Rep. Jim Clyburn: Our country is at a crossroads. We must urgently reclaim King's vision of America

I do not think it is possible to look back on our recent national elections and subsequent events and not conclude that our country is at a crossroads. That could be an alarming prospect but for the fact that it is not unfamiliar terrain.

Without going too far back in history, I find the turbulent 1960s for references. The election of John F. Kennedy in 1960 and his subsequent assassination in 1963. The election of Lyndon Baines Johnson in 1964 and the turmoil that followed with his escalation of the Vietnam War. The National Democratic Convention and election of Richard Nixon in 1968. Among the social activism that were backdrops to all these political events were the Freedom Rides in 1961, the March on Washington in 1963, and Bloody Sunday in 1965.

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As a student activist on the campus of South Carolina State College, I became a founding member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in 1960. It was in that capacity that I first met and got to work with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and my late colleague and great friend John Lewis. After the extraordinary success of the March on Washington, Dr. King penned "Why We Can’t Wait," extolling the “fierce urgency of now.”

The book was an extension of his timeless 1963 “Letter From Birmingham Jail.” That letter was in response to a letter Dr. King had received from eight white clergymen who chided him for being too impatient in his fight for freedom, justice and equality under the law. They urged Dr. King to be patient and wait; that the goals he sought would eventually be won.

Although he expressed hope that political activism and the election of President Lyndon B. Johnson would bring about the change Blacks hoped to see, Dr. King wrote that “wait almost always meant never.” In "Why We Can’t Wait," Dr. King argued that the promise of America had been denied to African Americans for 300 years and attempts to prolong the wait for equal rights would be met with persistent nonviolent resistance.

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Shortly before his life was cut short by the type of violence and ill will he had always extolled against, Dr. King wrote another rather profound book entitled, "Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?," which – in my not so humble opinion - can be viewed as a roadmap for us today.