“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” — Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
I have had a profound appreciation of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as a seriously important figure in American history, but not in the same way as most others.
The above quote is my very favorite from him, even though he left us a treasure trove of wisdom. So many others love to quote from his “I Have a Dream Speech,” yet I found his April 4, 1967, speech, “Beyond Vietnam,” much more compelling and courageous. Spoken exactly a year before his assassination, the speech was incredibly controversial because it was critical of the Vietnam Conflict from a moral perspective and it upset even some of his allies because they felt it betrayed President Lyndon Johnson.
I was pleased and surprised to understand Wayland Union Schools were closed in honor of the observance of King’s birthday and the Wayland City Council decided against meeting that evening as well. We have a lot of so-called holidays, such as Columbus Day and President’s Day, that cause closings, yet it wasn’t until 1993 when King’s birthday finally was recognized in all 50 states.
Though he is widely exalted these days as a man of peace, humility and courage, he was widely hated while he was alive. Many of our younger folks have not learned that awful truth, and I know only because I was in college on the day of his murder. My first reaction was fear because it might have been the spark to ignite a race war less than a year after the Detroit riots that left 44 people dead. And though the national media was promoting a love fest for the fallen civil rights icon, my roommates and I at GVSU didn’t believe it and we proceeded with an ugly way to prove it.
We called up a local TV station on the afternoon of Dr. King’s funeral and complained that the funeral was pre-empting customary local programming.
“What’s the matter with you guys? My kids are screaming that they want to watch Bozo.”
On the other line, a station representative replied, “We’re so sorry. It wasn’t our decision, it was the network’s, so we have to show this. Bozo will be back tomorrow.”
The TV station rep did not say this was an important historical event. Instead, the buck was passed to the network.
Of course, cooler heads prevailed, despite some disturbances.
But I submitted very early on that a lot of folks came to the realization that Dr. King wasn’t such a bad guy. He never promoted violence as a means to settling our differences. He was a pacifist and suggested civil disobedience instead.
Many in power took the opportunity to call attention to Dr. King’s legacy as a way to minimize the violence in the aftermath of his death. This was in contrast with other black leaders, such as Malcolm X, who were scarier than King.
Though the years, I have had to edit essays and feature stories about Dr. King, many of them sugar coated with the same comment s about “I Have a Dream” and the sunnier side of the man.
Yet I know he was not really a saint, he, like the rest of us, had flaws. He smoked cigarettes privately and was unfaithful to his wife. His private life underwent intense scrutiny from no less than FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who at one time pronounced Dr. King the most dangerous man in America.
Like so many other heroes in our history, he was a good man overall, but had shortcomings. We have deified Thomas Jefferson, though he slept with one of his slaves. We deified Andrew Jackson, who launched the brutal “Trail of Tears” against Native Americans. We deified Christopher Columbus, who personally oversaw the beginning of the near genocide of indigenous people on this continent.
So much of history is sanitized and it overlooks more troubling information about people we’ve put on pedestals. Our history books for too long have told us stories that weren’t adequate in telling us who came before us and what they did and why.
The importance of history through the years has taken an academic back seat behind the altars of math and science. Public and private schools have long been hiring coaches as history teachers who were physical education majors and group social studies minors.
So recalling arguably one of the most important figures in our history, we would do well to try to understand why Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is important enough to have his day.
