The Whitewashing of Dr. King

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Over the past few years, I’ve been thinking about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. a great deal. Not just his legacy, though that’s part of it, but how that legacy has been received, how it’s been manipulated to fit a rapidly reconfiguring status quo.

We all have an idea of the kind of man Dr. King was, reinforced by the slow parade of teachers — from elementary to high school — discussing the salient points of his…