Medium Meditations on MLK Jr Day
Several stories on MLK Jr 2023 honor (or dishonor?) the memory of MLK Jr. Reading through them, one finds a snapshot of what people are saying, thinking, writing about one of the greatest American heroes of the 20th century. Since the authors of those pieces may not know one another, but might have interesting things to say to each other, made sense to link everything together into a sort of ‘commentary stew.’
Please correct me if I err. We are all learning.
- Tom Tordillo
Noreen Sumpter discusses memorizing the entirety of King’s “I Have a Dream” speech as a teenager.
“I wonder if he [MLK Jr] is looking down thinking about what the hell is going on. I believe the Dream that he created is still alive.”
I believe so too.
Ms. Sumpter’s story features a picture of herself with a number of “Confederate flag” waving protesters Georgia, an odd picture that is explained in this story:
London native Noreen Sumpter, who this week was visiting Atlanta from her home in Brooklyn, called the demonstration “bloody ridiculous” given the park’s history and affiliation with hate groups like the KKK
Max Blau, “Protesters ‘defend Stone Mountain’ against proposed MLK monument,” Atlanta Magazine, (Nov. 15, 2015)
Would she be impressed to know that similar monuments in California have been obliterated, or that at Anaheim’s Pearson Park, once the scene of the largest Klan rally in California, there’s now a beautiful Kobe and Gianna Bryant Basketball Court.
Last time I was there, Asian, Latino, Black, and White teens were playing basketball. The world may not have reached “the promised land” of racial harmony — but it means something.
Here’s a link to Willard Neal’s book, “Georgia’s Stone Mountain” care of our friends at Project Gutenberg. Note that the ‘original concept’ was proposed in 1915 — the same year Hollywood released its first real blockbuster, “Birth of a Nation.” Someone ought to let Georgians know that this ‘historical monument’ was actually a Hollywood concoction, rather than an authentic expression of Georgian history.
For everyone except extremist bigots, actual real world history might drive reconsideration their ‘sacred’ memorials. Surely extreme bigots won’t care, BUT would they have smiled and posed with Ms. Sumpter? There’s certainly no end of bigots left in the world, but perhaps not as many as existed in the 1920s in Georgia.
Robinhood — the trading platform most famous for the GameStop squeeze of 2021 — put out a note to all “Robinhoodies” from Anastasia Talton, business partner for “Inclusion, Equity, & Belonging,” exhorting them to “demonstrate love in everything we do.”
Hmmm. MLK Jr was not exactly a fan of capitalism.
“Capitalism forgets that life is social. And the kingdom of brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of communism nor the antithesis of capitalism, but in a higher synthesis.”
MLK Speech to Southern Christian Leadership Conference Atlanta, Georgia, August 16, 1967
Would he laugh about this invocation, shrug, frown?
I suspect he’d have been gently chagrined. King favored direct, personal engagement with people — boycotts for him were much less about trading against bus fare or hurting bigots in the pocketbook than about unifying a community that could resist anyone and everyone who persecuted Black and poor people. Less “buy this! whisper ‘I love you when you do it!” More “talk to a sanitation worker, ask how to make their day easier.”
Note that in MLK Jr’s book, “poor white” people and Black people were inherently linked together — not just by a rhetorical conceit of a “garment of mutuality” — but also by real world needs and the options to meet them. Both ride buses together. Efforts to splinter Black and White working class poor (in labor unions and other fields) hurt BOTH of them, though the hurts may be different.
If the Robinhood platform links small investors across racial lines to help coordinate direct action, King would probably have been fascinated and wanted to know more. But end of the day, his notions of ‘love’ focused upon laborers, and workers more than capital structures.
Curious if anybody using the Robinhood platform — or working for the company —would bother to consult the source material that created Robin Hood. Here’s one ballad — there’s many, many others available at Project Gutenberg.
Michael Akinwumi wants to focus on the Fair Housing Act, to “get busy using the principles of Dr. Martin Luther King (MLK 1) to develop a machine learning knowledge (MLK 2) base that continues the legacy of Dr. King and that delivers in full the benefits of the Fair Housing Act.” (See his post.)
Way I see it, “artificial intelligence” will drive many social changes, but unless we can incorporate ‘love’ into machine learning, the tools will be used however they’re designed on behalf of whoever has the most power (usually, people driven by profits). How the tools are used will depend immensely on who builds them and how.
Project Gutenberg hosts one of the earliest books on ‘artificial intelligence’ run amuck. Still, most people are unfamliar with the fact that “artificial persons” have been around much longer than Mary Shelley — every “corporation” is an “artificial person” with its own separate identity. One of them produced a children’s book of its own…
Curious to learn more about what Mr. Akinwumi is working on.
Kirk Baltimore believes “It’s disrespectful to honor someone as acclaimed, heroic, and progressive as MLK in the handpicked manners in which whitewashed America insists on doing so.”
Is it disrespectful? I wonder. Some people invoke a sanitized saintly MLK Jr, or distort a word here or there. Words like “color blind” are grafted onto MLK Jr to mean something distinct from what he intended — perhaps even the opposite of what he intended.
So it has always been. Jesus exhorted his followers to “turn the other cheek” when they are struck — yet how many of the folks carrying firearms reflect such a statement? Language and culture always incorporate odd transversions.
Leo Tolstoy is one of the many insightful critics of militant Christianity — a writer whom MLK Jr regularly turned to in his examinations into what it actually means to love in this world.
Maybe MLK was merely a kinder, gentler, ‘white friendly’ sort of heroic figure — one part Tolstoy, one part Thoreau, and some Jesus mixed in for good measure. More likely, each sought to grasp and articulate principles that remain challenging for all of us. A person who inadvertently ‘disrespects’ Dr. King or his legacy can learn not to — and someone who does so deliberately might change course.
Ryan Rucker’s “Five steps to talking with your kids about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr” is probably my favorite find on Medium today. Particularly this item from his four suggestions:
What are you reading? What are you watching? How inclusive is the story, and do they see anybody who looks different than them?
Might I suggest reading the works that would have inspired Dr. King? Here’s a handful of interesting books.
Nearly all of those books are available FREE on Project Gutenberg, as well as some not on any list, but which King would have grown up reading, like The Upward Path. My daughters are too young for me to read that to them. Your daughter probably isn’t.
I’d suggest reading through the stories first (some haven’t aged so well), and with an open mind. It’s easy to judge old stories through modern lenses — but back when it was published, I’d expect that the primary concern was creating a primer to teach young Black children to read.
It’ll be a few years before Dr. King’s own words enter the Project Gutenberg library. When that happens, my hope is that the words will be read closely.
Christian Pierce’s poem 70 mm made me smile. And frown, since I really cannot think of an appropriate free ebook to direct him toward.
“Without a true thought you’re just a culture reflector.” Is that what I’m doing by looking at what people have written, and trying to link them to writings they may not have read? I’d struggle to reflect our culture as best I can, knowing that these shared legacies sit out there ‘in the cloud’ — ready for us all, and yet, so seldom consulted and digested.
What’s wrong with being a ‘culture reflector’?
Hate to be a bully, but I’m no genuflecter
WTF are “true thoughts” asks this pedantic objector?
Words are gifts, grifts, glyphs, even bad ones from hecklers
But your rhythmic rhymes groove with time —
so here’s some respect, sir!
