His birthday is a national holiday in the U.S. His leading in the conflict for civil rights and his nonviolent stance have made him an external icon of social judge . But that was n’t always the case . More than 50 year ago , Martin Luther Kingwas assassinate on April 4 , 1968 , but historians tell us that it was n’t King ’s study while he was live nor even his tragical decease that exchange his reputation in the minds of most Americans .
Jeanne Theoharisteaches political science at Brooklyn College and is the author , most recently , of " A More Beautiful and Terrible History : The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History . " Her Scripture is an endeavor to get beyond the myths that have arise about the Civil Rights Movement and search at how it was really seen then and what it imply for us now .
Many Northerners , for example , trust that King was always a beloved figure and that his crusade against the Jim Crow South was widely celebrated by them . But Theoharis points to a New York Times poll from 1964 — the same twelvemonth the Civil Rights Act was passed — that showeda bulk of white New Yorkersthought the Civil Rights Movement had gone too far . And a internal opinion poll in 1966 , just two age before King ’s death , found that only28 per centum of white Americanshad a favorable public opinion of MLK . ( A freestanding 1966 canvass found that78 pct of blacksrated King ’s task carrying into action in the " scrap for Negro rights " as " splendid . " )
" The general populace does not support theCivil Rights Movementwhen it ’s pass , " says Theoharis . " The same criticism made againstColin Kaepernickand theBlack Lives Mattermovement today were jog out against Martin Luther King andRosa Parks60 years ago . They were disruptive , they were call extremists , they were accuse of locomote too fast , going too far . All these thing we see today have latitude in the Civil Rights Movement . "
Even King ’s famous " I Have a Dream " oral communication at the 1963 March for Jobs and Freedom in Washington , D.C. , regard today as the in high spirits water line of the movement and King ’s poor yet impactful career , was delivered under a swarm of fear and tautness .
" We think of the March on Washington as the most American effect ever , " says Theoharis . " At the metre it was n’t seen like that . Local and Union law enforcement prepare for it like it was an encroachment . "
Many Americans also trust that King ’s work ended with the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act , and that the act themselves somehow " cured " the nation of institutional racism .
ButClayborne Carson , account professor at Stanford University and constitute director ofThe Martin Luther King , Jr. Research and Education Institute , points out that King did n’t retire after the handing over of the Voting Rights Act .
" He was in Chicago the next class dealing with job more home in oscilloscope that are still with us today . He was dealing with the question of warfare , and now we ’re living in an epoch of never-ending war . He was dealing with issue of poverty on the day he died , " says Carson . " If Martin Luther King were active today , he would say that [ the landmark legislation ] was a tremendous victory , but it has made us very complacent about his end of globose human rights and social justice . That was his big photograph . "
The Turnaround on King’s Legacy
So , if King was distrusted and malign by mainstream America during his life , was it his calvary at age 39 that vary public opinion and transformed him into an almost saintly American hero ? Not immediately , says Theoharis , explaining that it took 15 year of lobbying by civil rights leaders and sympathetic legislators to finally convince Congress to record Martin Luther King Day .
President Ronald Reagan , who was against the holiday during his first term in office — he agreed with former FBI film director J. Edgar Hoover that King was a commie — changed his tune when run for reelection and need to close up a"sensitivity gap"with minority and women .
signal the neb in 1983 that made King ’s birthday a national holiday , Reaganskillfully laid outthe elements that would become the national fable :
Theoharis says that Reagan ’s genius was to entrap King ’s story as another example ofAmerican exceptionalism .
" We had an injustice and we compensate it . It ’s all about the magnate of individuals and the office of American democracy , " says Theoharis . " These will be key elements in terms of how the Civil Rights Movement follow to be memorialized in our national culture . "
By 1987 , four years after the creation of MLK Day and nearly 20 year after King ’s execution on a hotel balcony in Memphis , Tennessee , a full76 percent of Americanshad a favourable view of King and those numbers only continued to turn , says Theoharis . ( By 1999 , King came insecondon a Gallup survey of 20th - century somebody Americans admired most , behind Mother Teresa . )
Political scientist Sheldon Appleton wrote in 1995 that younger , college - prepare ashen Americans tend to put up King and both of these demographics were larger in 1987 than in 1966 . He also noted that the widespread lack of knowledge about King and the Civil Rights Movement in worldwide ( see " Now That ’s Amnesia " at the end of the clause ) might have also tinge other perception . " Perhaps recent media treatment of King has help to induce selective memory board by some center - ripened and quondam Americans,“Appleton wrote .
Of naturally , Americans have every reason to venerate Martin Luther King and to lionise his accomplishments . He did n’t do it alone , and he had his flaws like any other man , but as Carson explains , he also had an undeniable endowment for challenging Americans , then and now , to make right on the hope of our founding principles .
" He had that ability to join the destination of the civic rights struggle to nonpareil that most Americans believe that they have , " says Carson . " That ’s what he was doing in [ the ' I Have a Dream ' speech in Washington ] . We as a res publica justified our independence with a human rights statement called the Declaration of Independence . The motion is : Can we live up to that ? "
