Today, the third Monday of January, is the day we recall some of the lessons of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., who was assassinated in 1968. King lived a brief but amazingly concentrated life that corresponded to an equally brief, unfinished, phase in America’s racial awakening. King’s teachings had a profound effect on everyone — those who loved and respected him, and even those who loathed him and everything he stood for.
Had Reverend King lived, many Republicans claim, he would have been a Republican himself, a social conservative, an ardent defender of Israel and the unborn, and would have been disappointed by street protests and the pessimistic anger of Black writers in 2021. But King was prolific, leaving a huge body of writings and speeches and, much like the scriptures from which he himself quoted, it’s easy to cherry-pick MLK’s words. Lauren Boebert, the gun-slinging QAnon representative from Colorado, just tried it. And Bernice King, MLK’s daughter, politely took Boebert to the woodshed.
Democrats, too, often associate King with the same cherry-picked elements their Republican brethren find so reassuring about some of King’s teachings: non-violence, reflection, service to community and country, love instead of hate. But after all we’ve witnessed in these last four years — and especially in the last week — Joe Biden’s odd takeaway from King’s teachings was to recommend a national day of service.
The Hallmark Card version of King’s legacy is trotted out each January. It’s questionable if White America has learned much from King or recognizes him for the angry Black man he was — in the finest sense of that phrase. Like many in the Black church before him, including his own father, King thundered against injustice at the pulpit, spoke movingly to crowds, often extemporaneously, echoing the old Jewish prophetic tradition of speaking angry truth to even corrupt and wicked monarchs.
James Baldwin, a man of the same times, expressed the same righteous anger: “To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.” Like King, Baldwin knew exactly where it came from: “Part of the rage is this: it isn’t only what is happening to you, but it’s what’s happening all around you all of the time, in the face of the most extraordinary and criminal indifference, the indifference and ignorance of most white people in this country.” To not be consumed by that rage was, in Baldwin’s mind, and clearly to King as well, the true test.
King was not merely preaching love and nonviolence: he was furious at America’s many injustices, racial, political, military, legal, and economic, and he was far more radical — in attacking the roots of our problems — than most of us give him credit for. By now everyone, including White America, knows very well what these roots are.
King was a wise and exceptionally thoughtful man. It is improper and reckless to pick only the soothing, non-violent elements of his teachings and reject the rest. King wanted America to show love, but he also wanted political and economic power for Black Americans. And in the last few months we’ve seen just how crucial Black political power has been — and how fearful and resentful of those newly-flexed political muscles White America is.
Here are four of today’s more thoughtful meditations on King’s teachings and on the ongoing injustices he fought. Things to consider on a cold and solemn day in January, in a nation with a very uncertain future.
NAACP on Martin Luther King
We are Called in This Moment to Step Up To This Moment
Martin Luther King Jr.’s Message for Us in this Moment
Finally, a deadly serious question America must ultimately answer:
