The History of Martin Luther King Jr. Day: An Excerpt from “Living the Dream”
Today, in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, we’re featuring an excerpt from the introduction of Living The Dream: The Contested History of Martin Luther King Jr. Day by Daniel T. Fleming. You can also check out this guest post from Daniel on the history of MLK Jr. Day.
On January 20, 1986, half a million people looked on as the inaugural Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade wended down Peachtree Street and turned into Auburn Avenue, in downtown Atlanta. Thousands marched, singing civil rights movement anthems, in a scene that reminded the New York Times of the 1950s and 1960s. On this day, however, police supported rather than menaced marchers. Coretta Scott King, widowed seventeen and a half years earlier, led bands, unionists, war veterans, 280 different groups, and some of the city’s homeless population through the city streets. Movement veteran and Atlanta mayor Andrew Young watched as crowds overflowed into the street and temporarily halted the procession, blurring the boundary between spectators and marchers. Begun in the early afternoon, after four hours the parade finished at King’s crypt on “Sweet Auburn,” as the avenue was affectionately known. The celebrations did not end there.
Promoted with the slogan “Living the Dream,” the holiday’s reach extended across the nation. That night, NBC televised a two-hour program of concert highlights from Atlanta, New York, and Washington, D.C. Musician Stevie Wonder organized the events and edited footage for the two-hour national television extravaganza. Before an audience of more than 4,000 at the Atlanta Civic Center, Patti LaBelle and Joan Baez, among others, sang Wonder’s “Happy Birthday,” the unofficial King holiday anthem. At Radio City Music Hall in New York, an audience of 6,000 heard Harry Belafonte sing “The Ballad of Martin Luther King,” and by evening’s end, the venue had been “transformed into a sea of green candlelike lightsticks, swaying bodies and outstretched hands,” according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Wonder personally oversaw the Washington, D.C., show, and producer Marty Pasetta explained that Wonder wanted “a happy finish to the holiday weekend.” Pasetta elaborated, “There’s no politics involved in the show. It is a birthday celebration.” These apolitical concerts were meant to uplift. Washington Post columnist Mary McGrory observed that Americans could not avoid hearing King’s “I Have a Dream” speech on television or radio. Eight thousand radio stations across the nation played excerpts of the speech at midday, and the New York Times reported that “church bells tolled, choirs sang and citizens paused” to reflect. Andrew Young aptly summarized the mood: “The leader may have departed . . . but the dream continues.”
Martin Luther King Jr.’s legatees were, however, divided. Coretta Scott King and Andrew Young hoped that the holiday would keep King’s dream alive, inspiring Americans to complete his unfinished work. Thus, they worked to foster a mood of celebration and avoided overt politicking. Others, however, voiced concern over the commemorations’ tone. Disturbed by the festive atmosphere, Jesse Jackson and Julian Bond reminded Americans of King’s radical civil disobedience. Wyatt T. Walker warned against being “oversentimental and romantic.” They were concerned that the celebrations smoothed over King’s legacy, making him palatable for a nation unwilling to comprehend his critique, a nation unwilling to adopt his entire agenda as its own.
The holiday both canonized and deradicalized King. Since 1986, those seeking political and social reform in the United States have used it to advance their cause, despite its original apolitical tone. Those who have wanted to maintain the status quo have used it to argue that King’s dream has been fulfilled. In the process, King’s words have often been distorted beyond meaning, his virtues exaggerated and his deficiencies weaponized. Today, every effort to memorialize him is fraught with contradiction: to remember King risks forgetting his radicalism.
Coretta Scott King stood at the crux of her late husband’s memorialization. Yet her example illustrates that the line between memorialization and activism is unclear. During the mid-to-late 1960s, while raising four children—Yolanda, Martin, Dexter, and Bernice—Coretta reemerged as an activist in her own right. She also became the prime guardian of her late husband’s legacy, particularly after initiating construction of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change. As Coretta commissioned monuments, she continued her activism, vigorously opposing apartheid in South Africa and lobbying for full employment, among many causes. After establishing and completing the King Center, Coretta lobbied Congress for the King holiday. She demonstrated that fighting for a memorial is a form of activism.
Today, every effort to memorialize him is fraught with contradiction: to remember King risks forgetting his radicalism.
The fight for the King holiday also constituted an act of resistance. Activists and politicians forged the holiday from a long history of Black resistance, married it to an American holiday tradition, and elevated an African American man to the previously segregated pantheon of American heroes. King is the only American citizen, Black or white, personally identified by name on the U.S. calendar. And despite its early apolitical tone, the holiday developed into a day on which activism could flourish. In King’s name, pro- testers have denounced events ranging from the 1991 Gulf War to incidents of police brutality. On King Day, movement veterans and their heirs in Black Lives Matter have taken to the streets, while conservatives sometimes receive cool or hostile receptions from Black church congregations. Though impossible for the eponymous holiday to be all its promoters hoped, the “national spotlight,” as David Chappell described it, shines on King’s message every January. The holiday affords an opportunity, albeit not always used, to further the cause of integration by forging a new relationship between Black and white Americans.
Daniel T. Fleming is lecturer at the University of New South Wales.