By the end of his life, Martin Luther King Jr was an avowed socialist.
The article’s good. This claim is unproven. I’m suggesting that it’s wrong, confuses what King believes is a means with an end in itself, and tries to appropriate King by sanding him into a grotesque caricature of a socialist hero, as if the complex truth of this historical figure can finally be ground down now to fit any pat, hackneyed worldview. Blame the editor who came up with the bogus subhead. Meant no disrespect.
King, in a speech that’s bang on point here, said: “I close by quoting the words of an old Negro slave preacher, who didn’t quite have his grammar and diction right, but who uttered words of great symbolic profundity: ‘Lord, we ain’t what we want to be. We ain’t what we ought to be. We ain’t what we gonna be. But, thank God, we ain’t what we was.’”
The article’s good. This claim is unproven. I’m suggesting that it’s wrong, confuses what King believes is a means with an end in itself, and tries to appropriate King by sanding him into a grotesque caricature of a socialist hero, as if the complex truth of this historical figure can finally be ground down now to fit any pat, hackneyed worldview. Blame the editor who came up with the bogus subhead. Meant no disrespect.
Thank you for your comments. Debates such as ours are always useful. No disrespect from me either and I do not entirely disagree with you.
King, in a speech that’s bang on point here, said: “I close by quoting the words of an old Negro slave preacher, who didn’t quite have his grammar and diction right, but who uttered words of great symbolic profundity: ‘Lord, we ain’t what we want to be. We ain’t what we ought to be. We ain’t what we gonna be. But, thank God, we ain’t what we was.’”
Epic speech, required listening/reading for sure.