In the middle of every January Martin Luther King is celebrated, and every year at this time I complain in my speeches and media interviews about King that many of these celebrations describe a sanitized MLK who was not the person I knew.
MLK was an unrelenting activist who went to jail 29 times fighting for the elimination of racism in American society, among other things.
Nicole Hannah-Jones
Nicole Hannah-Jones, creator of the 1619 Project, handled this whitewashing (pun intended) of King brilliantly in her MLK day speech. She reports that a few members of the group hosting her had complained that it dishonored King to have her there. Apparently, they assumed that Hannah-Jones and the 1619 Project said things about U.S. history—past and recent—that King would not say.
Following are some excerpts from what she read to the audience in the first half of her speech.
“It was in the year 1619 that the first black slave was brought to the shores of this nation. They were brought here from the soils of Africa and unlike the Pilgrim fathers who landed here at Plymouth a year later, they were brought here against their will.
“For more than 200 years Africa was raped and plundered, a native kingdom disorganized, the people and rulers demoralized and throughout slavery the black slaves were treated in a very inhuman form.
“White Americans must recognize that justice for black people cannot be achieved without radical changes in the structure of our society…The evils of capitalism are as real as the evils of militarism and racism.
“The problems of racial injustice and economic injustice cannot be solved without a radical redistribution of political and economic power. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
“The crowning achievement in hypocrisy must go to those staunch Republicans and Democrats of the Midwest and West who were given land by our government when they came here as immigrants from Europe. They were given education through the land grant colleges.
“These are the same people that now say to black people, whose ancestors were brought to this country in chains and who were emancipated in 1863 without being given land to cultivate or bread to eat; that they must pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.
“What they truly advocate is Socialism for the rich and Capitalism for the poor… We know full well that racism is still that hound of hell which dogs the tracks of our civilization.
“Ever since the birth of our nation, White America has had a Schizophrenic personality on the question of race, she has been torn between selves. A self in which she proudly professes the great principle of democracy and a self in which she madly practices the antithesis of democracy.
“The white backlash of today is rooted in the same problem that has characterized America ever since the black man landed in chains on the shores of this nation.
“…[F]or the good of America, it is necessary to refute the idea that the dominant ideology in our country, even today, is freedom and equality and that racism is just an occasional departure from the norm on the part of a few bigoted extremists.
“If America does not respond creatively to the challenge to banish racism, some future historian will have to say, that a great civilization died because it lacked the soul and commitment to make justice a reality for all men.’
“Why do white people seem to find it so difficult to understand that the black people are sick and tired of having reluctantly parceled out to them those rights and privileges which all others receive upon birth or entry in America?
“I never cease to wonder at the amazing presumption of much of white society, assuming that they have the right to bargain with the black for their freedom…
Hannah-Jones did not inform her audience until the second half of the speech that all the statements she had read were spoken by Martin Luther King in speeches between 1956 and 1967.
They were “shook” as she said, apparently because they do not celebrate this MLK. Only 26 percent of white America approved of the real MLK in 1967. They love this false whitewashed version.
Note: Of course, she substituted “black” for “Negro” to not give the stunt away.
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Wornie Reed is Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies and Director of the Race and Social Policy Research Center at Virginia Tech University. Previously he developed and directed the Urban Child Research Center in the Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs at Cleveland State University (1991-2001), where he was also Professor of Sociology and Urban Studies (1991-2004). He was Adjunct Professor at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine (2003-4). Professor Reed served a three-year term (1990-92) as President of the National Congress of Black Faculty, and he is past president of the National Association of Black Sociologists (2000-01).
This column first appeared online at What the Data Say and is shared here by permission.
