Remembering MLK as a dreamer soft-peddles his revolutionary ambition

[marmar]

Remembering MLK as a dreamer soft-peddles his revolutionary ambition | Opinion

Oseye Boyd
Indianapolis Star


Do you know who the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was? I mean really was.

Not this sanitized version of “a man who had a dream” that his four children would "one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

I’m not sure how this whitewashed version of King has proliferated our culture, but it does his legacy a disservice to reduce someone who stood for so much to so little. But this is the Dr. King, who died at 39 on April 4, 1968, most will remember and celebrate on Monday. King even pivoted from that dream, saying it "turned into a nightmare."

Over the years, I’ve realized that people who love to quote this speech, and in particular, this part of the speech, don’t know who King was and don’t understand the America he lived and died in. First, King wasn’t talking about a race-blind society. He was talking about one where being a Negro, the word used at the time, didn’t automatically mean second-class citizen, didn’t mean that you had to work twice as hard to get into the same position as a white person, didn’t mean you had to sit at the back of the bus, use the back entrance of a business or get up from your seat because a white person wanted you to. He wasn’t saying don’t see Black people. He was saying don’t treat Black people differently simply because they are Black.

Second, the fact that King’s “I Have a Dream” speech is so often quoted ― and his birthday a national holiday ― would make one believe he was treated well during his lifetime. He wasn’t. A Gallup poll in 1966 found 63% of Americans had a “negative opinion” of King. .........(more)

https://www.freep.com/story/opinion/contributors/2023/01/14/opinion-real-martin-luther-link-was-drum-major-not-dreamer/69805056007/

[Solly Mack]

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