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Comment by Anechoic | Hacker News Reader

I appreciate the sentiment for which this was submitted, but in reflecting upon MLKJr's legacy, please realize that he was far more than this one speech. He spoke about workers rights [0], civil rights backlash reparations [1], the dangers of incrementalism in civil rights progress [2], condemnation of the Vietnam war [3], and more [4]. Please resist the temptation to reduce his legacy to an out-of-context " content of their character" and call it a day.

And please remember that MLKJr was widely disliked in his time. [5]

[0] https://billmoyers.com/story/martin-luther-kings-fight-worke...

[1] https://www.theroot.com/exclusive-martin-luther-king-jr-talk...

[2] https://letterfromjail.com

[3] https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/beyond-vietn...

[4] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/how-mlks-...

[5] https://news.gallup.com/poll/20920/martin-luther-king-jr-rev...

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Indeed, his life was dedicated to defeating three evils: Racism, Militarism, and Poverty. Reducing it to only racism ignores most of what made his work so important.

With that ignorance fueling the autocolonization we're under today, having extracted the human and material wealth from all the developing nations of the world. Colonizing ourselves through the systems of control that we mastered, regardless of gender, race or creed, driven by the fear of some other doing better than we are.

But this is the point. To show the world that he died for racism. America wants him to be a hero, but an American hero, not a socialist hero. I wonder what opiniob had Dulles about him.

At the same time though, your links point out that he consistently opposed ideologies that glorify social deviance as some means of "fighting oppression", or espouse black supremacism:

"And so I'm not gonna give you a motto or preach a philosophy burn, baby burn. I'm gonna say build, baby build organize, baby, organize. I've decided to stick with love. Somebody’s gotta have some sense in this world. And a lot of white folks have demonstrated eloquently that they don't have no sense and why should we be that way? The reason I'm not gonna preach a doctrine of black supremacy is because I'm sick and tired of white supremacy."

MLK would not want to be a "woke" figure today. Even his pursuit of meaningful economic equality as equally important to racial equality is enough to make that abundantly clear.

His actions too, e.g. backing up Hosea Williams, John Lewis, and others in the march from Selma to Montgomery [1] that led to the Voting Rights Act of 1965 [2].

[1]: https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/selma-montgo...

[2]: https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/voting-right...

And also something he gave more speeches (sermons) on than anything else, was that on the topic of the Bible, and his faith.

https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/ind...

The turf war over King's legacy (evidenced by your post) is certainly interesting.

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