Free At Last

“There is no freedom without justice”
Simon Wiesenthal

” Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty I’m free at last”. These words marked the dynamic conclusion of Martin Luther King’s famous I Have a Dream Speech on August 28th, 1963. The phrase was derived from an anonymous spiritual first published in 1907 by John Wesley Work, Jr. in his collection of songs “New Jubilee Songs and Folk Songs of the American Negro.” In the song, the unknown singer rejoices:
“Way down yonder in the graveyard walk
I thank God I’m free at last
Me and my Jesus going to meet and talk
Thank God I’m free at last.”
The speech marked the end of the March on Washington. It was a big deal. The three major television networks covered the event. I remember watching that speech. It gave me chills. Every year, on the anniversary of King’s death, I look it up on youtube to watch it again. My eyes always start to well up as his voice begins to rise in measured fury, a verbal onslaught of anger, indignity, faith and hope, all rolled into a universal plea for simple justice. But the real meaning of those words has only recently dawned on me. I never understood the utterly damning indictment of Black life in America this song reveals, when the singer looks forward to death, because only in death will he, or she, be truly free. Three events occurred this past week that made me think of this song.
In Memphis, Tennessee, a black woman was sentenced to jail for registering to vote. She is one of those rabble rousers, an “activist”, and a former fringe candidate for the mayor’s office. She has an extensive record of criminal convictions, and had lost her right to vote as a result of those convictions. But in 2019, both the Department of Corrections and the County Election Commission advised her, in writing, that because her probationary sentence had been completed, she was eligible to register and vote. Based upon the express statements of both departments, she certified that she was eligible to vote as part of her registration application. Both departments subsequently said that they had made a mistake, and that she was not eligible. Despite the fact that both departments admitted the errors, she was nevertheless prosecuted for trying to illegally register to vote. The Judge sentenced her to serve 6 YEARS and one day. He said that the woman had “tricked” the probation office into giving her documents saying that she was off probation, which of course, she was. The sentence was a grotesque miscarriage of justice.
A few hundred miles north, former Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke was released from the Taylorsville Correctional Center in Central Illinois after serving about 3 years and 4 months of a 7 year sentence, released early for “good behavior”. On October 14, 2014, Van Dyke was on duty when he shot and killed a 17 year old black kid. He was convicted of second degree murder and 16 counts of aggravated battery. His victim was shot 16 times while walking away from the officer. The first shot knocked the kid down. The officer pumped the rest of the shots, the maximum clip capacity of his 9mm firearm, into the kid as he lay defenseless on the ground. The original sentence was a travesty, the early release a cruel insult.
The third event was the response of Senator Ted Cruz to the news that President Biden intended to make good on his campaign promise to appoint a black woman to the Supreme Court. Cruz found the idea of appointing a black woman to the Court offensive, because “black woman are, what, 6% of the U.S. population?” Mr. Cruz was appalled by the inherent unfairness of it all. “He’s saying to 94% of Americans: I don’t give a damn about you. You are ineligible.” Cruz, along with several other Republican senators, was upset because the President’s decision smacked of discriminatory “affirmative action”, ignoring the fact that 108 of the 115 Supreme Court Justices have been white males. The, current Republican pandering to white supremacists is beneath contempt.
I am 74 years old. I have lived a wonderful life of white privilege. I am not a racist, I tell myself. I can’t be a racist because every time I watch “To Kill a Mockingbird” or “Roots”, I cringe at the injustice of it all. I suspect, however, that I am cringing because my sense of justice in the abstract is offended, not because of the black oppression that demonstrates the injustice. I think I am more concerned about the possible damage to Lady Justice’s reputation than the actual damage done to the people Lady Justice is supposed to serve. I think that makes me racist to the core. I know I don’t have the faintest clue what it must be like to be black in America. I also know that these three events clearly reveal that despite all the flowery rhetoric about freedom and justice for all, our legal and political institutions are basically vehicles for the preservation of white power. Fifty-nine years have passed since Dr. King uttered those words. I fear that too many Black Americans are still going to feel freedom only in death.