The state of Florida granted UF students and staff a day off from work and classes to honor the memory of Martin Luther King Jr., a pioneer of civil rights for black Americans. You already know this, of course. Every elementary-school curriculum includes the study of King and his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.
However, we tend to look back upon King’s legacy with a soft filter, remembering only King’s beautiful speeches about brotherhood. Nearly half a century has passed since King’s assassination. It’s easy for white Americans to forget that King was a highly controversial figure, and his assassination in Memphis in 1968 was not a random incident. In 1999, according to The New York Times, a Memphis jury decided that a retired Memphis cafe owner was part of a conspiracy in King’s murder after King’s family brought forth a civil suit.
According to the Times, “After four weeks of testimony and one hour of deliberation, the jury in the wrongful-death case found that Loyd Jowers as well as ‘others, including governmental agencies’ had been part of a conspiracy.”
King’s killing was, as former U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson said, no act of “blind violence.” Other agencies were complicit in the wrongful death of an outspoken activist who condemned not only the way black people were treated in America, but also the Vietnam War and the way poverty was handled in this country.
Dexter King, Martin Luther King Jr.’s youngest son, told The New York Times in 1999 that he hoped history books would be rewritten to reflect the newest — and most accurate — account of his father’s assassination.
While it’s important to remember the messages of nonviolence that King passed, it’s also equally important to discuss the government’s possible involvement in King’s death and to remember that the U.S. — our “land of the free” — has committed some deeply disturbing acts over the course of its history and continues to do so. Drone strikes, anyone?
Our generation is one that trusts the government less than those before us. It makes sense, then, to open the floor to talk about institutional racism and its deadly effects on citizens — especially those who dare to be outspoken.
Although his most memorable words come from the “I Have a Dream” speech, we leave you with a part of his last speech delivered in Memphis the night before he was killed.
“I’ve seen the promised land,” he said. “I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And I’m happy tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”
A version of this editorial ran on page 6 on 1/21/2014 under the headline "Land of the free? Remembering MLK’s death"
