NEW SMYRNA BEACH -- When I was growing up in Edgewater and going to private school, I didn't come into contact with many African-Ameicans. However, I will point out that the first crush I ever had was on a black girl named Tiffany.
Public Enemey's "Fight the Power" from the Spike Lee movie, "Do the Right Thing" cast a spotlight on racial tensions in New York City at the beginning of the 90s.
Sadly though, things didn't work out. She was too old for me. I was 6, she was 12.
Where I grew up, and with the people who surrounded me, there was kind of this unspoken rule that white people listen to rock music and black people listen to rap. It was as if white people who listened to rap were somehow shameful or trying to be something they're not, like they were tresspassing where they weren't welcome.
Me, personally, I felt more like it just wasn't music that had anything to do with me. I wasn't worried what white people thought if I listened to rap, I just felt like rap didn't belong to me so I kept my respectful distance. As the 90s wore on, hip hop and rap became pop music, and everyone started listening.
The old lines that divided were smeared away, and even my little brother started rhyming and making beats in his bedroom. Even then however, rap still hadn't won me over yet.
What got me finally, was when I watched a documentary on one of the first rap groups, Public Enemy. The music video for their hit song "Fight the Power" in 1989, became a historic moment when film director Spike Lee organized a massive political rally in the streets of New York City against the tyrannical police brutality against blacks in the city at that time. Even though it was meant to be staged by extras hired by Lee's production crew, the streets filled with authentic protesters.
Watching this video inspired me tremendously. Knowing the details of the horrible repression of blacks in the city at that time, I was likewise righteously angered by the racist NYPD and so also thrilled with the protest. I felt like the song and the video was not just a victory belonging to African-Americans, but a victory belonging to all people, and to me.
Before I even finished watching the music video, I was already thinking of Martin Luther King, Jr. and realizing the same thing. His message and life's work belonged to everyone, not just blacks in America.
I took personal ownership over him as a hero and felt pride for him as if he belonged to me just as much as he belonged to African Americans. I arrived at these conclusions long before I came across King's last speeches. America has a funny way of forgetting the strange and radical turn that King began to move in before he was assinated.
These speeches are rarely quoted or discussed, so no one really knows about King's shift of emphasis from race to class. In his last years, he became more involved in workers strikes and other areas of economic equality.
Before he was murdered in 1968, King was drafting up an "economic bill of rights" that would be forwarded by the Poor People's Campaign. These are not things heard or discussed often when speaking of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. or his legacy leaving one to wonder about these curious deletions from the history books and national memory.
One might even consider that his assination was perhaps more inspired by this new turn in his emphasis on class instead of race. It's not hard to imagine that this scared the hell out of certain people in power at the time. He was quickly silenced.
Only now are we having this discussion on economic inequality, over fifty years later, with the Occupy movements and other national dialogues. One can't help but wonder where we might be now if such a conversation was allowed to happen back in the 1960's. King saw things then that people are only seeing now.
The legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. is thus even larger than people realize. King's message was broad and all inclusive. It certainly isn't hard to imagine his chiseled face and booming voice echoing out over Occupy gatherings.
I've little doubt that he's smiling down from wherever he is anywhere that people gather together to "fight the power" and claim their rights as human beings.
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