It seems we’re observing this MLK Day in a time warp. Because America today looks so much like the Jim Crow America MLK spent his life fighting to change.
Observing MLK Day in Jim Crow 2.0 America
America is on a schizophrenic march towards the Promised Land of MLK’s famous dream.
On the one hand, America
- elected the first Black man as president in 2008,
- elected the first Black woman as vice president in 2020,
- elected the Black pastor from his old Ebenezer Baptist Church to the US Senate in 2020, and even
- erected a monument to MLK on the Mall in 2011.
But on the other hand, America is
- rolling back voting rights for Blacks,
- rolling back abortion rights for women,
- rolling back employment rights for workers, and
- rolling back immigration rights for migrants.
Of course, the struggle for voting rights defined MLK’s life.
Give us the ballot. … So long as I do not firmly and irrevocably possess the right to vote, I do not possess myself.
(MLK Speech May 1957)
Blacks have been struggling for the right to vote since the founding of America. The 15th Amendment was supposed to redress all ballot issues way back in 1870. But Jim Crow laws soon made it practically impossible for Blacks to vote.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was supposed to redress those voter suppression efforts. Indeed, that Act led inexorably to the election of Obama in 2008. But, for many Whites, his election portended the end of White supremacy. And they reacted the way Whites did after the passage of the 15th Amendment.
(White) Republicans began passing Jim Crow 2.0 laws across the country. It has been déjà vu all over again, hence the schizophrenic march.
Of course, Democrats have been trying to defend voting rights. They introduced the Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2021. But Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema joined Republicans in defeating it. They believe the right to filibuster is more important than the right to vote.
Only insidious racism explains that belief. Manchin and Sinema famously decry Democratic partisanship as a vice. They couldn’t care less that Democrats are protecting the voting rights of Black folks. But they famously accept Republican partisanship as a virtue. They blithely ignore that Republicans are suppressing the voting rights of Black folks.
And Still I Rise
Even so, MLK is the only private citizen (Black or White) to have a federal holiday declared in his honor. Notably, Washington and Lincoln have to share a holiday. That’s Presidents’ Day.
Moreover, MLK’s monument is now perched on the Mall alongside theirs in perpetuity.
Of course, this might explain why Washington’s monument is glaring down on MLK’s. Because the cone head on Washington’s looks eerily like a stonemason’s homage to the KKK.
Sometimes a sculpture is not just a sculpture
I don’t know what to make of the MLK sculpture they unveiled in Boston on Friday.
A new monument honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and his wife, Coretta Scott King, was unveiled in Boston Friday, ahead of Monday’s national holiday honoring the civil rights icon. The 22-foot tall sculpture, named ‘The Embrace,’ represents the hug between Dr. King and Coretta after he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.
The $10 million bronze statue, designed by Hank Willis Thomas and MASS Design Group, now stands in the Freedom Plaza of the Boston Common, America’s first public park.
(CBS News, January 13, 2023)
This sculpture is too abstract. Indeed, Thomas’s “The Embrace” looks too much like Rodin’s “The Kiss.”
It’s supposed to reflect the triumphant expression of love MLK and his wife shared. But that reflection is lost. And I’m being kind. Because pornographic references were the first things that came to mind when I saw it.
Whatever the case, this holiday is not just a testament to MLK’s greatness. It’s a symbolic down payment on the promissory note. As MLK famously said, that note represents unpaid debt. That is, the trillions America owes descendants of the Blacks it enslaved.
That said:
This is the day which the Lord has made; Let us rejoice and be glad in it.
* This commentary was originally published on Monday, January 16, 2023 at 6:37 AM