We Better Get T' Steppin'

I was alive and well during all of the sixties.
I love Dr. King immensely because his heart was in the right place, and he did his level best to
elevate all black lives to standards of equal justice and opportunity.
However, he was met with nothing at all by way of cooperation from state or local authority.
Federal authorities tried as best they could to offer their cooperation to Dr. King.
But America was, and in many ways still is, a bunch of stupid little city-states.
I know when POTUS was a senator he offered us a picture of a unified country.
I think he had a country like that in his dreams. I don't know how real it was.
Americans reserve the right to be OK and entitled while backward, if they are white.
Americans reserve the right to keep to being dirt poor and still entitled, if they are white.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was vilified in the northern press for organizing and marching 'without
permission' because many times when he applied for local permits, they were denied.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was attacked by dogs.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was attacked by water hoses.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was jailed.
Dr. King's peaceful protests got us very very little. They got him respect chiefly at federal levels.
Medgar Evers was gunned down in his own driveway.
James Meredith was shot.
Ferderal troops had to protect kids going to school from mobs.
The authorities did none of that to Malcolm X.
They jailed Huey Newton as many times as they could, but he kept to his beliefs.
But we as black citizens got nothing of substance from this country from peaceful protests alone.
After the '67 and '68 riots, I finally got a job at the bank in my neighborhood.
White people didn't live in my neighborhood, but all the staff in that bank were white except one teller, until circa 1969.
Even in 1969,when Detroit was a very black city, not one black person worked in its mail room
at main office in downtown Detroit.
When we finally elected Coleman A. Young as mayor, in early the early 1970s, police stopped putting their guns to the temples of black men shouting "up against the wall m.....f.....!' and/or
other expletives to that effect.
We obviously paid a price to be free of that horror, but it took the death of our beloved Mayor, and
thirty years.
We have lost two other good mayors to insanely hostile out-city forces since Mayor Young died.
Still, we have the basic respect of the police forces here so far, and we realized we have paid a heavy
price for it.
It doesn't seem fair that 'live and let live' should be so hard to come by in an American city when we are discussing police departments. But we are not one bit surprised.
Several black millionaires still live in Detroit. And they know there is nowhere less hostile they can live around here.
We can be peaceful. We can march without violence; but it had better start working.
Dr. King gained power when Malcolm and The Panthers offered us alternatives.
Nelson Mandela gave up nonviolence; but he gained most power when first Buthelesi, and then Winnie's Boys offered black South Africans alternatives.