Every year that I can remember at this time the usual is rolled out. The same pictures, same clips, same speeches, and similar sentiments. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. has become something more than a man at this point. He has become an ideology. He is to be associated with freedom, justice, and the power of the people. That’s what all of the posters and scheduled programs will say. A great man who won his people’s rights.
I look at that as a Black person and find myself having a myriad of thoughts. The importance of Dr. King cannot be denied. I will never discount what he was able to accomplish. However, I know that those accomplishments have been co-opted and retooled by the very institutions that killed him. Used as another means of nullifying the righteous anger of Black people in America. His non-violence has been sold as the means by which progress was made without fully putting that non-violence into context.
Last year in one of my Black history posts I wrote about how Dr. King’s success was based on a well-orchestrated and executed plan that was the result of actions taken continuously from the time that enslavement was instituted as the primary builder of wealth in these lands. From the first enslaved African whose freedom was won through escape to the money used to buy our freedom and the court cases where we won it, there had been steady works to destroy the systems that converged to perpetuate chattel enslavement. There are many names spoken throughout Black history; many stories told of our long and valiant fight for collective freedom. Dred Scott. Fredrick Douglass. Harriet Tubman. The Underground Railroad. We know the lore. The patchwork-like retelling of our history can make it seem as if there was barely any time between each step in the African American struggle for freedom. Yet Harriet Tubman is believed to have been born in 1822. Dr. King was born in 1929, a full century and some change later. It took us nearly 250 years to get enslavement legally and nationally “abolished”.
With that being said, Dr. King came in picking up off of some heavy movement. Black people were technically able to vote starting in 1870, however, that right was not fully protected until the Civil Rights Act. In that time, everything was a fight. From the time the larger and most overt machinations of enslavement were mainly over in 1865, there was the question of where Black people would go. This question was coined by Dr. W.E.B. Dubois as “the Negro problem”. What to do with all of these newly freed African Americans? Where were we to go? The initial pushback did not lend itself to the reality that we would now all of a sudden be employed and paid for our work simply because we could technically not be forced to do it anymore. Many Black people in the South continued to try to do the primary work that we knew and were allowed: farming. Some of us tried to sell watermelons independently, but that was followed by a campaign that mocked us and is one of the reasons watermelons are associated with us. Many of us wound up sharecropping, which was different from enslavement because our masters didn’t live on the land with us for the most part. Even in situations where the Black families were left to the work, we never actually got paid because the landowner would keep us in debt charging us for everything and not allowing us to profit from our crops. Minstrel shows were making a mockery of everything that we did and it was very difficult for us to make more than the most degrading improvements without a staunch fight. More than anything there was the complete lack of protection from violent racists who were allowed to kill us at will and never see the inside of a jail.
And then in 1929, the same year that marked the collapse of the global market and descent into the Great Depression, Dr. King was born. Before him, his father lived a life that would serve to be a model for his Jr. Born to sharecroppers, Martin Luther King Sr. used his faith and an education to make a life for himself. He moved to Atlanta as a youth and found himself under the mentorship of A.D. Williams, who was at that time the pastor of Ebenezer Baptist church. He was welcomed into the family and would wed A.D.’s daughter Alberta and have 3 children. In this time, he would minister around Atlanta while completing an education at Morehouse college. He received his Bachelor’s degree the year after Martin Jr. was born. He took over Ebenezer after the passing of his father-in-law. He preached “social gospel”, which applied the teachings of Jesus to the needs of his Black congregations in their many struggles. Originally born Michael, he changed his and his son’s names to Martin Luther after taking a trip from Berlin to France to Jerusalem in 1934, being so inspired by his experiences. Sr. did his own actions of political dissent, from riding a “whites only” elevator to being a leader in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He was the chairman of the Committee on the Equalization of Teachers’ Salaries and won major victories for Black teachers. Dr. King was his father’s son.
This background is important. It was still not guaranteed for Black people to get any kind of education when Dr. King was born, however, with his father’s drive for education it is no wonder that he would follow suit. Imagine being a young Black man growing up as a genius. Graduating from high school at the age of 15 and going right onto receive your Bachelor’s degree and then doctorate. Theoretically you could be anything that you wanted to be; except you’re Black. So out of necessity as much as belief, you fight for the equalization of the rights of your people so that the future generations might live lives that they did not have to spend demanding basic human dignity.
The nonviolence of the movement was not all about love. It was about dealing a blow to the lies of racism. Lies that criminalized and dehumanized Black people as to inhibit us from even the most basic freedoms, like getting a decent seat on the bus or being able to sit at a lunch counter and eat. Minstrel shows and movies like Birth of A Nation perpetuated heinous stereotypes which were used to divide Black and white people. That division was not equal halves, but instead the wealthy white people on top getting the best of things and Black people being told to be grateful for whatever we can get our hands on to stay alive. We were lynched and accused of crimes to defend it when they had to. We had to fight in court sometimes just to gain admission into schools. We would be brutally beaten and worse simply for trying to vote. Violence followed us due to racism, however, because of this we were the ones portrayed as violent; our self-defense used as examples of our innate brutality. We were thrown into prisons for nothing. The non-violence of Dr. King’s movement showed the true source of the violence: racists. You can see in those photos of the protests, absolutely venomous racists attacking peaceful Black people trying to do the most commonplace and harmless tasks. Dogs sicked on us for daring to sit in the front of the bus. Hoses turned on us for simply trying to attend schools. The juxtaposition between the calm of the protesters and the violence of the surrounding racists changed the ability for many to assert that we were the violent animals. We were perfectly ironed, not a hair out of place, and beautifully eloquent in expressing our outrage at what we suffered.
What Dr. King led was a movement of intelligent and faithful young Black folks that completely defied the imagery of Black people that had been put forth to rationalize our terrible treatment. We were treated no better than any other wild animal because that was the way that we were perceived. Plenty of racist people were fully convinced that we were beasts of burden. However, it was not about convincing hateful people that we were good after all. It was about making it more and more difficult to insist that othering Black people was legitimate and necessary to protect greater society. The power and articulation with which Dr. King spoke was enough to show that there was at least the possibility of Black people who could and should be able to participate in and contribute to society. It becomes harder to dismiss the murder of random Black people when someone could assert that they might be like Dr. King.
Since his murder, which was credited to the U.S. government, Dr. King has become the face of the Civil Rights Movement. Out of the many, many actions it took to get to that place, Dr. King has become the main voice and image for the movement and its victories. He is certainly to be credited and celebrated for his works, especially considering how hated he was in his lifetime, however, the problem with singling out Dr. King is that his actions are then made so unique that it does not seem like something another could choose to do. There were a lot of particular parts of his life that enabled him to the heights he reached, yet he was not the only person who could do it. I write this not to be disparaging, but more so to point out that people can be inspired by Dr. King, but it should be understood that not only were there many men like him whose names we will never know, but also that we all have the ability to make the choice to take on giants. We can all take up the call and fight for what we believe to be just. Dr. King was special because he felt within himself the ability to be a part in what progressed the plight of his people. It was that belief in not only a higher power, but in his own abilities as a man that set him apart and made him one of the leaders of a movement.
In the time since his assassination, Black people have continued to make progress. As much as that progress is seemingly being undone, I feel that the issue has as much to do with the same systems that Dr. King fought still largely being in place as the division of Black people. As much space as Black people have earned to be known in different ways, from president to some of the most famous people in the world, we have also fallen into factions. We are not a monolith and therefore do not have to take on one, big shared identity, however, we are working against a system that very much generalizes us. When you have shared enemies, it is best to take up shared actions. Some may write. Some may make great speeches. Some may march. Some may walk from Texas to D.C. for peace. Some may create art. There are many different ways to do the work, but the first step is to understand the immensity of that work.
Dr. King brought home what had been the work of centuries. He was able to find a way to fight that made it clear who the villains were. His works and his life are incredibly important to my life and the lives of many Black people that have come after him. I mourn for what other wonders he could have accomplished if he did not have to spend his life fighting for rights that should not have been denied us in the first place. However, it remains possible to live in the way that creates a legacy of hope and brings us even further on. The dream has still not yet been fulfilled. As he stated, he did not believe he would see it come true, however, he still dedicated his life into playing his part so that in the future one of his descendants would. When we think about how to honor Dr. King and everything he did to push us further up that mountain, I hope we know that there are actions that we can take to keep the push alive. However you choose to be great and insist that you have dignity as an oppressed minority, understand that Dr. King dreamed for you. If we want to see that dream come to pass, it needs to become our dream too. Not simply unity for the sake of diversity, but true freedom and peace. A world where who we are as individuals and not who we are supposed to be based on our physical features is honored as our identity. A world where so many of us do not have to spend so much of our time and powers fighting for rights that should be ours by virtue of birth. My dream may not be exactly the same, but I would love to be judged by who I am as a human being and not by prejudice. The dream is deferred, but not dead.
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