Honoring Martin Luther King Jr’s Legacy

Every year in January, like most schools across the country, we have an assembly to honor Martin Luther King Jr. 

Students file into the gym and proceed to play with their phones while teachers try, in vain, to give them the “this is important” look. 

Then, February passes with hallway acknowledgements of Black History Month, but come March, posters of Black civil rights leaders and activists are replaced by shamrocks and rainbows. 

Of course, things look more than a little different this year. We are remote teaching, so there won’t be an assembly. The halls are unchanged, still frozen in time from last spring (there is at least one corkboard leprechaun, wrinkled but persistent). 

Though circumstances have forced us to alter these traditions, I also believe that we should rethink how we recognize Martin Luther King Jr. in 2021. The fact that this MLK Day of Service follows a summer of protests for racial justice across our country should not be ignored. 

Revolutionary and Radical

I was a part of the leadership team who created our homeroom lesson to honor MLK, and something about a simply historical remembrance felt hollow.

By high school, students have seen the MLK highlight reel. They know his most famous words, but not always the context behind them. Students know that he was a leader for non-violent protest, but don’t always understand that many of his demonstrations were met with violence, much like the protests of 2020. 

This summer, I read The Sword and The Shield: The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr by Peniel E. Joseph, which really opened my eyes to the often exaggerated contrasts between these two men who had much more in common than history textbooks or social media quotes might tell us. 

MLK is remembered for his dream of a truly equal and colorblind society. A vision that has become almost synonymous with “The American Dream” of equal opportunity, no matter race or demographic circumstances. By contrast, Malcolm X is broadly remembered as radical; the violent foil to MLK’s peaceful leadership. 

But, as Joseph explains in an interview about his book, “Malcolm X and MLK evolved over time and came to converge in surprising ways. Malcolm’s movement for radical black dignity became a global human rights touchstone in a manner that made King’s struggle for radical black citizenship both necessary and more expansive.”

What I took away from Joseph’s book, in a definite oversimplification (seriously, go read it!) is that MLK and Malcom X were both radical in their own way, and they were fighting for the same thing: Black liberation. 

2021, What Now? 

The 1960s, for those who didn’t live through them, are a sort of moral touch stone. What would I have done during the civil rights movement? How would I have structured my classroom around the complex history happening before us? 

Would I have made a sign and rallied as I did with Teachers for Black Lives in Tacoma this summer? What would I have taught my students Monday morning following Bloody Sunday on the Edmund Pettus Bridge? 

Events this summer, and even the January 6th insurrection of the US Capitol, have given me the opportunity to find out. 

During the nationwide protests for George Floyd and countless others, I heard from many students who were frightened, concerned, and deeply saddened. One Black student, in tears, asked me how to survive in a world where her life isn’t seen as sacred. 

After the coup attempt last week, I brought a news story into my English class and helped students dissect the events hour by hour, connecting to our unit’s essential question “How do choices have power?” 

Sometimes, teachers are hindered by the “political line” in the classroom, but, as Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” 

To truly honor MLK’s legacy, I believe we need to acknowledge the inequities that still exist. 

Helping students grapple with the world around them and develop empathy for experiences that might not mirror their own, is not political. Creating a safe space for them to ask questions and resist narratives that diminish their own power, does not have party lines. 

We can remember all Martin Luther King Jr. sacrificed for his dream of a just and equal America, and we can recognize that there’s still work to be done.