Marching Orders
- Now it's time for the nitty-gritty, the reason Dr. K is in Memphis, the reason everyone has risked getting sucked into a tornado and deposited in someone else's living room: the march of the sanitation workers.
- Sounds like a set piece from a Soviet ballet, but nope: it's a labor strike, a serious demand for better treatment from the workers' employer, the city of Memphis. The march is scheduled to happen in five days. Time to prepare.
- Dr. King is there to lead, so he starts leading, telling the audience how he wants this march to go, in three easy (or maybe not-so-easy) steps:
- Step one: Stick together. That means everyone.
- You know that old saying, "divide and conquer"? Well, King says, that's a favorite tactic of oppressors—people like Pharaoh in the story of the Exodus which we heard about earlier.
- If the downtrodden are busy fighting among themselves, they can't work together to defeat their common enemy.
- So everyone should agree on a plan and stick to it. Like a group of friends in a horror movie, the marchers definitely should not split up, but should stay on the same page. Like a good sports team, say.
- Step two: Keep calm and march on.
- In other words, stay peaceful. Dr. K is trying to generate public support for the strike, so he wants the media to report why the strike is happening, i.e., the city's exploitation of sanitation workers; he doesn't want journalists publishing sensational stories about how marchers are breaking windows and causing mayhem, which happened during an earlier march.
- (March on over to Historical Context to get filled in. People got hurt. And killed. It was bad.) King only barely alludes to that previous Memphis march: "You know what happened the other day" (15.6).
- Step three: Think positive.
- The point of the march, King says, is to show the general public how much the sanitation workers' suffering matters to the marchers, who will be missing work and school and even risking injury (or worse) during the demonstration.
- That's how sure they are that their cause is morally right. Dr. K wants them never to doubt that this display of conviction will win people to their cause.
- When people are willing to sacrifice to do what's right, there's no stopping them.