King’s Son Bemoans Growing Divisiveness Progress Toward Social Justice Not Encouraging, He Sayse

Martin Luther King III, eldest son of the slain civil rights leader, stood surrounded by history.

On the walls of Washington State University’s Heritage House were photos of some of the nation’s most accomplished African Americans: Harriet Tubman, Booker T. Washington, Elijah Muhummad, Duke Ellington and others.

Behind him towered a painting of Martin Luther King Jr. himself, his image swirled as if reverberating from the fourth dimension.

Looking out from such a vantage point, the younger King said he was not particularly encouraged by the progress the United States has made since his father led a revolutionary campaign for social justice a generation ago.

Gesturing to the images around him, he said he was reminded of “just how far we have to go within our nation, because the ultimate goal is to have a history of all the people of the United States, basically encompassed in one arena.”

For now, he said, “We have not learned how to elevate the different cultures and to have universal respect for every culture, and that’s very important. Until we do, we have to separate our histories.”

King, 37, appeared at WSU on Wednesday as the university commemorated Dr. King’s birthday two days after the national holiday that the younger King helped to create.

As part of the eighth annual “Keeping the Legacy Alive” celebration, he joined 250 students and community members in a campus march before speaking to an overflowing Compton Union Building auditorium.

For all the unity the march was meant to evoke, King earlier in the day bemoaned a growing divisiveness in America and political changes that threaten the civil and human rights advances his father marched for across the South.

“Our nation is probably more polarized in this day in my judgment than it probably was in the ‘60s and maybe late ‘50s,” he said. “And we’ve got to find a way to bring our nation together.”

King criticized attacks on affirmative action hiring practices, saying minorities continue to fight for jobs on an uneven playing field, and spoke against “an assault on poor people and the social programs that help support them.

“The poor in our nation are being blamed for some of the problems that exist while every segment of our society contributes to problems,” he said. “For example, violence is not just taking place in impoverished communities.”

King, a former Democratic commissioner in Georgia’s Fulton County, also alluded several times to the rightward shift of the nation’s politics and said the new congressional leadership is a possible threat to civil and human rights.

“We are at a crisis point right now as it relates to violence, as it relates to poverty, as it relates to jobs. So the people of America are going to have to come together and define responsible solutions,” he said. “I don’t think the Contract with America that the right wing developed is the solution.”

King touched briefly on his family’s ongoing dispute with the U.S. Park Service over the King Historic District, a popular Atlanta tourist attraction that includes his father’s birth home and his crypt. While the the service wants to build an $11.8 million visitor’s center there, the family is trying to block the plan and instead build its own $60 million-plus interactive theme park.

Critics have claimed the family is hoarding the King legacy. But the younger King said the family is only trying to preserve it as appropriately as possible.

“We just don’t feel like the government should be the sole entity to interpret the legacy when there are heirs who are here, who lived it, who breathed it, who were very close to it,” he said.