Dawn at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial in Washington, DC, on January 18, 2016. (Photo: Zach Gibson / The New York Times)
Coretta Scott King testified before Congress twice, in 1979 and 1982, to argue for the importance of instituting a national holiday in honor of her late husband, Martin Luther King Jr.
Pushback to the proposed holiday included conservative Democrat Congressman Larry McDonald’s assertion that a recognized holiday centered around King — a figure who both engaged in civil disobedience and openly criticized the government — would encourage young people to foster “contempt for the law.”
Contrary to this conservative (and racist) fear, MLK Day has since become a day centered around a watered-down or “sanitized” telling of the life of King and the movement he was a part of. What McDonald seemed to underestimate was the ability of people in power to control popular understandings of history and paint the past as something that supports the conditions of the present.
Today, many young people will be taught a warped version of history — punctuated by King’s inspiring speeches — that overlooks the hard work of organizers by suggesting that the Montgomery bus boycott organically evolved in response to Rosa Parks singlehandedly refusing to give up her seat.
With a neo-fascist president-elect taking office in just four days, these ahistorical narratives are dangerous. They work to mislead the public about the tools it takes to make change, the honest historical context in which we exist and the true political legacies of our icons and our ancestors. Although King’s persona and charismatic calls to action held a strategic place in galvanizing people, it was not charisma that turned out thousands of people to march to the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, in 1965; it was organizing. And it was not a spontaneous decision by a tired woman on the bus that led to the most massive transportation boycott of the century; the Montgomery bus boycott was a result of…