The official holiday and the marketing of his legacy have obscured King’s words and works.
In His Own Words
“And every now and then I think about my own death, and I think about my own funeral. And I don’t think of it in a morbid sense. Every now and then I ask myself, ‘What is it that I would want said?’ And I leave the word to you this morning. I’d like somebody to mention that day, that Martin Luther King, Jr. tried to give his life serving others. I’d like for somebody to say that day, that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to love somebody. I want you to say that day, that I tried to be right on the war question. I want you to be able to say that day, that I did try and feed the hungry. And I want you to be able to say that day, that I did try, in my life, to clothe those who were naked. I want you to say, on that day, that I did try, in my life, to visit those who were in prison. I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity. Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter. I won’t have any money to leave behind. I won’t have the fine and luxurious things of life to leave behind. But I just want to leave a committed life behind. And that’s all I wanted to say.”
– from King’s speech, “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop,” April 3, 1968 http://www.afscme.org/about/kingspch.htm
B-Movie Candidate
In a speech warning of “spurious patriotism” King said of Ronald Reagan: “When a Hollywood performer, lacking distinction even as an actor, can become a leading war hawk candidate for the presidency only the irrationalities induced by a war psychosis can explain such a melancholy turn of events.” Dyson says that if Reagan knew of King’s comments, it would explain why he was loath to sign the King holiday legislation 15 years later.
The King Holiday and Social Justice
Most of us suffer from collective amnesia around January 15th. Around the United States and throughout the world, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, birthday will be celebrated with marches and speeches, playbacks of his brilliant “I Have a Dream” speech. We’ll talk of a color blind world where character’s content is the measure of judgment for all people. But the vast majority of us will do nothing to bring about that happy day.
It is important to honor Dr. King. But if we only listen to the “Dream” speech, if we only indulge in warm, fuzzy feelings about how far we’ve come, if we forget to honor those who made it possible for King to do what he did, say what he said, and lead where he led, we do immeasurable harm.
We do a great disservice to his memory if we forget that, in the last three years of his life, his perspective changed and became more radical. We do damage to history if we do not remember that King didn’t die so that a few middle-class black folks, white feminists, and the bourgeois of every hue could get a piece of the American pie and leave the vast majority of those in poverty still waiting for a few crumbs. But we remember what we want to. To learn more about the largely ignored last years of King’s life, visit http://www.fair.org/media-beat/950104.html.
In his book, I May Not Get There With You, Michael Eric Dyson recounts how he and his wife visited Riverside Baptist Church in New York to hear the brilliant preacher Charles Adams talk about the King holiday. Adams said that the holiday bill had been passed by the same Congress and signed by the same president [Reagan] that had refused to pass a new civil rights bill in the 1980s:
“They mandated that Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday be a federal holiday,” he continued. “But they refused to demand the immediate release of Nelson Mandela; refused to protect affirmative action; devastated the Civil Rights Commission; amputated the legs and the arms of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission; cut off necessary support systems for the poor; snatched fifteen billion dollars away from poor babies, in order to reduce the tax liability of the wealthy; took away seven hundred and fifty billion dollars from the cities; cut off anti-poverty programs; polluted the air; destroyed jobs; carried on an illegal war in Nicaragua; despoiled the environment; de-neutered public education. And these are the same people that made Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, birthday a holiday . . . Now why did Ronald Reagan sign that bill? . . . Could it be that Mr. Reagan understood that the ease-ee-est way to get rid of Martin Luther King, Jr., is to worship him? To honor him with a holiday that he never would have wanted. To celebrate his birth and his death, without committing ourselves to his vision and his love. It is easier to praise a dead hero than to recognize and follow a living prophet. The best way to dismiss any challenge is to exalt and adore the empirical source through which the challenge has come.”
Now, neither Dyson nor myself say that you shouldn’t celebrate Dr. King’s birthday. By all means, do. If your hometown has a public celebration, participate. As Dyson says, “We should neither be ashamed to celebrate his greatness nor afraid to point to his limitations, taking them both into consideration as we figure out how to use the King holiday better to serve the cause of justice for which King died.”
Sharing Your Thoughts
The message boards offer a great opportunity to share with and learn from your instructor and fellow students.
A Closer Look
When we celebrate King’s birthday, we also must celebrate those who worked alongside him to bring justice to both the North and the South — folks like Ralph Abernathy, Ella Baker, Fannie Lou Hamer, Bob Moses, Jesse Jackson, Septima Clark, Diane Nash, James Bevel, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, Rosa Parks, and so many, many others.
When we celebrate King’s birthday, we celebrate his ability to identify something that he believed in enough to face rejection and death to see it come to pass. When we celebrate King’s birthday, we must celebrate the whole man, not just the image given to us of the years before 1965. Not just the saint, but also the sinner; not just the courage, but also the fear that led to the courage.
When we celebrate Dr. King’s birthday, let it be with a commitment to do something, just one small thing, to make his vision of social justice a reality. And, for the sake of his memory, make it your business to learn something you didn’t know about him. Read something other than “I Have a Dream.”
Assignment: A Symbol for the People, the Image of a Man
In his “Eulogy for the Young Victims of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church Bombing,” King says that the young girls who were murdered have something to say to us all. “They say to us that we must be concerned not merely about who murdered them, but about the system, the way of life, the philosophy which produced the murderers.”
Visit http://www.mlkday.com/theman_index.html and read the text of the sermon. Think about the Columbine murders. Research the incident on the Web to refresh your memory, if necessary. Write down your thoughts on the underlying causes of those murders.
By this time, the MLK Day celebrations should be behind you. Has anything changed in the way you look at social justice as a result of the celebration? Consider an issue in your community that you want to learn more about and become an active worker for. Give some thought to King’s efforts in a similar cause and write down some ways in which you are committed to becoming involved.
Consider these sayings by Dr. King:
“An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.”
“Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or the darkness of destructive selfishness. This is the judgment. Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’”
“Everybody can be great. Because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You don’t have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don’t have to know Einstein’s theory of relativity to serve. You don’t have to know the second theory of thermodynamics to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.”
