G21 TRIO: A Series of Voices
As CARLENE pointed out on our Vox Populi page, dying a violent death tends to make our icons, national and international, from Jesus of Narazeth to the many victims of assassination in the USA during 1960's to Princess Diana, take a special place in our psycho-social pantheon.
So it is with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose honor we show today in the United States with a national observance. We close our banks, make special celebrations, and pay homage to the memory of the man.
Not so fast!
What we really do is pay homage to our new-found "image" of the man, reproduced in a hagiographic glory.
 TRIO: ROBIN MILLER on former Maryland state Senator Larry Young and the Race Card +
ROD AMIS on King & Country...  G21 ASIA's KIM CARTER
..Buffalo Fights! 
 PREMIERE: BARE KNUCKLES Jeff Winbush's world view.
 BLKNBLU's TREND BENDS on "Wag the Dog".
 JENNIFER BLUE's PLANETARY MADNESS looks at YOUR influences!
 G21 EUROPE: FLISS USSHER... Best take a look
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CYNDI RUSSELL's 
POWERSBOOKS looks at "the 
Carlene 's Let me give you an example:
During his lifetime, most of the pictures of King that you would find --- especially in the mainstream media of his day --- ALSO prominently featured the images of the POLICE, police dogs, cops with billy clubs, King being rousted into jail or a police car by two burly white cops.
Not so today... Today the pictures of King prominently offered don't show someone on the fringe of our society, a convicted felon. What they show is a scholarly and reserved figure, usually in a retiring or soulful pose. In short, a Man of Peace a la Frederick Douglass... NOT a man of Action(s) a la the living Martin Luther King, Jr.
I would heretically suggest that King is getting the Booker T. Washington Treatment alluded to by fellow-G-21 writer Jeff Winbush.
Students of history, as those of us alive during King's lifetime, remember that there was no great love lost by King's country for Dr. King.
He was beaten, imprisoned, villified(J. Edgar Hoover and Co. referred to him as "Martin Luther Coon"), and though he never reached the significant epiphany about Pan-Africanism of Malcolm X, in his last days stood in opposition to the national policy of this country by decrying the moral atrocity which was the Vietnam (undeclared) war. Don't sound like much a reserved, go-along-to-get-along type to This Writer.
What happened?
Where is ANY OF THIS in our pious King Observance of today?
Gone, because it remains as potent and THREATENING TO THE EXISTING ORDER OF THINGS as it did when the man was alive. You won't hear any political homilies from Republican or Democrat about demanding that we exercise our national conscience to truly respect Human Rights around the world, for all people. No cash-and-carry politician in this country, or any other, is about to talk about social and economic equity as an imperative on the agenda.
This is what happens after ones death, when one is deified. When I quote Frederick Douglass's advice to the young man asking what a young leader should do("Agitate, agitate, agitate!") I usually get appalled stares from those in ear shot.
It is easier to quote the beatitudinal oratory of King's "Dream" speech -- bending it to our will, our agenda, as we go -- than to recall his harsh criticisms of this unbalanced social order. Just as it is easier to do such with Gandhi, Douglass, Malcolm, every ACTIVIST we have reduced via hagiography to a hollow symbol safe for the Powers That Be.
What I adjure you to do today is remember the passionate men and women behind the icon-symbol. Remember them ALIVE!
If you do that, it's easy to see what you must do --- while you are alive.