MARTIN LUTHER KING DAY. . . BULL CONNOR YEARS

SAM SMITH - I would like to celebrate Martin Luther King Day but I can't
get Bull Connor out of my mind.  I look for reminders of Martin Luther
King but they are either old and weary or in lonely, small places.
Reminders of Bull Connor are all around us.

The spirit of Bull Connor can be found in our foreign policy,  in our
police methods, in our treatment of the weak and the poor, in our abuse
of the Constitution, in the implicit values of our media, in the violent
forms of entertainment we prefer and our contempt for those who are
different than ourselves, even in how we raise and teach our children.
And, of course, as Charles Rangel said, "George Bush is our Bull
Connor."

Bull Connor was more than a brutal police commissioner. In describing
William Nunnelly's biography of Connor, Neal Tate writes, "Connor had
the backing of the local corporate elite in spite of his declarations of
being free of outside influence. Connor helped the industrial elite by
'controlling strikes...silencing radicals. . .  Connor was exactly what
companies that controlled Birmingham were looking for. . . ' He was
counted on to keep the status quo. Connor 'stayed on the good side of
the business leaders... [and was] always receptive to corporate
suggestions.' His preaching about economy in government and no new taxes
reflected the influence of Birmingham's industrial and financial
interests, who 'always insisted in cheap government with only bare
essential services.' "

In short, a Bush era conservative without the social graces.

It is hard to remember without reminders: an object, a story, a
contemporary version of what we are trying to recall. The Spirit of
Martin Luther King seems to have vanished.  You won't find him in the
Senate. You won't find him on CNN, nor C-SPAN nor NPR. He's even hard to
find in the pulpit or in the streets. Bull Connor, on the other hand, is
everywhere.

In that sense, we are living in a Birmingham before anything happened.
Before Bull Connor was challenged.

But eventually he was, and here is what one man named King said about
it:

|||| I remember in Birmingham, Alabama, when we were in that majestic
struggle there, we would move out of the 16th Street Baptist Church day
after day; by the hundreds we would move out. And Bull Connor would tell
them to send the dogs forth, and they did come; but we just went before
the dogs singing, "Ain't gonna let nobody turn me around."

Bull Connor next would say, "Turn the fire hoses on." And as I said to
you the other night, Bull Connor didn't know history. He knew a kind of
physics that somehow didn't relate to the trans-physics that we knew
about. And that was the fact that there was a certain kind of fire that
no water could put out. And we went before the fire hoses; we had known
water. If we were Baptist or some other denominations, we had been
immersed. If we were Methodist, and some others, we had been sprinkled,
but we knew water. That couldn't stop us. And we just went on before the
dogs and we would look at them; and we'd go on before the water hoses
and we would look at it, and we'd just go on singing "Over my head I see
freedom in the air."

And then we would be thrown in the paddy wagons, and sometimes we were
stacked in there like sardines in a can. And they would throw us in, and
old Bull would say, "Take 'em off," and they did; and we would just go
in the paddy wagon singing, "We Shall Overcome." And every now and then
we'd get in jail, and we'd see the jailers looking through the windows
being moved by our prayers, and being moved by our words and our songs.
And there was a power there which Bull Connor couldn't adjust to; and so
we ended up transforming Bull into a steer, and we won our struggle in
Birmingham. |||||

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RESURRECTION IN A PEW
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SAM SMITH - The memorial service for Gene McCarthy ran a bit long,
considering it was a tribute to a man who had once suggested reducing
the number of commandments from ten to four. And it was disturbing to
see Bill Clinton shamelessly delivering a tribute to a man of integrity,
especially one who had once suggested, as a reform, that "we fire all
the Rhodes and Oxford scholars and everyone from Arkansas." But then
there was also Peter Yarow singing  and the moving memorials and the
brass section of the National Symphony and, most of all, the guy sitting
next to me in the National Cathedral pew. 

With pleasant earnestness he had turned to me before the service and
asked, "Tell me, what did he do? He ran for president, didn't he? And
was he a senator?"

I was stunned, wondering what had led him to enter the cathedral in the
first place, but straight forwardly described McCarthy's experience in
1968.

The man was interested and noted, "I wasn't here then but I just liked
the way he stood up for the truth."

A light clicked. "You were in Vietnam," I said.

"Right. It really screwed you up. Every day you thought you were going
to die. I'm still screwed up."

During the service, my neighbor made copious notes and took photos with
his camera.

At the end of the service, I shook hands and said I had been glad to
meet him, adding, "Was it worthwhile?"

He smiled. "It was unforgettable. I feel alive again."