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A dream of freedom May I just say outright that MLK is one of my greatest heroes, working tirelessly for a dream that we have yet to achieve around the world, not just in our own nation. I revere him for his faith, his determination and the symbol of freedom he stands for. Below I've pasted a good editing of his speech, a transcript of the entire speech, and an article that does not oppose him, but advocates even further radicalization of the things MLK stood for. I don't like the article very much, but it is an interesting perspective if nothing else. http://youtube.com/watch?v=HxZCawujcRI&feature=related
The Prophet Reconsidered 40 years after the death of Martin Luther King Jr., new studies emphasize his economic and social philosophy advertisement Related materials List: Books Discussed in this Essay Article: The King Papers Project: An Interview With Clayborne Carson Article tools Printer friendly E-mail article Subscribe Order reprints Discuss any Chronicle article in our forums Three most recent discussions Re: Chair without tenure? Today at 02:07:03 PM by asstdean Re: Irritating Authors and Books in Your Field Today at 02:06:55 PM by sibyl Re: Get Out of That State! Today at 02:06:35 PM by dr_dre By CHRISTOPHER PHELPS We forget so much. We forget that he was hanging by a thread in 1968 at the time of his death, whose 40th anniversary we will mark in April. We forget that his moral authority had frayed, leaving his fund raising in free fall. We forget that in his final years, he faced not only a rising "white backlash" � the media term for white obduracy in the suburbs and working-class neighborhoods, North as well as South � but resentment from establishment liberals who thought he had executed too radical a turn by opposing a Democratic president and the Vietnam War. We forget that although blacks still looked to him more than any other leader, he was increasingly viewed with cynicism by young militants who derided him as "De Lawd" and thought his nonviolence too tepid for the times. We forget that police agencies from the Federal Bureau of Investigation to military intelligence viewed him as a dangerous subversive, listened in on his conversations, and spread both true and false rumors about him in a concerted campaign to discredit him. We forget that between major addresses he was prone to depression, afflicted by insomnia so severe that he slept only a few hours each night, even when popping sleeping pills. We forget that his close associates were concerned by his anxiety and fatigue, and taken aback by his fixation on his own mortality. We forget the critics who accused him of harboring a "Messiah complex." By all rights, though, we ought to remember. We are surrounded by constant reminders of the life of Martin Luther King Jr. Statues, monuments, and postage stamps bear his likeness, highways and boulevards his name. He has become a national icon. Television ads sample his voice. Presidential candidates invoke the "fierce urgency of now." Ubiquity has come, however, at a price. The nonviolent revolutionary who upended conventional society and sought to induce tension has become an anodyne symbol of progress. The disappointed prophet who spoke toward the end of his life of America as a nightmare is remembered only for his 1963 dream. Once widely reviled, King has become an almost obligatory object of reverence. Even conservatives genuflect before his memory. While dismantling affirmative action, a policy King advocated, they cite King's aspiration that Americans be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. King is a totem: safe, universal, unobjectionable. He is as remote and mythical to schoolchildren as any other figure in the national pantheon stretching back to the founding fathers. His inner turmoil, his public failures, his vocal critics, left and right, have all faded from view, replaced by a fable in which a nation awakens gently to his self-evident dream. This pattern is not wholly lamentable. It may even be necessary. Had the long campaign waged by Coretta Scott King after his murder not succeeded, had she and her husband's closest associates not surmounted strong resistance and achieved a national day named for him, there might be no annual federal commemoration of the life of any African-American. There might be no occasion for the nation to reflect upon the merit of the dismantling of overt racism in law, public accommodations, and education, as well as the securing of voting rights for all citizens, regardless of race. These accomplishments � understood by King himself as gigantic steps forward � merit our commemoration. But the ceremonial gloss now overlaid upon Martin Luther King Jr. causes problems. By rendering him immaculate and incontrovertible, sanctification has, paradoxically, left him vulnerable. Cynicism is too easily the reaction when revelations occur about, say, King's sexual escapades or collegiate plagiarism. But King's heroism and place in history never depended on a halo of saintly purity. Brilliant, flawed, controversial, talented, King � as he was first to observe � was always a sinner. To view Martin Luther King Jr. as the Man Who Brought About Civil Rights is to conflate movement with man, and biography is no substitute for history. King's stature ought not obscure the vast and variegated activity from below, in countless cities and rural districts, that made up the civil-rights revolution. Too often King's story is framed within a self-contented story of national progress that idealizes the extent to which the country has transcended race and minimizes the disruptive tactics necessary to bring about an end to Jim Crow. Commemoration further confines King's life to the box of "civil-rights leader," making it seem that his sole aim was to eliminate de jure discrimination � the explicit racist barriers to opportunity. In actuality, King, like the black freedom movement as a whole, pursued an expansive moral mission dedicated to ending inequality, racism, war, and poverty. "If any of you are around when I have to meet my day," King told the congregation of Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church on February 4, 1968, two months before his assassination, "I don't want a long funeral. And if you get somebody to deliver the eulogy, tell them not to talk too long. Tell them not to mention that I have a Nobel Peace Prize � that isn't important. Tell them not to mention that I have three or four hundred other awards � that's not important. Tell them not to mention where I went to school. I'd like somebody to mention that day that Martin Luther King Jr. tried to give his life serving others. I'd like for somebody to say that day that Martin Luther King Jr. tried to love somebody. I want you to say that day that I tried to be right on the war question. I want you to be able to say that I did try to feed the hungry. I want you to be able to say that I did try in my life to clothe those who were naked." Our scholarship on the civil-rights movement � truly stunning in its quality � is not to blame for our oversimplified iconography of Martin Luther King Jr. King is the subject of many fine biographies, among them David Levering Lewis's King (Penguin, 1970), Stephen B. Oates's Let the Trumpet Sound (Harper & Row, 1982), David J. Garrow's Bearing the Cross (William Morrow, 1986), and Taylor Branch's magisterial trilogy, beginning with Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63 (Simon and Schuster, 1988). Excellent biographies now exist of Ella Baker, Bayard Rustin, and Rosa Parks, King's colleagues. Testimonies of the black freedom struggle are collected in oral histories and memoirs. Narratives have appeared of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the Freedom Rides, and Freedom Summer, as well as struggles in local communities, from Birmingham to Greensboro. Writers have shed new light on Brown v. Board of Education (1954), organizations like the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the press's "race beat," and segregationists' "massive resistance." The freedom movement has even occasioned the best historical documentary ever produced on any subject, Eyes on the Prize." Please read the whole article at http://chronicle.com/free/v54/i19/19b00701.htm |
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