Dr. Joseph L. Jones

This Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday, we should all be doing some serious reflection upon the current time we live in. This decade is shaping up to be a serious battleground for ideas and vision for what America will ultimately become.

In the political world, we are seeing one of the most racist Republican primaries in recent history with every one of the current candidates having a problematic background concerning race (excluding Huntsman maybe, who dropped out of the race).

From a quality-of-life standpoint, we are witnessing an erosion of social mobility among many Americans, especially African Americans, coupled with high unemployment rates. Finally, our entire social system seems to be on the fringes with major problems in health, education and what we understand as community values.

Despite these obvious challenges, today, America will turn to its iconic dreamer for direction on where we should be striving for as a country from his classic 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech. Speeches will be made and interpretations will be offered on this speech from the most conservative to the most liberal of Americans on King’s dream for what American ought to be striving for. Beyond these litanies of reflections lies a dormant King that has yet to be discovered or seriously discussed in the mainstream discourse of the man.

This King is radically different from the one we celebrate and contradicts our very understanding of the man. He fundamentally rejects all forms of war and is very critical of military inventions of any kind by our country.

He is also a different kind of King that calls into question the morality of capitalism and argues for equity to eradicate poverty in the country. This “kingdom” he describes dismisses what we know understand and embrace as “American Exceptionalism” and calls for America to be equals with it global neighbors.

Every year, I patiently wait for this King to show up and his vision for his kingdom to be discussed and fought for so that we can truly honor the true King. However, every year there seems to be retreat from this King coupled with a miseducation of his core philosophy through the “I Have a Dream” speech he made in 1963.

Furthermore, he was assassinated five years later and had evolved his social and political thought about what his kingdom should look like in America, which is radically different from his dream. In fact, in a speech called “A Christmas Sermon on Peace” delivered in Atlanta in 1967, King talked about his dream becoming a nightmare explicitly:

“In 1963 … in Washington D.C., … I tried to talk to the nation about a dream that I had had, and I must confess … that not long after talking about that dream I started seeing it turn into a nightmare … just a few weeks after I had talked about. It was when four beautiful … Negro girls were murdered in a church in Birmingham, Alabama. I watched that dream turn into a nightmare as I moved through the ghettos of the nation and saw black brothers and sisters perishing on a lonely island of poverty in the mind of a vast ocean of material prosperity, and saw the nation doing nothing to grapple with the Negroes’ problem of poverty. I saw the dream turn into a nightmare as I watched my black brothers and sisters in the midst of anger and understandable outrage, in the midst of their hurt, in the midst of their disappointment, turn into misguided riots to try to solve that problem. I saw the dream turn into a nightmare as I watched the war in Vietnam escalating … Yes, I am personally the victim of deferred dreams, of blasted hopes.”

Perhaps we should start understanding King from another vantage point because admittedly he stopped believing his own dream only weeks after he spoke about it.

So, I challenge you with these questions on this King Holiday: Will you continue to allow Martin Luther King’s legacy to be misrepresented by only focusing on his “Dream” speech? Alternatively, are you willing to talk about the King’s vision for American and work towards building his kingdom for America in the coming years?

Joseph L. Jones is director of the Social Justice Initiative at Philander Smith College and can be reached at jjones@philander.edu.

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