Governor’s Talk

The following is the text of a speech given Monday by Idaho Gov. Phil Batt in observance of Martin Luther King Day.

I’m glad to be with you today. Dr. Martin Luther King’s most famous speech has the refrain “I had a dream.” In my case, I had experiences that clarified my thinking about human rights issues.

A year before the Pacific War ended, my brother had his arm blown off on the island of Okinawa. My brother-in-law was killed at Guadalcanal. I was seething with anger and a desire to punish the enemy.

I joined the Army Air Force at the age of 17.

Early in 1945, I was assigned as a greenhorn recruit to Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Miss.

The world I had come from never included more than my small-town rural setting with occasional tours to Boise. I had only seen a handful of black people in my life.

When the buses carried us from the train down to the camp, I was thrust into the world of black people.

They went quickly to the back of the bus, and if they didn’t move quickly enough, they occasionally got shoved.

On my first leave, I went to town to walk the sidewalks with two other white recruits.

Blacks coming toward us moved in to the gutter to let us pass.

The war ended and life went on. I became much more sophisticated about the world. Some 15 years later, my wife and I and another couple returned to the Deep South for a visit.

We stopped off in Ocala, Fla. There were separate entrances to the parks for blacks and whites, separate drinking fountains, separate obituaries in the newspaper, even separate sections in the telephone book.

All of that seemed so inappropriate. Yet even here at home in Idaho there were similar incidents. I remember proposing a neighbor for membership in a local club only to see him turned down because he was of Japanese ancestry. Years later, when I worked in favor of a Human Rights Commission in Idaho, I kept that memory of my friend and neighbor in front of me, not wanting ever to repeat that experience.

Martin Luther King was not a violent person. Neither was Rosa Parks. Neither was Medgar Evers.

When Mrs. Parks said her feet were too tired to move to the back of the bus, she performed an act of great courage. The others gave their lives in a non-violent movement that changed this country forever.

There have been excesses committed in the name of human rights. Those excesses do not honor these pioneers in equality. In our desire for equal opportunity, let us not create further inequity.

And let us not deny the satisfaction of self-achievement. Your theme for this year, “Help Somebody - Every American Can Make a Difference,” is a fitting one. Each of us needs to feel that we can make a difference.

The best difference we can make is to resolve that we will never allow this wonderful nation to submit any of our people to humiliation or subjugation merely because of the color of their skin or their ethnicity or their religion.

Like the rest of us, Dr. King was a man of both strengths and weaknesses. Those weaknesses only accent the tremendous impact he had on society. It is highly fitting that we honor him as a symbol of progress in human rights, and that we proclaim this day as a holiday honoring equal opportunity for all Americans.

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