He Had More Than a DreamDr. Martin Luther King Jr. had grit and determination, and strength and righteous anger that he controlled in the name of peaceful progress, and pride that he wanted Black Americans to recognize and adopt for themselves. He believed in this country - god knows why, given how much hell America put Black people through, all the way from 1615 to the then-current day - and he worked like hell to make it a better one.
He risked himself and his family, with constant death threats and a firebombing at his home in 1958. He almost died after being stabbed in the same year. He risked his reputation and his legacy, surviving several arrests and jailings. He risked those who believed in him and in what he had to say, because he knew those who hated him would hate those who believed in him.
He fought for what he shouldn't have had to fight for; true understanding of what Black Americans deserve, and what White America has resolutely refused to admit was required.
He fought against nasty, petty, and powerful men like J. Edgar Hoover, who spread filth and lies about Dr. King. Why? Because he was afraid of Dr. King. He hated what Dr. King stood for, so he tried to erase the man. He wasn't the only one.
After his stabbing, Dr. King had one more decade to shake the foundations of this country, to start the Poor People's Campaign and to oppose the Vietnam War. And then White America killed him.
Who called for the assassination? Did someone pay James Earl Ray? All of that kind of misses the point. Ultimately, the real conspiracy is what people in this country have insisted on doing ever since that April morning at the Lorraine Motel.
For more than 57 years America has worked tirelessly to erase his truth. America wants everyone to remember him only as he spoke during the March on Washington, choosing to turn those powerful words into an anodyne formula they want to speed the erasure of real history. Some of them manage to listen to Dr. King's "I've Been to the Mountain Top" speech and cry tears about his unnervingly prophetic commentary.
But they don't like reading his letter from a Birmingham jail. They can't stand his anti-war stance. They loathe his pro-union beliefs, his support of poor people of all colors.
It's still White America that fears him the most; rich white Americans, anti-union white Americans, pro-capitalism white Americans, the people who understand that he had grown so much larger and more dangerous to their power than they'd thought he would be.
Let's remember him for what he was. A warrior.
And I'll try not to be part of the problem, but part of the solution, as difficult as that will be.
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