In an internet article today, a history professor, Glenn McNair said that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. has "slipped into the realm of symbol that people use and manipulate for their own purposes." My reaction to that is, "of course he has." There is a tendency with any iconic figure to simplify and in, in some sense, to deify. America has also done that with George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and other popular historical figures.
Heroes are part of any unifying national mythology. They allow us to humanize transcendent principles. We associate Jefferson with the soul-stirring aspirations of the Declaration of Independence--and we forgive him for not quite living up to those aspirations in his own life.
For those who admire Dr. King (I admire him very much), I don't see how we can resist having him become a transcendent cultural icon--even if it means forgiving him for sometimes promoting socialistic solutions to the legitimate problems that he confronted and believing that a pacifist approach was the solution to the Cold War. I admire him in spite of my disagreement with him on those issues because he had the ability to call people to their better natures--to inspire them with a "dream" that was more aspirational than real-world. (I also think that his nuts and bolts organization of a movement based on aggregating the market power of black Americans to punish injustice was good old fashioned free-market capitalism and democratic free speech in the best sense.)
Dr. King, himself, was highly skilled at manipulating the symbology of the American experience in service of his own cause. Remember the "somewhere I read . . . " references in his "I Have Been to the Mountaintop" speech? Remember all of those references to the Exodus as a metaphor for journey from bondage into freedom? He applied the symbolism of those stories and documents to make his own struggle more resonant. Dr. King might find it a compelling irony that he, himself, became an enduring cultural symbol--I think that he might take some delight in it.
Dr. King’s status as a prophet to black America--crying out against racial injustice--is only enhanced by some mystical coincidences. The most notable of these was the fact that he gave his famous "I have been to the Mountain Top" speech with all kinds of references to the possibility of his untimely death the night before his assassination. People understand that as more than coincidental. Perhaps the right word is “providential”. They see Dr. King as a messiah figure who had been given enough of a premonition of his own death to comfort his disciples in the hours before, reassuring them that he had "seen the promised land" and although he might not "get there with [them]”, as a people they would "get there". He was encouraging them to keep the faith and believe that they would "overcome" regardless of what happened to him personally. I think that his becoming a cultural symbol is what ensures that his legacy will endure. Different people will understand his career in different ways because he has, in a larger sense, transcended his political ideology and speaks to the universal hopes and aspirations of our better nature.
Because Dr. King was one of the greatest manipulators of cultural symbols himself (and I mean this in a positive way), I suspect that he would find it an irresistible irony that he became one himself. His success in connecting the mundane (a bus boycott or sanitation workers strike) to principles of a more transcendent nature (that all of god's children are created free and equal) was not unlike Jefferson's ability to translate a dispute over tariffs on tea to the same transcendent ideas. It is what ensures that both of them will endure as primary figures in the pantheon of American heroes. The fact that a closer examination of either man yields some disappointing information only suggests that the epic quality of a prophet-hero is not in his perfection but in his ability to understand the trivial within the context of the universal.
I think that it is a legitimate point to suggest that Dr. King's career was more complex than one inspiring speech on the Capitol Mall, and then go about discussing that. In fact, I think that some of the hyper-sensitivity to any mention of Dr. King’s name in the current presidential campaign (meaning Hillary Clinton’s statement that, in addition to Dr. King’s efforts, “it took a President” to pass the Civil Rights Act) is disappointing. That kind of political correctness does not foster the robust exchange of ideas that our democracy needs and that Dr. King’s career encouraged. But, having said that, I think it’s kind of odd to complain that a man who became famous because he was the unifying symbol of a movement, has now entered the realm of symbology.
Let me suggest that all political leaders, candidates, etc., can learn from Dr. King’s style as well as his substance (both of which I admire). As I said, Dr. King was skillful at connecting the mundane with the transcendent and universal. He didn’t just make and defend policy proposals. He lifted and inspired the soul. He had a “dream” that included a nation where his children would be judged “not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” He talked about a “promised land” where little black boys and girls could join hands with little white boys and girls. Similarly, President Reagan wasn’t just cutting taxes, increasing defense spending and trying to cut back an overweening federal bureaucracy. He was building a “shining city on a hill.” And it wasn’t just an empty metaphor. It was a metaphor that stood for a philosophy and yet transcended it. It was something that people of all political stripes could understand and relate to—and he was reelected in 1984 with a 49 state majority.
Even with great vision, the nuts and bolts of organizing a movement remain important, including getting people enlisted to help, raising money, reaching out to interest groups, etc. But I think that the quality that makes people “believe” enough to take action is the ability to "transcend" all of that-- and make it about things that are more universal. Then your campaign becomes more than a laundry list of policy objectives. It is a sort of all-encompassing vision. It links the mundane to the sublime in a way that is coherent and has integrity. Dr. King's ability to do that is what made him such a singular figure in our history--and why his popularity endures across political lines. Conservatives can learn from his career as well as liberals. We continue to lose elections in Washington because we aren’t able to speak to the highest hopes and aspirations of people beyond our political base. As Calvin Coolidge said:
"We can not continue these brilliant successes in the future, unless we continue to learn from the past. It is necessary to keep the former experiences of our country both at home and abroad continually before us, if we are to have any science of government. If we wish to erect new structures, we must have a definite knowledge of the old foundations. We must realize that human nature is about the most constant thing in the universe and that the essentials of human relationship do not change. We must frequently take our bearings from these fixed stars of our political firmament if we expect to hold a true course. If we examine carefully what we have done, we can determine the more accurately what we can do."
We must not simply propose policies. We need to explain them with reference to the universal and unalienable. Our failure to do this is one important reason why we fail to connect with the voters of this state and, as a result, we continue to lose elections.
