University of Virginia Library

Dr. King's Legacy

It was only a year ago that Martin Luther
King was gunned down in Memphis, but it
seems as if so much more time has passed.
Developments since that day, both in the
nation and at the University, have perhaps
taken the cause he championed down
different paths from those he followed. But
today, on the anniversary of his death, it
would be well for that generation of black and
white Americans who heeded his call to action
to give thanks that there was such a man to
respond to the need of the times and awaken
them to the tasks and the responsibility that
lay before them.

It would probably be very difficult today
to find anyone in this community who did
not consider himself in agreement with the
eventual goal of the man - to end racism in
the country that he loved. Differences arise
only over the methods that have been
proposed to do something about it. People
here may be unwilling to stop singing Dixie.
They say that the photographs on applications
serve necessary purposes and should not be
done away with. Some argue that state funds
cannot be used to support a transition
program. Many wish to refrain from anything
that might alienate the decision makers in the
Administration. Unfortunately, few of them
have offered constructive alternatives, and if
all of their advice was heeded, nothing would
be done. Martin Luther King was a man who
wanted to do something.

We feel that all of those people at the
University who are concerned with effecting
or blocking proposals for racial progress are
afflicted with a certain unavoidable ignorance.
We do not know what racial progress entails
because we have experienced so little of it.
When a large number of students and faculty
members assert their opposition to racism,
and then an equally large number cannot
decide what to do about it, we are forced to
conclude that either people are not sincere in
their repudiation of racism, or that they are
simply ignorant of the enormous cost that an
effective repudiation will exact. We can only
hope that such intransigence does come from
ignorance, rather than from insincerity. For if
it does not, the eventual cost of racism's
demise, to both the black and white
communities, will be infinitely greater.

Martin Luther King, we feel, would set to
work with the assumption that the current
frustrations and disagreements were caused by
just such a youthful naivete on the part of
those who desire a community of racial
equality, by a feeling that racism can be ended
merely by verbal repudiation. If this is the
feeling, progress can be made, for time will
temper it with the realization that the task is
indeed enormous and that the sacrifice on
songs or lunches is truly insignificant in the
light of what must, eventually be done.

Schools and cities all over the nation are
discovering now what Martin Luther King
knew, and what the University will learn if it
tries to move forward - that progress is not
entirely positive, and that the search for a
long-run gain may well entail taking short-run
risks. They are learning that the admission of
a representative number of black students is
more often the beginning, rather than the end
of a university's search for racial equality, for
when those students are admitted, they are
going to attempt to right the injustices which
will refuse to disappear upon their mere
arrival.

They are discovering too, that the search
for racial progress is not without its mistakes
and blind alleys. Martin Luther King knew
this and predicted it. Reformers after all are
only human and their judgment cannot be
expected to be perfect. What these schools
and cities, and eventually the University, must
realize is that every human endeavor is fraught
with mistakes, miscalculations, and injustices.
Witness the Industrial Revolution. While never
allowing an obvious mistake, we must be
willing to take the short-run risks, losing on
them if we must, in hopes of achieving the
long-run goal.

More important for this University today is
that it gird itself for a struggle that will not be
completed in the foreseeable future, but one
which nonetheless must be pursued with all
the vigor we can muster. The nation has had
350 years to build its racial barriers. It could
conceivably take as long to tear them down.

Historians can often point to incipient
movements in the course of events and follow
them through the years, concluding that the
movement, once started, had a kind of
irresistible momentum; that the only way to
stop its growth would have been to crush it
before it got started. The movement toward a
truly decent inter-racial society is like that;
more than any other man, Martin Luther King
helped start it and make it grow. The
University's reaction to this inevitability must
be molded in his spirit if more tragedy is to be
averted.