Honoring Dr. King’s Radical Legacy 64 Years After His “Look to the Future”
Dr. King spoke at Highlander’s 25th anniversary in 1957 on the topic “A Look to the Future.”
Sixty-four years later, looking back from that future, his words illuminate striking parallels to the work before us today. He noted that the Klan had forged a resurgence, bolstered by White Citizens’ Councils who matched the Klan’s terror with economic and social policies and rhetoric that “create(d) the atmosphere for violence.”
Yet Dr. King encouraged those gathered to “gain consolation in the fact that there are constructive forces that will defeat in time all of the barriers of opposition”, noting that conditions in the South were shifting through Black-led organizing and solidarity in the fight for racial justice from workers, organized labor groups, faith-based groups, and grassroots organizing across the region.
The beloved expansiveness of his vision and of the forces that were shifting our region then still inform today’s work: we know there is power in Black-led, multiracial organizing today. We know that power is not finite and that resources are actually abundant. We do not have to fight each other for the scraps left behind by capitalism — our destinies are bound together, we are stronger together, and we all suffer under systems of oppression. This belief is the foundation of the work for collective liberation.
In the face of centuries of oppression and in the events of the last week, we know that Dr. King’s radical legacy continues as we are called by Dr. King to remain maladjusted to the violence of the state and those who are led by it to do harm:
“There are some things in our social system to which I am proud to be maladjusted and to which I suggest that you too ought to be maladjusted. I never intend to adjust myself to the viciousness of mob rule. I never intend to adjust myself to the evils of segregation and the crippling effects of discrimination. I never intend to adjust myself to the tragic inequalities of an economic system which takes necessities from the masses to give luxuries to the classes. I never intend to become adjusted to the madness of militarism and the self-defeating method of physical violence. I call upon you to be maladjusted… Through such maladjustment we will be able to emerge from the bleak and desolate midnight of man’s inhumanity to man into the bright and glittering daybreak of freedom and justice.”
We see that daybreak in the work of 21st century freedom movements like the Movement for Black Lives, the Frontline and in the uprisings last summer to defend Black lives. We work in solidarity with these organizations and movements that are in right relationship with Dr. King’s radical vision. We ask you to join us today in supporting the Frontline’s MLK 2021 day of action “Impeach, Expel, Transform.”
Learn more at https://thefrontline.org/mlk2021/?link_id=15&can_id=8d792353d8959be70f047649ab55c7d1&source=email-frontline-mass-call-follow-up-3&email_referrer=email_1044856&email_subject=frontline-mass-call-follow-up and take action online, in your community, and in a communal viewing of Dr. King’s “Three Evils” speech today at 4pm.
