NYT columnist and sociologist Tressie McMillan Cottom and scholar Eddie Glaude Jr. reflect on the struggle for civil rights and what it means to celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on the same day that President Donald Trump is sworn into office. "Perhaps the juxtaposition of seeing Donald Trump preside over the official state memorialization of Martin Luther King will remind us of our responsibility to remembering King as he actually was ... as he was a philosopher, an organizer of the people," Cottom says.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Chapter 1: What does it mean to celebrate MLK Day alongside Inauguration Day?
What else does the—you know, as James Baldwin hated this question, what else does the Negro want? He hated that question because he said the question reveals that they didn't think of him as a human being just like they think of themselves. They think of us instead as a charitable enterprise, you see.
And so I think the anger, the grief is rooted in a deeply skeptical view of the moral capacity of the nation. in this moment. The skepticism is in full bloom. And one wonders, where do we go from here?
I just can't help but keep going back to that time period, 67. 68, and the optimism of after the I Have a Dream speech in 63. And I actually want to play another clip. This one is from a 1967 interview with Sander Vanacore, three and a half years after that I Have a Dream speech. Let's listen.
That period was a great period of hope for me. and I'm sure for many others all across the nation, many of the Negroes who had about lost hope, saw a solid decade of progress in the South. And in 1954, which was, I mean, 64, 1963, nine years after the Supreme Court's decision to be in the March on Washington, meant a great deal. It was a high moment, a great watershed moment.
But I must confess that that dream that I had that day has in many points turned into a nightmare. Now, I'm not one to lose hope. I keep on hoping. I still have faith in the future. But I've had to analyze many things over the last few years, and I would say over the last few months. I've gone through a lot of soul-searching and agonizing moments.
And I've come to see that we have many more difficult days ahead, and some of the old optimism was a little superficial, and now it must be tempered with a solid realism. And I think the realistic fact is that we still have a long, long way to go, and that we are involved in a war on Asian soil, which, if not checked and stopped, can poison the very soul of our nation.
That was Dr. King speaking to NBC in 1967. He's also referring to the Vietnam War when he mentions the Asian War. And I mean, you know, they say, Eddie, of course, that history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes and that progress is not linear. These are all things that we talk about often.
But what is notable to me is that optimism lost, much like both you and Tressie are talking about right now.
Right. I mean, he's trying to suggest that, you know, a kind of realistic politics is necessary. But, you know, even in the way in which he characterized the moment, King is speaking. He knows he's speaking to a particular audience because the March on Washington is framed by death. Medgar Evers is assassinated before the march. The Birmingham bombing after the march is the response, right?
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Chapter 2: How do we reflect on King's legacy in today's context?
Is that to the detriment of us, though? You know, I know that you probably have a lot of elders, at least I do, who talk about how there is no leader. There is no person, no guiding force in this moment.
I'm King obsessed. You know, my last three books each have consists in a chapter or has a chapter on Dr. King, trying to figure it out. And, you know, in the last book, we are the leaders we've been looking for. I'm trying to grapple with this figure in my own imagination. As a country boy from Mississippi who goes to Morehouse, I'm baptized in King's waters, right?
Socialized in his career, his activism, his witness. And oftentimes what happens is that... We outsource our own responsibility to the folk who came before us. Oh, if we only had a Dr. King today. Or we find ourselves being complicit or consenting to, rather, a style of leadership. That allows us in some ways to abdicate our responsibility to change the moment right in front of us.
King is so large that we become really small. You know, great people come to us not for us to be supplicants, but they come to us so that we can understand the greatness that's in us. They come as models for us, exemplars. And so oftentimes Dr. King is invoked, right, to discipline. Oh, let me say something that might be a little bit controversial here.
No, say it, please.
Dr. King is often invoked to justify certain people being in front of the march. Mm-hmm. There you go. I was with him. I'm in his tradition. He's also invoked to discipline what constitutes legitimate forms of political dissent. That's not what Dr. King would say. Remember what the former mayor of Atlanta, Kasim Reed, said? Dr. King wouldn't take over a highway.
The idea is to kind of contain and constrain what constitutes legitimate forms of political dissent. We can only engage in mimicry, imitation in some ways, according to certain invocations of Dr. King. He's used to beat us over our heads so that we can't find the truth. the energy, the courage, the imagination, the creative will to speak to our moment with his legacy as the wind beneath our wings.
Instead, we're supposed to kiss his feet. Now, that's one critical orientation. But again, remember how I began. I'm king obsessed. What does it mean to stand in that tradition of
What does it mean to understand that Miss Ella Baker, who was the first executive director of SCLC, who was very critical and suspicious of charismatic leadership, used to say, you know, strong people don't need strong leaders. We need to understand that we are the leaders we've been looking for.
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Chapter 3: What contradictions exist in America's view of MLK?
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