In an event sponsored by the Center for Politics and the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy, Martin Luther King III, professor of practice and civil rights leader, spoke about honoring his parents’ legacy. King shared several stories about his parents throughout the evening and also addressed the ways that he still adds to their legacy with his own civil rights work.
King has been a professor of practice with the Center for Politics since March of last year. He does not teach any courses at the University but visits twice each year to guest lecture and engage with students in discussions on civil rights issues and participation in politics.
The event started with moderator and Batten Dean Ian Solomon asking King about his experiences growing up as the son of Martin Luther King Jr. King described his father as a man who traveled or had audiences with endless influential figures nearly every day. King recounts that his father’s energy shone through when with his children.
“Coming up the stairs, it oftentimes appeared that he was just exhausted,” King said. “Once the door opened and he greeted us, there was a total expression change, a total energy shift.”
King also spoke about his mother, Coretta Scott King, noting the influence she had on both himself and his father. Because King was just 10 years old when his father was assassinated in 1968, he states that he was closer to his mother, spending decades with her as she fought for labor rights and to create a national holiday commemorating her late husband. According to King, his mother’s work to make MLK Day a national holiday was as much about teaching his father’s non-violent methods as it was about honoring his legacy. But, he said, society has still not fully adopted MLK Jr.’s non-violent ways.
“We still gravitate towards violence, and I don’t personally believe that’s going to be sustainable,” King said. There… are times when we have to learn something and we obviously have not learned it yet.”
King touched on the current political climate throughout the event. He compared his father’s mission of non-violence to the extreme toxicity of modern politics, harshly rebuking efforts to minimize slavery in school curricula and a decline in civility, among other developments.
King elaborated that the fact that enslaved people played such a large role in enabling the United States to become the wealthiest country on Earth makes its suppression in some classrooms all the more painful.
“[This country] had 250 years of free labor,” King said. “And [we] don’t even acknowledge it?”
King said teaching the horrors of slavery and the centuries-long fight for civil rights in schools is not about assigning guilt to white students, pointing to South Africa and Rwanda as examples of countries that openly confront the evils of their pasts.
“Suppress[ing] and arranging history out of books, or saying that we don’t need to learn [about the past] is not the right way to go,” King said. “A people that do not know their history are doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past.”
As a civil rights activist, King has done much to honor his parents’ legacy. King is the chairman of the Drum Major Institute, an organization that derives its name from MLK Jr.’s "Drum Major Instinct" sermon. King is also the founder of the Realize the Dream initiative, which has a goal for their volunteers and partners to achieve 100 million hours of service by 2029, or the year that MLK Jr. would have turned 100.
The Realize the Dream initiative is what spurred King and his co-authors to write their new book, “What Is My Legacy?: Realizing a New Dream of Connection, Love and Fulfillment.” King co-wrote the book with his wife, Arndrea Waters King, and activists Marc and Craig Kielburger. He says that he wants his initiative to encourage connection, something he fears has been corroded by modern technology.
“We decided to write a book about legacy and fulfillment because of the disconnect going on,” King said. “Technology, as great as it is … is currently not bringing us together.”
To wrap up, King returned to the theme of legacy by turning to the role young people have in making change.
King recalled when, at the 2018 March for Our Lives in Washington, his daughter Yolanda invoked her grandfather’s dream by pronouncing her own dream that “enough is enough, and we must create a gun-free world.”
King referenced the gun-control advocacy of his 16-year-old daughter, Yolanda, and said he is hopeful for the future precisely because of the legacies being built by Yolanda’s generation.
“We as parents couldn’t be prouder,” King said. “There are millions of young people just like her [Yolanda] who are working every day to create a much better world.”
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