Dr. King Was More Than Your Inspirational Half-Quote
Dark times call for visionary leaders, someone who reminds us that we can forge ahead and create for ourselves the light at the end of the tunnel. Indeed the hallmark of social justice organizing is instilling the belief that a better world is possible. The visionary leaders of today aren’t the ones who are the most popular, the least controversial, or the ones who make everyone most comfortable. Our best hope for the future aren’t the ones ones who ask us to just stay positive, or the ones who stay out of fights. Our best leaders convey a powerful vision of the future, without shying away from the challenges of today.
I think about that a lot when I think of Martin Luther King, Jr - yesterday, this day, and any day. The passage of time, and the persistence of society’s biases have whitewashed over the fact that Dr. King’s vision seemed radical to most of America at the time. Those of us who gloss over the difficulty of organizing in dark times, obscure the boldness and bravery of challenging fierce and entrenched opposition.
Look at your social media feeds and take a look at the quotes people post, and you wouldn’t know that the man’s life was in danger the entire time. You wouldn’t know he was stabbed, that his house was bombed, that he was assassinated for his beliefs. Take a look at those quotes, and you’d scarcely grasp the context in which they were made. The little snippets we see are sanitized because we don’t want to see that the darkness he fought still persists today.
Dr. King’s speeches, letters, and interviews were powerful not because they were full of love and hope, but because he called on that love and hope in the service of combating hatred and despair.
That that’s the key -- his vision never ignored the darkness of the world. They called it out explicitly. His speeches weren’t escapes, they were paths forward. The difference between an escape and a path forward is the latter has to acknowledge the darkness in the world as it is in order to promise that a better world is possible.
Take Dr. King’s most famous speech, the one all your friends are posting, “I have a dream.” Almost every representation of this speech, to me, is reductive. To say that Dr. King was simply a dreamer takes away what the theme and content of the speech.
This is a speech about a broken promise. Not simply a dream, but what must be done to fulfill a promise.
The speech was revolutionary not just because he painted a picture of what should be, but also what currently is, why it needs to be changed. He doesn’t shy away from it. He follows a pattern - first he lays out the problem, the reason why everyone was gathered on the National Mall in 1963, THEN he lays out what must be done. And only then can we dream of a better world.
He chose the steps of the Lincoln memorial to symbolize the broken promise, the promise of freedom that was to have started with the Emancipation Proclamation.
“But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.”
He makes a point of starting with the world as it is, not the dream of a world that ought to be, not yet. He says explicitly that America has defaulted on that promise, likening it to bouncing a check. He goes further,
“It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.”
Urgency, discontent, rude awakenings, and revolt. Every year when we try to remember one of this country’s greatest speeches, we ignore what makes this a speech on social justice, and make it about a nice dream.
What makes this one of the greatest speeches in history? It’s that Dr. King shows confronts us with injustice, and shows us that we can forge a path out of it. He tells us that there is horror, and that we can free ourselves from it. Every ‘I have a dream’ line, is paired with the terror of the current moment before the promise of what a better world looks like. That pattern, the alternating ‘World as it is, vs world as it ought to be’ is at the heart of any great speech on social justice.
“Let us not wallow in the valley of despair. I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.”
I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.”
But this speech could not be great without that alternation, without recognizing injustice.
The progressive movement today is reckoning with a crisis. I’m not talking about Donald Trump, though he does represent a crisis, as well. No, we are reckoning with a crisis of leadership. Throughout the movement, we have an old guard of leaders who are risk averse and demand that others also eschew boldness. These are ones who wish that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez would quiet down, or who are quietly upset with her notoriety. These are the ones who mean to punish any business owner who participates in serving a progressive primary challenger against a Democratic incumbent. These are the ones who plead for us to make the ‘safest’ ‘most electable’ choices in the Presidential Primary.
When we quote Dr. King but leave out the difficult parts, we miss what’s made it so inspiring. Similarly, when Democratic leaders what to inspire the voters, but leave out the tough issues, the difficult work, and the bold ways forward, it fails to inspire us.
How do we chart a path forward? Well,you can’t be brave by sticking your head in the sand. In your next speech, TV interview, public appearance, or social media post -- start by with an unafraid, clear-eyed acknowledgement of the situation, and then take us to the promiseland. Don’t sugarcoat, don’t whitewash. It’s all platitudes without grounding. The soaring oratory of our most capable leaders is grounded in the pain and truth of fighting on the front lines. Never cover that up. Acknowledge it, center it first, and then take us to great heights.