybe the first black president needed to be re–elected to thoroughly establish the historical credibility of a black president — most presidents, after all, have not been elected twice, and re–election is generally regarded as one of the marks of a successful presidency — and that, once that particular color line or glass ceiling (or whatever the current popular terminology for it may be) was shattered, the next black president could get down to the serious business of leading.

Perhaps that is how history works. I don't know.

I do know that today, when a member of any group is not permitted to eat where others eat or shop where others shop, it becomes a national news story, and the owner of the business is targeted for public ridicule and shame.

That is progress. Or is it?

It is also a national story when a celebrity admits using a racial slur decades ago and is viciously attacked as a "racist."

I definitely do not believe that is progress — I don't know anyone who can justify everything he/she said or did 30 years ago — and I don't believe King would think it was progress, either. His vision called for equal treatment for all, not preferential treatment for some and discriminatory treatment for others. He saw that all around him, and he knew it wasn't fair.

(Here is an example from my own life. It may or may not be relevant. I'll leave that to you to decided.

(My father went back to school at the age of 48 to study architecture. Up to that time, he had been fulfilling his parents' vision for him to be a teacher, but they were both gone, and he made the decision to study the subject that really had been his first love. I remember asking him about that once, and he replied, "Why should I commit the rest of my life to a decision that was made by an 18–year–old?"

(I think King would have a similar approach to someone who used a derogatory word three decades ago but has not made a habit of it.)

Regardless of which group benefits and which does not, any kind of preferential treatment contradicts the message of King's life. I think he would see swapping discriminatory treatment of groups not as moving forward but more of a lateral move — if not a step backward.

As a Southerner, I have frequently acknowledged the terrible things that happened here before I was born and even when I was a child, but I also know that many things have changed. There is still work to be done, but it was never the work of this region alone. Because of its more notorious past, the South repeatedly has been made the scapegoat for a nation's sins.

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As the Post says of the changes in America since King gave his most famous speech,

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"[he] would be pleased, but we doubt he'd be content to leave it at that. As he told those marchers: 'We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and the Negro in New York has nothing for which to vote.' In other words, civil rights was not exclusively a Southern issue."

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Over the years, I have had the impression that the South has been America's whipping boy for racism for which people in every region share guilt.

It is just (and I'm about to use a word here that one never hears associated with racism, but I'm going to use it, anyway, in the hope that you, dear reader, will grasp the meaning beneath the surface) a more honest kind of racism in the South.

I'll grant you that honest is a strange word to use in connection with racism, but, please, hear me out. I'm not saying that racism is, in any way, good or honest, but I am speaking about the ways racism is expressed.

My sense has been that there are many people in the North and the West and the East who are every bit as racist as anyone I ever encountered in the South — and I have been to most of the states east of the Mississippi River and several of the states west of it — but they keep their racism hidden, cloaked in the language they use and policies that they say are the same for everyone but really aren't.

I teach in a community college these days. I have many different kinds of students in my classrooms, and I can tell from what I overhear them saying to each other that they take it for granted that they will be allowed to eat in any eatery they choose or shop in any store they choose — or attend any school they choose.

I've been teaching at this community college for more than three years now, and, frankly, I originally expected to hear stories about students (or their friends or relatives) being denied the right to vote, but I haven't overheard anyone talking about that.

Perhaps, I have pondered, young people don't vote with any more frequency than they did when I was a young person. But then I think, that can't be true, not when you consider the credit that young voters received for the two Obama elections.

So maybe their silence on the subject means they take the right to vote for granted. If anyone was prevented from voting, that might spark a conversation, and, I conclude, if I don't hear anything, that must be seen as a sign of progress toward the fulfillment of the American vision, right? Well, perhaps, but, nevertheless, as the Post writes, "we still have a ways to go."

I still hear stories from some of my students about being stopped by the police for no apparent reason other than the color of their skin, and I know there is still work to be done. Profiling is only one aspect of it. As a crime–solving tool, profiling is essential, but, when misapplied, whether deliberately or not, it can breed distrust among people it is intended to protect.

"When we look at the high unemployment rates for African–Americans in our city, for example, or the way our public schools are failing our African–American children," says the Post, "we know the civil–rights challenges are real and continuing.

"Fifty years after King's dream, we should also have learned that none of these challenges are beyond the ability of an America serious about resolving them."

Joshua DuBois of Newsweek writes, "Instead of being in a state of perpetual struggle, an endless existential march, I believe there is far more evidence to support the idea that we are right on the verge of Zion. And the only thing that will stop us from getting there is the hopeless belief that we can't."

Here is what I believe: The reason why any progress has been made in the last 50 years was Americans were mostly united, not divided, when it happened.

It was with a shared sense of purpose that Americans have risen to any occasion and met every challenge — so far.

"United we stand, divided we fall" is as old as the Scriptures (albeit in somewhat different language), which may be why King, a minister, recognized its value for effecting true and meaningful change while most politicians do not.

King's dream is not dead. It has not been completely fulfilled, but enough of it has been accomplished to make Americans confident that we are moving in the right direction.

Yes, there is still work to be done, but America has always been a work in progress.

Thoughts on King's Day

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"If only we would see and respect our shared humanity, so much of what ails America could be healed.

"That was the essence of the message of Martin Luther King Jr. It was the underlying theme of President Obama's speech last week in Tucson.

"It was, as well, the heart of a lovely letter first lady Michelle Obama wrote last week to the parents of America's children about the tragedy in Tucson.

"If only we would acknowledge our shared humanity, our common desire to do what is right by our best lights, we might learn to listen and trust and work out our differences on firmer ground."

Chicago Sun–Times
Jan. 17, 2011

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Today is, of course, Martin Luther King Day.

If you have today off from work, you may already know that this holiday encountered some obstacles along the way to becoming a federal holiday. Ronald Reagan signed it into law in 1983, and it was first observed 25 years ago this Thursday. But it has only been recognized in all 50 states in the last decade.

King has been dead now for more than 40 years, but his memory is still vibrant for those who remember when he walked the earth, his words still speak to what Lincoln called the "the better angels of our nature."

Many people are putting their own spin on King's words today. Some are on target; others, not so much. The validity of one's interpretation depends, I suppose, on those who are doing the interpreting.

Well, people have been known to interpret and re–interpret things for years, generations, even centuries. They're still interpreting the Constitution in the courts.

But, today, I would just like to let King's words speak for themselves.

And I want to focus on three of his speeches that are considered among the Top 100 speeches of the 20th century by AmericanRhetoric.com.

King's "I Have a Dream" speech is, of course, at the very top of the list.

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And the speech he gave the night before his assassination, in which he proclaimed that he had "been to the mountaintop" and almost seemed to know that his life would end soon, is considered the 15th best speech of the 20th century.

I don't think that speech exists in its entirety on video. At least, I haven't seen it if it does — only clips like the one above. But if you want to read the text of the speech, you can find it here.

And then there was a great speech that is often overlooked by people but holds a unique significance in the story of King's life — "A Time to Break Silence" — that King delivered exactly one year before he was killed.

On April 4, 1967, King spoke out against the war in Vietnam. It was a costly decision for him. Many white Americans who had been his allies when he confined his activities to the pursuit of civil rights turned against him when he spoke against the war. The Washington Post editorialized that King had "diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people."

I've heard some people speculate that, because King made that speech, powerful white Americans who had protected him to that point stepped to one side and let the conspirators hatch the plan that resulted in King's death.

I don't know if there is any truth to that.

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But I know that the words King spoke that day still resonate with us today.

"A time comes when silence is betrayal," King said. "And that time has come for us in relation to Vietnam."

Many white Americans turned against King after he spoke those words. But not my mother. She always admired King and his nonviolent approach to social change, and she was a devout supporter of civil rights. When he spoke against the war, he spoke about another issue that was important to her.

And she grieved when he died.

But the things he stood for did not die with him.

Back to the Future

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Today is the 42nd anniversary of the murder of Martin Luther King Jr.

When many people think of King, they think of his inspiring, uplifting messages — his "I Have a Dream" speech that he delivered in front of the Lincoln Memorial during the August 1963 March on Washington or the speech he gave 42 years ago last night, the night before his assassination, when he told his followers he had been to the mountaintop.

In the 1950s and 1960s, King was reviled by segregationists, but he had the support of many who held positions of power in Washington and many who held positions of influence in the media. Among those groups, his work for racial equality was perceived as being on the right side of history.

But I have long believed that it was a speech he gave exactly one year before his assassination, at Riverside Church in New York, that changed his relationship with many who had supported and protected him. On that occasion, he spoke against American policy in Vietnam.

His allies would not stand with him on the subject of Vietnam. The war had nothing to do with racial injustice, they argued. Not so, said King, who believed that peace and prosperity went hand in hand. And he believed that to remain silent was betrayal.

(Or, as Edmund Burke put it, "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.")

Because so many rejected his message in 1967, the tragedy of Vietnam went on, and thousands more Americans died needless deaths. In recent years, I have felt that we were repeating that mistake in the Middle East.

Apparently, Bob Herbert agrees with me, although the focus of his attention is mostly on Afghanistan, not Iraq — of the two, I have believed for many years that Iraq was the unjustifiable war.

King's message in that speech at Riverside Church in 1967 wasn't a radical departure from what he had been saying throughout his public life. But, as Herbert observes in the New York Times, it was controversial because he questioned what the government was doing in Vietnam.

Even the NAACP thought he was making a mistake in shifting his focus from civil rights to foreign policy. But King felt (and said so, in words that were far more eloquent than mine) that economic opportunity and peace were compatible, and economic opportunity was the key to equal rights. The war in Vietnam ran counter to the ultimate objective of the civil rights movement.

In 1967, to question the government's policy in Vietnam was seen as nothing short of heresy — and those who spoke out were often seen as advocating communism. Even entertainers (i.e., the Smothers Brothers) were censored when their comedy was believed to be contrary to national policy abroad.

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King was not a communist, and, eventually, a majority of Americans came to share his view of Vietnam. But his speech drove a wedge between him and many who had supported him in the past.

And things, Herbert argues, haven't changed all that much in four–plus decades. True, America has a black president now — something that even Dr. King may not have dared to imagine — but Herbert sees that president making the same mistake that Lyndon Johnson made in the 1960s — sending more troops (this time to Afghanistan) "in support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept and without popular support," to use King's own words.

"More than 4,000 Americans have died in Iraq and more than 1,000 in Afghanistan, where the Obama administration has chosen to escalate rather than to begin a careful withdrawal," writes Herbert. "Those two wars, as the Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz and his colleague Linda Bilmes have told us, will ultimately cost us more than $3 trillion.

"And yet the voices in search of peace, in search of an end to the 'madness,' in search of the nation–building so desperately needed here in the United States, are feeble indeed."

Until America learns from the mistakes of the past, it will continue to make them.

And the madness will go on.

During his life, King was an advocate of civil rights, as everyone knows, but he advocated civil rights for all, not just one group. That is why the words he spoke still speak to us today. He spoke of fairness, not unfair advantage. And he knew that economic opportunity was at the heart of the human struggle.

No doubt he agreed with Gandhi, who said, "Poverty is the worst kind of violence." He certainly made it clear what he thought of a government that would commit so much money and so many lives to waging war overseas instead of dedicating those resources to programs designed to improve things at home.

I wonder how he would feel about an administration that, faced with massive unemployment and under–employment and budget crises in nearly every state, chose to escalate a war?

Well, just as in Dr. King's day, the poor, the hungry, the unemployed will pay the price for it.

James Earl Ray and the King Assassination

March 10 was a pivotal day in the life of James Earl Ray, the man who spent nearly 30 years in prison for the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King.

His life began on March 10, 1928, in the city of Alton, Ill. Forty-one years later, to the day, Ray confessed to the assassination of King and was given a 99-year prison sentence. He took the guilty plea on the advice of his attorney to avoid a trial conviction and the possibility of a death sentence.

Three days later, though, Ray recanted his confession. Until his death in prison on April 23, 1998, at the age of 70, Ray claimed that a man he met in Montreal (known to him only as "Raoul") and Ray's brother had been involved in the assassination — but he had not been involved.

He later amended his story, claiming that he didn't shoot King but said he may have been "partially responsible without knowing it," hinting at the possibility of a conspiracy. But, just as it was in the case of Jack Ruby, who shot alleged JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald on national television, the suggestion of a conspiracy never went any further than that.

Ray died in prison from complications related to kidney disease caused by hepatitis C after spending years trying to get the trial he never had. His attorney, William Pepper, represented him in a televised mock trial. Pepper also represented the King family in a wrongful death suit against a Memphis restaurant owner, Loyd Jowers, who was found legally liable.

The King family does not believe Ray was involved in the murder. Ray's father did not believe he was smart enough to pull off such a crime. And, in 1978, a special congressional committee investigating assassinations in the United States said there was a "likelihood" that Ray did not act alone.

What was the truth? It has been nearly 41 years since King was murdered. And, if Ray were still alive today, he would be 81 years old. But there was never a trial in the case while Ray lived, and the chance that there would ever be one died with him nearly 11 years ago.

It would be useful for future generations to know the truth, to know who really killed King and why. But it appears destined to remain one of history's coldest cases.

Historic Day

January 20 has been Inauguration Day for more than 70 years. Technically, I suppose, it's been an historic day whenever a president has taken the oath of office, whoever the president was, even if the president was taking that oath for the second time (or, in the case of Franklin D. Roosevelt, for the third and fourth times).

But rarely in my lifetime has it been truly historic — in the sense of being a break with the past.

In just a few hours, it will be an historic moment when Barack Obama puts his left hand on the Bible that Abraham Lincoln used to take the oath of office more than a century ago and takes that same oath, becoming the first black president.

I suppose the only comparable moment in my lifetime was 48 years ago when John F. Kennedy took the oath of office, becoming the first (and so far only) Catholic president (although it is worth noting today that the next vice president, Joe Biden, also is Catholic). I wasn't old enough to remember that event.

But I will remember today's inauguration. Come hell or high water, whether this presidency is ultimately judged to be a success or failure, I will remember today's events.

The inauguration of President Obama will mean different things to different people. But, on this day, my thoughts are drawn to the memory of my mother, who died in 1995.

As a young woman, she and my father were Methodist missionaries in Africa for five years. It was during that time that I was born.

When the three of us came back to the United States, my father took a teaching position in central Arkansas, and my mother became an activist in our community. Her experience in Africa taught her important lessons about human relations and racial justice, lessons that she applied to her efforts in Arkansas.

Yesterday, the nation paused to remember Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. For the first time on that holiday, I thought about the night in April 1968 when Dr. King was killed. (In case you didn't realize it, it was on January 20 in 1986 that the nation first observed Martin Luther King Day.)

I don't know where my father was that evening. Perhaps he was at a faculty meeting. Perhaps he was teaching a class. Nor do I know where my brother was that night. He was 5 years old at the time. Maybe he was at a friend's house.

But my mother and I were the only ones in our house. Our telephone rang, my mother answered it, and her face went ashen as she listened to the person on the other end of the line.

After she hung up the phone, my mother tried to explain to me, in terms an 8-year-old could understand, what had happened. In a choked voice, she told me that someone she admired and respected had been killed. My mother rarely cried in front of me. But on that occasion, I saw tears running down her cheeks.

Not many, because, as I say, she was not given to that kind of thing in front of her children. But there were enough that I could tell that she was very moved by what had happened. I did not know who King was. I did not know whether my mother was acquainted with the person who had been killed. But I tried to comfort her in my 8-year-old way.

I've always felt that my mother believed that more than a man died that evening. In many ways, I believe that she was convinced that the cause of justice in America had been set back, that some of the things she believed should be might never come to pass.

But that dream did not die in April 1968.

Today, more than 40 years after that evening and nearly 14 years after my mother's death, the dream lives in a way that I wonder if Mom could have imagined. Millions of people will be in Washington today to bear witness to it, and hundreds of millions more will watch it on TV.

Last March, when Texas was about to hold its presidential primaries, I asked my father whether he thought my mother would have voted for Obama or Hillary Clinton. He said he believed she would have voted for Obama. That's certainly possible, considering the years she spent with my father in Africa, but I wasn't so sure then, and I'm still not sure about that. Mom was against racism, but she was also an advocate of education, children, women, single parents and health care, all things that are important to Clinton. I could see her supporting either candidate.

As I told some friends of mine during the recent Christmas holiday, I think Mom probably would have seen it as a race between two qualified candidates (I don't know if she ever felt that way about the electoral choices she had in her life) and that the only regrettable thing was that only one could be nominated. Since Clinton appears to be on her way to becoming the next secretary of state, I think Mom would have been gratified that both will go on to greater service to the nation.

I don't know if there is a heaven, if there is an afterlife. If there is, I'm sure she will be looking down on the scene today and smiling her extraordinary smile — although I'm equally certain that she would say there is still much that needs to be done.

But that's OK. America has always been a work in progress. I think one of the things my mother wanted to teach my brother and me was that America was meant to constantly reinvent itself, to never be satisfied with the status quo, to always seek ways to improve.

As Frederick Douglass said, "If there is no struggle, there is no progress."

So let's get on with the work that remains. It seems to me that we've struggled enough.

The Man

Today, on the day set aside to remember the birth of Martin Luther King Jr. 80 years ago, I've been thinking about a book I read as a teenager.

It was called "The Man," and it was written by Irving Wallace in 1964. He wrote many remarkable novels — and a few works of nonfiction, like "The Book of Lists" and "The People's Almanac," as well.

"The Man" was written before the 25th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified in 1967.

(The 25th, in case you aren't familiar with the amendments, provides the means for a president to nominate someone to be the next vice president when the duly elected vice president has died or resigned or cannot fulfill his responsibilities. It was first used when Spiro Agnew resigned in 1973 and Richard Nixon chose Gerald Ford to replace him. The following year, after Nixon himself resigned and Ford became president, Ford chose Nelson Rockefeller to be the next vice president.

(The 25th also provides a framework for the vice president to be the "acting president" when the president is unable to carry out his duties for any reason. Fans of the TV show "The West Wing" may remember that the president in that series invoked the 25th Amendment to temporarily hand over power to the speaker of the House when the president's daughter had been kidnapped. The move was hailed as patriotic in the show because it showed the president was putting the interests of the country ahead of his own and didn't want important decisions to be made by a distraught father.)

That's important to remember because, in the novel, the vice presidency is vacant; then, on a trip overseas, the president is killed in a bizarre accident and the speaker of the House (who was next in line to be president) dies during surgery. That makes the next person in line the president pro tempore of the Senate — who, in this case, happens to be a black man.

The novel then becomes an examination of the many problems faced by America's first black president. He has to deal with racists who aren't happy to have a black man in the Oval Office. At the other end of the political spectrum, he has to deal with black activists and their agenda. He is also the target of an assassination attempt, and he is impeached for firing the secretary of state — in proceedings that are remarkably similar to the ones surrounding Andrew Johnson's impeachment nearly 100 years earlier.

On a personal level, he has to contend with the racial issues faced by one of his children, who looks white and is harassed.

Eight years after the book was written, it was made into a movie. The film originally was intended to be a TV movie, but it was released theatrically instead because of its sponsors' concerns about racial backlash.

The black president was played by James Earl Jones, who may be best known for providing the voice of Darth Vader in the "Star Wars" movies, although he has had a long and distinguished career — which began with a part in Stanley Kubrick's "Dr. Strangelove" in 1964.

Others in the cast included Georg Stanford Brown (who appeared with Jones in the TV blockbuster "Roots" a few years later), Burgess Meredith and Martin Balsam. Rod Serling (of "Twilight Zone" fame) was the screenwriter.

"The Man" was written more than 40 years ago. It was written, obviously, in a different time and in a country that was different from the one in which we live today. But Barack Obama, like James Earl Jones' character, will face many challenges in his presidency. He will not always be the popular figure he is on the eve of his presidency. And he will need everyone's support to succeed.

The Burden of Great Expectations

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By almost any yardstick one chooses, the 1964 election was a lopsided landslide. President Lyndon Johnson, who ascended to the office after the assassination of John F. Kennedy less than a year earlier, hammered Barry Goldwater in an election that was never in any doubt.

In some ways, the victory wasn't as complete as some — for example, both Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan carried 49 states when they ran as incumbents, whereas Johnson carried 44.

But more than 61% of the voters cast their ballots for Johnson, and that's a figure that no one, not even Johnson's idol, Franklin D. Roosevelt, has matched or exceeded.

The 1964 election is the subject of Kenneth Walsh's next-to-last article in his U.S. News & World Report series on the most consequential elections in American history.

By invoking the dead president's memory, Johnson successfully sought the passage of a social agenda that exceeded what Kennedy had hoped to achieve in his lifetime, using skills from his Senate majority leader days to get a mountain of legislation passed.

The legislation wasn't well received in the South, and Johnson himself conceded that the Democrats had handed domination of the region to the Republicans for a generation or more after passing bills like the civil rights act and the voting rights act.

At least, that's what the legend tells us.

If it is mostly legendary, it had the virtue of being accurate. In the 44 years since that time, only one Democrat — Jimmy Carter of Georgia, in 1976 — has carried more than four states in the Old South.

Of course, Johnson's standing in the South (and, consequently, the Democratic Party's standing in the South) wasn't helped by Johnson's efforts to support Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement.

Without the landmark legislation that Johnson promoted, this year's nomination of Barack Obama might not have happened. So, in many ways, it's appropriate that Obama should be nominated not only on the 45th anniversary of King's "I Have a Dream" speech — but also the day after what would have been Johnson's 100th birthday.

For Obama's nomination is as much Johnson's legacy as it is King's.

In the four years that followed the historic landslide of 1964, Johnson's popularity declined along with the popularity of the Vietnam War. By March of 1968, Johnson had had enough and withdrew as a candidate for the Democratic nomination, leaving the war to his successor.

"His failure to honestly discuss how badly the war was going and to reveal the true costs of the conflict led to a credibility gap with voters," Walsh writes. "He also badly underestimated the determination of the enemy to win."

Johnson's administration achieved some remarkable things on the domestic side, but, as Walsh observes, "the momentum behind Johnson's programs stalled under the weight of the war's unpopularity and cost."

And, in the end, the president who wanted to be remembered for his domestic achievements (and who may yet be recognized for that part of his record) instead found waiting for him an ugly little war on the other side of the world that consumed him.