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DOES THE 58TH ANNIVERSARY MARCH ON WASHINGTON ILLUMINATE MISSTEPS OF THE PAST AND PRESENT?
By Tolson Banner
Martin Luther King, Jr. (King of Love) in his prophetic way differentiated between the drum major instinct and the drum major. The King of Love warned us of the drum major instinct in which he acknowledged led to a lot of the race problems in America: A need for some people to feel that their white skin ordained them to be first.
The reverberations of these racial drum beats have sent seismic shifts through the American soil resulting in the King of Love turning over in his grave so much he has rolled right off of the American soil. The composer of the King of Love’s birthday song, Stevie Wonder, announced he too was feeling these same racial seismic shifts and concluded it was time for him to “roll out” and head for Ghana in Africa.
The reverberations of these racial drum beats have sent seismic shifts through the American soil resulting in the King of Love turning over in his grave so much he has rolled right off of the American soil. The composer of the King of Love’s birthday song, Stevie Wonder, announced he too was feeling these same racial seismic shifts and concluded it was time for him to “roll out” and head for Ghana in Africa.
But a march of any sort requires a drum major to beat out the syncopated rhythm so the marchers keep time. During the 1950s, we marched to a steady drumbeat with synchronized actions: On December 5, 1955, blacks stood in solidarity to launch the Montgomery, AL bus boycott. For 381 days, black people carpooled, walked or hitched rides to their destinations. The bus boycott concluded on December 20, 1956. Our economic solidarity broke the back of Jim Crow. This was a major step we took and a strategy implemented with fervor.
