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Category: News and Politics
Anyone who has ever tried to play “Montgomery Bus Boycott” at homeprobably realizes how hard it is to make Martin Luther King out oflegos. First of all, it’s difficult to find black minifigures unlessyou buy the NBA 3-packs which feels, If you think about it, eitherdeeply insulting to black people or to white basketball players.Secondly, the hair. Put a black minifigure in a suit with accompanyinghair and it will look like a second string Eddie Murphy character from“Coming to America”. In fact, legos are so poorly representative ofethnic diversity right now that the posted versions of Martin LutherKing Jr. on Flickr look identical to the posted versions of Will Smithas Agent J in “Men in Black”; right down to the suit. It’s hard totell, from a distance, if he has a dream or a neuralizer.
As hard as it is to get good Martin out of little plastic blocks, it’seven more complicated to get a good Coretta Scott King. Legos arenotoriously bad at replicating women in minifigures as well. For mostof her husband’s non-plastic life, you would find her right behind him,supporting him. In reality, Mrs. King had the singular distinction ofbeing witness to every single “Lego Block” that went into building theCivil Rights Movement in the 60s. Each piece of this fight for justicewent through her hands at one point or another. If anyone were lookingfor deeper insights into what King believed and how he followed thearrow of justice, looking through her eyes is our greatest opportunity.
Mrs. King was reluctant to take up the role as leader of the civilrights movement after her husband’s death. In fact, she went toJosephine Baker, asking her to act as leader of this community. Whenshe declined, Coretta Scott King became the soul and heart of AmericanCivil liberties. She fought to ensure that even though Martin LutherKing was gone, his dream would be visible, relevant, alive. She madesure that he had a voice even when surrounded by people without herunique insights into his mind. She made it clear to the world that thebattle for civil liberties and freedom did not end at the color ofpeople’s skin. Just as Frederick Douglass found that he couldn’t befree as long as anybody remained in chains, fighting for Irish HomeRule and the women’s suffrage, Coretta Scott King explained that theCivil Rights movement was there for the poor, for women, for LGBTpeople, for everyone.
In 1968, during a Solidarity Day Speech, she called for women to "uniteand form a solid block of women power to fight the three great evils ofracism, poverty and war." She opposed Apartheid when the word wasunknown to most people. In her fight for equality for gay peopleeverywhere she spoke out to say “Homophobia is like racism andanti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry in that it seeks to dehumanizea large group of people, to deny their humanity, their dignity andpersonhood. This sets the stage for further repression and violencethat spread all too easily to victimize the next minority group."
She indelibly linked the fight for gay rights to the Civil Rightsbattle in one of her most famous speeches of all, calling out that, "Istill hear people say that I should not be talking about the rights oflesbian and gay people. ... But I hasten to remind them that MartinLuther King Jr. said, 'Injustice anywhere is a threat to justiceeverywhere.' I appeal to everyone who believes in Martin Luther KingJr.’s dream, to make room at the table of brotherhood and sisterhoodfor lesbian and gay people." She was completely unequivocal andabsolutely clear. In 2003, she invited the National Gay and LesbianTask Force to be a part of the 40th anniversary of the March onWashington. She crossed bridges to support a group she wasn’t a partof- to honor the dream. She fought for the equality guaranteed to allof us when she fought for equal marriage, calling an amendmentpreventing marriage equality “a form of gay bashing that would donothing at all to protect traditional marriage.” She took the hardestroad she could and she handled it without falling.
On Martin Luther King Day, this year, I want to honor the woman that hehonored when he said “without whose love, sacrifices, and loyaltyneither life nor work would bring fulfillment...” There is still a longway to go, but to the woman who got every single building block right,the woman who understood every word he said better than most of us, thewoman too beautiful to be constructed out of Legos - to you I want tosay thank you.
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