Most Americans don’t know the real Martin Luther King Jr.

Every nation needs its heroes. Heroes give people a shared set of values that helped explain history, nature, and shared identities. In America’s case, the youth of our country means we have an even stronger appetite for grand narratives that cement our sense of nationhood. The story of the Founding Fathers—told and retold in many different ways—is probably the best example of national myth-making at work. It was only in the 20th century that a majority of Americans began to critique this tale of triumphant liberal democracy by questioning the motives and practices of its protagonists.

When I sat down this week to write about Martin Luther King Jr., and the day that honors his vision and life’s work, I realized we’ve done much the same thing to his legacy.

MLK as a divisive figure

Dr. King was, in his own time, a highly contentious figure whose accomplishments by no means guaranteed him a spot in the national pantheon. Most of the country (nearly 75%) disapproved of him at the time of his assassination. And it was only after nearly 20 years of campaigning that President Reagan reluctantly signed the bill that gave us Martin Luther King Jr. Day into law.

By contrast, the King I grew up with was a figure of legend, in some ways reduced to a caricature of the complex, radical activist he actually was.

We all remember our civil rights units in social studies class, tracing King’s involvement and eventual leadership of the movement that delivered equality under the law to all people, regardless of “race, color, creed, or national origin.” Many of us will have watched documentaries or recordings featuring the “I Have a Dream” speech. And few can suppress the stirrings of historical nostalgia and national pride when we do.

Because Dr. King was an American hero—one of our own—whose commitment to nonviolence redeemed us, saved us from the darkest corners of our nation’s soul.

Or at least that’s what we’re expected to feel. Even though Dr. King was much more deeply involved in politics, social justice, and radical economic philosophy than his posthumous characterization as America’s Gandhi would suggest.

Claiming King as a martyr and myth

History is written by the victors, and in the post-civil rights era, white progressives claimed King as a martyr to their battle for civil rights. He became a hero whose sacrifices proved the righteousness and necessity of the cause which, following his death, had to many liberal minds reached its natural end. Of course, we can confidently say in 2023 that equality under the law is by no means a guarantee of racial equity in practice.

The 1968 Civil Rights Act was the last major piece of legislation guaranteeing equal protection to all. King’s assassination that year prompted widespread riots that pressured the government to sign the bill into law to quell unrest. For the white progressive politicians like President Lyndon B. Johnson who had sponsored the bill, King’s murder was a politically expedient event.

And with his death, the process of mythologizing King’s legacy began. The assassination sealed the triumph of the Democratic Party’s racial justice agenda. From then on, the radical Martin Luther King Jr. would become increasingly diluted over the years, transformed and condensed into a gentle paragon of palatable civil disobedience and nonviolent protest.

Nonviolence was a necessary pillar of King’s heroization even though he was by no means the originator or sole proponent of the ideology. In an era of frequent public unrest, violent riots, and lethal racial violence against Black communities, King’s unfaltering lack of aggression made him a de facto hero by way of the moral upper hand. After his death, it allowed many in the nation to sidestep the issue of racial violence and focus instead on our achievement as a nation of equal treatment and opportunity, a true democracy where progress was achieved through rational, liberal values. Nevermind the numerous grisly details to the contrary.

Unlike Malcolm X or the Black Panthers, who defended violence as a natural and even necessary tool in the fight for racial justice, Dr. King was more palatable to a white America congratulating itself in the wake of 1968. Violence in the name of racial justice—from slave rebellions to the Civil War—had always been constructed in America as a source of destabilization, a threat to national security and the status quo. The same thinking was still at work in the protests that followed George Floyd’s murder in June 2020, when police brutality was reported as peacekeeping and constitutionally protected protests as lawless hooliganism.

Because of his association with nonviolence—which was itself a radical idea in Western social politics—King was eventually diminished to a “shorthand for racial fairness,” as one contemporary commentator puts it. Anyone, from Donald Trump to corporate brands, can lay claim to his cultural and moral capital by quoting his speeches or citing his name. This consumable, mass-market version of King has replaced the image of a radical thinker whose vision of economic and racial equity became too disruptive to the nation’s status quo.

The real, radical Dr. King

So, who was the real Martin Luther King Jr.? What was his reputation when he was alive, and how was his legacy transformed after his death?

To put it succinctly: The real Dr. King was a complex, flawed, and radical activist for racial and economic justice.

He first rose to prominence as a civil rights leader following Rosa Parks’s nonviolent protest in 1955 on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. After Parks was arrested, activists formed the Montgomery Improvement Association to boycott the transit system, electing King as their leader.

At that point, King had been serving as a preacher in a Baptist church in Alabama. He had received his bachelor’s degree at 19, followed by his Bachelor’s of Divinity and a doctorate. A skilled orator from a solid middle class family, King quickly established himself as a fresh voice in the civil rights movement. He led the boycott in Montgomery until the buses were eventually desegregated in 1956.

King went on to organize the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), which helped him operationalize his activism across a broad swathe of Southern states and launch a national platform. Over the next several years, he lectured all over the country and met with leaders at home and abroad to discuss race relations, nonviolence, and liberation struggles around the world.

At the same time, he was routinely arrested during boycotts and actions, while his homes and family were threatened. His house in Montgomery had been bombed with dynamite in the early days. King was viewed by the American South as an extremely dangerous political figure.

In the early 60s, King continued to have enormous influence with African-Americans, liberal whites, and key politicians in the Democratic Party, including Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. Along with a growing team of advisors, he deftly navigated the communications challenge of national and local desegregation campaigns. Direct, nonviolent actions were increasingly televised and broadcast across the nation, during which police violence and activist incarcerations helped cement public opinion in favor of the movement. Although it is by no means true that all African-Americans or white liberals supported King at the time; he faced constant criticism within his own movement and communities.

In 1963, he helped organize the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, a highly televised event that gave King the perfect platform for his now notorious “I Have a Dream” speech. In 1964, public opinion had changed so much that the federal government passed the Civil Rights Act, extending protection and non-discrimination to all in employment and publicly owned facilities. King also accepted the Nobel Peace Prize that year.

In the years that followed, however, the movement evolved along with King’s place in it. Many were frustrated by the lack of tangible progress and King’s perceived cautiousness. The confrontational, anti-establishment trend of 1960s American youth culture clashed with King’s image of middle-class respectability and slow-but-steady social change.

In the years preceding his death, King continued to organize, lead, and support marches and direct actions in service of critical civil rights issues. The Voting Rights Act, which (theoretically) protected all Americans from disenfranchisement or voter discrimination, was signed into law in 1965. King had led the march in Selma, Alabama that year to campaign for it.

After that, he turned his attention to discrimination in housing, leading campaigns in Chicago urban areas. He was less successful here on a local level for a number of reasons, but his work inevitably contributed to the success of the 1968 Civil Rights Act, which protected Americans from discrimination in housing on the basis of race.

At the same time, King expanded his platform and his message to include campaigns for economic, not just racial, justice. As he succinctly put it in 1967: “We aren’t merely struggling to integrate a lunch counter now. We’re struggling to get some money to be able to buy a hamburger or a steak when we get to the counter.”

He created the Poor People’s Campaign to widen his base and rally support across political, state, and race lines. This was partly a response to criticism that decried nonviolence as an impractical and even nonsensical response to constant racial violence. Figures like Malcolm X branded King as politically and culturally inert, despite the massive strides the movement had made in the past decade, largely under his stewardship. Many in the Black community agreed at the time that while King had had his moment, federal protections were nowhere near enough.

King also alienated many of his allies by publicly voicing his opposition to the Vietnam War, which for the Democratic Party in power at the time was political suicide. His championing of working class people and liberation struggles internationally earned him an uneasy and equally dangerous association with Marxism and the Communist Party. King was followed closely by the FBI and many of his political allies found it advantageous to drop ties with him. He was associated with prominent Black socialists like Bayard Rustin, an openly gay civil rights organizer who had helped King along his rise to power in the 1950s.

By the time of his assassination in 1968, King had disapproval ratings between 65 and 75% in American polls. His murder is widely considered to be the result of a political conspiracy. And his work as a radical defender of poor and working class people’s enfranchisement and protection made him politically anathema to the future Nixon and Reagan presidencies.

Attacked on all sides, and steadfast in his commitment to peaceful protest and the intersectionality of racial and economic justice, King was by no means a shoo-in for national commemoration after his death.

The long, slow march to MLK Day— and how we can celebrate

So, how did we come to honor this contentious, brilliant man with a federal holiday? To put it briefly: with great difficulty.

The campaign began four days after King’s death. Representative John Conyers (D-Mich) introduced a bill that would usher in a holiday in honor of King. It was initially rejected in the House, but over time, public support grew.

Coretta Scott King, Dr. King’s wife, was instrumental in the campaign, working with politicians, the Congressional Black Caucus, and prominent Black celebrities to increase support for the holiday. Stevie Wonder wrote his famous track, “Happy Birthday,” in honor of King and the campaign.

By the 1980s, Reagan was president and the bill once again appeared before the House and Senate, this time sponsored by Senator Ted Kennedy. Despite a 16-day filibuster, led by North Carolina senator Jesse Helms, who claimed that King had maintained dangerous ties to the Communist Party, the bill passed. President Reagan signed it into law, while noting that he remained uncomfortable with instituting a federal holiday for King.

Indeed the holiday is exceptional: American political tradition has typically excluded private citizens from being honored with federal holidays. Other politicians at the time complained that a federal holiday would create unnecessary costs to the government and business.

Even after the bill passed, many states refused to recognize it. (States are not legally required to recognize federal holidays.) Some even found roundabout ways of mitigating the symbolic value of its celebration: Alabama and Mississippi still celebrate King-Lee day, which combines Martin Luther King’s commemoration with the birthday of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. Other states have transformed it from “MLK” Day to “Human Rights” Day, obscuring the day’s link to racial justice, desegregation, and King’s life achievement. Where I grew up in Basking Ridge, New Jersey, the town had class on MLK day and all the Black families (all 5 of us) refused to go to school in protest. (Thank you Mom and Dad!)

For many states, King still represents a challenging cocktail of civil rights, wealth redistribution, and personal foibles, such as marital infidelity and Communist sympathies. He is often not even considered the gentle paragon of nonviolence mentioned above.

And in many other states that do celebrate King, I think the day has dwindled into just another excuse for a day off. But in 2023, we can’t afford to forget King’s true legacy.

First and foremost, he was a radical thinker for his time. Brilliant, compelling, and passionate, he brought an incredible dynamism to the civil rights movement that changed the tenor of American activism forever. His commitment to nonviolence remains not only admirable, but a provocative take on activist communications and public relations.

King’s commitment to the power of words, dialogue, and in-person, direct actions were equally transformative for how regular citizens influence politics. For those of us in this country still personally dedicated to the principles of social democracy and civic engagement, we have to recognize we wouldn’t be where we are without Dr. King.

For me personally, King is also a reminder that patience, kindness, and persuasion are the most important weapons in my arsenal—as a citizen, as a human being, and even as an entrepreneur.

MLK Day is an opportunity not only to honor the legacy of a man who changed America forever, but to reflect on what we can all learn from King personally. Let’s do that with the real King in mind: a radical, a visionary, and an incredibly brilliant activist for social justice.