I hope you have all had a good Martin Luther King, Jr. Day! On Thursday, we briefly talked about the ways that stories about King are often used to make political points in the present. On the one hand, commentators like Wolf Blitzer and Armond Budish have cited King’s example of nonviolence to criticize or warn black protestors. On the other hand, others have used different words of King’s to explain that he was more radical than mainstream memories of him allow, and that he would have understood or even joined protests like the ones in Baltimore and Ferguson.
Arguably, both of these arguments exemplify the tendency of Americans across the political spectrum to turn to larger-than-life historical figures in search of a “usable past.” That’s a term and a concept that we’ll be returning to over the course of the semester. And the search for a “usable past” in the life of Martin Luther King, Jr., was also on full display again today.
For example, conservative radio host Joe Walsh made the provocative claim this morning that King would not have supported the Black Lives Matter movement, a claim that historian Ed Baptist refuted.
Others, on the opposite end of the political spectrum, took to Twitter to enlist King’s memory in support of Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders.
Alongside both of these narratives about King, I also noticed another theme in the articles and tweets I read today. Authors like Donna Murch and Jamil Smith argued that celebrations of Martin Luther King, Jr., today often traffic more in myth than in reality: they not only water down or miss the core of his message, but they also overlook or forget how unpopular he was when he died, especially among white Americans.
All of these arguments show that history is contested. And they call to mind, once again, the Three Big Questions we are going to spend our semester considering in this class.
First, they raise the question of what a study of “legendary Americans” can tell us about American history. For example, what does King’s rapid rise from unpopularity to nearly universal recognition tell us about the changes that have occurred since the 1960s? Some might interpret these changes as evidence of the nation’s progress on issues of racial justice, as a sign that instead of needing to still listen to King’s message about the oppression of black Americans, we are ready to move on to an “all lives matter” society that is essentially color-blind. On the other hand, many others would contest that view. They argue that King has been canonized only because he has been oversimplified and mythologized, and that we still very much need to hear his radical messages today.
That debate leads directly into our other two Big Questions. One, do we still need “legendary Americans” today to unify us and provide us with usable lessons from the past, or do the services that “legendary Americans” provide always come at the cost of layering them with myth? And second, if King has been shrouded in myth, how do historians separate the myth from reality; which interpretation of King is, in the view of professional historians, the right one: the color-blind advocate of nonviolence at any cost, or the democratic socialist radical forerunner of the Black Lives Matter movement? Or is neither entirely correct? How would historians decide such a question?
We will return to some of these debates about King at the end of the semester when we read about the Civil Rights Movement in Danielle McGuire’s book. But for now, I just wanted to point out how very current some of the central questions of our course remain, and to ask you to chime (but only if you’d like; this is optional). Did you notice any articles or themes on social media today that reminded you of our discussions in class?
There are some interesting comparisons to be drawn between this discussion and the debate we had today, specifically concerning the introduction of bias into written primary sources. Unlike the historical record of Sacagawea’s death, the paper trail left by Dr. King is easily accessible and very broad. It’s obvious that Dr. King was promoting a particular political agenda in almost all, if not all of his publications; this bias (perhaps motivation is a better word) is easily identified, and we can read his works through the lens of his society. This is not difficult; the attitude towards the Civil Rights movement is, again, well-documented, and recent enough in the national memory that it hasn’t been distorted by time. So we see none of the difficulties we encountered in class. You’d think this would eliminate any controversy about his works, but we still see a sharp division between two opposing camps in the application of his words to today’s issues. Just to reinforce this point one more time, Dr. King left absolutely no confusion as to his message. Nobody was thinking maybe there wasn’t really any segregation, or that maybe he wasn’t in favor equal rights. Here we see the issue with the other side of historical evidence than the one we discussed in class. While the records of Sacagawea’s death were potentially skewed because they numbered so few on both sides, we manage to form equal, if not greater controversy by picking and choosing from the abundance of evidence available instead of examining King’s work as a whole.
Interesting points, Luke! And your observation can probably be extended to George Washington, whom we will read about this week. While scarce documentation made Sacagawea malleable, that doesn’t mean that abundant documentation precludes myth-making.