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Another Martin Luther King holiday is upon us.
Some will no doubt partake in mock freedom rides at a special King Holiday rate; some will march in the spirit of Chuck Berry, with “no particular place to go;” others will attend breakfast in King’s honor.
There is something about the King holiday that creates an arrested development of the spirit, leading us in a direction that is antithetical to the project for which King gave his life. Pacifying ourselves with King quotes, utilizing rote memorization, we opt for the “cheap King” rather than the authentic version.
Cheap King, like cheap Jefferson or cheap Lincoln, results from methodology whereby one takes a quote, often times void of any context, to justify the position they already hold.
Cheap King is a deified straw man, the embodiment of grandiose assumptions and self-serving naivety. It is where we arrogantly serve as the public ventriloquist who selectively puts the words in King’s mouth. These words are based not on King but our desire to be seen in lockstep with him in order to fortify the position we hold.
How many major corporations will run ads demonstrating how their business philosophy is almost synonymous with King’s vaunted “dream”?
How many within the “Black Lives Matter” movement have shunned the civil rights era, in part because they view their so-called “leaderless” approach to be superior to the movement that moved the needle of democracy more than any other in the 20th century?
I’m not suggesting that the current movement should follow the efforts of the 1950s and ’60s, but where I do take issue is how they reached their conclusion. The primary argument in support of the leaderless approach is based on an understanding of not having someone fly in and co-opt the efforts that have been painstakingly put in place by those at the grassroots.
While a valid critique, it is a post-King phenomenon, something more akin to actions of Jesse Jackson and later Al Sharpton.
King never launched any of the seminal civil rights efforts. He was always invited to participate.
One need only to read the second paragraph of “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” to know that King was in Birmingham at the invitation of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. King’s participation in the effort to support striking sanitation workers in Memphis, which cost him his life, was at the behest of longtime friend and former aide the Rev. James Lawson.
The same was true for movements in Albany, Selma, Chicago and elsewhere.
But I suspect the erroneous understanding of King is based on intoxicating the culture with Cheap King — the non-abrasive hero who is suitable for framing but offers no other value. Cheap King is held in solitary confinement during the last five minutes of the March on Washington’s keynote address originally titled “A Canceled Check” that operates under the pseudonym, “I Have a Dream.”
Look through the lens of Cheap King at the one who said: “I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant.”
Through those lens, the words become merely fodder for those who see only a milquetoast dreamer.
But through the authentic lens of an imperfect prophet, the words are the statement of radical nonconformity. The authentic King is an unwavering prisoner of hope, not someone endowed with syrupy sentimentality. He embraced a tough determination that believed in American democracy far more than those who sought to deny Negroes their basic human rights.
Too often Cheap King is what we celebrate, forgoing the authentic version. It’s easy, nonthreatening and does not require that we leave our comfort zone in order participate.
The authentic version praised President Lyndon Johnson for groundbreaking civil rights legislation, but could not remain silent in the wake of Vietnam. This King saw that his efforts to eradicate government-sanctioned racism were incomplete without also addressing abject poverty.
Against our collective efforts to mobilize the Cheap King on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, the authentic one kept evolving, making even his allies uncomfortable in his unwavering pursuit for justice.
It’s quite possible that had we embraced the authentic King, the third Monday in January might not be a designated holiday, but we would most likely be a better people.
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