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Monday, January 21, 2019, was the 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. Following this commemorative day of service and in the midst of Black History Month (February), it can be easy to feel overwhelmed by the spike in the cries for social overhaul this period brings with it. As the annual time has yet again come to, in the name of this brief celebratory moment, echo the same cries for social change that African-Americans find themselves uttering year-round, it would seem that everyone has become an activist from the safety of their armchair. Yet, this sort of “seasonal activism” peddled by citizens proves harmful in severely undercutting efforts to understand the roots of black activism, distorting the legacies of those that championed it in its early days. In the midst of this social justice–bandwagoning, we ought to be wary of the incongruous way in which those who are currently singing messages of social equity the most loudly refuse to embody those same messages when the time of national celebration passes.
These messages originated with the dirty struggle of Dr. King and his long-standing denunciation of racism, militarism, and poverty as elements of the American fabric. As a result of Dr. King’s association with love and harmony, thoughts of him have come to invoke sterile images of a nicely-trimmed moderate widely loved for his ambitious dreams of racial peace. This is the saddening regurgitation of Dr. King’s “story” that we have come to anticipate from seasonal activists whenever the calendar professes it time to honour his legacy. In an attempt to make Dr. King’s activistic aggression more palatable to audiences that seem to espouse his legacy only when prompted, a man so passionate he was willing to die for his cause, whose radicalism earned him vilification from various fronts during his time, is wrongly sanitised and recast as one who was purely a unifying force and loved by all.
This was, of course, never the case. Dr. King exists today as something of a mainstream saint, a prophet of black redemption guided solely by a dream of Americans joining hands in brotherhood. This is not a bogus legacy, nor does it fail to capture the essence of Dr. King’s goals, but the naïve holiness of this characterisation of Dr. King dangerously undermines the often tough conditions in which he led his fight for equity and peace. In conjuring this angelic image of Dr. King, we forget that he was labelled as the most hated and dangerous man in America by the FBI for the greater portion of his career. Though wildly popular to invoke today, Dr. King in his day was anything but a popular icon who fought solely for love and peace during his time.
But this is the version of Dr. King that has posthumously been used to set him up against many of his own modern-day brethren. As a result of his common association with peace and love, we tend to see him in a holy, Mother-Theresa-esque light. While this is not false — we should definitely see him as an incredibly compassionate figure — seeing him in this purely happy light causes us to forget the dirtiness of his struggle. As a result, we misconstrue his legacy. The former governor of Arkansas, Mike Huckabee, said that Dr. King would be “appalled” by the Black Lives Matter movement for its censure of police officers. United States Vice President Mike Pence recently cited Dr. King’s devotion to democracy as an argument for erecting a border wall to deter immigrants. These are Conservative politicians whose ideological beliefs stand in stark opposition to those of the man whose wisdom they choose to invoke.
While Dr. King rests in the rearview mirror, they can feel content citing his devotion to non-violence and inclusion to fuel their agendas. Yet, they fail to understand that his radicalism in fact more closely aligns him with passionate Black Lives Matter supporters or desperate immigrants than any lofty conservative populist ideals. In overlooking Dr. King’s zeal, which bordered on zealotry, we unknowingly mischaracterise the man’s legacy.
No one can claim ownership over someone like Dr. King — the legacy of such a champion of social justice belongs to all of us as we look for ways to honour it in any way we see fit, holiday or otherwise. However, we must be aware that it is counter-productive to “whitewash” his legacy, gloss over his heated stubbornness and hardcore resistance in a bid to remember him as a moderate, Kumbaya-singing centrist that never existed. To do so would be to do a massive disservice to black history — it means belittling the all-too-real opposition he and his people continue to face through time. It means wrongly characterising his fight for black rights as finished rather than continued by the black activists of today.
On the heels of the semicentennial anniversary of Dr. King’s assassination, we ought to move beyond simply remembering his legacy and reconsider the way we remember it. Choosing to focus on the unsightly parts of history isn’t easy considering the attractive ideals Dr. King is synonymous with, but doing so is the only way we properly pay tribute to Dr. King’s dream when the time calls — a way that honours Dr. King in all of his radical glory.
