…I’ve always known we’ve done a poor job of teaching Black
history, but as of the last few days it’s so clear to me why history classrooms
reference Dr. Martin Luther King almost as if he’s the only significant civil
rights activist. It’s not because of his
effectiveness; truthfully speaking, if we wanna talk about effectiveness, we’d
do better to talk about the brilliant organizer A. Philip Randolph who, behind
the scenes, made that fateful marching day and so many others possible. Or, we’d talk more about Thurgood Marshall,
who won the cases and made the rulings that secured our futures on paper and
not just in romantic demonstrations.
Nope. We don’t teach
Dr. King because of his effectiveness; we teach Dr. King because it’s our way
of protecting the status quo. Our way of
reminding the actors in the civil rights stage play of their ‘proper roles’. “Okay, this is our routine, guys: we do the brutalizing, and you sit there and
take it and catch us on camera, then you give the powerful speech, and that’ll
bring the change.”
