Accents
The son also rises
Many a commentary whether for good or bad, positive or negative, complimentary or defamatory, has been said of fathers and their sons. Novels, short stories, movies, songs are rich in this relationship theme. There’s Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons, in the list of home reading books for students of literature. Among various ditties, there’s Asin, the singing group, with “Magulang…kayo ang gaming gabay…” (Parents, you are our guide). Then, we often hear people say, “He is his father’s son.” For good or bad, in physique or in brains, in success or failure — a reproduction comes up. Or, “Like father, like son” in the way they react to the trials of every day.
Gush, that’s some intro after I’ve just finished GROWING UP KING, a memoir by Dexter Scott King about his father, Martin Luther King, Jr., the famous civil rights advocate. Gifted to me by my daughter Rose and her husband Timothy, the book is a fitting read for the upcoming Martin Luther King Day, Jan. 19, a national holiday here in America. A King Holiday has been observed since 1983, the year former Pres. Ronald Reagan signed it into law. When the book-signing by the author, Dexter Scott King, was scheduled in California, Rose and Timothy went for it and got me a copy.
The title of this column is an oblique allusion to Ernest Hemingway’s novel, The Sun Also Rises where optimism trumps ennui and decadence. Somehow, somewhere, someone goes out of orbit and becomes a sun unto himself. As I read, I find the son, Dexter Scott King, his own person. His competence and capabilities are shown in his position as chairman, president, and CEO of the King Center in Atlanta, Georgia. Certainly, not a thought about breaking away from the huge shadow of his father. For what offspring can opt out from the shadow of a father that has spanned the world? Fact is the son lives by the principles his father had espoused—in thought, word, and deed—so that the dream won’t remain just a dream and the mountaintop would be reached. The famous “Dream” speech was to find reality with the assumption of Barack Obama, an African-American, to the US presidency.
Scott King’s book delves mostly on the family’s efforts for light to be shed on King’s brutal assassination, April 4, 1968. Danger lurked around the lead protester against low wages and intolerable working conditions, and found its target. A final verdict was reached 31 years later: “On December 8, 1999 a jury of twelve citizens of Memphis, Shelby County, TN concluded in Coretta Scott King, Martin Luther King, III, Bernice King, Dexter Scott King and Yolanda King Vs. Loyd Jowers and Other Unknown Conspirators that Loyd Jowers and governmental agencies including the City of Memphis, the State of Tennessee, and the federal government were party to the conspiracy to assassinate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.” James Earl Ray, the fall guy who entered a guilty plea, was sentenced to serve 99 years as the murderer of Martin Luther King, Jr. Several years later, Earl Ray professed his innocence and died in prison before the final verdict came out.
It’s not only unfair labor practice that Martin Luther King, Jr. sought to end, but the over-all, large-scale injustice toward African-Americans in the whole of the United States. The marches he led and the speeches he delivered ended economic and educational segregation, and won for him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. Writes Dexter, the son: “I had no conception of segregation…[of] the meaning of a Nobel Peace Prize which my father had received in 1964, the same year the system of formal segregation was abolished by law…I was almost four years old…Daddy’s point had won. He’d persevered. His cause was just and its righteousness prevailed…” Ludicrous segregations were written off such as “This seat is for whites only, that seat is for blacks” as what happened to civil rights activist Rosa Parks (but that’s another repulsive story that reeks of bigotry and heights of prejudice and intolerance).
From the book’s jacket, these lines describe best the relationship between father and son: “Poignant—and bracingly candid—GROWING UP KING is an intimate portrait of an unforgettable hero, a loving, searching son, and the unbreakable bond between them. It evokes the frustration and yearning we all experience when we struggle to come to terms with the past—and, from it, create a future we can be proud of.” As head of the King Center, Dexter Scott King has the resources to uphold the legacy of his father and create his own future as well.
In 2005, we visited the King Center in Atlanta, Georgia, and found in one area a statue of Mahatma Gandhi, in honor of another martyr in the long struggle for human rights. India’s Gandhi was a forerunner of Dr. King’s philosophy of changing society through nonviolent means, the doctrine that also names the place Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change. Nonviolence that worked in our world-renown EDSA which brought about the fall of a dictatorship, the Marcos era.
(Email: lagoc@hargray.com)