On Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, Don’t Whitewash King’s Words

On the first day of my “Women in the Civil Rights Movement” class, I asked students to go to the board and write anything they knew about the Civil Rights Movement. As they went to the board, students wrote “Martin Luther King, Jr.,” “Rosa Parks,” and “I Have a Dream.” Some other students wrote “Jim Crow” or “Black Panther Party,” but the majority of responses centered on the former. I knew that this would be the extent of what my students wrote, essentially encapsulating the nine-word problem that exists when people think about the Civil Rights Movement. While students wrote on the board, I started thinking about specifically about Martin Luther King, Jr. and how individuals use his “I Have A Dream Speech” at the 1963 March of Washington for Jobs and Freedom as a way to signal to their audience that they know something about King while using him to further their own agendas that King would totally disapprove of if he was alive today. I’ve written about the problems with this before, but today I want to look at some of the quotes from King that everyone needs to think about as we reflect upon his life and work.

In September 1963, King delivered the eulogy for Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, and Carol Denise McNair the four girls murdered by white supremacists in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing. During his eulogy, King called the young girls “martyred heroines of a holy crusade for freedom and human dignity” who “died nobly.” His words counter those of whites who, before the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, claimed that King’s religious rhetoric was not true Christianity.

He continues by saying that Collins, Wesley, Robertson, and McNair have something to say to the world from ministers and politicians to everyday citizens, both black and white. Most pointedly, he states, “They have something to say to every politician who has fed his constituents the stale bread of hatred and the spoiled meat of racism.” King directly attacks politicians who serve up racist rhetoric to their constituents, whipping them into a froth with fearful ideas dancing in their head. What would King say about Republican presidential nominees continually talking about border security by using language that dehumanizes individuals or candidates who echo Adolf Hitler by calling political…