An argument for freedom

After being absolutely incorrigible for my holiday celebrations, I vowed to celebrate the next holiday, which happens to be Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Hallmark doesn't have a section for this particular holiday, but for that matter it doesn't cover President's Day all that well either.

For the past week, I've pulled out the old books from my academic years and reread some of the words Dr. King.

King wrote about much more than race relations and the struggle for civil rights. He wrote about humanity and its potential. Guided by his background as a preacher, he had a wonderful way of dramatizing the issues of his generation.

"Today our very survival depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change," he stated in his essay The World House.

And later in the same essay, "Together we must learn to live as brothers or together we will be forced to perish as fools".

Though I read his books in college, it was only when I heard tapes of King preaching in church did I understand the real power of King's language. In the national spotlight, his speeches anchored the issues and causes of his day with the plain speech of a man who spoke the language and experience of real people. When he said, "I have a dream" he was simply stating his vision of a new tomorrow.

When he was preaching, he used another aspect of that same gift. Instead of preaching to the people "Be happy with who you are", Dr. King gave a sermon about the perils of wanting to be a Cadillac when you're a Ford.

There are many ways to make a point, and never one for subtlety, to make me see a point. And this past week of thinking about Martin Luther King, Jr. has brought to mind an argument from college that has never left my mind.

For a freshman English pre-requisite I took a Comparative Literature course where we read the book "Beloved" by Toni Morrison. The book chronicles the life of an escaped slave who takes the life of her child so that it won't be subjected to a life of slavery. The ghost of that child haunts the woman for the rest of her life.

During one class, we discussed the murder of the child. I was an opinionated girl that had lived a very sheltered life growing up in Salt Lake City, Utah. Not so different from a life that you might lead in Montana or anywhere in the West for that matter.

For a large portion of the class, I argued with an African-american woman about the morality of taking the child's life. I took the side that murder was inexcusable. I was surprised to find that the woman, her name escapes me now, was equally adamant that the murder was best understood as a way to spare her child the horrors of slavery. Years later, though I have forgotten the class, I cannot forget the argument. We argued loud and long, neither giving an inch.

Years later, as I attempt to find meaning about Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in Montana, the argument haunts me. Not for my moral argument, I could make that same argument again. But the pitch of my argument - the presumption that I was right, that I had some moral high hand.

Having aged and seen the world, I think I see her point. Right or wrong, some people are willing to pay any price for freedom (an argument I'm sure our forefathers in the Revolutionary War could make) . Which, if anything, makes me understand how precious freedom really is.

These days, I'm not sure what the argument was all about in the first place. It shouldn't have been about right or wrong, it should have been about understanding two viewpoints of one experience.

And it shouldn't take an argument to underscore that point.

Christine Hensleigh is the editor of the Whitefish Pilot.