Martin Luther King's Legacy and #MeToo

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I’m an MLK scholar – and I’ll never be able to view King in the same light

David Garrow, the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of Martin Luther King Jr., has unearthed information that may forever change King’s legacy.

In an 8,000-word article published in the British periodical Standpoint Magazine on May 30, Garrow details the contents of FBI memos he discovered after spending weeks sifting through more than 54,000 documents located on the National Archive’s website. Initially sealed by court order until 2027, the documents ended up being made available in recent months through the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992.

The most damaging memos describe King witnessing a rape in a hotel room. Instead of stopping it, handwritten notes in the file say he encouraged the attacker to continue.

King was once thought of as a saint beyond reproach. After his death, it eventually emerged that he was a womanizer.

If these FBI memos are accurate – and I have good reason to believe they are – we now have to ask the unthinkable: Was King an abuser? And what might this mean for his legacy?

https://theconversation.com/im-an-mlk-s ... ght-118015

And here are the author's final questions:

I’ve also started thinking about what happens next.

What will the next Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebrations look like? Will other details emerge? Will more women come forward? Will community centers, schools and streets need to be renamed? Will statues come down, or will they remain – and give fodder to those who justify keeping Confederate monuments?

People are complicated and historical figures weren't perfect. Trying to re-litigate all past individuals is a folly.

King's Legacy is primarily a message: "That people will be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.", and a method "Peaceful protest of injustices."

That message is still a good message, even if it was said by a man whose character may be suspect. Whether you believe in the method of peaceful protest or not, the validity of the method is independent of the man who popularized it.

Wow!

My first reaction is to not want to believe it. My second reaction is to want to see the evidence for myself, so I can draw my own conclusions.

He’s an American hero. I can understand why this would be kept from the public. This isn’t something that Americans would want to know about.

To remove another positive male icon/role model from the African American community would be tragic. Even though it doesn’t negate the powerful things that he accomplished, I’d have a lot of trouble viewing him with the same enthusiasm (or, perhaps, any enthusiasm) if these claims are substantiated.

This does NOT mean that King’s beliefs, or the belief in the ultimate equality of each human, are besmirched.

This does not undermine the quest for social justice.

All this does, if true, is undermine an individual man:

Dr. Martin Luther King.

It would mean that he actually didn’t fully buy into the words that he said. Encouraging a rapist would be equivalent to encouraging one of the worst forms of oppression to occur. It’s sickening.

If you can’t live by the morality you preach, it takes much of the wind out of your sails. Although his speech was amazing, much of what made it special was the source that it appeared to come from. When the source is tarnished, it doesn’t stand out anymore than words that have been written and voiced by any number of authors or public figures of the time period and the decades surrounding it.

That’s what I said. This would undermine the legacy of the MAN.....but not his IDEAS.

The IDEAS didn’t encourage rape. The MAN did.

Last edited by kraftiekortie on 01 Jun 2019, 2:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.

People need to learn to put stock in ideas not people, and to be able to disassociate the two. Almost no person actually stands up to a puritanical scrutiny.

I'm having a very hard time with this as well. Assuming what has recently been in the news about King, the man was a monster. No way could or should anyone rationalize being in the same room while someone is being RAPED, watching and laughing about it. That's a monster. There is no way I could celebrate a national holiday in the name of such a person. It's terrible.

I wouldn’t expect people to stand up to “puritanical scrutiny.” I would, however, expect them to stand up to a rapist.

His ideas were voiced before. As a medium, he (as a person) was a central part of the Civil Rights Movement.

A nice, moral man might preach in support of racist ideas.

It does not make racist IDEAS nice and moral. Those IDEAS are still rotten to the core.

The holiday should be changed to Civil Rights Day.

Last edited by TwilightPrincess on 01 Jun 2019, 2:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Right. But King’s ideas weren’t that original. They have been voiced before. Who he appeared to be as a person and his charisma gave him popularity that others, who came before him, were unable to attain. If he had delivered his speech in a monotone voice, we wouldn’t still be talking about it.

In this particular instance, the medium mattered because he wasn’t spouting his own ideas that had never been heard before.

Whew! This is complex to explain!

Last edited by TwilightPrincess on 01 Jun 2019, 2:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.

If this actually happened.....

It doesn’t stain the idea. It stains the man.

It’s not the idea’s fault that the man failed to live up to them.

What am I saying that’s wrong?

Yes. Civil Rights Day, rather than the King holiday if he did this.

Last edited by kraftiekortie on 01 Jun 2019, 2:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Uh. Can we see the evidence for this please before the hysteria?

Yep....there has to be a dialogue about this.

We can’t hang a person without evidence.

Last edited by kraftiekortie on 01 Jun 2019, 2:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.