On the occasion of the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington
On December 10,1964, Martin Luther King, Jr. was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Following the banquet, he and Coretta were expected to open the ball with a waltz. As a Baptist minister Martin had never danced in public. He was not personally opposed to dancing, mind you. On the contrary, he had been a wonderful dancer as a child. It’s just that he knew many Baptists didn’t approve and he didn’t want to offend. However, on the night he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, Martin threw these scruples to the wind. He and Coretta danced and danced and danced.
In truth, though, this wasn’t his first public dance. Martin Luther King made life bearable in the 1950’s and 1960’s by choreographing a national, non-violent dance in holy defiance of the brutality of racism. He made life bearable by writing on his dance card the poor and forlorn, those who suffered inequality in a land proud of its freedoms. When he and Coretta waltzed that night in Oslo, Norway all 250,000 of those who had attended the March on Washington were dancing in their living rooms. The Ralphs (Bunch and Abernathy) were dancing, and Rosa Parks and Linda Brown and Thurgood Marshall and the Little Rock Nine. I imagine Jimmy Lee Jackson and Emmett Till were dancing that night from beyond their graves.
Martin and the leaders of the Movement orchestrated a great dance and everyone was invited ... no one had to be a wallflower ... it was all about freedom of movement, intimacy, sensitivity to the others moods and moves—including the other others whom we do not know, whose moves are unfamiliar, with whom we may be reluctant to get too close—for this is intimate work and requires compromise, discipline and keen sensitivity
During the March on Washington Martin and his lieutenants swept out upon the dance floor and the nation was caught up in the beauty, intimacy and power of dreaming together, moving together and hoping together. What a dance. And it still goes on.
Will you join the dance?