(The Forgotten) MLK Jr.
It wasn't until college that I met the forgotten Martin Luther King Jr. Like everyone else I had met the civil rights leader in grade school, learning about him in history texts and on MLK Jr. day. This man was so monumentally popular in US history, held up as a saint who helped make racial equality part of what it means to be an American. But I didn't meet the other MLK until years later and I've come to find out that most people never meet this other MLK. It was in his last years here on earth that Martin Luther King Jr. turned his attention towards the growing poverty in the United States and towards the systems that help cause and maintain such poverty. He turned his attention towards the growing militarism of the United States and towards the wars being fought. Indeed MLK had the courage to say that the United States was "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today." It was this MLK that our country has forgotten. This MLK was assassinated. The words of this MLK still have a prophetic word for us today.
Thanks to Mark Bilby for this article about the forgotten MLK.
Labels: Life, Military, Non-Violence, Politics, Theology
posted by Charlie at 4:24 PM
1 Comments:
For most people who treat today as an excuse to take a 3-day weekend this serves as a good reminder of what our Christian brother stood for. I read his "Letter from Birmingham Jail" again today and was yet again moved by his steadfast commitment to justice and mercy as a fellow disciple of Christ.
Curiously, King's opinion of the Vietnam War notwithstanding, it is odd America reifies such a prominent figure known so well for his commitment to nonviolence and civil disobedience. Why does King's nonviolent struggle for justice not have anything to say to us about how America views struggles for justice outside our borders? Within the popular conscience do we relegate King's nonviolence to an internalized American struggle that Union and Confederate soldiers had already bled over whereas the rest of the world has yet to pay its dues to the long struggle that democracy can be? I wonder if we treasure (and thus dismiss) King's methods precisely because of their simplicity and allusion to democratic ideals. This seems to parallel how we often forget the very resistant, political nature of Christ's teachings, instead focusing on the "neighbor love" than anyone can hardly be against. Similarly, King's "dream" is hardly anything threatening to the world today. The demonstrations and marches of King's days were not benign democratic processes in work, but direct challenges to the structures of injustice in society. But instead it's about "thinking different" or merely about "rights." King's methods were as radically opposed to the status quo as his ideas and we either forget that or keep it at bay by dismissing his high ideals as relevant to another time and another place--Birmingham in 1963.
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