Pride

The 4th of April to which the well-known "Pride" of U2 refers is that of 1968, the life, that of the Reverend Martin Luther King. An ordinary day, for a man who was no ordinary man and who was preparing to face another battle like so many others he had already fought and won. The Memphis scavengers, who had been asking the mayor for months in vain for recognition of their rights, were waiting for him that evening for a rally: they expected words of encouragement, perhaps a little more public attention, instead, they would only receive news about his murder.

“Pride” (In the name of love) speaks of the importance of people who carry a message of universal love and a verse was dedicated to Martin Lither King killed in Memphis on 4 April 1968: “Early in the morning, on April 4th, four gunshots rang out in the sky of Memphis”...

Martin Luther King Jr. was born in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1929, in an environment closely related to the Baptist Church. Growing up in a racist environment as the southern United States could have been during the Great Depression, he soon realized that the life of a black child was different from that of his white peers. Prohibitions marked his childhood: no talking to white people, separate schools, separate games and separate entrances to shops. They were overwhelming constraints, especially for a child like Martin, gifted with acute and lively intelligence. At the age of fourteen, a bus trip with his teacher impressed him indelibly. During the journey, some white passengers got on the bus and the white driver ordered Martin and his teacher to get up and give them their seats. And because he didn't think they were moving fast enough, the driver started cursing at them. The two got up for the whole hundred and forty kilometres before they reached Atlanta. That night he never erased himself from his mind. The deep questions that segregationist aroused in him pushed him to study with passion and anger, to understand and, later, to help change the state of things. The youthful dream of becoming a lawyer had given way to a deeper thrust that slowly but surely matured in the years of university: embracing religion. After high school, he enrolled in the Chester seminary in Pennsylvania where he engaged in a serious study of the social and ethical theories of the great philosophers. In 1952, during the preparation of his thesis, he met a singing student, Coretta Scott Young, who shared with him the dream of trying to do something for the blacks of America. In 1953, she became his wife and, moved by a genuine moral duty, they decided to move to Montgomery in Alabama, in that difficult south where they were born and where both were determined to fight not to be judged inferior, but citizens with equal rights. Minister of the Baptist church on Dexter Avenue since 1954, Luther King soon became famous for his sermons inciting his brethren to fight for civil rights but proposing a non-violent model of struggle, inspired by the example of Gandhi. On 1st December 1955, on a bus from Montgomery, the turning point. The dressmaker Rosa Parks refused with a calm, subdued and dignified attitude to leave the seat on which she was sitting free, reserved for white people. She was arrested. The Reverend, informed of the incident, decided it was time to raise his voice and accepted the proposal to boycott public transport.

The initiative was a huge success and not only among coloured people: the buses travelled almost completely empty for many days. The authorities, unable to cope with the situation, found nothing better than to sue Martin Luther King for damaging the public transport company. The Supreme Court's ruling came when the trial was just around the corner: on 13 November 1956, the laws imposing the segregationist regime on buses were declared unconstitutional. It was a great victory for King and the civil rights movement. A victory that, however, in addition to bringing great popularity and visibility to the situation of African Americans, cost him and his family a great deal on a personal level. A privileged target of both racist fanatics and law and order, over the years the black leader has been the victim of bomb attacks, assaults, stone attacks, beatings and constant threats. The arrests during the peace demonstrations were at least twenty and more than once John and Robert Kennedy, his supporters, intervened to obtain his release on bail. In the summer of 1963, at the end of the march for work and freedom, he was able to gather in Washington in front of the Lincoln monument, a crowd never saw before: two hundred and fifty thousand people. To that immensity, he delivered his most famous and emotional speech, opened by the words "I have a dream". President Kennedy had responded by introducing legislation to end segregation in the public sector. The following year, 35-year-old Luther King received the Nobel Peace Prize and Pope Paul VI welcomed him to the Vatican. The reaction of enemies of all time was not long in coming; a Southern newspaper wrote: "The people of the South know that where King passes, he leaves violence and hatred". The road to equality of rights was still a long one, King knew this well, as demonstrated by the success that organisations with the most drastic and extreme methods such as those of Malcolm X, Black Power, Black Panthers, have joined the ranks of an increasingly exasperated black people. On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King returned tired to room 306 of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. He still had to write his sermon for the following Sunday and then, later, the strikers were waiting for him downtown. After dinner, he shaved, tied his tie and went out to get some air on the balcony. Who was waiting for him was cold and precise: the large calibre bullet reached his chin, death was practically instantaneous. The ghettos exploded and the balance was terrible: twenty-seven thousand people arrested, three thousand five hundred wounded, forty-three dead, tens of millions of dollars in damage.

Two months later, the arrest in London of James Earl Ray, who confessed to the murder, was an opportunity to put an end to an uncomfortable affair. Ray was sentenced without trial to 99 years in prison, but shortly afterwards he recanted his confession, fuelling the conspiracy. Despite much evidence that would confirm the political matrix of the assassination, as many as five commissions of enquiry confirmed that Ray killed King and acted alone, but no investigation considered the possibility of government or organised crime involvement.