Where are his monuments? Granted, he was not embraced widely as King was- across racial boundaries- but to the black community, Reverend Minister Malcom was a leader who encouraged black unity, strength and self-reliance. But because he was for black people and unconcerned by the white opinion of that, or did not seek their endorsement (not that King did, i guess i should say that X did not invite or include white folks in his movement) he is not ‘mainstream’ like King.

And that is why people forget. We forget that Martin Luther King, Jr. struggled for black rights because today we see the whites that joined him, anti-racist whites but even so, and somehow the primary task is watered down, diluted in some way. Maybe that is our own racism of today- political correctness. Yet, i’ve never written a history text book.

i don’t even know if that all make sense, but your article got me thinking. Your work, as always, was thought provoking, enlightening.

I go back to the quotation in my post: black people should have the rights to representing their greatest struggle in this country. Martin Luther King, Jr. was not struggling for abstract rights or generalized rights. He was leading the struggle for the rights of black Americans. That specificity is what makes this “outsourcing,” as I call it, of the monument problematic.

To my mind, this outsourcing and the general sense that it doesn’t matter much bears witness to one of the saddest features of contemporary political iconology: King, Jr. as generalized rights champion. Sure, he was, and The Poor People’s Campaign was an expression of that, but his real transformation of American life was racially specific: the liberation of African-Americans. Don’t get me wrong. I think people usually have good hearts when they remember King, Jr. that way (generalized justice seeker), but I can’t help see another (inadvertent?) poaching of black culture.

So, the authorship matters to me when this sort of struggle is so connected to a group of people. Even more so when that group’s history is defined by such traumatizing violence and general historical erasure. Even at the moment the nation honors King, Jr., there’s just a bit of that erasure all over again.

I hope that clarifies my point! And that it is convincing, but that’s a much taller order…

The Statue of Liberty is French and yet is one of the most enduring symbols of our country. Does that make it less of a potent image?

I don’t think so.