As we approach January 20, Martin Luther King Jr Day, we should all look back to his work during the Black liberation movement and recognize his continued relevance. His nonviolent approach to civil injustice is typically contrasted with Malcolm X’s call to fight back. One was villainized by the media, and the other sanitized; Mal colm X has been portrayed as an angry Black person stereotype, born from Malcolm’s determination to achieve equal rights through “any means necessary,” as he stated, and Martin Luther King Jr has been viewed as his mild opposite. We now understand, through a more compassionate lens, that both acted out of necessity and through different perspectives to produce change.
It can be hard to understand the continued relevance of historical public figures. How can we, in a digital age, with extracurriculars and social concerns, possibly relate to and apply the teachings of the Civil Rights era of more than fifty years ago?
King’s path to greatness was fraught with obstacles, and he was jailed 29 times, according to the King Center. He was even denounced as an “extremist” by his fellow clergymen and by white Americans. In my conversation with Ashley Linda, a Haldane High School Honors English teacher, we discussed King’s 1963 “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” which he composed in a prison cell in response to local religious leaders’ criticisms of King’s civil rights demonstrations.
“First of all…as a piece of rhetoric, I think it’s a compelling piece to read and to study. I think it’s one of the best examples of argumentative writing,” Linda said. This skillfullness is clearly illustrated in lines such as, “We still creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward the gaining of a cup of coffee at a lunch counter,” and “Twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty.”
I asked what Linda thought students take away from the letter. She stated, “The message to me is… treating one another with respect, and treating all humans with rights and dignities that they deserve.” This is what King fought for, inalienable rights and the age-old American promise, the idea that all men are created equal. “Especially in this age, with sexual orientation and sexual preference, I really think he continues to be relevant even now,” Linda concluded, referencing the ongoing fight for trans rights in the United States and the banning of gen derqueer authors in school districts.
treating all humans with the rights and dignities that they deserve.” This is what King fought for, inalienable rights and the age-old American promise, the idea that all men are created equal. “Especially in this age, with sexual orientation and sexual preference, I really think he continues to be relevant even now,” Linda concluded, referencing the ongoing fight for trans rights in the United States and the banning of gen derqueer authors in school districts. serve the real lives and real people of an era difficult to picture. She reiterated the idea that the most important thing everyone can do is to retain and give out basic dignity.
King had his critics. Kelly Carter Jackson, contemporary Black historian and academic, said she does not find his philosophy inaccurate, but incomplete. His ideals, she writes in We Refuse: A Forceful History of Black Resistance, “[do] not represent the full scale of human suffering.” George Jackson from the Black Panther Party, wrote in Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson that nonviolence was a hopeful but “false ideal.” I asked if Linda personally felt differently about King, to which Linda replied that, from her place of privilege, she could not respond to the question. She said, “I feel like if you have different views, that’s fine, everyone is entitled to their own opinion.”
We drew to the conclusion that certain problems and certain flaws and inclinations in humans will always exist. “Freedom is a constant struggle”, said Angela Davis; the struggle for freedom unites us across color barriers, and political lines, because the struggle concerns, and always will concern, the people. “I think at the end of the day, something that ties all of his work together, is the appealing nature of the fact that there is so much about us that is different, but to celebrate the fact that there is so much of us that is the same,” Linda closed.
King’s words continue to be relevant today in the message that is carried by freedom fighters and organizations all over the world: that every human being has a right to their dignity, which no institution or body of government should be allowed to take away. Sometimes, when we are reduced to our most basic principles, and let those be our guidelines, we move not only ourselves but others around us. Change comes from within; and when we extend our hand to others in need, there is a ripple effect that changes everyone, and ourselves, for the better.
