Martin Luther King: A Prophet Without Honor in His Time?
reframingthenarrative.substack.com
If Martin Luther King hadn't achieved a kind of secular sainthood by his death, I doubt he would be near-universally acclaimed the way he is today. According to an early 1968 Harris Poll, [MLK] died with a public disapproval rating of nearly 75%... The basis for today’s approval rating north of 90% for King can be captured succinctly in carefully cropped newsreel footage of his countless confrontations with vicious, inflammatory bigots and his magnificent oratory that day in August 1963 at the Lincoln Memorial when achieving his 'dream' seemed largely a matter of rallying his countrymen against institutionalized racial persecution in the South. Overly narrow historical memories typically serve a purpose, and in this case it is far more comforting to focus on Dr. King’s success in making a bad part of the country better than to contemplate his equally telling failures to push the whole of America to become what he knew it should be.
Martin Luther King: A Prophet Without Honor in His Time?
Martin Luther King: A Prophet Without Honor…
Martin Luther King: A Prophet Without Honor in His Time?
If Martin Luther King hadn't achieved a kind of secular sainthood by his death, I doubt he would be near-universally acclaimed the way he is today. According to an early 1968 Harris Poll, [MLK] died with a public disapproval rating of nearly 75%... The basis for today’s approval rating north of 90% for King can be captured succinctly in carefully cropped newsreel footage of his countless confrontations with vicious, inflammatory bigots and his magnificent oratory that day in August 1963 at the Lincoln Memorial when achieving his 'dream' seemed largely a matter of rallying his countrymen against institutionalized racial persecution in the South. Overly narrow historical memories typically serve a purpose, and in this case it is far more comforting to focus on Dr. King’s success in making a bad part of the country better than to contemplate his equally telling failures to push the whole of America to become what he knew it should be.