Is Something Happening Now?

Here is Martin Luther King Jr in 1968 saying "something is happening now". It leaves me wondering... is there something happening now? With the Great Recession and the shaking of the foundations of the world economy, is there something happening now? (Listen at 6:30 in this first clip. MLK was widening his message from racial equality to economic equality and the need for global peace & security.)

Part 1:


Part 2:


In the second clip at time 2:35 there is something relevant to the Giffords assassination attempt. And 8:50 is when MLK is prophetic about the coming of the end of his life. He remained positive to the end. He held his vision of a better future to the very end.

The transcript of the speech is here.

For all the hatred of "socialist" Obama, I think back to the early 1960s when my church had a youth minster who had to flee Alabama with his wife and two young toddlers because fanatics from the KKK had burned a cross in his front yard to give him a warning. The descendants of those fanatics now run the Republican party. this is nearly 50 years later, and change has come but it has not yet come deep enough to root out the fanatics of hate. There is something that needs to be happening now. I hope it is. I hope that I don't see it because I'm too close to it. But change has been going on and continues to go on, and needs to be going on.

A good history of the American Civil Rights struggle can be found in Taylor Branch's three volume study:

• Volume 1: Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63


• Volume 2: Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years 1963-65.


• Volume 3: At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years 1965-68

The American Civil Rights struggle was a revolution, but like all revolutions it has left much still to be done. Each struggle is like a wave of the ocean lapping at the edge of the land. Each brings in new possibilities, but each ends by receding a bit, then a new wave arises and comes in to yet again offer hope.

I am left wondering... is something happening now?