Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day is more than its virtue signals
Martin Luther King Jr Day is often disregarded as a hollow platitude for centuries of racial injustice. With the historically cherry-picked stories of Dr. King pleading for non-violence and racial harmony broadcast every third Monday in January; with corporations posting images of King, pledging to promote DEI, while repressing the same people King advocated for; with senators and congressmen who probably would have opposed everything that King stood for, posting a quote, how could it not be?
Dr. King is more than what is made of him in the accounts of his life that have taken on mythic proportions. He was as real as a person could be. Imperfect in many ways. Representing an ideal, but often faltering, much like the nation itself.
America began to reconcile its racial sins during Reconstruction. More sins followed with Jim Crow segregation, the rise and later resurgence of the KKK, and lynchings. The Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, often called America’s Second Reconstruction, was just that. Like the first, while many racial wrongs were righted, more failures followed.
For nearly two decades following his assassination in 1968, activists fought for a holiday honoring King. Time after time, when the Congress voted, the activists lost. Finally, in 1983, enough support was mustered for the House and Senate to pass legislation establishing MLK Day as a federal holiday, reluctantly receiving the signature from President Ronald Reagan. I recommend the National Museum of African American History and Culture’s article on the holiday’s creation.
The complexities and truth of King’s life and advocacy have become somewhat more mainstream in recent years, which has helped ease the virtue-signaling nature of the holiday, though not totally. All holidays represent something and have meaning. MLK Day can’t be pushed to the side because it doesn’t solve all of our racial woes, or because it is used to virtue signal. It is meaningful because we honor it. Holidays define us and display what values we prioritize. MLK Day shows that we acknowledge the importance of the Civil Rights Movement and our nation's racial evolution, even if that truth is sometimes distorted.
A handful of states in the South, Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida recognize the third Monday of January (or January 19) as Robert E. Lee Day also, symbolizing a different set of values.
MLK Day can be hollow and purely symbolic, but it can also be valuable. It’s an opportunity to reflect on where we can go from here and acknowledge how far we’ve come.
Other Readings This Week
Axios: MLK's words resonate with both sides of Israeli-Palestinian conflict
Both sides use King to argue for their position.
“‘First and foremost, he always was for nonviolence. So I can be sure that he would be for a ceasefire’ in Gaza today, King's son, Martin Luther King III, tells Axios.”
Civil War Memory,
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