“Marching With King”.

Marching with King is more than just showing up that one time, and expecting a free pass. It’s a lifetime of labor, and it’s not easy.

I am writing this a few days away from the National Day of celebration for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. It is a day that will cause a lot of reflection, most of it rosy, almost all of it sunny, as people come to reckon with his legacy and what his legacy means. America is going to spend this three day weekend patting itself on the back and celebrating how we were able to produce someone like Dr. Martin Luther King in the first place. All of a sudden, the things he did, the life he risked…will belong to everyone.

Equally, you will find a strain of angrier writings that will muse that the legacy of Dr. King is mixed. From either the right, where he is seen as an agitator, a con-man, or a race-hustler (They want to use another word, but they won’t. Even they know better). Or the extreme left where he did not do enough. One will say that if Dr. King had been patient, we wouldn’t have had all these troubles. The other will say that he was a sellout and that too many Black People were left behind.

Needless to say, both thoughts are ridiculous.