If going out of one’s way is what’s necessary to clean up a gross inaccuracy, I think MLK would have considered it important - certainly more so than cleaning up his image for the very sort of people who stood against him anyway. In any case, I think the truth trumps appearances.

If Obama fails, maybe we can bring back Frederick Douglass and GW Carver.

After this time last year I did some reading up on him. There are those who would wish to paint him as a Communist. While he did have contacts with some out-and-out Communists, there’s nothing to suggest that he ever signed up. He was certainly tending towards socialism, but they can’t really full claim him either. How many socialists in America could agree with this:

One day the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters, they were in reality standing up for what is best in the American dream and for the most sacred values in our Judaeo-Christian heritage, thereby bringing our nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in their formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

Most socialists (but by no means all) in America seems to want to deny or bury our Judaeo-Christian heritage and the acts of the founders of this country, not embrace them and hold them up as the highest example of what this country is and should be all about.

The more of the Rev. King’s work you read, the more you get to see that he was indeed a complex man. In church yesterday our priest called him a prophet and saint. Interesting juxtaposition, that. The word “Saint” (for those who haven’t actually studied the lives of any of them) paints a picture of someone separated from reality, someone almost sinless. Prophets tended to be a real pain in the ass to whatever power structure existed at the time, and like Rev. King often did not live out their full natural span of days. The label that I didn’t hear in church is likely the one that might fit him best; Rev. King was a martyr.

The common depiction of saints is one that’s usually quite cleaned up from the real life of the person involved. Prophets somewhat less, and all that people generally know about martyrs is the cause they died for and how they died. In all cases, little is known about the man or woman, and their image is carefully crafted out of those aspects of their lives that it is desired to use as an inspirational example to us all.

So too with Rev. King. It’s no surprise. Going out of one’s way to tie him to socialism will be more likely in America to degrade Rev. King’s image, not to enhance that of socialism.