“Woke” culture piddles on most of what Martin Luther King stood for.
Which is, alone, a great reason to post the original version of this, one of his greatest speeches, today:
4 thoughts on “Martin Luther King Day”
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I won’t be available for witty banter today. Marching in Selma for civil rights for White people.
It is best to look at King as a black community leader, organizer, and speaker rather than as a religious figure.
His theology was weird and OT centric. He plagiarized quite a bit of his doctoral thesis. King’s record as an intellectual is mixed.
Not trying to make King look small, but to place him properly. King was not a particularly religious man. In the context of his time and place, becoming a preacher was really the only outlet for a natural politician who was black.
King was personally courageous and promoted non-violent resistance to segregation. That alone makes him a remarkable person.
He is one of those historical figures that are so matched to their time that there is no way to correctly place him if he was in our own time. Would he be pro or anti woke? Don’t know. Would he be part of the establishment or part of the counter culture? Don’t know.
There is no heir to Martin Luther King because there is no longer any place for an heir to Martin Luther King.
Through a somewhat odd series of circumstances, my wife, (aka the “Reverend Mother”) had the opportunity to deliver the keynote address at the MLK Day event in our community. When the opportunity first arose, my advice was to run from it like it was a live grenade.
It all went well, however. She started with King’s “content of character” quote, and then delved into an old King sermon about what character consists of, quoting several segments of the message. At least a third of the sermon would be enough to get King canceled these days, but dead black guys aren’t judged the same way as dead white guys. To paraphrase something I’ve said about God in this space before, “Everybody wants to speak for Martin Luther King, Jr.; nobody wants to listen to him.”
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