MARTIN LUTHER KING'S DREAMS: CRIPPLED BY
NON-MARRIAGE
Aug 27, 2003
By Michael J McManus
August 27, 2003 Column
#1148 Advance
for Aug. 29, 2003 Martin Luther King's Dreams: Crippled by
Non-Marriage by Michael J. McManus
A century after Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation
Proclamation, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. stood on the steps
of the Lincoln Memorial, exactly 40 years ago, and declared:
"One hundred years later, the Negro still is not
free...The Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of
segregation and the chains of discrimination;
"One hundred years later the Negro lives on a lonely
island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material
prosperity; one hundred years later, the Negro is still
languishing in the corners of American society and finds
himself in exile in his own land...
"There are those who are asking the devotees of civil
rights, `When will you be satisfied?'
"We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy
with fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of
the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be
satisfied as long as the Negro's basic mobility is from a
smaller ghetto to a larger one.
"We can never be satisfied as long as our children are
stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by
signs stating `for whites only.' We cannot be satisfied as
long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in
New York believes he has nothing for which to vote...
"I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply
rooted in the American dream that one day this nation will
rise up and live out the meaning of its creed - we hold
these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
equal.
"I have a dream that one day on the red hills of
Georgia, sons of former slaves and sons of former
slave-owners will be able to sit down together at the table
of brotherhood."
Those are very specific yardsticks by which we might measure
how much progress African-Americans have achieved and what
remains to be done. Most important, what is the best
strategy to close the gap?
Signs "for whites only" disappeared and America's
motels and hotels became open to all before Martin Luther
King was assassinated in 1968. Blacks now vote in such
numbers that even ex-Dixiecrat Sen. Strom Thurmond became
solicitous of black voters and Martin Luther King's birthday
is celebrated as a national holiday.
Black high school dropouts have fallen from 28.5 to 13.1
percent since 1970 and 11 percent of college students are
now African-American, almost equal to their 12.9 percent
share of the population. On the other hand, white high
school students were only half as likely as blacks to drop
out in 1970, and remain half as likely, at 5.9 percent.
No longer is the Negro "crippled by manacles of
segregation" or limited in "mobility from a
smaller ghetto to a larger one." There are more
African-Americans living in the suburbs of Washington D.C.
than in the city itself. While 250,000 heard King's
"I have a dream" speech in 1963, only 4,000
attended the 40th anniversary.
African-Americans are no longer living "on a lonely
island of poverty." One third of blacks were poor in
King's day vs. one-fifth today. True, the Children's
Defense Fund notes the number of children in extreme
poverty, is rising. Some 966,000 children are living in
homes with less than $7,000 for a mother and three kids, up
from 809,000 in 2000. However, thanks to welfare reform,
there are 2.3 million fewer black children in poverty.
In fact, the median income of black families with two wage
earners in 1999 was a stunning $60,439 - virtually equal to
the $61,878 of white families with two wage earners!
The major economic gap is not between the races, but between
the married and the unmarried - of both races. A white
female head of household earns $26,000 v. $18,244 for black
females. Both are less than half that of married two earner
homes.
The core black problem is that few marry. In fact,
that situation has deteriorated. In 1970 only 20.6 percent
of blacks had never married. In 2000 the percent doubled to
39.4. In 1970, two-thirds of blacks were married.
Today only a third are.
White discrimination has nothing to do with this
self-inflicted wound.
Here is a cause for the next generation of civil rights
activists and African-American religious leaders.
Sadly, as president of Marriage Savers, I cannot name one
black leader who has championed the vital mission of
building African-American marriages.
END TXT Copyright ©2003 Michael J.
McManus
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