The Abuse of History and the MLK Memorial

Despite the false interpolations of a racist sister, and the mad ravings of a weakened man despising his physical state, Friedrich Nietzsche's historical writings evince respectability.

In "On the Use and Abuse of History," he targeted the vanity of historical monuments, in part because they reduced to tireless efforts of many over a long period of time to one sign, a sign which by its nature distorts the truth of an event, which was in fact the culmination of many working for an ideal.

Human beings have a tendency to stereotype, from placing human beings into empty, arbitrary categories, to reducing historical trends to images and personalities.

The Civil Rights Movement is one of the those events in recent American History.

The protests that shook the South during the early 1960's emerged from a long line of protest, including two previous bus boycotts which failed, the earnest desire for meaningful legislation to enforce civil rights. Even the Radical Republican Congresses of the late 18602 to 1877 passed major Civil Rights legislation, which in essence broadened state power and solidified Republican rule (and one-party corruption) until the early 20th century.

After the Second World War, when African Americans once again demonstrated fidelity and courage defending their country, they faced segregation, discrimination, and state-sponsored humiliation. Civil rights leaders like Reverends Ralph Abernathy and Martin Luther King Jr. took on leadership roles to amass coordinated protest against discrimination. But they did not fight the non-violent fight themselves. Thousands, black and white, Hollywood actors, student activists, and other preachers, Northerners and Southerns, canvassed the South, flagrantly violating laws that separated the races in public facilities.

Dr. King was one man, one man who articulated a competent vision which Americans could receive and release to others, which we recognize to this day. Yet the message means nothing without the millions who adhere and advocate for it. Rather than celebrating the efforts of one man, the United States must applaud the many who sat at lunch counters, who refused to ride in the back of the bus, not just Rosa Parks but the many courageous individuals before her who also refused to suffer indignity simply because of the color of their skin.

The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington D.C. is an inevitable injustice, promoting one man into a symbol whose flaws harm the legacy of peaceful demonstration for civil rights as much as promoting them. As Nietzsche argued more than a century ago, we cannot invest in one person, in one monument the effort, the losses, the failures, the setbacks, and the partial successes turned institutional policies which have secured greater recognition of man's natural rights.

The simplification of MLK as perennial mascot for a grand movement becomes a freedom-stealing distortion, one that subjugates people to mouthing empty slogans without appreciating the quiet dedication of living one's life in peaceful concert with individual conscience, depending on one's own attachment to civil rights for all, special privileges for none.