THE MARTIN LUTHER KING THAT AMERICA AND OBAMA IGNORE

In President Barack Obama’s final State of the Union speech he invoked, as he often does, the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. about how “voices of unarmed truth and unconditional love” represented the most potent weapons against injustice.  

But King would likely be disappointed by the glaring absence of the #BlackLivesMatter movement in Obama’s final remarks to the nation. Indeed, the groundswell of protests, demonstrations, and movements for racial and economic justice that have spread across U.S. cities, highways, and university campuses this past year echo the political landscape King confronted half a century ago.

As a nation, we more comfortably remember King’s political activism during the Civil Rights Movement’s heroic years, between the 1954 Supreme Court Brown decision that outlawed public school segregation and the August 6, 1965 signing of the Voting Rights Act. King proved to be this era’s leading political mobilizer, if not its most effective organizer. From his earliest participation as a spokesperson for the 1955-56 Montgomery, Alabama Bus Boycott, where he witnessed the organizing prowess of stalwart local leaders — most notably Rosa Parks — to his forays into direct action in Birmingham and Selma, Alabama during the first half of 1960s, King trusted that comprehensive political legislation and court ruling would usher in a new era of racial equality and black citizenship.