In the fall of 1975, I opened my fresh new Language Arts textbook and found that some pages had been cut out. I walked up to my teacher’s desk and his response was,
”I did that. It was a story about Martin Luther King. I don’t want you reading about some nigger who went around stirring up trouble.”
Yesterday, I was talking with an elderly woman who didn’t realize today was a holiday.
“What holiday is it?”
“Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday,” I replied.
“I swear. Every body and his brother has a day named after him? He didn’t do nothing.”
This morning, I was talking to a man in his 70s about King’s legacy.
“I know he preached non-violence,” he said, “but as soon as he’d finish his speeches, blacks would go around breaking into stores and stealing stuff. I don’t care what the history books say. I saw it on TV.”
While King is celebrated as a saint by nearly all African Americans and a vast majority of white Americans as well, there is still a pervasive racial attitude among some – perhaps those who find themselves on the wrong side of history – that King was anything but heroic.
In a climate of racial, ethnic, and religious hatred and division, we desperately need people of passionate faith and commitment to reconciliation. It is essential that we not cast Dr. King’s memory in stone, but allow his legacy to live on in us through relationships devoted to peace and justice.
“Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.” ― Martin Luther King Jr.