Letters from an American - January 19, 2025

Episode Date: January 20, 2025

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January 19th, 2025. You hear sometimes, now that we know the sordid details of the lives of some of our leading figures, that America has no heroes left. When I was writing a book about the Wounded Knee Massacre, where heroism was pretty thin on the ground. I gave that a lot of thought. And I came to believe that heroism is neither being perfect nor doing something spectacular. In fact, it's just the opposite. It's regular, flawed human beings choosing to put others before themselves, even at great cost, even if no one will ever know, even as they realize the walls might be closing in around them. It means sitting down the night before D-Day and writing a letter praising the

troops and taking all the blame for the next day's failure upon yourself, in case things went wrong, as General Dwight D. Eisenhower did. It means writing in your diary that you still believe that people are really good at heart, even while you are hiding in an attic from the men who are soon going to kill you, as Anne Frank did. It means signing your name to the bottom of the Declaration of Independence in bold print, even though you know you are signing your own death warrant should the British capture you, as John Hancock did. It means defending your people's right to practice a religion you don't share, even though you know you are becoming a dangerously visible target,

as Sitting Bull did. Sometimes it just means sitting down, even when you are told to stand up, as Rosa Parks did. None of those people woke up one morning and said to themselves that they were about to do something heroic. It's just that when they had to, they did what was right. On April 3rd, 1968, the night before the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated by a white supremacist, he gave a speech in support of sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee. Since 1966, King had tried to broaden the Civil Rights Movement for racial equality into a larger movement for economic justice.

He joined the sanitation workers in Memphis, who were on strike after years of bad pay and such dangerous conditions that two men had been crushed to death in garbage compactors. After his friend Ralph Abernathy introduced him to the crowd, King had something to say about heroes. As I listened to Ralph Abernathy and his eloquent and generous introduction,

and then thought about myself, I wondered who he was talking about. Dr. King told the audience that if God had let him choose any era in which to live, he would have chosen the one in which he had landed. Now that's a strange statement to make, King went on, because the world is all messed up. The nation is sick.

Trouble is in the land. Confusion all around. But I know somehow that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars. Dr. King said that he felt blessed to live in an era when people had finally woken up and were working together for freedom and economic justice. He knew he was in danger as he worked for a racially

and economically just America. I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead, but it doesn't matter because I've been to the mountaintop Like anybody I would like to live a long life, but I'm not concerned about that now I just want to do God's will and he's allowed me to go up to the mountain and I've looked over and I've seen the Promised Land I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land. People are wrong to say that we

have no heroes left, just as they have always been. They are all around us choosing to do the right thing no matter what. Wishing you all a day of peace for Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2025. ["Soundscape"] Letters from an American was produced at Soundscape Productions, Dedham, Massachusetts. Recorded with music composed by Michael Moss.