We are in the thick of another January. As has been customary for decades, millions of Americans will celebrate the legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Forty years ago, after one of the longest legislative battles in its modern history, the US established Martin Luther King Jr. Day in recognition not only of Dr. King’s leadership but also of the Civil Rights Movement’s moral force. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the national holiday.

As with many deceased, iconic public figures, it has become standard practice for numerous politicians, academics, pundits, journalists, entertainers, and cultural critics to engage in annual reflections on Dr. King’s life as well as speculate on what he would think of the nation’s current state. “Pleased,” “despondent,” “distressed,” and “disillusioned” are a few of the terms these individuals perennially express. I suggest that “intensely ambivalent” would likely be most precise to describe how King would view the US today..

Despite the increasingly hostile racial climate and backlash, the Trump administration and many of its eagerly racist sycophants are engineering, America is considerably more racially integrated (some would argue desegregated) than the hyper-racially segregated nation in which Dr. King resided. Almost 60 years after his brutal assassination, the nation has witnessed Black Americans become mayors of the majority of its largest cities as well as governors, senators, vice president and president. While the most cynical observer might view many of these milestones as merely symbolic, the truth is that no one harboring any cogent level of realism would deny their being significant, distinctive, and noteworthy.

In 1954, upon receiving his doctorate from Boston University, Dr. King could have pursued a relatively comfortable life (particularly for a Black person) as a pastor by becoming part of the leadership of Ebenezer Baptist Church, following in his father’s footsteps. He could have led a well-respected, upscale, middle-class lifestyle in Atlanta’s Sweet Auburn neighborhood. Although he was the product of upper middle-class southern Blacks, Dr. King opted (some say higher powers chose him) to begin his own ministry as the spiritual leader of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama.

Sadly, today, there are many individuals quick to quote selectively if not outright distort King’s rhetoric and messages during his all too brief tenure on Earth. Members of the political right have feverishly attempted to rail against and disassemble the policies that King supported. Indeed, more than a few conservatives perversely invoke his landmark 1963 I Have a Dream speech, in which he stated his hope that children “will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character,” to denounce DEI and programs designed to help historically marginalized groups. Such disingenuous interpretations grossly misrepresent Dr. King’s true feelings about the issue of race. He steadfastly perceived race to be a crucial and pertinent factor in American life that had to be aggressively confronted, not minimized.

The reframing of his legacy has focused on specific interpretations of some of his landmark phrases from pivotal incidents in his public life, making it indisputably clear that he supported civil disobedience against racist laws and chastised politically centrist White members of the clergy who implored him to be patient and resist overt protest. Certain conservatives sinisterly manipulate sections of the document to defend augmenting law-and-order policies; disingenuously promoting individual initiative rhetoric; ruthlessly hurling attacks at DEI and affirmative action policies; and discriminating against non-Whites, women, LGBTQIA+, the disabled, and others who are not heterosexual White men or support people who resist government mandates - all while hypocritically and avidly utilizing such policies themselves.

In a statement after the Trump administration released her father’s files last summer, Dr. King’s daughter, Bernice King, commented, “A 1967 poll reflected that he was one of the most hated men in America.” She further stated, “Many who quote him now and evoke him to deter justice today would likely hate, and may already hate, the authentic King.” She was deft, candid, and precise in her assessment. Speaking of hate, Dr. King would undoubtedly have been a vociferous critic of the alarming nationalist and fascist ideology increasingly saturating and dramatically capturing the conservative right’s political soul in America and the Western hemisphere.

To be sure, there are individuals across the political spectrum who perceive Dr. King’s efforts as well as the larger modern civil rights movement as a failure or, at best, a Pyrrhic victory. These academics, journalists, pundits, podcasters, and ordinary people believe that America, as a nation, is so vehemently racist that non-Whites, in particular Black Americans, will never achieve genuine equality and freedom. They believe that, in spite of good and noble intentions, the Civil Rights Movement accomplished little to nothing in eradicating endemic structures of domination.

Although Dr. King would have been 97 years old today, his age wouldn’t have stopped him from being on the front lines with other activists to denounce the ongoing injustices such as poverty, systemic and systematic racism, ongoing global warfare and augmenting right wing Christian nationalism, political fascism and authoritarianism increasingly saturating America and the larger world. Unlike many of today’s so-called leaders, he would not have sacrificed his people or political constituencies for his own personal gain but would have seen that, despite the progress made, there was still considerable work to do to “get to the Promised Land.”

Given the fact that Dr. King has been dead for almost 60 years, the truth is that many people tend to forget the progressive messages he attempted to convey. He was an ardent champion of economic justice, a fierce anti-militarist, and a tireless proponent for revolutionary and systematic transformation that confronted racism, anti-Semitism, poverty, and war. Unlike many of today’s so-called leaders, Dr. King was willing to confront standard orthodoxies of the status quo and endure personal consequences for his beliefs. More than a few public figures could take a page from Dr. King’s playbook.