1/23/2023

Last week’s curation at RealClear’s American Civics portal starts with Jack Miller Center President Hans Zeiger’s reflections on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, which celebrates the legacy of the martyred civil rights leader. As Zeiger argues, “In King’s mind, the solution to the injustices of American life could be discovered right in the very documents that birthed our country.” As King taught in his famous “I Have a Dream” speech, the answers to the country’s turmoil over race were located in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. King said that it was on this basis that he fought for equal treatment and equal opportunity for all Americans. Zeiger writes that King carried out his mission with prudence and restraint: “Rather than the extremes of revolutionary violence or defeatist retreat, he argued that ‘We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline.’” Ultimately, “King believed that by respecting one another as equals in citizenship, both white and black Americans could work together to fulfill the promises of the founding.”

At RealClearPolitics, Armstrong Williams calls Americans to “exalt, celebrate and salute black achievement and success stories to inspire the living and those yet to be born to strive for excellence and courage.” One forgotten hero is Crispus Attucks, the escaped slave who “was murdered during the 1770 Boston Massacre, the first casualty in the American Revolution.” In death, Attucks was given honors that no black person – particularly one who had escaped slavery – had received to that point. He lay in state for three days at Boston's Faneuil Hall, being seen by “more than half of Boston’s population.” And as Williams adds, “Attucks became a symbol in the 1840s for African American activists in the abolitionist movement.” Williams concludes by calling Americans to “dwell on the positive, not the negative, in black history” and focus on “the glorious possibilities for the future rather than cry forever over split milk.”