April 24, 1968
Page 10500
ADDRESS BY HON. FRANK M. COFFIN IN HONOR OF DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, Hon. Frank M. Coffin, of Portland, Maine, circuit judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals, delivered the principal address at a memorial service for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., at Portland High School on April 7.
Judge Coffin's remarks sum up the dilemma both blacks and whites face in the race issue, and his remarks accurately describe the special problems of responsible white Americans in working to resolve the issue.
I ask unanimous consent that Judge Coffin's remarks be printed in the REcORD, because I think every American, whether living in the metropolitan centers of the Nation or in rural communities, can become better neighbors and citizens by understanding the dilemma as described by Judge Coffin.
There being no objection, the address was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
REMARKS BY THE HONORABLE FRANK M. COFFIN AT THE MEMORIAL SERVICE FOR DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., PORTLAND HIGH SCHOOL, PORTLAND, MAINE, APRIL 7, 1968
When a great man dies in the evening of his years, the world pauses in mingled sadness and gratitude for his gifts to humanity. So we felt about Einstein, Schweitzer, and Pope John.
When such a man dies in the ripeness of his powers, the world grieves over its unmeasurable loss – as it did over Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Adlai Stevenson, and Dag Hammarskjold.
When such a man is cut down by the hand of a deranged assassin, the world bleeds and its heart aches – as it did over Lincoln, Gandhi, and John F. Kennedy.
But when such a man is struck down by an assassin who pulled the trigger of a hate and a hardness of heart which are products of our times and ourselves, do we have the courage, the candor, and the love to give meaning to our mourning?
If our mourning is not to slide into an easy and cheap sentimentality, this should be a time of honesty, purification, and dedication. We have been selective in our grief and in our memory.
Who recalls Mr. and Mrs. Harry Moore, the Florida NAACP leaders killed over a decade ago? or Reverend George Lee? or even Medgar Evers? And how many of us were perhaps relieved when violent death came to Malcolm X? I suspect that the purity of the grief of the white moderate today is tainted by his anguish that the apostle of non-violence has been snatched away.
Only twelve days ago Dr. King dared to say in restless Harlem: "We need an alternative to riots and to timid supplication. Nonviolence is our most potent weapon." This was comfortable doctrine. Even those who had criticized Dr. King for his earlier associations or for his opposition to government policy in Viet Nam came to look on him as the only buffer between us and ugly violence. We applauded his stand. We even sensed that it jeopardized his continuing leadership. But we never asked ourselves: what does it take on our part to make Dr. King's "militant nonviolence" a workable principle?
I am afraid that we looked on this as a one way proposition. We felt it reasonable to demand patience and restraint from Dr. King's 22 million constituents, not so much in order that progress be speeded but that we avoid a backlash which could undo our gains. The front page of our morning paper was a lesson in irony. The banner headline at the top read: "More violence scars America." A smaller headline at the bottom read: "Open Housing Seen Eroding Liberty." The story told of opposition in Maine to the modified open housing provisions of the civil rights bill based on the fear that passage would bring a repressive backlash.
What we do not realize is that nonviolence is not acting as human beings normally act under pressure, insults, deprivation, and often the application of brute force. Dr. King's way required tremendous discipline, subordination of the self to indignities, and a surpassing faith in the ultimate power of love to bring about not so much victory as reconciliation. We asked all this. In return we had to say that if we were to avoid a tax increase, other expenditures were more urgent than those for education and poverty programs. As nearly as we could, we wanted to conduct business as usual. But Dr. King's brand of nonviolence is far from conduct as usual. It is sacrificial. And for it to have a ghost of a chance of succeeding, it must be matched by an equally militant and sacrificial response.
We are, as a nation, at a watershed. For we are tempted to respond to the illegal violence of minorities by asserting the legal violence which a majority can always impose. Even before the tragedy of April 4, observers of the American scene were fearful of a swing of the national pendulum to a society, in Robert Lowell's words, of "piety and iron". This danger is now more acute. But Dr. King's death must make it clear that the healing way is for the majority now to share the burdens of self purification, patience, and restraint. At least for a time white people can not expect their efforts to be greeted with gratitude. At least for a time we must labor without the satisfaction of being loved. Our own love will be put to the acid test by working for bitter people who will not trust us, who will call us "Whitey" with contempt, and will refuse the hand of fellowship. This will wound liberal egos. But to ask that we swallow insults, yet patiently and in good spirit work more energetically for a society of equal opportunity and dignity for all, is no more than what Martin King has always asked of his followers.
We in Maine may feel remote from Memphis, Birmingham, Montgomery, and even Washington, Detroit, and Chicago. By and large, we like to think of ourselves as a relaxed, tolerant, and fair people. It is easy for us to be sympathetic, open hearted, and understanding. But whatever our parlor talk, it is easiest to be blandly indifferent to the canker of discrimination which still exists in our own state and communities. For we are not free of the impurity that struck down Dr. King.
Our body politic, if one looks closely, has its running sores. We would like to shut our eyes to our blighted Indian compounds, to our tattered pockets of rural and urban poverty, to a genteel, stabilized, unostentatious, and accepted discrimination against both Jew and Negro. And, despite the splendid brotherhood among the leadership of our faiths which brings us together today, we still have a residual amount of patronizing condescension if not intolerance. Whether our symptoms are ugly eruptions on the surface or a low grade infection within, the disease is the same – man's inhumanity to man.
In closing, I can do no better than use the words which Dr. King used at the death of President Kennedy. In a prophetic way they are even more applicable to Martin Luther King than to President Kennedy. He said:
"We were all involved in [his] death.... we tolerated hate; we tolerated the sick stimulation of violence in all walks of life; and we tolerated the differential application of law, which said that a man's life was sacred only if we agreed with his views. . . . we mourned a man who had become the pride of the nation, but we grieved as well for ourselves because we knew we were sick.... If [his] tragically premature end ... will prove to have so enlarged the sense of humanity of a whole people, that in itself will be a monument of enduring strength." The time is now; the place is here.