About Trayvon, What Would Dr. King Say?

Civil Rights Movement must rise up in response to the “unjust” Zimmerman verdict. Following twelve days of deliberation and fifty-six witnesses, a jury of six persons exonerated Zimmerman, man of Anglo-Hispanic heritage. It was a just verdict.


Instead of heeding the irreverent civil rights race-baiters like Al Sharpton, who lies bluntly, or Jesse Jackson, whose urge to merge and need to screed has diminished his integrity, we should consider what Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. would say about the Zimmerman verdict, and today’s status of African-Americans.


First, Dr. King would remind voters that in previous decades, most white people were never indicted, let alone convicted and incarcerated for willfully killing black people. Back then, white lynch mobs would preen for cameras following their savage murders of black people, brazenly smiling because they knew that no white jury would convict them.

Then King would recall the trial of the “Scottsboro Boys”, in which a white judge set aside a corrupt guilty verdict, knowing full well that the nine young African-American men did not rape a white woman of dubious reputation and loose morals. A white lawyer defended the nine defendants, and shortly after black men began serving on Alabama juries. Perhaps King would then remind everyone about the tragic slaughter of fifteen-year old Emmett Till, a forerunner of young Travyon Martin, who was killed by white supremacists in Mississippi for whistling at a white woman. Fifty years later, prosecutors filed charges and indicted the men who killed that child. He would talk about OJ Simpson, a wealthy African-American athlete tried for murder, yet not convicted.

In his “Letter in a Birmingham Jail”, King commented that in his time blacks still had to beg to get a cup of coffee at the local dime-store. Today, blacks are celebrated entrepreneurs, including Earvin “Magic” Johnson, whose investments helped save gang-riddled, irrepressibly corrupt Compton from epic stagnation. Of course, Herman Cain ran Godfather’s Pizza, and we have black leaders in our courts and in our statehouses, including Deval Patrick of Massachusetts. We even have a black President (even though his policies have put more black people “in the back of the bus” than any white President).

Instead of crying about racism and victimization, King would say: “We have come a long way!”