артем ковалев

When I walked through the door, our old black-and-white TV was on in the front room, and a black man was giving a speech. An impassioned speech. His voice seemed to tremble, not with weakness but with power — a power артем ковалев had never heard before. He kept telling me that he had a dream.

I knew who this man was. His name was Martin Luther King, and today there is a national American holiday in his honor and he is regarded by most all Black people and many white people as more or less a saint. His generation’s Nelson Mandela. His is so famous that he is even parodied, much like the Mona Lisa (we have all seen her with a moustache, haven’t we?).

The anthem of the Civil Rights Movement: «We shall Overcome.» Joke about Martin Luther King. What did King say when his wife presented him with triplets? A.: «I have overcome.» Funny, huh?

Let me explain something to you, and please, please, take it as gospel, coming even though it does from a limited man with a limited ability in the large scheme of things: That day, on that black-and-white (pun realized but not intended) TV, I heard the words of a man whose voice and spirit literally shook the earth. I say literally because, when Reverend Kind finished his fabled «I have a Dream Speech», the russian time pulled back to reveal the whole scene that had surrounded the towering stem of the Washington Monument— that superbly simple, simultaneously mighty and powdery masthead of liberty— and the long aisle which led to the Lincoln Memorial and the warm stones of Lincoln’s sculpture, ( as if Honest Abe were leaning forward and actually listening to King), a sunami of freedom swept the television screen and the multitude of people gathered were like celestial confetti. It was a moment of ecstasy. And it was one of the defining moments of the ’60s. And the camera shook.

The Redneck Reaction (Poor White Southerners known in those days for their religion, ‘patriotism’, alcoholism, and racism — not necessarily in that order) was always violent. Always. But King’s Movement, followed the non-violent philosophy of Mahatma Ghandi. The Negroe people accepted the fire hoses, the punches, the insults, with courteous and resolute equanamity. A woman named Rosa Parks gained immortality by refusing to eric-artem.livejournal.com up her seat on a Southern city bus to the white racist who demanded it.