Op-Ed Columns

Bill Clinton spent Martin Luther King Day last Monday in Georgia, which has a simultaneous state holiday, Confederate Memorial Day. Alabama commemorates the birth of Robert E. Lee on the same day.

Though a Southerner himself, the former president and most men and women of the South today pay little attention to the men and the war they fought in a bygone century, on the other side of the millennium.

There was a local celebration of Gen. Lee's birthday at Janney Furnace in Ohatchee, site of a skirmish in which 13 Confederate soldiers died. Led by a peppery and popular county commissioner, Eli Henderson, dozens of men have given thousands of hours to build a nice park and keep it ship-shape in honor of Confederate dead from Calhoun County.

Much effort and feeling has gone into the creation and maintenance of the Confederate Memorial Park, maybe driven in part by a sense that their culture is discounted or scorned, and so it's easy to see why Commissioner Henderson, his family and his friends are both proud and touchy about what they have built.

They know, and shrug off with a flash of resentment, that even the local paper will ignore their annual celebration. They know where they rank; they know that even Fox News feels obliged to focus on Dr. King, a man of the historical moment who helped end a civilization and replace it with a better one.

There's no sense being bitter about something they can't change, they tell themselves, and go on about their business, each one with a hollow place, carved by knowing they've been put outside, apart from the cultural consensus.

But what if they were welcomed home by someone like President Clinton. What if he gave a speech honoring the dual holidays, inviting all Americans to join in a pageant of reconciliation? What would happen, for instance, if he said something like this:

"America's journey toward a more perfect union has not been easy. It has been a long climb up a rocky road. We have not been of one mind. We have separated brother from brother, formed armies and warred against ourselves. Out of that great civil conflict came a sense of nationhood, but though men fell and soaked the ground with their blood by the hundreds of thousands from Ticonderoga to Tallahassee, we could not yet find a way to honor our creed: 'All men are created equal.'

"Only in our own lifetime did there come a man, a very young man, whose words rose and swept over the nation like a symphony, who told us we could make the last hard climb to the Promised Land without violence or bitterness in our hearts. So today we honor Dr. Martin Luther King, who died so young but in one short lifetime made America a better, freer, more just nation.

"There are others on this day who honor the memory of those who fell in that terrible civil conflict further down the mountain. If they regard the place where those men fell as sacred ground, are we to tell them it is wrong to do so, that their heritage does not matter?

"I have a dream. I have a dream that one day when all the tribes of America are secure enough in their own being that each will regard the other with curiosity rather than discomfort or hostility. I have a dream that white Americans and black Americans, wherever they live, can fly their flags, sing their anthems, have their commemorations and be respected as we would another's church.

"I have a dream that one day we can guarantee each other — freedom of culture."

What would happen, after the first shock wore off? The talk-show hosts would rip Clinton to shreds: "Denigrating Dr. King in a blatant racist appeal for the redneck vote in South Carolina, Georgia and Alabama."

CNN, the networks and print reporters would pursue Bill and Hillary with the psychology of a lynch mob. In the charged atmosphere of a presidential campaign, the megaphone of cable news magnifies the most trivial remarks: repeats them, dissects them and polls them for days.

Hillary Clinton's offhand remark out of a political science textbook that it takes a president to propose laws and Congress to pass them was bent and twisted to seem that she was discounting Dr. King's essential role.

There can be no discounting Dr. King's role; history won't allow it. But neither should the eloquent and talented Barack Obama assume he is the reincarnation. The senator was 2 years old when Dr. King spoke at the Lincoln Memorial.

I was there on the steps, just feet away as he gave his "I have a dream" speech. It was a great speech, for me greater in later repetition. There were so many speeches that afternoon, and frankly I was more impressed by the anthem I heard for the first time that day, "We Shall Overcome."

When people sing, and sing as the marchers did that August day in 1963, they are not afraid. The will overcome.

It is disconcerting and irritating to have those great events mauled by a new generation of broadcast reporters, who were children, if born, at the time, whose excuse is boredom with the campaign and eagerness for conflict.

They would have a fine time virtually burning Bill Clinton at the stake if he were to give a speech on Dr. King's day inviting all Americans to believe they belong, and that they should respect each other's cultural icons.

Next year, maybe we can celebrate the birthday of Dr. King, Gen. Lee and commemorate Confederate dead separately, in peace, free from analysts.

And, who knows, maybe one day — long after I'm gone — we may finally achieve freedom of culture.