Every
year, millions of Americans pay tribute to the memory of Dr. Martin
Luther King. We often forget, however, that King was the object of
derision when he was alive. At key moments in his quest for civil
rights and world peace, the corporate media treated King with
hostility. Dr. King's march for open housing in Chicago, when the
civil rights movement entered the North, caused a negative,
you've-gone-too-far reaction in the Northern press. And Dr. King's
stand on peace and international law, especially his support for the
self-determination of third world peoples, caused an outcry and
backlash in the predominantly white press.
In his
prophetic anti-war speech at Riverside Church in 1967 (recorded and
filmed for posterity but rarely quoted in today's press) King
emphasized four points: 1) that American militarism would destroy the
war on poverty, 2) that American jingoism breeds violence, despair,
and contempt for law within the United States, 3) the use of people
of color to fight against people of color abroad is a "cruel
manipulation of the poor," 4) human rights should be measured by
one yardstick everywhere.
The
Washington Post
denounced King's anti-war position, and said King was
"irresponsible." In an editorial entitled "Dr. King's
error," The
New York Times
chastised King for going beyond the allotted domain of black leaders
-- civil rights. TIME
called King's anti-war stand "demogogic slander...a script for
Radio Hanoi." The media responses to Dr. King's calls for peace
were so venomous that King's two recent biographers – Stephen
Oates and David Garrow – devoted whole chapters to the media
blitz against King's internationalism.
Dr. King may be an
icon within the media today, but there is still something upsetting
about the way his birthday is observed. Four words – "I
have a dream" – are often parroted out of context every
January 15th.
King, however, was not a dreamer – at
least not the teary-eyed, mystic projected in the media. True, he was
a visionary, but he specialized in applied ethics. He even called
himself "a drum major for justice," and his mission, as he
described it, was, "to disturb the comfortable and comfort the
disturbed." In fact, the oft-quoted "I have a dream"
speech was not about far-off visions. In his speech in Washington,
D.C., August 28, 1963, Dr. King confronted the poverty, injustice,
and "nightmare conditions" of American cities. In its
totality, the "I have a dream" speech was about the right
of oppressed and poor Americans to cash their promissory note in our
time. It was a call to action.
In
1986, Jesse Jackson wrote an essay on how Americans can protect the
legacy of Dr. King. Jackson's essay on the trivialization,
distortion, the emasculation of King's memory, is one of the
clearest, most relevant appreciations in print of Dr. King's work.
Jackson wrote: "We must resist the media's weak and anemic
memory of a great man. To think of Dr. King only as a dreamer is to
do injustice to his memory and to the dream itself. Why is it that so
many politicians today want to emphasize that King was a dreamer? Is
it because they want us to believe that his dreams have become
reality, and that therefore, we should celebrate rather than continue
to fight? There is a struggle today to preserve the substance and the
integrity of Dr. King's legacy."
Today, the media
often ignores the range and breadth of King's teachings. His speeches
– on economic justice, on our potential to end poverty, on the
power of organized mass action, his criticism of the hostile media,
his opposition to U.S. imperialism (a word he dared to use) –
are rarely quoted, much less discussed with understanding. In fact,
successors to Dr. King who raise the same concerns today are again
treated with sneers, and their "ulterior motives" are
questioned. A genuine appreciation of Dr. King requires respect for
the totality of his work and an ongoing commitment to struggle for
peace and justice today.
This
commentary was originally published by BC in issue 121 on Jan 13,
2005
