Historians Fear MLK’s Legacy Being Lost

[IndianaGreen]

Were he alived today, MLK would have opposed neolib economic policies and neocon militarism, and he would have marched in support of the oppressed people in the world, including Palestinians.

Published on Monday, January 21, 2008 by Associated Press

Historians Fear MLK’s Legacy Being Lost

by Deepti Hajela

NEW YORK - Nearly 40 years after the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., some say his legacy is being frozen in a moment in time that ignores the full complexity of the man and his message.

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King was working on anti-poverty and anti-war issues at the time of his death. He had spoken out against the Vietnam War and was in Memphis when he was killed in April 1968 in support of striking sanitation workers.

King had come a long way from the crowds who cheered him at the 1963 March on Washington, when he was introduced as “the moral leader of our nation” - and when he pronounced “I have a dream” on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

By taking on issues outside segregation, he had lost the support of many newspapers and magazines, and his relationship with the White House had suffered, said Harvard Sitkoff, a professor of history at the University of New Hampshire who has written a recently published book on King.

“He was considered by many to be a pariah,” Sitkoff said.

But he took on issues of poverty and militarism because he considered them vital “to make equality something real and not just racial brotherhood but equality in fact,” Sitkoff said.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/01/21/6519/