Historical March 1994 article. Dates, prices, services and contacts describe the source period; current availability has not been established.
Editor’s note: Following is the text of the speech Freeman delivered at the annual King Commemoration, February 6, 1994.
Dr. King died when I was almost 12 years old, and I didn’t really understand his contributions immediately. But, as I grew older and became more and more aware of them, his life served as an inspiration to me.
In fact, in many ways, I have tried to follow his beliefs in my own life.
Dr. King believed in justice, in equality, in peace. And there is no question in my mind that King would have been deeply disturbed if he were alive today.
The violence that we saw when King was assassinated, back in 1968, was nowhere near what it is today. What has happened, in 1994, is that issues of crime and violence have overshadowed issues of justice and equality. Instead of living in peace, as King had dreamed, many of us are living during a war. Not the war of Vietnam, nor the war of the Persian Gulf, but a war on our own city streets.
We are seeing thugs, drug dealers, and criminals not only affect but, in many ways, control our lives. More and more of us are finding ourselves forced to live with bars on our doors and windows, burglar alarm systems, and clubs protecting our cars.
The idea of sleeping in our parks on hot nights—as St. Louisans did 50 years ago–seems as ancient today as the Roman conquerors. Increasingly, the notion of sitting on a front porch, especially at night, seems to be vanishing as well when punks shoot wildly into the night, spraying anyone and anything that gets in the way of their misplaced anger.
This is a grave problem, one that should disturb all of us, even if some of us are fortunate enough to live in areas where they are not affected by these problems. St. Louis had a record homicide rate last year.
Most of the victims of those homicides-88 percent—were young men, under the age of 21, and most of their murderers were of approximately the same age.
Most of those charged with murder were poor, many of them uneducated or undereducated.
I suspect that precious few of them knew of Martin Luther King and the message that he gave his life trying to convey.
They couldn’t. Not when you take a look at some of the reasons people are being cut down before they’re even old enough to buy a legal drink in the state of Missouri.
I took a look through the PostDispatch’s files for 1993.
Most of the homicides were over matters that most of us would agree certainly weren’t worth dying for: arguments about drugs, about young women, about who stepped on whose foot, a lot of nonsense.
Most of the murders took place among people who knew one another, although a growing number of them took place during robberies and other street crimes.
The criminals are doing what, in a way, they are encouraged to do. Richard Rosenfeld, a professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, has written a book called Crime and the American Dream. Rosenfeld says that today’s criminals are doing little more than pursuing what is commonly known as the American dream—pursuing what you want and letting no obstacle get in your way. Unfortunately, many people are interpreting that dream literally, suggesting that it means that they can rob, assault, murder or use any illegal means necessary to get what they want, simply because they want it. Much of that has to do with materialism.
When I was in college, many of us made fun of what we called “conspicuous consumption,” owning things, cars, wearing expensive clothes designed only to impress other people, not only keeping up with the Joneses, but trying to surpass them.
It made no sense then, and it makes no sense now. Yet, it is that sort of materialism, that sort of conspicuous consumption, that has led to the activity of many of those involved in crime today. Much of the crime also has to do with the drugs and guns that are on the streets today at levels never seen before. And while a majority of our young people are not involved in this activity, the thugs that insist on dealing drugs to our babies pointing guns at our children are giving all of our young people a bad name.
As crime spreads its poisonous tentacles into more and more of our lives, we all suffer more and more.
Dr. King believed in non-violence—at all costs. And had he been alive today and been here speaking to us, I think he would have insisted that the time has come for us to fight back against this criminal element that is making our lives more and more unbearable.
I think that he would speak out against the conspiracy of silence that we are seeing in some of our neighborhood that has frightened good, upstanding neighbors to such an extent that are afraid to stand up.
I think it is high time for neighbors to band together and fight back against this seamy side of our society. It’s time to stand up and work together and push the violence out of our neighborhoods. So how do we do this?
There is not one answer.
The solutions to this dilemma are neither liberal or conservative, Democratic or Republican, black or white.
The first solution comes from within ourselves.
We must be willing to commit ourselves to rooting these ne’er-do-wells from our communities.
We must begin to come forth, to report what we see, to let police know about drug dealing, shootings, and other trouble that we see in our neighborhoods.
The police are not insensitive to the problems that are being faced, and have developed programs in which those who are frightened need not give their names to report what they’ve seen.
They have programs in which the police can talk to you by cellular phone as they come to your neighborhood so that no police officer is seen coming to your door.
The criminals won’t be able to figure out you were the one with a tip.
We also must be willing to stand behind the police department as it takes a more aggressive stance in getting guns and drugs off the streets.
The damage that has been done so far is far too harmful for us to squabble over this issue. Children are dying.
The elderly are being terrorized. People are refusing to leave their homes for fear someone will break in and steal the few possessions they own. And too many guns are in the hands of kids—mere babies–who are busy shooting each other, and everyone else in the process. We’ve got to get these guns off the street and we’ve got to be willing to commit ourselves to stricter gun control laws.
I know that this statement is controversial to some who tell me that stricter gun laws won’t help. Well, I counter that stricter gun laws won’t hurt.
If we make it harder to get guns, we can begin to get them out of the hands of those who, frankly, shouldn’t have them. Let us begin now.
It strikes me that our sentencing laws must be made stiffer.
If a person is sentenced to 20 years in jail, he shouldn’t get out in seven. People shouldn’t be allowed to commit violent crimes one day and be out of jail the next.
The juvenile code also must be changed so that youngsters who do things that at one point in our nation’s history were done only by adults will find themselves treated as adults by our court system.
These changes are important if we ever hope to involve the citizen again in the process of pointing out individuals who are responsible for making some of our lives hell on earth.
I can remember when I was a child, if you did something wrong, someone was going to tell your parents.
It might have been the lady next door or your friend’s mother down the street.
If you did something you weren’t supposed to do, your parents would find out about it. That doesn’t go on much anymore, especially among those who live in areas that are notorious for crime because of a tremendous sense of fear. Those who witness murders are too frightened to give descriptions for fear the culprit will get out of jail somehow and harm them. That has got to change. Part of it, of course, is teaching children, starting at a young age, the importance of morals and ethics.
These are areas that cannot—that should not–be easily dismissed.
If a child is raised without moral and ethical training, he or she is likely to grow up making decisions solely on the question of what his or her chances are of being caught. That is no way to go through life. Among the morals and values which must be taught is the value of human life.
To quote Dr. King, “Now let me say that the next thing we must be concerned about if we are to have peace on earth and good will toward men is the nonviolent affirmation of the sacredness of all human life. Every man is somebody because he is a child of God.” Children are like sponges.
They absorb what we teach them and they absorb what they see.
If we teach them right and wrong, they absorb that.
If they see us resolving our conflicts in a nonviolent manner, they absorb that. But, everyone doesn’t know how to be a good parent.
Some have never had values instilled in them and so are at a loss as to how to instill them in others.
For that reason, we must support parenting programs which teach people how to be good parents and instill values in their children. How else do we turn around the violence that we are seeing far too often? Mentor programs are important.
They can go a long way to help people out of poverty and into jobs. Education is important.
Most of those involved in crime are undereducated.
They are not prepared to enter the legitimate job world.
We must make a commitment to educate them. Education is a way to lift hopelessness, a state in which many of those at risk live. Now, it’s easy for us to sit back and say “that’s not my problem, and I don’t want any of my tax monies or private monies to go to help people with those problems.” But, it is our problem.
As Dr. King said, “Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or the darkness of destructive selfishness.
This is the judgment. Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, what are you doing for others?” It is incumbent upon all of us to do what we can to help others who are not as fortunate as ourselves.
We must do what we can to improve the lives of as many as we can.
We can do something about crime: We don’t have to sit back like scared animals and let thugs and murderers take over our city.
We can work together and stand together.
We can defeat this scourge.
We can reach Dr. King’s dream of all of us living in peace, together, as fellow human beings, unfettered by the problems of crime and violence.
Originally published in The Times of Skinker-DeBaliviere, March 1994.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Original source: SD_Times1994_03.pdf, printed page(s) 3, 5; PDF page(s) 3, 5.
