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41m ago

On MLK Day, Commentaries Recenter King’s Legacy on Ideals, Service, and Chicago’s Lessons

Analysts highlight his use of America’s founding promises.

The top of the Washington Monument and part of a US flag are reflected in the sunglasses of Austin Clinton Brown, 9, of Gainesville, Georgia, as he joins others in the March on Washington in August 1963.
By the 1950s the "American dream" had come to symbolize a steady job and a tidy house in the suburbs. Here moving vans unload families' possessions in December 1952 in this new housing development in Lakewood, California.
Peaceful demonstrators walk along the National Mall during the March on Washington on August 28, 1963. The gathering was a high-water mark for the civil rights movement.
A year before the stock market crash of 1929 plunged the country into the Great Depression, men line up for bread at the Bowery Mission in New York City on March 31, 1928.

Overview

  • Writers revisit the Aug. 28, 1963 March on Washington, noting King’s case for civil rights as a fulfillment of the Declaration and Constitution before an audience of roughly 250,000.
  • Accounts cite the National Museum of African American History and Culture in reporting that Mahalia Jackson urged King to "tell them about the dream," a refrain absent from early drafts.
  • Essays foreground King’s disciplined nonviolence and his wish to be remembered for serving others, drawing on his Feb. 4, 1968 "Drum Major Instinct" sermon.
  • Coverage spotlights King’s 1966 Chicago campaign against housing discrimination, including his move to 1550 S. Hamlin Ave., marches met by hostility, and the nonbinding Summit Agreement on Aug. 26, 1966.
  • Commentators, including references to Bernice King’s "Be a King" message, urge daily practice of his principles rather than limiting tributes to the holiday.