Towering legend, flawed man? King’s image evolving

BRETT ZONGKER, SAMANTHA GROSS

Asso­ci­ated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — On the National Mall in Wash­ing­ton, Mar­tin Luther King Jr. is a tow­er­ing, heroic fig­ure carved in stone. On the Broad­way stage, he’s a liv­ing, breath­ing man who chain smokes, sips liquor and occa­sion­ally curses.

As Amer­i­cans honor King’s mem­ory 44 years after he was assas­si­nated, the image of the slain civil rights leader is evolving.

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THE MEMORIAL

The new King memo­r­ial, which opened in August in the nation’s cap­i­tal, cel­e­brates the ideals King espoused. Quo­ta­tions from his speeches and writ­ings con­jure mem­o­ries of his mes­sage, and a 30-foot-tall sculp­ture depicts King emerg­ing as a “stone of hope” from a “moun­tain of despair,” a design inspired by a line of his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.

Some gaze upon this fig­ure in silence. Some smile and pull out cell phone cam­eras. Oth­ers chat about how closely the statue resem­bles King. And some are moved to tears.

“Just all that this man did so that we could do any­thing and be any­thing,” said Bran­dolyn Brown, 26, of Cheraw, S.C., who vis­ited the memo­r­ial Sat­ur­day with her aunt and cousin.

“I know it took a lot more than him to get to where we are, but he was a big part of the movement.”

Brown’s aunt, Glo­ria Drake, 60, of Cheraw, S.C., said she remem­bers King almost as though he was Moses lead­ing his peo­ple to the promised land, even when there were so many rea­sons to doubt things would get bet­ter in an era of seg­re­gated buses, schools and lunch counters.

“It was really just hos­tile,” she said. “… And then we had a man that comes to tell us things are going to be better.”

“Don’t be mad, don’t be angry,” she recalled King’s mes­sage. “Just come together in peace.”

They said King’s last­ing legacy is the real­ity of equal­ity and now hav­ing a black pres­i­dent. Drake said Pres­i­dent Barack Obama reminds her of King with his “calm­ness” even in the face of anger.

Chris­tine Red­man, 37, vis­ited the memo­r­ial with her hus­band, James Red­man, 40, and their young son and daugh­ter. She said they also feel a per­sonal con­nec­tion to King.

“We’re a mixed fam­ily, and we know that with­out a lot of the tri­als that he went through to help end seg­re­ga­tion and help the races to become one, we would not be able to have the free­doms to love who we want to love and be accepted in the world,” she said.

Her son, 8-year-old Tyler, echoed his mom: “And be who we want to be.”

The fam­ily tries to cel­e­brate King’s birth­day by find­ing a way to serve oth­ers, they said. They were think­ing about vol­un­teer­ing at a food pantry or donat­ing toys for needy kids.

When he thinks of King, James Red­man said he thinks of hope. Still, he said, King’s legacy is lost on many.

“Dr. King was about love and about coop­er­a­tion and com­pro­mise and work­ing together,” he said. “We don’t see a whole lot of that in our lead­ers. We don’t see a whole lot of it in our citizenry.”

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THE STAGE

On Broad­way, the­ater­go­ers are see­ing a dif­fer­ent ver­sion of King — one that is more man than legend.

The real­ism was refresh­ing for Donya Fair­fax, who mar­veled after leav­ing a mati­nee of “The Moun­tain­top” that she had never really thought of King curs­ing, as actor Samuel L. Jack­son does while por­tray­ing King in the play.

“He was human and not some­one who was above fault,” said the 48-year-old, vis­it­ing from Los Ange­les. “He cursed. He did things that peo­ple do behind closed doors. He was regular.”

For some, such a por­trayal would seem to chip away at King’s mem­ory. But for Natalie Pertz, who at 20 has come to know King only through the gauzy view of his­tory, it seemed a pre­cious reminder that it is not beyond the reach of the ordi­nary and the flawed to effect change.

“It’s impor­tant for peo­ple our age to see that he wasn’t this saint-like fig­ure,” she said. “It’s mak­ing you see that just because you’re not per­fect, it doesn’t mean you can’t do good.”

For M.E. Ward, see­ing an in-the-flesh incar­na­tion of King brought her back more than 40 years, to when she watched his soar­ing speeches on the tele­vi­sion. No mat­ter how human he seemed on stage, she said, he still car­ried a godly gift.

“Still charis­matic, still an ora­tor, and an indi­vid­ual who was able to move peo­ple through his speech,” she said, adding that King enlight­ened the world with a mes­sage “to be peace­ful, to be patient, to be non-violent.”

No mat­ter how dis­tant his pres­ence is now, that legacy is still very rel­e­vant, she said, in what she called “a world of tur­moil and vio­lence, con­stant violence.”

Do peo­ple ide­al­ize him too much?

“They don’t do it enough!” said 64-year-old Elis­a­beth Carr, who cried through most of the play, feel­ing some of the pain she felt when the civil rights leader died. “The younger gen­er­a­tion, they don’t know any­more. … They don’t under­stand what they went through.”

After trav­el­ing more than five hours with three friends — all of them African-American — to see Saturday’s mati­nee, Mariko Tap­per Tay­lor said see­ing King in all his flaws did noth­ing to dimin­ish his legacy.

“It’s bet­ter to remem­ber him as human,” she said. “Who’s flaw­less? It just shows that there’s another side of him.”

For her, the hol­i­day remains very per­sonal, Tay­lor said.

One of her friends, Dr. Don­nita Scott, chimed in:

“If it wasn’t for him we prob­a­bly wouldn’t be doc­tors,” she said, nod­ding at the group, which includes two ER physi­cians and a psychiatrist.

Dr. Jan Thomas agreed:

“We’re stand­ing on that mountaintop.”

Posted by AP News on Jan 15 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.