Ponderings

“And any religion that professes to be concerned about the souls of men and is not concerned about the slums that cripple the souls—the economic conditions that stagnate the soul and the city governments that may damn the soul—is a dry, dead, do-nothing religion in need of new blood…”
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Chicago, Illinois on 27 August, 1967

My grandmother didn’t care for Martin Luther King, Jr and was deeply resentful of the pressure to set aside a day to honor him.

In the last years of her life, she lived in Arizona where an MLK Day was late on the scene. We spent many hours talking about King, about justice, and about race in America. Her experience of King was in southern Michigan, her home for the first 70 of her 87 years. She remembered MLK coming to Michigan, crowds gathering, and disenfranchised people demanding change. While she had no tolerance for the Jim Crow segregation of the south, she pointed out that King’s speeches in Michigan weren’t limited to the (more obvious) issues of segregation. To be sure, my grandmother had ideas that would today be labeled racist, but she was remarkably open-minded for her time and harbored no malice.

She remembered that King’s speeches were delivered in churches and, cloaked with God talk, his sermons demanded a level of change that was frightening and that his visits were often followed by unrest and even violence. I can only assume that with her experience she expected that an MLK Day would be an uncomfortable day for those of us who have and do profit from the racist underpinnings of our society. In the least, she expected an MLK Day be a call to repentance and an invitation to consider the immense work still undone. She needn’t have worried.

Since my grandmother’s death, the MLK Holiday has become institutionalized. “A day on, not a day off” is the slogan and all but the crassest of racists at least acknowledges the day. Even in our little community, where the swimming pool and lunch counters closed rather than integrate, several of the local churches organize a march with dinner and a program to celebrate MLK. The picture used in publicity is the young King; the quotes are from his early “dream” days. Long gone are the biting words King used for the institutionalized racism inherent in our economy. Forgotten is his challenge to our war making. And our community march, held conveniently at the end of the workday, includes no mention of the ways in which our community pool is still closed to the poorer neighborhoods of our school district.

Instead, our MLK Day celebrations read more like one of Henry Ford’s “melting pot” celebrations than the defiant strength of bus boycott. We congratulate ourselves on our ability to celebrate King and have so domesticated the prophet that we have emasculated the message. I can’t help but think that if my grandmother had lived longer she too might have become accustomed to the tamed version of King that will be heralded in the coming days.

Although I miss my grandmother deeply, her undomesticated memory continues to shape my discomfort with this holiday. More importantly, her angst invites me to annually reach beyond the headlines and tap into the challenge anew. I am grateful for my grandmother’s memory of undomesticated Martin Luther King, Jr. We need him now more than ever.