Dr. King’s Dreams and Nightmares
A fairy tale is sometimes described as "a story in which improbable events lead to a happy ending." Almost every history book used in classrooms across the country describes Dr. King as a man who through his oratory skills, worked in collaboration with multiple organizations and led a movement that resulted in substantive legislative change that we still benefit from today. This narrative is an interesting one. Especially when taught across the country and essentially adopted fully as fact by children who eventually become adults.
He had a dream that we'd integrate and everyone would live happily ever after. Every mainstream narrative sticks to that and recycles lines and buzzwords from his speeches to string together arguments as to why everything is fine. This is a fairy tale. This, in light of his education status, and the network of people around him makes no sense. No one in their proper mind would assume that post-integration everything would be fine. People would have had reservations at the time. The narrative is oddly cavalier for a man who has historically been seen as an introspective and well-read individual.
The reality is that at some point Dr. King woke up from his dream. At some point, his message shifted. It can be assumed that he knew the whole time that the war he was fighting was against deeply ingrained ideologies that laws could never change. His "I Have A Dream" speech was in 1963. A few years later, in 1967, he had an NBC interview with Sander Vanocur. In this interview, is the King that we don't see in textbooks. The King that the fairy tales are loosely based on.
"I must confess that that dream that I had that day has in many points turned into a nightmare. Now I’m not one to lose hope. I keep on hoping. I still have faith in the future. But I’ve had to analyze many things over the last few years... I’ve gone through a lot of soul-searching and agonizing moments... I’ve come to see that we have many more difficulties ahead and some of the old optimism was a little superficial and now it must be tempered with a solid realism."
This sounds like a completely different man from the man who spoke at the March on Washington in 1963. This sounds like a man who reflected on a dream and realized it was indeed a nightmare. This is important to understand for how we teach Dr. King and the Civil Rights era as a whole. In the modern era of Black Lives Matter and our continued fight against police brutality and systemic racism, we must fully understand the thought process of those that came before us. We must understand that back then, like now, there was a spectrum of ideas on how to solve the issues. Most people agreed on the "what" but the discrepancy came with the "how."
Harry Belafonte recalled a conversation he had with Dr. King at some point before his death. Around this time, Dr. King moved his attention to economic empowerment and the ever-present wealth gap that we're still trying to sort out today. In this conversation, Dr. King said "I have come upon something that disturbs me deeply. I’ve come to believe we’re integrating into a burning house."
In all the good that Dr. King did, it seems that in the closing years of his life there may have been some second-guessing about the end result or maybe the method as a whole. At some point, we need to acknowledge Dr. King's nightmare just as much as we acknowledge his dream. Until we do, we will be simply attempting to imitate a fairy tale. As long as we continue to retell a version of a story that isn't the complete truth, our plans for progress may always be futile.