Martin Henry

The man who locked down the United States on Monday for his birthday, loved Jamaica. It was the place, he said, that he felt most like a human being. Martin Luther King Jr. spent quality time here.

King delivered an electrifying valedictory address to the UWI graduating class on Sunday, June 20, 1965 and spoke to the public at the National Stadium the following day on that visit.

Back in Atlanta, in a sermon on 'The American Dream' two weeks later on Independence Day, Sunday, July 4, 1965, King told his congregation: "The other day Mrs. King and I spent about 10 days down in Jamaica. I'd gone down to deliver the commencement address at the University of the West Indies. I always love to go to that great island which I consider the most beautiful island in all the world. [King had completed his book of sermons, Strength to Love, in an earlier visit here.]

"Over and over again I was impressed by one thing," King told his congregation. "Here you have people from many national backgrounds: Chinese, Indians, so-called Negroes, and you can just go down the line, Europeans, and people from many, many nations. Do you know they all live there and they have a motto in Jamaica, 'Out of many people, one people.' And they say, 'Here in Jamaica we are not Chinese, we are not Japanese, we are not Indians, we are not Negroes, we are not Englishmen, we are not Canadians. But we are all one big family of Jamaicans.'"

Norman Manley, who was smitten by King, two years later proudly advised the Philadelphia Bar Association, in a 1967 speech entitled "The Rule of Law": "I think I can claim too that this understanding of the rule of law as a living force made a major contribution to the fact that Jamaica is second to few, if any countries that are seeking to solve the problem of racial integration and harmony. I do not say we have come to the end of that journey, but I say we are well on our way down the right road. We press on to the end where colour has ceased to have any psychological significance in society."

In International Human Rights Year, 1968, initiated with the United Nations by Jamaica, the non-violent apostle of the American Civil Rights Movement was honoured posthumously. Manley, as Leader of the Opposition, spoke. Referring to King's UWI speech three years earlier, he recalled, "I do not know that I have ever heard a better address to young people standing on the threshold of life - and I confess I lost my heart to the man."

Manley called up memories of the great public orator switching style and swaying the crowd at the National Stadium the day after the UWI address. And, "one more memory of the Jamaican visit - when Martin Luther King Jr. was leaving Jamaica, he said among many other good things, how every minute he had spent in Jamaica he had felt like a man, a human being, and how it had uplifted his heart."

King and Premier Norman Manley had shared a flight to Ghana for that country's independence in 1957. They exchanged correspondence after King's Jamaica visit. "I love Jamaica and its people," King wrote. "We are a living example of the sort of world you are fighting to achieve for your people in America," Manley wrote back.

The Radio Education Unit of the UWI has preserved King's UWI speech. Rex Nettleford has published the text of Manley's King tribute and many others speeches. I would love to hear, or at least read, King's National Stadium address and Shearer's posthumous prime ministerial tribute. It is so important to properly archive these national treasures and never lose them and then make them publicly available to new generations, especially at commemorative moments.

On Monday night, two universities, UTech and NCU, along with a business house, People's Telecom, collaborated to host a candlelight vigil at UTech to pay tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. - and to the many lives lost to violence in Jamaica in 2006 and since the start of 2007.

The restrained violence of racist America against M.L. King and the Civil Rights Movement was much less deadly than the wanton violence, largely of poor Black people against each other, which is consuming Jamaica. Manley's PNP and Bustamante's JLP, which both started with such large commitments to race harmony and peace have turned around and engendered political violence, the tap root of violence, to ravish the land.