Not a Two-Dimensional Figure
Hi, everyone. It has been a busy time for me as of late, what with visiting my family in West Virginia, preaching a sermon nine days ago, tracking down paperwork to make sure that credentials are in order, and starting another semester at Temple University. However, one thing that I have been thinking about for several days now, after Martin Luther King Day, is about the nature of what it means in order to have lived a multi-faceted life with a challenging and complex message, only to be remembered as a two-dimensional character.
The Impetus for the Post
Eight years ago, while I was stationed in northern Iraq, I saw a drawing for some material commemorating Martin Luther King, and the winners would be announced on Martin Luther King Day. I went to the mess hall the next day, and I saw my name on the list of winners. To my surprise, I found out that there were more free books than there were people who entered the raffle, so I was allowed to get whatever book I wanted. When I picked my book, I saw one that compelled me more than the others: A Knock at Midnight: Inspiration from the Great Sermons of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.
In this book, there are several of Martin Luther King’s sermons, from the 1950′s into 1968, the year he was assassinated. A lot of people think of Martin Luther King as someone who gave a great speech on the Washington Mall with the refrain, “I have a dream…” Anyone who has ever written music or any oral form of communication knows the importance of repeating a key word or phrase in order to help the audience remember it, and anyone who has studied at a seminary can recognize the preacher’s rhythm of the words and tone of the I Have a Dream speech, and can probably sit down and diagram each of the major points of a well-crafted sermon. Here is the speech in its entirety:
Many of us in the United States hear of that speech, and we also hear of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the 1955 event spurred on by Rosa Parks’ refusal to get up from her seat on a bus, that eventually prompted an effort by black people in Montgomery to refuse to ride any bus that would not treat them equally, which eventually broke the back of the bus system in Montgomery, and after a year, it ended in victory.
However, this sanitized version of Martin Luther King is not the whole truth. Civil rights was and is an important part of King’s legacy, but it is not the only part of his message. He was a brilliant man who was taken from us far too soon, dying at the end of a gun at the age of 39. However, he began his national role at the age of 26 years old. He went across the country preaching a message of justice, and making sure that the message of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution applied to all, and not just a few.
A Broad Message
As I read the book, I found that this book covered one area more than any other: poverty. Over and over, he pointed out the unjust nature of an economic system that too often focused on greed and focused on the haves rather than everyone. In his lifetime, King advocated a national guaranteed income and he opposed the Vietnam War, both because he opposed violence, and because of what he saw happening to poor people in the region whose farmland was destroyed. As a matter of fact, when he died in 1968 in Memphis, he was not there for a civil rights march, he was there to stand in support of striking sanitation workers, as part of his Poor People’s Campaign. If you have never heard Martin Luther King on poverty, here is a powerful video juxtaposed with images of what poverty really means:
Martin Luther King was a great man with a great message, but I believe that we do him a disservice by ignoring the whole message of Martin Luther King.
How do you fight to make sure that someone’s entire legacy is remembered and not turned into a cartoon?
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Tags: legacy, Martin Luther King, Poor People's Campaign, poverty, whole picture
This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 24th, 2012 at 8:33 pm and is filed under Personal Development, Steve's Book Club, Thoughts on Faith. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
January 25th, 2012 at 7:20 pm
yes all too often the legacy that is left is one major even, may not even be the best thing that they did, but it will be whatever plays the most often in the media. Most people are lazy and few pick up a book to learn, and that is what the shame is, there is more than one kind of poverty the poverty of the mind, and that is totally within our control!
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January 26th, 2012 at 11:09 am
Inspirational Steve and I can actually relate to the images you shared. A part of my family is from the south and I remember like it was yesterday a visit to the small town where they lived when I was in high school – railroad tracks ran down the middle. White on one side / black on the other. They still had white only restrooms. It was like being transported back in time and it was pretty scary. What’s also scary is I just read an article by an “expert” about how “people don’t want the detail anymore, they want snippets.” How do you ever experience the bigger picture in life with snippets?!
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February 4th, 2012 at 5:04 pm
Steve,
Very touching and inspirational article. Sometimes we all forget about what happened in the past and what mankind was capable of. We still have a long way to go, but at least we are making progress. Thanks for the great post.
February 5th, 2012 at 3:20 pm
Thank you for your reply, Lynda! Please forgive the lateness of my reply. I remember reading something very interesting about the idea of what we are taught in school. It’s not that it is necessarily false, but that the younger kids are, the more likely they are to get a more basic understanding of issues, so there isn’t a lot of depth. (I remember reading something critical about the Pilgrims in Massachusetts Colony for the first time when I was in tenth grade, when they talked about compulsive religious practices and forced confessions.) However, the real problem occurs in my mind when people keep the superficial understanding.
February 5th, 2012 at 3:24 pm
Thank you for your reply, Marty! In my hometown, it was more rich on one side/poor on the other (to this day, there isn’t a lot of racial diversity there), but there was still that way of people keeping to themselves.
I’ve heard that sentiment about the “snippet” as well. It seems like with things like Twitter, where we are forced to such a tiny mode of communication. I wonder how many people actually realize that Cliffs Notes are condensations of books.
February 5th, 2012 at 3:28 pm
Thank you for your reply, Gary! It is good to see that things aren’t as bad as they were, but I guess each generation has its own challenges to make sure progress continues.
February 8th, 2012 at 4:00 am
Isn’t this the way it goes? An author writes 80 books, and we remember 5 of them. A great politician serves for several years and we remember him for a handful of great quotes. A band records 40 songs and we remember 10. It seems to be a characteristic of our society, or people in general. I’m glad you were able to get hold of a book of Martin Luther King’s sermons, and dig deeper into what he contributed to our world.
Willena Flewelling
February 21st, 2012 at 7:30 pm
Thank you for your reply, Willena! In a sense you are right about the opus of people, but I think that the frustration of Martin Luther King’s legacy is that he is being used to justify policies that he opposed, all because of the two-dimensional image too many of us have accepted (and I’ll admit that I did for a long time). It is truly amazing how much he moved the conversation in this country, and that is how I choose to honor him.