Although he has a successful career as an actor, playwright, director and producer, Ossie Davis doesn't have a doubt about whose side he would fight on should there ever be a war in America between what he describes as the "haves" and the "have nots." "I choose to stand with ... the poor, the rejected," he told a packed audience in the School of Medicine's Harkness Auditorium on Jan. 20. Fighting alongside him would be "a lot of black folks, a lot of white folks, a lot of Latinos, a lot of Asians and a lot of women" who make up the class of "have nots," he said.
Unless something is done to close the growing chasm between the well-off and the poor in America, such a war may not be unthinkable, said Mr. Davis, who was the featured speaker at the medical school's annual program celebrating Martin Luther King Jr. Day, this year titled "Scenes From Our Story: We are Still Marching."
"I believe the point of danger is approaching," Mr. Davis said, "and it's up to those of us who believe in and follow Martin Luther King Jr. ....to sit together on occasions like this when there is still peace ... and ask what we can do."
To avert that crisis, Mr. Davis proposes a Constitutional amendment guaranteeing a job for any American who wants one. "It's a crazy dream, a mad dream; it may not make the bondholders happy, but truly I don't care," he stated to the applause of his audience. "I choose to believe, as I think Dr. King believed, that man was not made for the economy but that the economy was, must, should be and shall be made for the people."
A civil rights activist himself who has known many of the movement's leaders, Mr. Davis noted that his idea of a Constitutional guarantee of a job has been supported by other historical figures who, like Dr. King, were "dreamers." In his 1944 State of the Union address, Franklin D. Roosevelt called for a second Bill of Rights that would ensure all Americans' right to a useful paying job, a decent home, adequate medical care, a good education, economic security in old age or ill health, and other rights, Mr. Davis recalled.
Roosevelt's death prevented that second Bill of Rights from ever being realized, but Martin Luther King Jr. carried forward the former president's "dream" of economic security for all American citizens, said Mr. Davis. King's 1963 march to Washington, he noted, was called "The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom."
"Jobs came first, not because we didn't appreciate freedom or didn't want it, but because we understood as well as anyone else that if you're free and hungry, you're in serious trouble," explained Mr. Davis.
Today, the first half of King's dream -- political equality -- has for the most part been realized, but there is still much more to be done to reach his dream of economic equality, Mr. Davis told the members in the audience, who ranged from school-aged children who know of the slain civil rights leader as a great figure in history, to those who had the opportunity to hear firsthand King's eloquent messages of hope.
During his talk, Mr. Davis traced the economic history of African Americans, beginning with their arrival on the country's shores as slaves; through their role as sharecroppers on cotton farms after emancipation; their value as "cheap labor" during a period of rapid industrialization prior to World War II; and later as "unskilled laborers," when a lack of jobs in industry after the war led them to "the dirty jobs nobody else wanted," he said.
"We had an umbilical connection to those jobs. And though we hated them, we were able to save our nickels and dimes and marry one another, to establish families and institutions and villages and communities, build schools, build churches, and establish some kind of life. And though we were at the bottom, it was a life; we had a place in American society," he recalled.
Since then, the most significant attempts toward economic equality for all American citizens have been thwarted, such as Lyndon B. Johnson's "War on Poverty," which, despite the pleas of civil rights leaders, was sidetracked by the Vietnam War, Mr. Davis said.
Violence, drugs, racism, hatred, crime, drugs, guns and teenage pregnancy are current indicators that "the nation cannot exist half rich and half poor," declared Mr. Davis after reminding his listeners of Abraham Lincoln's proclamation: "We cannot exist as a nation half slave and half free."
"Let us begin from now on to celebrate not only what has been accomplished by Dr. King's dream ... let us say to Dr. King, 'When you died, you left unfinished the second half of the American dream, the half that Roosevelt spelled out. Let us fight to make those rights [the right of all Americans to a job] part of our government documents," he asked of his audience. "My prayer is that you might consider joining those of us who are already engaged in this crusade."
The talk by Mr. Davis was a highlight of a three-hour event that included the presentation of Distinguished Community Service Awards to 11 students from the medical and nursing schools, and musical performances by the undergraduate a cappella singing group Shades and medical student Sherri Sandifer. The celebration began with an audiovisual presentation in memory of Martin Luther King Jr. featuring scenes and speeches from his days as a civil rights leader.
--By Susan Gonzalez