Martin Luther King Jr. Day
Here in the States it’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day. While it’s partially set aside to remember Michael King, better known as Martin Luther King, Jr., the main point of the day is to remember all that he stood for.
Anytime I watch the “I Have a Dream” speech, it sends shivers up my spine. What a powerful, truthful and well-delivered message. If you have the capabilities, watch this 10 minute, 17 second Real Video clip of Rev. King, Jr. on the steps of Lincoln Memorial giving his famous speech.
Of course King isn’t perfect. In recent years it’s come to light that King plagiarized much of his scholarly and civil rights work. The very director of the King Papers project details just a fraction of that cheating, and essentially says plagiarism was the norm and not the exception with his writings and speeches. Considering he plagiarized his doctoral thesis, he shouldn’t even really have the title “Doctor.” And although the “I Have a Dream” speech was partially plagiarized too, King’s message should not be overshadowed.
We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. . .
. . . I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. . .
. . . When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”
Update: For those of you interested in more about King’s writings, I recommend Theodore Pappas’ book. A revised, broader edition is also available.
I don’t really care whether King has the title of “Dr.” or not. He was ordained of God, and that ordination is one thing that can’t be retracted.
My favorite speech is “I See the Promised Land.”
The thing that makes me the most ballistic is when conservatives cite King as a reason to oppose affirmative action without mentioning that King supported affirmative action — quotas, even.
I don’t have to cite King for anything. Affirmative action doesn’t solve anything substantive and all evidence points to the long run effect being harmful. Beside all that, common sense dictates that it is just a plain bad idea. It is a bit like trying to re-attach a severed and gangrenous arm with a dirty band-aid.
The tone of your post seems to suggest that King wasn’t perfect, so basically we should just remember his message.
But why do a man’s imperfections make him automatically less heroic, though, or less worthy of honor? What made King (and the thousands who worked with them) heroic was never his perfection (otherwise, there are no heroes), but his blamelessness (which is a very different trait than perfection). Is this what we must do everytime we honor someone? Immediately qualify that honor with … of course, X wasn’t perfect. Who is? When we honor a person, we are not imputing perfection.
To suggest that King’s plagiarism in any way overshadows or undermines his personal integrity — an integrity demonstrated not primarily by intellectual originality but by personal courage in the face of constant physical and emotional danger — would be wrong. I’m not sure that’s what you are suggesting, but anyone who would suggest it would be wrong.
But why do a man’s imperfections make him automatically less heroic, though, or less worthy of honor?
They don’t make him less heroic. You’re right to point out it’s his courage that largely make him memorable, and I certainly agree. I just think we must not to attribute the source of the message to him (if we’re interested in historical accuracy), only its delivery, both figuratively and literally.
Incidentally, this also raises some interesting legal issues. The King family has long held copyrights to much of King’s work that was plagarized, raising questions about whether they can justly and legally continue to collect royalties and restrict its use.
I just think we must not to attribute the source of the message to him (if we’re interested in historical accuracy), only its delivery, both figuratively and literally.
I think we certainly should be interested in historical accuracy, but that’s a very different thing from historical memory. All memorials necessarily bracket certain questions of historical accuracy, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing: the purpose of a day of remembrance is very different from the purpose of an historical monograph.
I like the way you put your last line — that what we attribute to MLK is not just his delivery of a message, his eloquence, but the fact that he literally delivered on that message in his life. The number of people who have said original things is vastly greater than the number of people who have lived original lives. That’s why we have days to remember the latter.
“King pushed racism to the front burner of America’s attention and refused to let it or himself be pushed back. Along with other heroes like Rosa Parks and Medgar Evers, he took the first important steps in making it OK to be dark-skinned. Covert, institutionalized, and insidious segregation and discrimination didn’t end because of him, but it was revealed as our country’s dirty laundry. Now we can talk about it; before him, we didn’t so much . . .
“(I am somewhat saddened, too, by what seems to be an undoing of Dr. King’s work. The dark-skinned community seems to be drifting back into a segregated mentality once again, but with a difference. This time they’re doing it by labeling themselves as anything other than American or Christian or Muslim or whatever other non-observable appellation they might choose to set themselves apart from others. In so doing, I fear, they are duplicating and subtly justifying the segregationist mentality that light-skinned people foisted upon them for centuries. It is an ironic tragedy.)”
Liberal Elites Defile King’s Dream
The following is a previously published column about Martin Luther King, Jr., and the liberal elites who taint his idea of character over color. I’ve heard the stories and rumors about King’s infidelities (and other things), but this post is about th…
Henderson v. Sander, The Future of Affirmative Action
“…readers may be familiar with the story of Richard Sander, Professor of Law at UCLA. Recently (provoking a lot of criticism), he used empirical analysis to mount a broad criticism of affirmative action in American law schools.”
” Professor Willia…
Dr. Martin Luther King
Brief and to the point:
I do not believe that Dr. King would approve much of the misery merchants many in Black Leadership have become, exploiting for political power and money rather than effectively helping the Black community by offering it real …
MLK Day
Today we honor the memory of a man who lived and died to end segregation, by once again holding parades…
The plagiarism is noteworthy, but before I die, if I have accomplished 1% of what King did, then I should be greatly humbled.
In my book, any post referencing King’s plagiarism ought to spend 10 times the words on the highlights of his ministry.
The Unforgiveable Sin?
Josh Claybourn was kind enough to drop me an email…
Misguided Priorities
Josh Claybourn, to his shame, is once again copying-and-pasting his annual takedown of Martin Luther King, Jr, this time on his new joint blog, In the Agora. I generally respect Mr. Claybourn as one of the few conservative voices in the blog world who…