The Wild Reed: Jonathan Eig on MLK: “We Need to Remember the Radical Words He Spoke, Not Just the Safe Ones”

Monday, January 15, 2024

Jonathan Eig on MLK: “We Need to Remember the Radical Words He Spoke, Not Just the Safe Ones”

It’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day here in the United States, and to mark the occasion I share this evening an excerpt from an interview with Jonathan Eig, author of the 2023 biography, King: A Life.

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Harry Belafonte said to me many times that, “We don’t like radicals in America. . . . Even though this was a country born of radicalism, born of revolution, we, as a government, at least, are dedicated toward preserving the status quo.”

And when King was assassinated, I think it was James Farmer who said, “This is what America does to its conscience.” This is what we do when somebody speaks truth to power: We snuff it out.

And that’s one of the great tragedies. King became deeply unpopular in the last years of his life. We celebrate him now. We’ve turned him into a national holiday and a monument. But we forget that he was beleaguered, that he was depressed, that he suffered anxiety, that he felt like the country had turned on him, that [people] didn’t want to hear his voice anymore. He died feeling like he had been neglected and that the country had turned its back on him. And in large part, that’s because active efforts were made by government officials to try to undermine his work.

But it’s really important that we remember that King was not always this sainted figure that we make him out to be, and we need to remember the radical voices [like King’s]. We need to remember the radical words that he spoke, and not just the safe ones.

. . . [I]t’s a sad thing to think about, but King went to his grave believing that the country was as racist as ever, that his work had not had the impact that he had hoped for. And we see we are still living with many of the issues that he raised. We’re still living with police brutality. We’re still living with skewed incarceration rates and segregated schools and segregated housing. So, it’s painful to think about it, but . . . racism still kills.