Now that he is safely dead, let us build monuments......

Now that he is safely dead, let us build monuments to his greatness.

Tomorrow, we have been told, is the day that we celebrate the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his life, contributions, and dream. We reflect upon the dream itself, it’s progress, and hopefully, its fulfillment. We are to try out hardest to make sure that Dr. King did not die in vain. We are to try our hardest to make sure that his dream stays alive.

While all of this is all well and good, perhaps we should more closely examine who Dr. King truly was and how we can best honor him. Let me clarify. Dr. King was a man of greatness. He was kind, courageous, just and determined. He continually put his own life at risk for the sake of causes he believed in with all of his might. He wrote great books, gave great lectures, and delivered great speeches. He was, in my opinion, the epitome of manhood. He was able to stand up when other sat down. Able to motivate millions of people when he was in need of encouragement. Able to be himself without justification, pause, or apologies. He was a man of righteous indignation and justified anger. However, it has only been of late that I met this Dr. King that I speak of.

Growing up, Dr. King was the man with the "dream,” who was shot and killed because he wanted Black folks to be able to sit at counters with white folks and eat burgers together. He was the man who wanted little white kids and Black kids (always the white kids first) to be able to join hands and sing Negro spirituals. He was the man that all my white teachers suggested I study when I wanted to study Josephine Baker (whom, they informed me, was a whore). He was the man who McDonalds aired commercials about on that day that we got off from school. He was a handsome, brown, cuddly man who always wore a smile and a dapper suit and hat. He was the man whom everyone loved.

It wasn’t until later that I found out that everyone loved him because he was dead. All of those people who had hated during his lifetime because he called for equality of all kinds like him now because he can't speak up any longer. I know that, in a country, so obsessed with trying to portray equality out of inequality, those words can be hard to stomach. King is probably the safest of all American heroes, but he wasn't always that way.

Now that King was safely buried in the ground, those who sought to destroy him while he walked on this earth could begin to drill one speech into our brains with the intensity of a child coloring with a dried up marker. They could press and press and press this one color, this one speech, into our collective memories and act as if this one speech represented all that King was, all that King wanted us to be, and all that we should be.

The march at which Dr. King delivered the speech was called the “March on Washington For Jobs and Freedom.” It was not called the "March For Blacks and Whites To Go To School With Each Other," or the "March For Pictures of A Black Hand Shaking A White Hand To Be Put Up On School Websites." It was not a march of facades and feel-good pictures. It was a march about goals of economic and racial equality. It was a march that shocked our then president, John F. Kennedy, because he had no idea that the Negroe citizens of his country were so unhappy. It was a march about the radicalism of everyone being able to have equal access to what this country has. It was a march about eradicating poverty, treating humans like humans, and not just acting as if things were changing, but actually changing things. But even with all of that, it was just one march. It was one day out of millions of days. It was one event out of thousands of events. It was one speech out of hundreds of speeches. It was not the beginning and it wasn’t the end.

Dr. King gave other speeches. Speeches about how evil war was. Speeches about evil poverty was. Speeches about how ridiculous the lack of good healthcare was. He said, “the world is all messed up. The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land. Confusion all around.” But yet, all we’re bombarded with is, “I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word." But what about, “there is nothing more dangerous than to build a society, with a large segment of people in that society, who feel that they have no stake in it; who feel that they have nothing to lose. People who have a stake in their society, protect that society, but when they don't have it, they unconsciously want to destroy it?”

Why is it that I hear more about Dr. King wanting Blacks and whites to like each other than I hear about statements such as, “we must never be ashamed of our heritage…or the color of our skin. Black is as beautiful as any color….I am black and beautiful.” Why is it that we hear more about Dr. King wanting unity amongst Blacks and whites than we do about Dr. King wanting us to treat those who do not reside in America with the same dignity? What about when Dr. King said, “God didn’t call America to do what she’s doing in the world now….God didn’t call America to engage in a senseless, unjust war…and we are criminals in that war. We have committed more war crimes almost than any nation in the world and I’m going to continue to say it. And we won’t stop it because of our pride, and our arrogance as a nation.”

Why haven’t we talked more about Dr. King; the realist? Why are we so stuck on Martin; the Dreamer? What good is a dream without actions? What good are quotable quotes without a complete picture?

I’ll tell you what good they are. They’re good for those who hated Dr. King when he was alive and now build monuments to him in his death because they know he's not alive to protect his own legacy and too many people are dense enough to let them create one for him. They’re good because they safely put blinders on our eyes. They raise up a man that we love and mutilate him into a man that they can love. They tell us just enough about him so that we can walk hand in hand one Monday out of the year. They tell us just enough so that we can keep on hanging onto that one “dream” that has long since turned into a nightmare of gargantuan proportions (especially for African-Americans).

Dr. King wasn’t a harmless caricature of a man who thought the solution to all injustice was integration. No, that's what they would have you to believe. Dr. King wasn’t like the Jesus in the pictures who went around carrying lambs. Dr. King was more like the Jesus who went into the temple and overturned tables. He was a man who said things like, “But God has a way of putting nations in their place……He has a way of saying ‘if you don’t stop your reckless course, I’ll rise up and break the backbone of your power.’ And that can happen to America.”

And yet, a man who lost his life while fighting for the rights of sanitation workers is now celebrated by Fortune 500 companies and we sit idly by as if that makes an ounce of sense. We sit around and listen to people twist his words for their own twisted gain while they support a war that Dr. King would’ve been just as sickened by as he was by the Vietnam War.

What we need to do is stop dreaming and WAKE UP and smell the coffee. We better take back Martin. We better let him have his own dream and think of some ways to get ourselves out of this terrible situation. We better remember who he was. We better be willing to give our lives just like he gave his.