A young person coming of age in the last few generations, particularly if she or he is black, may have seen more images of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. than anyone, even if we count depictions of Jesus Christ. They would have seen his image adorning cheaply framed portraits above a mantle or the old church calendars that hung in a grandmother’s kitchen, browning from age as they stayed affixed to the refrigerator long past December due to pride. (You see the same thing happening to a lot of Obama photos in black homes today.)

King’s soft, fleshy face, either painted with a celestial glow or photographed in black and white, was often depicted looking off into the distance as if in reflection or mourning. We’d see that face move in familiar footage that typically went into heavy rotation right around this time of year, especially with the inevitable broadcast of his 1963 speech at the March on Washington. We’d sit rapt, our voices exhausted by the singing of “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing” and “We Shall Overcome” at our church commemorations, and we’d listen. Hearing about his dream again would be as if we were taking up a New Year’s resolution anew every January to end racism. Once the commemoration of his birthday was first observed as a holiday, King not only became more image than man. He became ritualized.



The same as Jesus, King is often celebrated incompletely. Princeton professor Eddie Glaude, speaking Sunday at the WNYC MLK Day event at Harlem’s Apollo Theater, referred to those who might “empty his radical witness.” Even as contemporary historians and artists such as Michael Eric Dyson and Ava DuVernay have offered fuller pictures of King the human being in recent years, our nation’s Eurocentric historical narratives continue to do their work to a man who was, in his time, one of the foremost threats to structural racism and inequality. Our rituals, while comforting and inspiring, lulled the American public into a lionization of a complicated man whose advocacy for economic justice and labor—and against war—are not always part of the story. As long as King’s radicalism stays missing from our remembrances, it will be easier for people to lay claim to his story—even people who oppose everything King actually stood for.

One group of young leaders used this holiday weekend to adopt the King tradition in full. The Black Youth Project 100, a Chicago-based movement collective that trains and mobilizes activists between the ages of 18 and 35, staged #ReclaimMLK actions in several cities. The protests, per BYP100 digital strategist Fresco Steeze, aimed to “build a narrative that when we want to celebrate radical history, movement history, we don’t have to have this cookie-cutter narrative that America wants us to have for our black movement leaders. We can celebrate the fact that they fought.” The actions, Steeze said, were also in coordination with the forthcoming release of their new Agenda to Build Black Futures, an economic-justice document advocating for reparations, worker’s rights, divestment from policing and prisons, and workplace protections for women and trans employees.

This is right in line with King’s critiques of capitalism. I’d imagine that if we had the young King of the 1950s and 1960s in our midst today, he’d be in Flint, Michigan, shining light on the water contamination crisis in a poor, majority-black town, brought about by politicians prioritizing money over lives. Looking at what is happening there and in cities like Chicago, it is refreshing to see the magical unifier version of King sidelined and receive a reminder of the radical.