Fifteen years of blogging on Martin Luther King Jr. Day has taught me that people still want to hold on to the nice man image

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a fighter and never backoff from calling out systems of power and oppression, specifically what he referred to as the “Evil Triplets” – systemic racism, militarism and materialism/Capitalism. 

Dr. King was also an organizer who believed in direct action and disruptive actions, actions that would inspire people and to mobilize people join the movement. However, Dr. King’s actions and that of the Civil Rights Movement also got the attention of systems of power and oppression, which led to an intense FBI surveillance campaign, along with the FBI recruiting infiltrators to disrupt the movement. King’s involvement in the Black Freedom Struggle ultimately got him assassinated, not by a lone racist, but by a system that collaborated to end his life. 

Over the past 15 years that I have been blogging here on GRIID, I have consistently written about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., what he did while working within the larger Black Freedom Struggle and how he was part of a resistance struggle against systems of power and oppression. 

I am not going to include ever blog post about Dr. King, but I have gone back a selected some of the post that I think are always relevant for the current and ongoing struggles for justice today. The first post from 2010 is entitled, The Dr. King We Rarely Hear About. That post begins with quote from Dr. King, which generally isn’t invoked during MLK celebrations. “I am sorry to have to say that the vast majority of white Americans are racists, either consciously or unconsciously.”

In 2011, I posted a piece entitled. Which Dr. King will you celebrate? I ask the question, since too often at MLK events we talk about the I have a Dream speech or we talk about diversity. What we don’t hear about very often in those public events is people talking about how Dr. King condemned the Vietnam War, US militarism and US Imperialism. 

In 2016, I wrote a 3 part piece about Dr. King. Part I centered on his Beyond Vietnam speech that was delivered in 1967, a speech that many in the Civil Rights Movement did not support.  In Part II, I focused more on Dr. King’s critique of economic matters, using the title, The slums are the handiwork of a vicious system of white society: Seeing the world through the eyes of Dr. King.  The third post in that series focused on racism and White Supremacy where I apply Dr. King’s vision on what is happening in Grand Rapids.

In 2018, I wrote two articles around MLK Day, with the first post providing a summary of several excellent books either written by Dr. King or about him and the Black Freedom Struggle. Celebrating the Real Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  The second article talked about how business associations and corporations and exploited the legacy of Dr. King, which was entitled, From Organizing a Poor People’s Campaign to hosting a Corporate Breakfast: The Uses and Abuses of Dr. King’s Legacy.

In 2020, I wrote a piece about how Dr. King fought against structural racism and White Supremacy. In that same piece I wrote about what it means to be an anti-racist, with book resources and talking points.  

In 2023, my article, was entitled, The uses and abuses of the Legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Grand Rapids. In that article I talk about how both conservatives and liberals misuse the legacy of Dr. King to justify that actions and inactions. 

Finally, in 2024, I wrote an article entitled, Virtually every politician you know will misrepresent and bastardize the legacy of Dr. King today. So many politicians will bastardize the legacy of Dr. King, but in this post it looks specifically at how Senator Gary Peters has used to Dr. King to justify his own public policy choices.