(ThyBlackMan.com) As I leave the Martin Luther King Unity breakfast being hosted by the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity in Huntsville, AL, I am reflecting on the legacy of Dr. King himself. In the midst of my airport inner-ranting, I realized something that I should have understood more thoroughly in the past: Martin Luther King was nobody’s hero.
Dr. King achieved extraordinary things, no doubt. But for some reason, we have turned him into something that he would not want to be: This bionic, all-powerful, unstoppable civil rights machine who could leap tall racists in a single bound.
Dr. King, according to legend, is only meant to be worshipped on your wall, studied in class and honored at an annual dinner. In no way, in your right mind, should you EVER have the audacity to believe that you can achieve 
even a fraction of what this man accomplished during his life. He was an icon, a symbol, a prop in a McDonald’s commercial; he never felt fear, he never made mistakes, and he never had moments of weakness.
This translation of Dr. King, honestly, makes me sick.
To allow one of our greatest freedom fighters to be politically neutered and turned into a product of Marvel comics is downright shameful. Dr. King is not Superman, Spiderman, Iron Man or the Incredible Hulk. Some would say that he was not even intrinsically great. In his quest for equality of all mankind, Dr. King never wanted us to think that he was any better than the rest of us.
Dr. King quite simply, was something that all of us can be: an average man who put extraordinary effort into everything he did. He faced his challenges head on and confronted the ostracism, humiliation and danger that comes with doing what’s right. When God told him what to do, he didn’t ignore the message, and even when he felt fear, he didn’t allow this fear to cause him to buckle into doing that which was most comfortable, convenient and socially acceptable.
Dr. King was human, just like the rest of us. But he made the conscious effort to take his limited years on this planet and turn them into something worth celebrating. He also ran the first leg of a long relay race, and some of us have dropped the baton entirely. When we choose not to continue what Dr. King started, we are disrespecting the depth and breadth of his sacrifice.
So, when you go to an MLK dinner, you’re likely to hear a speech that sounds something like this: “Dr. Martin Luther King believed in unity, harmony, coming together, loving one another and helping others. He believed that all of us should be kind toward one another regardless of the color of our skin.”
This statement is not incorrect, Dr. King did believe all these things. But when we tell the story about the peaceful, sweet, kind little man who was nice to those who tried to kill him, we must supplement the remarks with an even more accurate speech that sounds like this one: “Dr. King battled tirelessly on behalf of the oppressed, fought against the establishment when necessary, and demanded socio-economic equality and put his life on the line to fight racism.”
As it stands, Dr. King would see almost nothing about America that reflects the essence of his dream. He would see a country where the rich have hoarded the wealth at the expense of the American worker, where we are declaring war on other nations just to take their oil, where black men are being herded to prison like cattle, and where 40% of all black children are in poverty. This is no great society, at least as far as Dr. King is concerned, and to suggest otherwise would downright delusional and disrespectful of what this man stood for during his life.
Let’s not let Dr. Martin Luther King be taken away from us. Reconnecting with Dr. King means that he’s no better than what the rest of us can be, and it also means not allowing others to rebrand him as a soft, polite, eternally gleeful corporate puppet used to sedate the masses. Martin Luther King was a fighter, and there’s no getting away from that. We must earn the right to honor his legacy.
