Martin Luther King is rightly remembered for his dream, shaped and spoken to the world for the first time on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial 48 years ago. His words formed a vision in which the principles embodied in and by “the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence” would one day be realized and applied to all men and women as intended. This dream and his words stoked the fire in the hearts and minds of the people of the world. King's work in the struggle for the civil rights of all people will be remembered throughout history.
In these trying times that we find ourselves in with turmoil and civil unrest found nationally and across the globe we must remember the lessons that we have learned from leaders and teachers such as Martin Luther King, Jr and the scores of others who have fought and inspired us all to reach for a just world.
Martin Luther King, Jr., would have been 82 this month, and his assassination occurred nearly 43 years ago. As we get further and further from that time, memories get fuzzy. So, the question is how to remember King clearly and to see that amazing moment in history that he participated in through a sharp and focused lens?
First of all, King was a radical. Not the venomous kind that promotes reckless violence against innocent people; quite the opposite. King was a radical in his criticism of the root causes of injustice, and in his brilliantly imaginative vision of a different, more just and humane world. For example, King did not just urge protesters to be non-violent, he urged politicians and governments to be non-violent. In 1968 he took a brave stance against the war in Vietnam, in a speech in New York City’s Riverside Church, that cost him some of his liberal supporters. He criticized the injustices of capitalism: persistent poverty, inadequate aid to workers and the poor, and growing wealth disparity. Let us remember he died demanding not simply integration, but labor rights for striking sanitation workers in Memphis.
Secondly, King was not a king. He was not a superhero who rushed in to singularly rescue black people from the evils of American racism. He acted in concert with others, many others, some of them with longer careers in social justice struggles than himself. There is a famous analogy in King’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech, one he used many times, in which he compares his work to that of a pilot guiding a plane. The pilot is important, King concedes. However, that safe journey could not be achieved without the sometimes invisible work of a very skilled and committed ground crew. I might chose a slightly different analogy, but the point is an important one. As Ella Baker was fond of saying, “King didn’t make the movement, the movement made King.”
Individuals change their minds, and their loyalties. They get assassinated. Most fundamentally, individuals are only as strong as the collectives and communities that surround them, that keep them safe and honest and grounded and accountable. So, celebrations of King have to go hand in hand with celebrations of the maids and porters students and teachers who struggle tirelessly in what we now term the civil rights movement.
Finally, part of remembering King’s legacy is remembering the dangers of political repression and vitriolic persecution. Recent events in Tucson come to mind. King lived under a constant fear of assassination because his visibility and outspokenness made him a target. But something else made him a target, too: The way in which his critics vilified him, attributed sinister motives to his actions, called him un-American and a danger to the traditional values of our nation.