The Orbis

Issue date: 2/5/07 Section: News/Features

There is hardly a member of our society who has not heard of Martin Luther King Jr. We have a national holiday commemorating him, and in countless cities across the country we can find streets and schools named in his honor. As a nation, we are at least vaguely familiar with his "I have a dream" speech, and we associate him with a struggle that culminated in the Civil Rights Act and other legislation that helped strike down racially oppressive laws that had morally contaminated our nation for far too long. However, rarely do we discuss the complete character of his legacy. In fact, the version of MLK we encounter most frequently is depoliticized and watered down in a way that betrays his struggle and his dream for justice.

For younger generations, it is difficult to imagine an era in which major Republican politicians might stand up publicly to protest King's status as a national hero. Former senator Jesse Helms did precisely this and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., voted against commemorating him with a national holiday. In the mid 1960s, the CIA described King as the "most dangerous and effective negro leader in the country" and Time magazine described speeches he gave as "demagogic slander." But today, even the right-wing Heritage Foundation stands up to claim MLK as one of their own. "Despite decades of its appropriation by liberals" they tell us, "King's message was fundamentally conservative."

Despite the apparently universal and enthusiastic praise for King we find in the public sphere today, it is painfully disconcerting to acknowledge that the majority of what he struggled for and sought as an intensely political public figure is virtually forgotten. In the words of historian Vincent Harding, "It appears as if the price for the first national holiday honoring a black man is the development of a massive case of national amnesia."

Underneath the stripped-down, whitewashed and non-controversial image of MLK that gets such wide currency in the public realm rests King's far broader and more radical critique of society. King was not just interested in passing a few laws and securing certain civil rights through legislative means. Rather, he sought a profound change in the social order.

Although he is widely praised as someone who gave his life in fighting for racial equality, this by no means exhausted his struggle. He keyed in on structural and systemic pathogens in our society; he saw problems of racism, economic injustice, and militarism as intricately intertwined evils. In addition to his unrelenting advocacy for racial justice, he was a strong advocate of labor and the working class and was staunchly opposed to the Vietnam War - which he once denounced as "one of the most unjust wars that has ever been fought in the history of the world." The Washington Post derided his anti-war stance for having "diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people."

Continued...

Page 1 of 3 next >

Article Tools