Daily Translation #4

此日后，十年间，见证美国的变革

1963年，美国并没有推出什么重要的民权法案，但却是为美国带来变革的十年里最重要的一年。

2023年8月28日，星期一，是“为就业与自由”华盛顿大游行的60周年纪念日。该游行以马丁·路德·金博士的“我有一个梦想”演讲而闻名，并为社会大众，还有一些公众人物，包括当时的美国总统约翰·F·肯尼迪和总检察长罗伯特·F·肯尼迪，提供了一次参与到前所未有的群众运动中的机会。

尽管当时总统与总检察长是在白宫观看的游行，他们也惊叹于金精湛的口才以及他演讲的重要性。“真他妈的好，”肯尼迪事后评价道。之后，肯尼迪面带微笑对金说了一句最能引发共鸣的话，“我有一个梦想。”

从一方面看，华盛顿大游行使得那一年达到了高潮。那一年骚乱动荡，有人洋洋得意，也有人遭受悲剧。那一年充斥着民权示威和抗议活动，揭露了种族隔离制度的暴力。那一年记录着伯明翰公共安全专员尤金·“公牛”·康纳等警察的野蛮行为，也记录着南方政客，尤其是阿拉巴马州州长乔治·华莱士的残忍行径。

1963年是发生激烈对抗和巨大转折的一年。这一年恰逢1863年解放宣言发布100周年，这给肯尼迪政府及其“新边疆”政策带来了新的压力，最终使其在支持民权方面迈出了大胆的一步。出生在哈莱姆的作家詹姆斯·鲍德温凭借其书《下一次将是烈火》成为当年最具影响力的国际文学与政治人物。《下一次将是烈火》包括两篇短小精悍的散文（前一年在杂志上发表），它剖析了种族，美国例外论，美国在种族奴隶制上的原罪和其在种族隔离制度中的死灰复燃之间的关系。鲍德温的散文富于雄辩，字里行间充满着愤怒与非裔群体的脆弱性，揭露了美国社会的真相但也对未来寄予希望。他对美国爱之愈深，恨之愈切，批之愈厉。

助长美国种族隔离和种族等级制度的力量，以及对二者进行政治抵抗的力量，在那一年打的不可开交。

发生在伯明翰的事件就是个鲜明的例子，它使得世界为之惊动。

在四月，由弗雷德·舒特尔斯沃教士领导的一个当地反种族隔离运动与马丁·路德·金和南方基督教领袖会议（SCLC）合作进行一个计划已久的对迈阿密（Magic City）的袭击。马丁·路德·金在4月12日，也就是耶稣受难日，被逮捕和监禁，并在狱中完成了《伯明翰监狱来信》。在信中他不仅抨击了白人自由主义者，还批判了肯尼迪政府为结束种族不公的努力只是杯水车薪。尽管这封信言辞犀利，把民权运动与美国建国初期形成的自由传统相联系，但还是不如能把格拉姆公园里的树皮扯掉的高压水炮有冲击力，不如击退抗议者的德国牧羊犬有攻击性，不足以引发世界的关注。

伯明翰暴力事件所造成的群体恐慌为那些致力于推动民权进步而努力的人提供了帮助，像是马丁·路德·金，肯尼迪总统，非裔学生，白人和犹太活动家还有自发组织的劳工和普通民众。当恐怖事件再次出现时，他们能够在公众中凝聚共识，团结一致。对世界上大部分人来说，美国的民主结构正在分崩离析，或者至少摇摇欲坠。

肯尼迪在1963年6月11日发表了他一生中最重要的演讲，也是美国历史上关于种族公平的最佳演讲。他称公民权利是全国上下都应当支持的“道德问题”，认为在面临种族危机和民主危机时，没有人可以袖手旁观。“无为者，懦弱且羞耻，”肯尼迪讲到，“而勇敢者，则晓事理且明大义。”

第二天早晨，正直坚定的密西西比州全国有色人种协进会（NAACP）外勤秘书梅德加·艾维斯惨遭白人至上主义者暗杀。（凶手直到1994年才被判刑）

于7月2日宣布的“为就业与自由”游行将美国的自由民主传统与渴望尊严与公民身份的黑人运动相联系起来，使得党派分歧之间形成了新的共识。

贝亚德·拉斯汀是一名黑人同性恋和激进的社会民主主义者，曾在二战期间良心上拒服兵役而被监禁。他应A·菲利浦·伦道夫之命领导了华盛顿大游行，后者是劳工领袖，卧车员工兄弟会的创始人。拉斯汀在运动前后遭受了恶意的恐同行为。作为非暴力反抗的长期倡导者，拉斯汀曾担任马丁·路德·金的导师，但后者最终因为怕被同事中伤而与拉斯汀保持距离。（比如哈莱姆区国会议员亚当·克莱顿·鲍威尔，他曾在几年前用贝亚德的同性恋行为来威胁金）

尽管面对着非议，拉斯汀坚持了下来，最终使得游行运动势如破竹。他优秀的组织能力使得包括宗教团体、劳工组织、学生团体、民权运动者、商人团体和其他公民团体达成共识，齐聚华盛顿。并且他还为游行准备了大巴车、移动式厕所、三明治、喷泉、贵宾椅等等。

但无论如何，这也是一个不完美的活动。鲍德温害怕跑题所以拒绝进行演讲，由演员伯特·兰卡斯特取而代之。学生非暴力协调委员会主席约翰·刘易斯删掉了他演讲中冒犯到华盛顿大主教帕特里克·奥博伊的内容。这一请求来自于德高望重的劳工领袖和游行组织者伦道夫，目的是保持团结。没有非裔女性在游行中发表重要演讲，尽管罗莎·帕克斯、格洛丽亚·理查森、黛西·贝茨和全国黑人妇女委员会主席多萝西·海德等女性都在领导游行中发挥了重要作用。

当轮到金发表演讲时，他的“我有一个梦想”结束语使其演讲主题内容相形见绌。他谈到了赔偿和组织者承受执法机构暴力的必要性。他公开反对南方州的州长们。这些要点大部分都淹没于他在总结时所唤起的听众们的激昂之情，过去如此，现在亦然。

“现在是实现民主的诺言的时候，”金在他演讲的开篇处说道。60年后，民主的承诺仍未完全实现，但60年前的这次大规模非暴力示威仍然是一个活生生的例子，呼应着金所构想的“心心相印的社区”。

大概华盛顿大游行最重要的意义就是它告诉了我们，实现民主永远在路上。美国在1963年没有通过任何的民权法案，但这一年作为一个分水岭为之后通过的所有立法奠定了基础。

在1963年取得的成就，就像我们这个时代一样，不是线性的。六十年间，美国取得了突破性进展也经历了惨痛的挫折。如果我们不止于缅怀过去，如果我们努力实现金、拉斯汀和其他人所倡导的激进务实的精神，我们就可以在当代人为当代的梦想而努力时看到希望。

Original Article:

This single day defined the decade that transformed America

No major civil rights legislation passed in 1963, but it was the most important year in the decade that transformed America.

Monday, August 28, is the 60th anniversary of the historic March On Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Best remembered today for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, the march offered average Americans, along with public figures like then-President John F. Kennedy and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, the closest thing to attending a mass movement meeting they ever would see.

While the president and attorney general watched from the White House, they both marveled at the importance and eloquence of King’s speech. “He’s damn good,” Kennedy remarked afterword. A smiling Kennedy greeted King afterward with the line that resonates most, “I have a dream.”

From one perspective, the March On Washington was the capstone of a tumultuous, triumphant and tragic year filled with civil rights demonstrations, protests that cast a bright light on the violence of a system of racial segregation, the brutality of police such as Birmingham public safety commissioner Eugene “Bull” Connor and the cruelty of Southern politicians, most notably Alabama Gov. George Wallace.

1963 was a year filled with dramatic confrontations and extraordinary twists and turns. The centennial anniversary of the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation brought renewed pressure on the Kennedy administration and its New Frontier vision to finally make bold moves in support of civil rights. The Harlem-born writer James Baldwin became the most impactful global literary and political intellectual of the year with his book “The Fire Next Time,” a slim volume of two powerful essays (published in magazines the previous year) that distilled the relationship among race, American exceptionalism and the nation’s original sin of racial slavery and its afterlife in Jim Crow segregation. Baldwin’s prose shone with eloquence, anger, vulnerability, truth and hope. He loved America enough to criticize it when he experienced disappointment, as he so often did.

The forces that fueled segregation and racial hierarchy in America — and the forces that galvanized the political resistance to both — sped up that year.

Events in Birmingham, for example, forced the world to take notice.

A local desegregation campaign, led by Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, collaborated with King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in April for a long-planned assault on the “Magic City.” Martin Luther King Jr.’s arrest and imprisonment on Good Friday, April 12, set the stage for his “Letter From Birmingham Jail,” which was a critique not just of White liberals but also of the Kennedy administration’s efforts, halting at best, to end racial injustice. Despite the rhetorical power of the letter, which linked the civil rights movement to longstanding American traditions of freedom dating back to country’s founding, it would take the sight of high-pressure water canons, powerful enough to strip the bark off of trees in Kelly Ingram Park, and attacking German shepherds being unleased on protesters, to capture the world’s attention.

Collective horror at Birmingham’s violence helped those working for progress on civil rights — Martin Luther King Jr., President Kennedy, Black school children, White and Jewish activists, organized labor and ordinary citizens — to mold consensus among the general public at a time when it appeared, to much of the world, that parts of America’s democratic fabric were falling apart or at least fraying at the seams.

Kennedy delivered the speech of his life on June 11, 1963, giving the best address on racial justice in American history up until that time. Kennedy called civil rights “a moral issue” that the entire nation would have to support. The crisis of race and democracy, observed the president, could afford no bystanders. “Those who do nothing, invite shame and violence,” said Kennedy. “Those who act boldly recognize right as well as reality.”

Early the next morning, Medgar Evers — the upright, powerful and stalwart NAACP Field Secretary in Mississippi — was assassinated by a White supremacist (who would not be convicted for his crime until 1994).

The March for Jobs and Freedom, announced July 2, forged a new consensus across partisan divides by linking American traditions of freedom and democracy with the Black movement’s aspirational notions of dignity and citizenship.

Bayard Rustin — a Black, gay and radical social democrat who spent time in prison as a conscientious objector during World War II — led the organizing of the March On Washington at the behest of A. Philip Randolph, the legendary founder and labor leader who served as head of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. Rustin endured vicious homophobia within and outside of the movement. A longtime advocate of non-violent disobedience, Rustin served as a mentor to Martin Luther King Jr., who eventually distanced himself from Rustin out of fear of being compromised by colleagues (such as Harlem Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, who had threatened a few years earlier to weaponize Bayard’s homosexuality against King).

Yet Rustin endured, making a final unstoppable comeback within movement circles through his ingenuous organizing skills that helped ensure the eclectic coalition of religious, labor, student, civil rights, business and civic groups were all there in Washington, equipped with buses, portable toilets, sandwiches, water fountains, chairs for dignitaries and more.

It wasn’t a perfect event by any stretch. Baldwin refused to have his speech censored out of fear he would go off script, so actor Burt Lancaster read it instead. John Lewis, chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, cut out parts of his speech that offended Patrick O’Boyle, the Archbishop of Washington. The request came from the venerable labor leader and march organizer Randolph as part of a plea to maintain unity. No Black women delivered major speeches at the march, despite the invaluable leadership of Rosa Parks, Gloria Richardson, Daisy Bates and National Council for Negro Women President Dorothy Height.

When it was King’s time to speak, his “I Have a Dream” peroration overshadowed the speech’s bone and sinew. He discussed reparations and the need for organizers to withstand prison and police violence. He publicly repudiated Southern governors. Those elements were then, as now, largely drowned out by the ocean of emotion that his preacher’s cadence brought forth at the keynote’s conclusion.

“Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy,” said King at the beginning of his speech. Sixty years later, that promise is not yet fully realized, but the massive nonviolent demonstration on August 28, 1963 remains one of the most resonant examples of King’s Beloved Community the nation has ever witnessed.

Democracy is a journey and never a destination, perhaps the most important lesson left for us by the March On Washington. No civil rights legislation was passed in 1963, but it set the table for all the watershed legislation that subsequently passed.

Progress in 1963, just like in our own time, was not linear. Six decades later, America has made hopeful breakthroughs and experienced tragic setbacks. If we do more than commemorate the March, if we strive to embody the simultaneously radical and pragmatic spirits that enabled by King, Rustin and so many others, we can find hope in the actions this generation takes toward fulfilling a dream that remains alive in our own time.

原网址： 

https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/25/opinions/march-on-washington-i-have-a-dream-60th-anniversary-mlk-joseph/index.html