Hannah Richey
Opinion Editor
[email protected]
The image of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. has been sanitized over the decades since his death, in part due to the miseducation about his legacy people receive as early as kindergarten.
King was assassinated 52 years ago today and we continue to remember his commitment to nonviolence but ignore his other teachings.
This miseducation is a wrongdoing. It’s integral to the history of Black Americans as well as the poor and working class.
King is used as “one of the good ones” in the civil rights movement. Teachers often use his messages to demonize the image of the Black Panthers and Malcolm X.
Not only do they teach a villainized image of the Black Panthers, but they ignore the respectful working relationship King and X had.
King fighting for the rights of Black Americans, but he was also an anti-war activist. He organized protests against the Vietnam War and spoke out against U.S. imperialism.
The protests against the war may be taught but King’s anti-imperialist politics are not.
King also spoke often about support for democratic socialism and the fragility of capitalism, even supporting what he called a guaranteed basic income.
This criticism of capitalism should be no surprise since America was built on chattel slavery of Africans, and then legally paying Black Americans lower wages.
However, this conclusion would be difficult to draw in a standard classroom in the U.S. because this point is not emphasized enough. There’s no way to teach King’s criticism of capitalism without explaining its history in the U.S., and that doesn’t go deep enough in a normal classroom.
King even explored the idea of a working-class coalition of all races in his book Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?
The ability to vote was only the first phase of King’s plan for the civil rights movement. After that there had to be fundamental changes in what’s guaranteed to all Americans.
King supported health care for all and called the disparities in health for Black Americans, “the most shocking and inhuman.”
Things haven’t changed since then, with Black women having a higher maternal mortality rate than white mothers.
The sanitization of King’s message to make it friendly to capitalism is not only factually wrong, it’s a wrong act towards those in the classroom.
Taking from King’s advocacy for the right to education, children also have a right to a factually correct education. Children should have the information they need to think critically.
Many of the reasons we teach about King in this way is due to McCarthy-era politics that painted him as a Soviet allied communist, and many educators are products of that era.It’s up to teachers to re-educate themselves about King’s legacy and teach students the factual history of King and his politics.
