Agata Popęda here. Martin Luther King Jr. is now pacified, changed into marble, just another national hero. The overall message coming from his story seems to be: He was an exemplary citizen who fought for equal rights for all. But there’s another lesson in it: To become an exemplary citizen, you have to die first.
MLK Jr. was more of a radical than the U.S. government is comfortable to remember, a radical Christian whose beliefs led him to politics of no borders, no race and no class. In his time, he was the government's enemy No. 1 and if he was alive now, he would be in no less of a danger, despite his admiration of the U.S. Constitution. This side of his struggle, as well as the struggle with personal vices, is well-described in the 2023 book by Jonathan Eig, King: A Life, the first full biography attempt in decades.
On April 4, 1968, King was murdered. He dreamt not only for America, but fostered the same ideals of equality around the world.
By the time he died, many young Black men thought King was not radical enough, while many whites moved away from him, scared that he was too radical for bringing up issues like income inequality and police brutality. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 turned out to be just enough for a palpable change.
It was a good few years after the culmination of the Freedom Movement in 1963. In 1968, King was depressed; he knew he was being hunted. At some point, through his Christian faith, he realized that in order to help his ideas, he had to sacrifice himself in a real sense. Just like Christ was crucified, Galileo burnt and a proverbial scapegoat being offered.
As culture critic René Girard noted decades ago, the scapegoat is a mechanism that motivates much of human history. Only then, can a society move on andーwith timeーembrace the ideals of the one who was condemned and killed.
Decades later, we still have not arrived at the world that King envisioned.
Editor's note: The story above has been updated to reflect the following correction. Martin Luther King Jr. died on April 4, not Dec. 4, 1968.
(1) comment
I wish your article were not accurate about this country and its culture and behavior; unfortunately, it is. Somehow, instead of positive evolvement, we seem to have moved backwards and negatively in the decades since he was killed.
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