| This Martin Luther King Day, some thoughts from...

21st Jan 2013

This Martin Luther King Day, some thoughts from Vorris Nunley on the part of King’s legacy we seem to have forgotten:

Apparently, immediately after delivering one of the most rhetorically brilliant, oratorically moving, politically significant speeches in American history — the “I Have a Dream” speech — Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. effectively died. Died in August 1963, that is, not in April 1968; in celebrations, commemorations, and ceremonies, commercials, speeches, and public gatherings, the “I Have a Dream” King is frozen in time — his later politics dulled of its edginess, stripped of its demand for introspection of the part of both the oppressor and the oppressed. A more progressive Dr. King, the rhetorically and politically more prickly, complicated, beyond “I Have a Dream” King, the Dr. King who from 1963 through 1968 would discomfort Americans — even African Americans — has been disappeared. Erased. Allowed to dissipate in the winds of historical nostalgia for a more domesticated, compliant, more easily consumable Dr. King. A dreaming King. A Dr. King more comfortable for the American imagination.

Click here to read the rest of “Beyond ‘I Have a Dream.’”