"I Would Rather Be Dead Than Afraid"

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I spent Martin Luther King Jr. Day reading Jonathan Gill's lively history of Harlem. After following the transformation of Muscoota, the Indian name for lower central Harlem, through tenuous Dutch settlement and successive waves of German, Irish, Italian, Jewish, and Latin migration to become the capital of black America, I arrived at the civil-rights era. King was signing his book at Blumstein when a woman walked in the department store's front door, cut to the front of the line of autograph seekers, and stabbed him in the chest with a letter opener. She was convinced that the Communist Party had been persecuting her for years through King.

Writing in 2018, on the 50th anniversary of King's assassination, philosopher and social activist Cornel West observed that many who now sing the praises of King would be threatened by what he stood for. "His grand fight against poverty, militarism, materialism and racism," wrote West, "undercuts the superficial lip service and pretentious posturing of so-called progressives as well as the candid contempt and proud prejudices of genuine reactionaries." It was a fight that was fiercely opposed by all manner of enemies, but, according to West, King loved to say, "I would rather be dead than afraid."

That letter opener was not the weapon that killed King, of course. He was shot fatally while standing on the second-floor balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. After he was stabbed behind his books, the blade lodged dangerously between his heart and lungs, he had the presence of mind to stay calm and reassure the crowd around him that "Everything is going to be all right." He was taken to Harlem Hospital where his injury was treated by doctors who knew all about stab wounds. Fear could have debilitated King and his movement for equal rights, but he did not let it. To ward off the fear, perhaps he repeated his favorite saying in the spirit of a mantra. "I would rather be dead than afraid": that is Dr. King's letter opened up for me in the heart of a man, flawed but courageous.

Gaudy Boy's author Lawrence Lacambra Ypil has just been longlisted for The Believer Book Awards 2020. The Experiment of the Tropics is one of only 12 titles selected by the editors in the poetry category. The short list and winners will be announced in April/May, and the winners will read at the 2020 Believer Festival in Las Vegas. Buy the book to see what the fuss is about. Invest in us by giving to Singapore Unbound in support of all that we do for literature and human rights.

Jee Leong Koh
January 23, 2020

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