For his entire adult life, until the very day he was assassinated in 1968, he was under constant surveillance from the federal government, under constant threat from millions of people who actually hated the causes and ideals he stood for, and, in his last days on earth, seemed to frequently suggest to his closest friends that he was aware he wouldn't make it much longer.
In the nearly 50 years since his death, the passage of over 17,000 days has attempted to sanitize and whittle away at the reality of a man, and the movement he was leading, so much so that the Dr. King known to most was simply a sweet dreamer who desperately wanted his kids to be able hold the hands of white children. It sounds crass, but Dr. King has been horrifically reduced to a few poignant, but benign lines from his famous "I Have a Dream" speech.
Consequently, the average American can recall that Dr. King said that he wanted his children to "live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character," but have no idea, that before he said this line, he said that the United States had written African Americans a bad check.
Opening that same speech, Dr. King said something so powerful and profound that has conveniently found its way outside of the mainstream recollection.
Martin Luther King Jr.'s inspirational quotes that resonate today
"In a sense, we have come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.
"This note was a promise that all men — yes, black men as well as white men — would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
"It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked 'insufficient funds.'
"But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check — a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice."
If we functioned only in stereotypes, most Americans would believe that Malcolm X must've uttered those words, declaring that America had written a bad check to black folk, but that was actually quintessential Dr. King. He called truth to power. He spoke boldly and believed this country had failed when it came to matters of wealth, freedom, opportunity and justice for African Americans.
This, perhaps more than any other stanza of the "I Have a Dream" speech, best represented the work of Dr. King in the remaining five years of his life that followed.
Dr. King fought against police brutality and actually even mentioned it by name in this speech. Dr. King did not just vaguely fight against the idea of poverty, he fought for equal pay, he fought for better work conditions in cities across America, he fought to protect workers who were regularly abused by corporations.
He did not just vaguely fight for peace in the world; he stood up and spoke out against the Vietnam War when it was still tremendously unpopular for a man of his stature to do so. He did not, in fact, fight for integration, as much as he fought against segregation.
African Americans were not dying to eat and shop with white people. That is not what it was about. The movement was about having the legal freedom to move freely, without consequence, all over America.
It is convenient for cartoons and corporations and conservatives to reduce Dr. King to a tiny sliver of his dream on a single day of his life, but it's time that we grow up and grasp the reality that Dr. King was a revolutionary. He wasn't calling for an ever so slightly better America, with minor tweaks here and there, but a New America, willing and able to do the hard, dirty work of living up to the lofty language of its own founding documents.
In 2016, the check to Black America, to American immigrants, to our indigenous sisters and brothers, to Muslim Americans, to women in the workplace, to the LGBT community, to refugees, is still stamped "insufficient funds." All is not well here. Thankfully, Dr. King, the revolutionary, can help show us the way.