40 years later

Friday marks the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

King has in the time since received much deserved honors, from everything including a federal holiday to being featured on a U.S. postage stamp.

However, important aspects of his legacy tend to get overlooked This side of King is especially relevant today.

Amy Goodman recalls King's "Beyond Vietnam" speech in her latest column:

He said: “A few years ago, there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor, both black and white, through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam, and I watched this program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war. And I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic, destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.”

He went on, “I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today: my own government.”

In recent years, King's message has been softened and depoliticized by the media. The same media who praise him now attacked him viciously in 1968.

As Goodman points out:

Time magazine called the speech “demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi.” The Washington Post declared that King had “diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people.”

One can't help but think of the race-bating that goes on today in the coverage of civil rights issues at FOX News. I can't count how many times I've heard a current black leader attacked in similar terms by the network (and other cable channels). It's usually followed by some comment that if Dr. King were alive, he'd disown today's civil rights leaders.

If King were alive, these same commentators would be attacking him just as hard and in the same manner.

In today's AP story the Rev. Jesse Jackson put it this way:

“He is a beloved man today, but a hated man when he was killed,” Jackson said.

However, the softening of King's message is not limited to the media. Even organizers of King Day events tend to shy away from the relevance of his activism to today's issues, perhaps out of fear of controversy.

I'm reminded of 2003, just prior to the outbreak of war with Iraq. I was part of M.A.P.S., a student antiwar group at Marshall University. The organization decided to take part in the King Day observances in Huntington that year. However, some organizers of the event tried to forbid antiwar messages of any kind from being a part of it, out of fear that it would become too politicized.

Apparently, some of us overlooked the part of King's life where he went to great lengths to avoid hot issues.

The contemporary version of King seems to end with the "I Have a Dream" speech and omits the years leading up to his death, one of the most active periods of his life.

In addition to his opposition to the war, another overlooked part of King's life is his work to address the issue of wealth disparity and poverty in America.

At the time of his death, King was preparing to take part in the "Poor People's March on Washington."

His son, Martin Luther King III recalls his King's efforts on this issue in a column in The Atlanta Journal Constitution:

My father spent his life in the trenches of a war that poses a true threat to our peace and security as a nation. He fought the war on poverty with the sanitation workers in Memphis, and he was moved to continue that fight as he witnessed barely clothed children in Marks, Miss., and a mother in Newark, N.J., raising her children in a rat-infested apartment.

Four decades have come and gone, but as I have traveled the country continuing the fight on poverty, I have seen firsthand that the poverty remains the same.

I urge our nation, our citizens, our businesses, our government and our presidential hopefuls to remember my father’s caution in his final sermon: There is no such thing as a conscientious objector in the war on poverty.

(Photo: The Associated Press)

Hear "Beyond Vietnam" here: