There is one school of thought that the Civil Rights Movement ended with the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. Other historians give it a more inglorious demise three years later with the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Nearly two decades after that, the Rev. Joseph Lowery, a colleague of King's and his eventual successor as head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, still wasn't ready to write its obituary.
"Everything has changed, nothing's changed," he said in his SCLC farewell speech in 1987. "We have an expanded black middle-income group -- everything's changed -- but we also have an expanded black low- and no-income group -- nothing has changed."
Now, with the greatest change imaginable a day away from reality, and the outspoken black minister playing a part in it, delivering the benediction at the inauguration of President Barack Obama, does it mean the fight for racial justice in America is finally over -- and victorious?
I may get to ask Lowery that at a reception in his honor in Washington today. But you don't have to go that far -- just ask any community organizer in Duluth.
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"Absolutely not," said Carl Crawford, president of the African American Men's Club of Duluth, going on to list a host of reasons why King's dream has not been completely realized.
Doug Bowen-Bailey, an organizer of Duluth's annual King Day observances, cautioned against turning Obama into a symbol without seeing substantive changes to eliminate lingering racial and economic woes.
"It's certainly a step and a significant one," he said, adding: "This is not the change we seek but the opportunity for change."
As in so many political cartoons during the campaign season, the word "change" could be interpreted as the kind that goes ka-ching -- and hasn't been doing so lately. With the whole country, and world, looking to the new president to deliver us from the economic brink, few question the need to uplift all ships, to end poverty while keeping the middle and even upper classes from falling into its depths.
That's the other part of King's message: the shift in focus at the end of his life from racial justice to economic justice, his Poor People's Campaign that sought to improve the meager existence of Appalachian whites along with that of people of color in ghettos, barrios and on reservations.
It's persistence is all too real in Duluth, where figures released last week show unemployment to have doubled in the past year for all races.
And it's the unrealized part of King's dream for which there was no victory as concrete as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act the next year. If the disparities listed by Lowery in 1987 could have been ignored before, the country cannot afford to do so with the specter of another Great Depression on the horizon.
It's because of that unfinished business I have thought ever since Martin Luther King Jr. Day became a national holiday that its appropriate salutation should be to have a meaningful King Day, not a happy one.
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Community activist Cindy Donner of the East Hillside PATCH shared similar feelings about the convergence of historic days this week.
"Tuesday is my 50th birthday," she said. "I told people I don't want gifts. I just want them to bring in writing their commitments to grass-roots organizing, and I will send them to the White House."
In other words, the struggle isn't over. It just has a new headquarters.
Robin Washington is news director of the News Tribune. He may be reached at rwashington@duluthnews.com . He will be writing from Washington today and during Tuesday's inauguration.
