Back when I matriculated at Syracuse University, the Schine Student Center had a computer lab with a large whiteboard in the back of the basement used by student organizations, but the Black and Latino orgs would rapidly occupy that space. I’ll attribute it to feeling like we had few spaces where we could, at least, develop our publications and flyers while convening with other like-minded folks of color. In any case, one day, I walked in to find that someone drew a long black line with “MLK Jr.” written in the middle. I didn’t know what to do with it, and many of my fellow students felt the need to put their names on the line to denote their radicalism. Of course, names like Clarence Thomas were written to the far right, so everyone wanted their names as far away from there as possible.
When I approached it, at first, I didn’t know what to make of it. Was I to understand that King Jr. was a middling activist, qualified enough to be the barometer for us all to judge our values, but not radical enough to pass the muster of the room’s collective, and perhaps redefined, blackness?
Yet, I found myself putting my name just to the left of Martin Luther King Jr., not as far as Malcolm X or Angela Davis, but a bit more anarchist than my perception of MLK Jr. Just then, a few members of Alpha Phi Alpha walked in and remarked, “Well, what’s the purpose of this chart?” Martin Luther King Jr. was himself a member of APhiA, so I didn’t know what to make of their objection.
“I don’t know …”, I said, hoping the person who put it up would jump in.
“Well, if you don’t know, then why put your name up there?”, one APhiA said.
“Not really sure, but this is supposed to represent where our political views lie.”
“So then how does a line do that for us?”
These questions rattled my brain enough for me to take an eraser to the line and toss it in the air.
“Why did you erase it, though? It was such a good discussion piece!”
Twelve years later, and I’m still wrestling with this idea, but this time, with me as the provocateur. When David Coleman, now-president of the College Board and mind behind the Common Core State Standards, presented the CCSS plan to New York State in the spring of 2011, he introduced his divine plan for ELA with a mini-lesson on “Letters from a Birmingham Jail,” Martin Luther King Jr.’s indelible rejoinder to some of his harshest [white] critics. [check a similar speech Coleman gave here] When I first heard him use it, I couldn’t understand why he didn’t just stick to the Gettysburg Address, but then I realized that he needed to tie in MLK as a nod to the civil rights community to say, “This is for you, too!” as if the CCSS would take us on the path toward teaching for equity.
Nowadays, everyone loves using MLK Jr. to make one point or another, akin to using Morgan Freeman to quotes he didn’t say, as if to add a moral gravitas that may or may not be there. It’s how I feel about quoting King overall. It feels less likely that one would quote Ella Baker, Malcolm X, or Marcus Garvey, but, when faced with a challenge regarding people of color, people too quickly jump on the lap of the prolific (and sanitized version of) MLK and find the most overarching quote possible to justify even the most obtuse arguments.
We don’t have to ignore the deep flaws in King’s life, and, as was made abundantly clear in my last post, everyone will have their different perceptions of the heroes we hold dear. Of course, that’s fine by me because there’s no such thing as a pure hero, but they do serve their purposes. King is one of the proverbial lions standing in front of our houses, guarding our visions for a better country to live in with hope and faith. Yet, his roar rang more globally, more fiercely as time went on. Peep this piece from his aforementioned letter from Birmingham:
I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.
Would David Coleman have read that far for his classroom? If so, how does he reconcile the civil rights faux-ra (portmanteau of faux and aura) with the multi-billion dollar industry that the CCSS has created right in front of us? If he’s going to present the letter as a text worth teaching, would he have the cultural responsiveness to deal with the reactions to this particular paragraph, or are the first three paragraphs universal and innocuous enough to get buy-in from all vested communities?
Conversely, how do any of us connect the work of those who came before with the work we’re doing now? Do you need King to serve the “good Negro” purpose for you or are you really about that life? This part especially goes to white allies, but applies to everyone as well: does MLK truly belong to everyone or does his standing as a Black man fighting for equality for people of color actually matter in the quotes we utter?
I’d say so.
Just because you’re in the coolest room in the house doesn’t mean the house isn’t, in fact, burning around you. For the rest of us in the house, we can’t rely on calling 911 for help. King, like so many others, was a firefighter, and our government put him out. Close read that.