Remembering King's complete legacy

By Editorial

We all remember what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. day was like back in school.

You would sit in class and read a copy of the "I Have a Dream" speech. Maybe even watch a grainy video of it if you were lucky.

Your teacher would speak about all that King did to fight against the horrors of segregation and inequality in the American south. Depending on how old you were, your teacher may have even told you that King was arrested 30 times for his efforts, had his house bombed and received numerous death threats directed at him and his family.

All this before being assassinated at the young age of 39.

At the end of the lesson, the teacher would summarize: King fought bravely against discrimination, and dreamed that one day we would all just get along.

Maybe after a quick sing-along of "We Shall Overcome," it was time for recess.

Every year, in many mainstream media reports, this story is repeated. Thanks to King's activism, black Americans have access today to opportunities that they could have only dreamed of in the past.

From the way his story is told, King and his message seem easily acceptable, even tame in comparison to other civil rights movement activists.

In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.

King was a revolutionary, who was criticized heavily by both his government and mainstream media at the time. And while his tireless civil rights advocacy was instrumental in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that banned segregation in schools and public places, he didn't stop there.

As media analysts Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon described in an article last year, King recognized that being allowed to eat at a lunch counter was meaningless if you couldn't afford to eat there, and advocated for economic rights with the same fervor with which he fought for desegregation.

This activism didn't only apply to the economic struggles of black Americans. King was fully aware that the majority of citizens living under the poverty line were white, and attacked the large economic disparities between rich and poor from a class perspective, calling for a "poor people's bill of rights."

"True compassion," he said, "is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice that produces beggars needs restructuring."

We hear even less about his criticism of American foreign policy, particularly the Vietnam War.

He decried the way that Congress gave nearly unlimited funding to the military, while continually turning their backs on America's poor.

In the last years of his life, King wasn't the media darling that he is now. In describing his later work, the Washington Post wrote that King had "diminished his usefulness to his country, his cause, his people."

Yet somehow, when it comes time to commemorate his life, both the media and our history textbooks conveniently forget the more controversial aspects of his work.

By only recognizing the mainstream aspects of his legacy, we diminish this great man, and the hero that he was for all of us, not just black Americans.

Thankfully, segregation no longer exists. But if King were alive today, he wouldn't waste any time celebrating. He would look around and see the disparity between the rich and poor growing, public programs to help those in poverty failing and far too many brave young people dying in an unnecessary conflict overseas.

Make no mistake about it, Dr. King would not be satisfied. And we shouldn't be either.