White Martin

The day he was lynched, Martin Luther King Jr was among the most reviled men in the United States.

That is a hard statement to write. I am, however, old enough to remember that April day. I remember the tone of the conversation, the attitude, the emotion of my friends and neighbors in the lily white community where I grew up. ‘Beloved‘ was not one of the adjectives that white communities used to describe him in those times.

Today, however, the climate has changed. Boulevards are named in his honor. White congregations hear sermons about King’s call for Love as a Christian practice. Politicians deliver platitudes to King’s work in advancing civil rights. Students perform a day of service. Today we remember the life of “The Beloved, Honorable, Doctor Martin Luther King Jr.” Or perhaps, a more honest statement would be that while the weather has changed, the climate surrounding King’s work remains very much intact.

It is true that many streets (over a thousand worldwide) are name in honor of Dr. King; seventy percent of those in the US reside in the South. However, in the South there are far more tributes to leaders of the Civil War who fought to preserve states’ rights, including the right to decide who was and was not a free person. Locally, Confederate flags fly in front of homes and the backs of pickup trucks, badges of honor to their heritage of racism.

White Christian congregations will honor King and feel justified in the eyes of God and King because they strive to love their neighbor in the gated community in which they live and proclaim that “All Are Welcome” on the sign at the front of their church. They ignore the stinging words that were written from a Birmingham Jail, “ I MUST make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councillor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says, “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically feels that he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by the myth of time; and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”

Still, today, white moderate church leadership stands, for the most part, silent on matters of justice. Not wishing to cause discomfort among its members, their pulpits remain silent on a criminal justice system that incarcerates a disproportionate number of Black males; ignores the root causes of a cycle of poverty that cannot be broken by band-aid solutions, no matter how helpful or well intended; mute about voting laws and gerrymandering that enshrines rather than includes; transports their students to days of service but not protest marches for equality; have their choir sing kumbaya or a Negro Spiritual rather than”We Shall Overcome”, the anthem of the Civil Rights Movement. When the benediction is pronounced, all can leave feeling redeemed in their lukewarm acceptance.

Today our political leaders will tweet and talk about Dr. King. They will lift up his work on civil rights, while many seek to deny the privileges associated with those rights to people of color or are LGBTQ+. King was ostracized by his white political supporters when he spoke against the Vietnam War; the New York Times blasted his participation and President Johnson said, “What is that goddamned nigger preacher doing to me?”.King was well respected when he took on the likes of Bull Connor, the dogs and the tear gas but became despised when he stood with labor and called for a boycott of Scripto Pen, organized labor movements in Chicago, or stood with the sanitation workers in Chicago. In the past week but one of the Democratic contenders showed support for a strike by unionized snow plow operators, and that was in the form of a tweet by Joe Biden.

Today is Martin Luther King Day. I think it is best to honor his real legacy, not, what Cornel West calls the Santa Claus-ification of King. West states, “ I don’t want to sanitize Martin Luther King. I don’t want to deodorize Dr. Martin Luther King. I don’t want to disinfect Dr. Martin Luther King, and we’re not gonna domesticate Dr. King. The FBI said he was the most dangerous man in America, and the FBI said he was the most notorious liar in America.” Today we celebrate the birth of Martin Luther King Jr. White America has managed to re-create him in our own image just as we have White God and White Jesus. MLK is not Saint Martin; he was flawed in character. But he was a deeply devout Christian who sought to live into Christian practice by challenging empires that oppressed; he walked side by side with his brothers, seeing their affliction and on laying hands for healing. He spoke of Justice and walked to secure it.

And, then he was lynched.