Growing up in rural Indiana, I didn't always hear positive things about Martin Luther King, Jr. If memory serves me correctly, I don't even think we got the day off every single year. But he has managed to confront me throughout my life, and this attests to the force of his personality, even after his death.
When I was a kid, I was getting my hair cut on Martin Luther King Day. The adults there (who were all white) were discussing him and racial issues in general. I remember various points of the conversation, but the part that sticks out to me most is a comment made by a man who was probably in his 60's: "Martin Luther King's 'dream' was one race."
Throughout my childhood and adolescence, I read various things by and about Dr. King. In the fifth grade, I read a biography on King for young people, and it was essentially a hagiography. The book had King's "I have a dream" speech in the back, and I learned that his dream was not one race (though I still hadn't warmed up to the figure). I also read right-wing literature, which characterized King as a radical who cheated on his wife and had Communists on his staff. Such literature almost always had the same photo of King sitting in this training school, which the authors identified as Communist (see Martin Luther King Jr. EXPOSED!).
I suppose that my general view on King as a child and a young adult was rather negative. I remember this social studies workbook that my third grade class had, and I was thumbing through it when I was supposed to be listening to the teacher (maybe that was some ADD at work!). I saw this one exercise in which students were to read a statement and determine if it described George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, or Martin Luther King. I thought that the assignment was propaganda (or whatever I as a third grader called it). Certainly King was not in the same category as those great men!
Years later, when I was in high school, my mom bought a book of King's sermons entitled The Strength to Love. I think I initially read the book to prove that King was a Communist, since the book included a sermon that was explicitly about Communism. Much to my surprise, the book had a certain charm to it. I liked the way that King tied the experiences of African-Americans to the stories of the Bible. I admired him for using the Sermon on the Mount as a program for the Civil Rights Movement, for he said that African-Americans should love their white oppressors, not hate them. I found him to be a person of great faith. Here was a man who believed that prayer got results, and he drew on God's strength to get through situations that would challenge the strongest human being (as when an anonymous caller threatened to blow up his house). And the book wasn't entirely about race, for King offered his thoughts on theological issues like Calvinism and predestination. The book was a combination of folksy appeals to Bible stories, anecdotes, testimonies, and theological musings. I loved it!
But what did the book teach me about King and Communism? Well, his sermon was not exactly pro-Communist, for he criticized Communism for being atheistic and totalitarian. At the same time, he advocated a rather leftist approach to Communist countries, as when he supported the inclusion of Red China in the United Nations. So he didn't appear to be a Communist, but I still disagreed with his positions on foreign policy.
That brings me to my next point: I don't feel that I have to agree with everything Martin Luther King said and did to admire him. And I get sick of the way that both the Left and the Right appeal to him for their political purposes, as if I'm supposed to believe something only on the strength of Martin Luther King's beliefs. Let me first tackle the Left. When I was at DePauw University, African-American author Michael Eric Dyson came to speak to us about Martin Luther King, and the school forced all of us to attend his lecture. Well, after sitting through his unfair criticisms of Newt Gingrich and other conservative figures, I heard him finally come to the topic of King. Essentially, he argued that the portrayals of King we saw in the media (he mentioned McDonald's ads) are highly sanitized. For him, the real King was someone who would shock modern American society. King supported bringing America towards socialism, and he advocated a tactic known as "aggressive non-violence."
My response was (and is), "So what if he did?" Am I supposed to become a socialist just because Martin Luther King was? I admire King because he championed racial equality on Christian grounds, not because of his socialism.
This brings me to the Right. I've often heard conservatives say, "King would turn over in his grave if he encountered current affirmative action policies! He believed that people should be judged according to the content of their character, not the color of their skin. If he were alive today, he would definitely oppose racial quotas." I seriously doubt that claim. Affirmative action began to exist in the 1960's, and (as far as I know) King did not criticize it. I bet that King would be a liberal on a lot of issues. During the last MLK day, I saw an African-American pastor say on television (with a smirking President Bush sitting behind him), "King wouldn't support going to war over non-existent weapons of mass destruction." He's probably right! King called America an imperialistic power during the Vietnam War (ignoring the Communist imperialism that was engulfing the world). The guy was a liberal. At the same time, like a lot of African-Americans, King possibly would have been a conservative on certain social and cultural issues, such as gay marriage. But that was an unresolved debate between King's wife and daughter (see MPR: What would Martin Luther King do?).
So where do I stand today on Martin Luther King? I don't care for his womanizing, and I disagree with several of his radical leftist positions. But I have to respect and admire him, and not because some sanctimonious politically correct gurus tell me to do so. Here was a man who courageously stood for racial justice, and he did so promoting Christian love rather than hatred. He endured threats, intimidation, hatred, and jail, and he even gave his own life for what he believed was right (for he knew in 1968 that he was about to die). And he did these things when he was my age. That in itself is a sobering, challenging thought.