If you frequent Facebook, especially after any sort of demonstration against injustice of some sort, like Ferguson for example, you will see an uproar from your more conservative leaning friends. The privileged, white and middle-aged dad of your best friend may post something similar to this:

It is called “whitewashing“. When someone takes an event, such as the perceived non disruptive civil rights movement, and dilute the message and appeal it to the masses who, without background knowledge of the movement, believe it for its face value. This rampant misinformation is dangerous. It can lead to incredibly misunderstood conclusions regarding civil rights, regarding the strenuous efforts to gain a shred of human decency from a nation that seemed okay with the oppression of millions of black souls.

The fact is: Martin Luther King Jr. was a criminal. He was arrested more than 30 times from 1958 to 1967. The FBI spied on him, and used tactics to discredit him and the movement.

He was a disruptive civil rights leader who knew that direct action was necessary to alleviate the suffering of millions. He led marches, broke the law multiple times by marching, protesting, boycotting, and disrupting.

The meme above fails to understand the incredibly rebellious actions of MLK, which at the time many were illegal and considered to be breaking the norm. He was a renegade, and defied the faulty civil right denying rules laid in front of him. Any video you watch of a civil rights march was NOT a peaceful event. Dogs, police, water cannons, horseback officers clubbing without a concern, hundreds of men, women, and children brutally beaten and arrested. An endless bombing campaign and harassment from the KKK and other white nationalists threatened and disturbed the life of black communities.

I recall reading a rant about the Black Live Matters protesters who blockaded a bridge, not allowing cars to pass through. The person posting the rant was complaining that the people on the bridge did not follow the tenets of Dr. King. They didn’t care about the “…many people who need to go work that morning.” or the “…police officers that can be put somewhere else, helping people.” (or killing and racial profiling blacks, but okay). The one comment that drove me crazy was this: “Imagine how much money was wasted during this “protest”.”

What a strange time to be alive where money matters more than the death of dozens of young black men by the very people who swear to protect those very same men. What moral justification is there to put the however many dollars were “wasted” (and this socialist wants to remind you that profit = exploitation of workers) over actual human lives?

People in positions of privilege see disruptions as a bad thing. They idolize a form of protest where people stand in a row on a sidewalk, hold some signs, wave a little, and then go back to their homes, accomplishing next to nothing. They view the anger that comes out of being oppressed, of being treated like second class citizens, of years of systematic racism and inequality, as not a big deal, in fact, a crime. It shouldn’t happen they say, evoking the wise words of a man who say otherwise.

I found an artist series that truly shows the multitude of Dr. Kings tactics. I hope that these will provide some fodder in case you do stumble upon a meme like the one above or any variation of whitewashing. The history you are searching for is not in a book or a documentary. Nor any Wikipedia page. It came out of the mouth of the man himself. Thank you Dr. King for being a renegade.

Artwork is by Daniel Rarela. Please visit his Twitter here: https://twitter.com/DJRarela