We Must Honor Dr. King by Completing the Second Phase of the Civil Rights Movement

As we approach Black History Month, we need to realize that to do full honor to the great man whose life we recently celebrated, we must overhaul K-12 education toward realization of economic justice, Dr. King’s foremost concern during the last two years of his life.


Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., is in that class of eminent historical figures of the United States that includes Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglas, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, and A. Philip Randolph. He is not fully appreciated, even though the Congressional tally finally brought us a national day of recognition for him in 1986. By applying the principles of Mohandas K. Gandhi’s satyagraha assertive version of nonviolence, Dr. King put himself in harm’s way many times in efforts that contributed mightily to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.


Those were landmark pieces of legislation, of a kind that also brought us fair housing and employment opportunity legislation. All such legislation was hugely important in opening unprecedented pathways for those positioned to realize middle class aspirations. But all of this meant remarkably little to those left behind at the urban core, just trying to survive from day to day. Dr. King knew this.


At the time he was struck mortally by a bullet on a balcony at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis in April 1968, Dr. King was hurdling himself aggressively into his movement’s new and paramount Nonviolent Populism Phase (1967-1968) for economic justice. Dr. King’s trip to Memphis in the interest of economic justice for the city’s sanitation workers was to be a brief interruption in his larger effort to organize a Poor People’s March on Washington, bringing public attention to the plight of the nation’s most economically impoverished people.


And that is where we are today. Forty-six years later, we have never adequately addressed the problems that Dr. King knew still lay unresolved at the time that his heart stopped beating. We must do better. The time is now. No one can do this for you (readers of this article). All great movements require direct, persistent efforts on the part of masses of people. And this one may just take more effort than has heretofore been required.


We must overhaul public K-12 education to complete the second, economic justice phase of the Civil Rights Movement We must do this not by depending mainly on charter schools, and certainly not on some forlorn hope that privatization through vouchers could ever point us in the direction of educational excellence. We must do the hard work of transforming the centralized school districts that do now and will in the future serve most of those impoverished young people about whom Dr. King cared so deeply.


We must define excellent education as a matter of excellent teachers delivering a rich liberal arts curriculum in logical grade by grade sequence; and excellent teachers as those professionals possessed of broad and deep knowledge with the pedagogical ability to educate all students.


Then you yourself must do the hard work. Do not depend on any of the putative reform organizations to do the work for you. Leaders and members of such organizations have proven themselves timid and ineffective. The transformation of K-12 education must occur on the strength of the labor of masses of people willing to traverse inner city streets, meet challenged families at the urban core, volunteer as tutors in the most academically challenged schools, and support the efforts of serious educational professionals to do whatever is necessary to ensure that students of all ethnic and economic descriptors succeed.


Minneapolis Superintendent Bernadeia Johnson is such an educator. She has assembled an astonishingly talented staff that is making full effort to achieve the necessary educational transformation. So call Superintendent Johnson and tell her that you are behind her and will work in the coming months to elect school board members who support her mission. Let Early Literacy Tutoring Coordinator Kara Bennett know that you want to offer tutoring assistance to a struggling child.


Then get on the phone again and tell Teaching and Learning Director Mike Lynch that you admire his efforts to upgrade curriculum and teaching through “Focused Instruction.” Notify Human Resource Operations Executive Director Rick Kreyer that you are behind his efforts to advance Superintendent Johnson’s “Shift” campaign by placing the most effective teachers at severely challenged, “High Priority Schools.” And communicate to Associate Superintendent Sara Paul that you are fully behind her efforts to bring innovative design to schools that are both pedagogically engaging and academically substantive.


No one else can do this for you. Overhaul of K-12 education requires populist participation of the sort advocated by Dr. Martin Luther King. You can best honor Dr. King’s efforts in behalf of the most economically poor among us by working for high quality education for all students.


Designate Black History Month for commencing assistance to those at the Minneapolis Public Schools who are themselves already hard at work at the most important mission imaginable: the achievement of educational excellence in a large urban school district, for the benefit of students of all ethnicities and economic statuses.