Going to the well for redemption and revolution

Note: This was originally posted to my old Substack back on November 13, 2021. I deleted that Substack a few years ago so I’m reposting these old blogs so they don’t get lost.

Disclaimer: most of this text is about Martin Luther King, Jr., and racial justice in America. I’m a middle-aged White man who has never experienced racial discrimination and never will. I would understand if you think it’s presumptuous or misguided of me to write about these topics as someone whose role should be primarily to listen, not talk. So I have grounded my thoughts in the words of Dr. King. You will judge if I succeeded in speaking with humility and in a spirit of amplification, not self-importance.

Hello and Holla

The word "hello" always bothered me because no one seemed to know what it meant. Every time I answered the phone or greeted someone a little language-imp perched on my shoulder, wrinkling its nose. What was I saying? I finally asked my seventh grade English teacher what hello meant. She was both faintly amused and vaguely pained. It's just what people say when they greet each other, she said. But what did it actually mean? We went around for a while until she understood that I wanted to know what the content of hello was. "Rock" means a rock and "red" means a color. So what is a "hello"? At this point my teacher was suddenly very busy, looking down at her papers and shuffling them intently, indicating that she deeply desired me to be anywhere else at that moment. should be headed somewhere else.

Hullo and Ahoy

The etymology of "hello" doesn't help, but it does tell you that the modern English word "hello" comes from an older French form spelled "holla," meaning "hold up" (close to the British "what's all this then"). When Missy Elliot shouts holla! in the middle of Get Ur Freak On she's using old French to say "whoa there!" When we say it on the phone it's because Thomas Edison was once startled by his phone ringing and blurted out something that sounded like "hullo!" and it stuck. Alexander Graham Bell liked to say "ahoy" when he answered the phone. As if the person calling was a vessel passing through thick fog, trying to hail you through the darkness, hoping for a response.

Evocations and Salutations

Some words describe and some words evoke. They can summon powerful and frightening spirits into the world, who cleave reality apart, into what was real before the words were used and what is real in the aftermath. "I now pronounce you wed"; "this has been declared an unlawful assembly"; "you are under arrest"; "I hereby sentence you"; "fire". But some evocations are gentle gestures of affection and friendship, like salutations and closings in correspondence. "Dear X"; "best regards"; "yours most sincerely." Salutations and closings persist in our emails, the way the save icon for MS Word is still a 3.5 inch floppy disk and how fact we call digital objects "files." It's a horseless carriage effect -- misapplying our old familiar words to newborn technology, using our comprehended past to brace ourselves against the incomprehensible present.

I Hope This Finds You Well

Back in the late 1990s, beginning an email with "Dear X" was, I believed, what you were supposed to do if you were writing to anybody over 30. Our Elders disdained email as shabby and informal (or so we heard) so to placate them we wrote electronic mail messages as if they were magical missives washed up from the ocean-sized Information Superhighway. Thirty years later those emails read like they were scribed on parchment by a quill pen daubed in iron-gall ink flitting above a candle-lit writing desk. Finding the right register for an email is somehow distressing and a dull chore. It it's too officious ("X, the memo is attached") it scans as icy or angry; too effusive ("Hi X!!") and it looks close to madness. So we compromise with standard openings. And there is one of these that everybody hates: "I hope this finds you well." Maybe because it's 2021 and no one who isn't unbelievably rich and powerful is physically and/or mentally well. Maybe because it feels like it goes even farther and projects stoicism onto the recipient -- hope you are keeping that upper lip stiff! Maybe the sender has to earn the right to claim hope before they can proclaim it to you in an email salutation.

I Hope This Well Finds You

There's something inherently sacred about a well, and humans have always known it. Every culture on earth has a version of holy wells, going back farther than we have written records. The most dried-out, used-up well keeps enough magic for itself that people use it to make wishes. Even the roots of the word "well" are tangled up with the word "wish" because both words meant abundance and satisfaction. There’s something mysterious about a well, a straw piercing the rind of the earth. Isn't it nice to think that we each have a well somewhere? Waiting to bring us abundance and satisfaction? Maybe you already found yours and draw from it every day. If you haven't found yours yet, I hope your well finds you. I hope this well finds you.

I am an Archivist

I've been a professional archivist at Boston University for about 20 years. My official title is Assistant Director for Manuscripts, which my daughter likes because it "sounds witchy." An archival repository consists of collections, aka papers; these collections can be made up of almost anything: drafts, notes, letters, journals, media (photographs, audio/video etc.), artwork, textiles, newspapers, even digital objects. Archival collections are enchanting because their contents are usually unique and irreplaceable in a global economy built on mass production, reproduction, consumption, and disposal. (But even modern garbage can be a historical collection.) What the creator or collector of the material chose to keep in the papers, what they discarded, and how they arranged everything — all these choices are also unique to that collection. Researchers treasure archival collections because they offer access to things that are hidden, insights into the process. Archives aren’t for information retrieval, they’re for knowledge production. That’s a rare thing in a data-science-society that values aggregation not inspiration.

The Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers

The collection I work with the most is the Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers. I was the project supervisor on a major re-cataloging project on the papers in 2007-2009, and I'm the only staff member from that project still remaining at BU who worked on it. The finding aid (which is what archivists call inventories or catalogs) for the King papers describes every scrap of paper in the entire collection. The papers only go from the early 1950s -- when he was a graduate student studying for his doctorate at the BU School of Theology -- to about 1963. They're not comprehensive, and there are other major King collections out there, especially at Morehouse College in Atlanta. BU's King Papers stop right before the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, held on August 28, 1963 in Washington, DC. Which is what I really wanted to talk about.

Improvising the Dream

Part of my job is to answer people's questions about our collections, and one of the most common questions I get is: do you have Dr. King's original draft of the "I Have a Dream" speech he gave at the March on Washington? Imagine if we could unveil his thought-process on that! We don't have it; nobody has it because it doesn't exist. No single draft survives. The March was such a huge undertaking that MLK barely had any time to prepare any remarks at all. What everyone really wants to see is the original draft of the section that starts with "I have a dream," but one of the greatest feats of oratory in American history was improvised. A common story about how it happened: as he approached the end of his written text, the voice of the legendary Mahalia Jackson rang out. One of the greatest gospel singers of all time and a close friend to MLK, she had preceded his speech singing an old, old spiritual, "I've Been 'Buked and I've Been Scorned," about holding on to your faith and hope against an entire world whose fuel is your sweat and blood. "Tell them about the dream Martin!" she cried. Some words describe and some words evoke. Speeches and sermons are obviously forcible evocations. “I Have a Dream” was so powerful American space-time has curved itself around it ever since.

Inward and Outward Prophecy

IHAD is a prophecy. Prophetic language is an ancient method of evocation, in two styles: inward and outward. Inward prophecy addresses the self and the past, calling the people who have fallen into faithlessness back to the principles they have forsaken.

In an early section of IHAD, MLK says:

In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the "unalienable Rights" of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds." But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.

This is MLK’s inward prophecy: The state and the citizens of the United States strayed from the justice promised at the moment of national creation. His demand is redemption.

Outward prophecy looks to society and the future; it widens the horizon of possibility to brings the principles into our shared material reality — the dream of making a just world in our present life.

MLK immediately follows the section above with this:

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. And those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. And there will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

This is MLK’s outward prophecy, a new world that won’t be delayed or denied any longer. His demand is revolution. MLK had recently made this demand already in his Letter from Birmingham Jail, published two months before the March on Washington. (Another text with no surviving original draft, probably because there was no single original draft.)

Dr. King was a preacher of the Christian gospel, he knew this prophetic language down to his bones. Like any good sermon, IHAD blends the two kinds kinds of prophetic language together, alternating between the past…

And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

… and the future:

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

That last sentence is the most misused, misappropriated text in the United States since at least 1980. How and why did that happen?

Redemption and Revolution

The ideology of racism and the brutality of enslavement and its aftermath are obviously woven through the entire history of the United States going back to the colonial era. Racial oppression has always been an essential part of the American economy. MLK wasn’t naive about this history. Despite the liberation rhetoric in the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution, he knew there was no true promise of universal equality and justice intended there. So MLK is careful to make his inward and outward prophecies inseparable: no revolution without redemption, no redemption without revolution. “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up [revolution] and live out the true meaning of its creed [redemption]: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal” [transforming the meaning of the original language].

The work of the US civil rights movement has always been both redemptive and revolutionary. Trying to redeem American democracy through equal access to the ballot, for example; trying to revolutionize American society through equity in the streets, public spaces, trains and buses, hospitals, shop floors, boardrooms, everywhere. Revolutionary because it would mean justly reclaiming everything withheld by the enforcers of our old national ideology: housing, wages, education, health care, freedom of movement, safety from violence by the state and its permitted vigilantes. In other words, a revolution in wealth.

Neither Redemption Nor Revolution

Wealth has always equated to power in American society, so to equalize American wealth the ruling class would have to relinquish their absolute control over the existing political economy. A just share of wealth, and thus power, would be an unassailable birthright of the people. Can you imagine living in such a moral society? (It’s not hard to understand many conservatives since the 1950s thought MLK was obviously a communist.) American wealth and power is more concentrated in an untouchable group of White aristocrats and their families than it has ever been. Republicans are shrinking access to the ballot. Our horizon of possibility is chased into remoteness. And one of the great paradoxes of US politics since 1968 is how MLK’s words played a role in bringing this about.

IHAD was shorn of its redemptive, revolutionary demands by White aristocrats, their politicians, and their followers in the US of the 1980s. Their mission was to reframe MLK’s rhetoric so it appeared to support White supremacy instead of attacking it. They disregarded the historical context of three hundred years of injustice and microscopically focused on the phrase “…not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” This is what it looks like, from an address by Ronald Reagan in January 1986, where he was defending himself against critics pointing out that his administration had tried to roll back civil rights laws, poverty relief, and affirmative action :

We are committed to a society in which all men and women have equal opportunities to succeed, and so we oppose the use of quotas. We want a color-blind society.

And again, from February 1986:

We want what I think Martin Luther King asked for: We want a colorblind society. The ideal will be when we have achieved the moment when no one--or when nothing is done to or for anyone because of race, differences, or religion, or ethnic origin; and it's done not because of those things, but in spite of them.

In 1991, Senator Alan Simpson said this during the US Senate hearings on the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court:

[MLK was the] greatest . . . civil rights leader. . . [who] asked only that he and his children be judged, quote, 'based on the content of their character and not on the color of their skin,' unquote. Isn't what he was asking for was [sic] a colorblind judgment, and isn't that exactly what Judge Thomas is advocating?

There are too many examples to quote them all.

None of this is news to anyone who is familiar with the history of US civil rights since 1970. But it’s worth repeating just to point out how insidious it is that colorblindness became the mainstream interpretation of IHAD for generations of White Americans.

Equivocation and Counterrevolution

Because of MLK’s status as an unimpeachable martyr for civil rights, one whom baby boomers and their parents felt bound to respect, the “colorblind” framing of IHAD obtained moral weight in the White imagination and was passed on as the correct reading. Conveniently for the status quo, colorblindness assured the favored that their elevated status was not the symptom of a morally sick society. According to colorblindness, racism was not a hateful ideology incarnated by violence, injustice, poverty, and exploitation; it was simply bigotry. Pointing out the historical context of three hundred years — that was the real racism.

To complete the rhetorical reversal, in the 1980s-1990s American politicians shifted their language away from addressing racial inequality in society in order to talk about crime. Talking about the “race problem” went out, talking about the “crime rate” and “superpredators” came in. The terminology of crime, safety and property rights allowed Americans to embrace racist sentiments without overtly using racist words. By this logic tough-on-crime rhetoric and mass incarceration were not ideological projects designed to ruin the lives of thousands of Black Americans, they were initiatives intended to make the entire nation “safer.”

The phrase Black Lives Matter came into common usage after the murder of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman in 2012. Echoing MLK it declares the value of the lives of Black Americans against the constant threat of violence and oppression. The conservative backlash to this righteous declaration was the phrase “All Lives Matter,” descended from colorblind rhetoric. It weaponizes the abstract concept of equality in order to neutralize any shift towards justice in our material reality. The ultimate mutation is the perverse phrase “Blue Lives Matter,” an advertisement of American police’s aggressive opposition to anything that might restrain their capability to terrorize not just Black Lives but All Lives.

The Giant Triplets

By the time of his 1967 speech “Beyond Vietnam,” MLK had shifted his prophecy towards the outward, revolutionary posture:

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin... we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

Racism, materialism, and militarism are the pillars of American dominance and hegemony across the planet. To attack them is to undermine everything that keeps America “strong”. Acting against them is taboo. That’s why true activism provokes an extreme reaction by the ruling class and their media and military wings. Activism stakes out a place of power, refuses to relinquish it, and uses that power on behalf of the people against injustice.

I Hope This Well Finds Us

In IHAD, Dr. King says: “we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.” The roots of the world “well” and “wish”, abundance and satisfaction, are also connected to the word “will”. Is abundance and satisfaction, in the form of justice in our society, something we can both wish for and will into reality? Is there such a generous well somewhere waiting to bring us abundance and satisfaction? Maybe we will find it and draw from it every day. I hope this well finds us.