Dr. King on a Bicycle

This morning, walking across the Grand Army Plaza to meet a friend for a walk around Prospect Park, I passed a cyclist at rest on the corner, and greeted him with a “Happy Martin Luther King Day!” salutation. I immediately was reminded of the many #BLM rides last year that met and mobilized at that very spot.

As I walked away, I yelled back to the cyclist, “Do you think Dr. King ever rode a bicycle?” Just the week before, I had ridden past Eduardo Kobra’s fun Einstein–on–a–bike mural at 48th and 2nd Avenue,

a grand reminder of how magically a bicycle acts to humble and democratize even the greatest, the most powerful, the most celebrated. Albert Einstein’s prodigious intellect deserves a bicycle or kite or psychedelic cycling costume, to balance out the seriousness of his vocation of penetrating the secrets of the Universe.

We grow up with a Martin Luther King whose severity and discipline we take for granted, because we have at least a small inkling of the enormity of the forces allied against him and his mission. Like Einstein, he deserves a bike ride, no?

So it was with great relief that when I arrived home, I found this photograph:

As soon as the wave of relieved delight passed, I found myself scrutinizing the scene. Where was he going? What was in that delivery basket? Who were those men in the distance? Why was his seat set so low?

Dr. King in this moment atop a bicycle (that looks very much like a Raleigh or other English 3–speed) wears no Einstein–like grin, but just perhaps a more momentarily relaxed attitude of concentration and determined purpose. He leans in a little, eyes on some – to me – unknown prize. All that Marram grass flanking the path could make it Rockaway or Jones Beach.

This photo helps to solve the little mysteries:

Dr. King was just trying to keep up with the kids in front of him – Daniel Deutsch and his girlfriend Susan Wachtel, the daughter of Dr. King’s close advisor, NYC attorney Harry Wachtel – who had a summer place on Fire Island. Dr. King had come to Fire Island on September 2, 1967 for a fundraiser for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. At the cocktail party that evening, he spoke about community, the war in Vietnam, anti-Semitism and the need for a third political party. The photographs were taken by Newsday staff photographer Stan Wolfson, right at the very beginning of his career.

That Fire Island visit, and the bicycle ride, must have been at least a small deliverance to Martin Luther King in that seminal, historic year of 1967. In April, in his "Beyond Vietnam" speech to a gathering of Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam at Riverside Church in New York City, he demanded that the U.S. take new initiatives to end the war. Eight weeks after that photo was taken, Dr. King revealed his plans to organize the Poor People's Campaign, in Washington, D.C., to force the government to end poverty.

Dr. King knew full well that those two seemingly small but wholly titanic deeds would put a price upon his head. Only five months later he was killed by men who may also have occasionally ridden bicycles, perhaps even taught their children how to ride a bicycle. Tools, machines – even a seemingly ensouled, convivial, non-threatening machine like the bicycle – are only as moral as the men and women who employ them.

May we ride upon our bicycles today with the inspiring memory of Dr. Martin Luther King in our hearts and hands and heads, mindful of his great deeds of sacrifice.