MLK: 50 years later, a mission unfinished

return to the scene of his most famous moment, with plans for a Poor People’s Campaign where black, white, Hispanic and Indigenous protesters would camp out on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

That everyone recalls his 1963 speech on the mall, “I Have A Dream,” while his final project languishes in comparative obscurity, is why AfricanAmerican academic Cornel West bemoans the “Santa Claus-ification” of King, recalled by history as a jolly figure who just wanted kids gathered around the table of brotherhood.

His public image certainly improved posthumously. In life, Gallup polls found mixed support for King, with disapproval as high as 63 per cent. By 2000, he was Gallup’s second-most admired person of the 20th century — after Mother Teresa.

One Canadian union leader attending the Memphis anniversary events said he hopes people remember the broader story, not just the feel-good version.

“Unfortunately this is what happens with history,” said Martin O’Hanlon, president of CWA Canada, the Canadian media union.

“Things are simplified. One person did one thing. It’s never that simple... (People) have put Martin Luther King into a bit of a box... After he was killed, his legacy was sanitized... People have to ask, ‘Why was he shot down on that day in Memphis?’ He was there at a strike.”

People wrestle with other parts of his legacy.

African-American writer Mychal Denzel Smith, writing in The Atlantic magazine, recalled King’s moonlighting as a magazine advice columnist, and how he was less than helpful to women who wrote about spousal mistreatment.

He also expressed resentment at how people use King today, as a foil, to negatively compare other black people. His piece carried the headline, “Is King all that we are allowed to become? Americans ... use (his) memory more to chide black youth than to inspire them.”

Debates over King’s legacy aren’t new.

In the explosion of anger following his death, African-Americans questioned his peaceful resistance: “Nonviolence was murdered with Martin Luther King,” read one sign at a protest at Washington’s Howard University.

People rioted, looted, burned buildings in 120 cities. The effects remain engraved in some. Clay Risen, author of a book on that week’s events, “Nation On Fire,” says there are still empty lots in Chicago and Baltimore in the place of charred buildings.