Martin Luther King, Jr: Legacy in Action by Liz Prisley

What do you think of on MLK Day?  Sleeping in?  A day to catch up on your to-do list?  MLK Day as a holiday has never had much of a national feel compared to holidays like July 4th or Presidents’ Day.  In fact, not all 50 states agreed to celebrate MLK Day until the year 2000, despite the fact that President Reagan signed the holiday into national recognition in 1983.  In 1994 the King Day of Service Act was passed, challenging American citizens to carry on the work of Martin Luther King, Jr. by dedicating volunteer hours to civil service.  While there are a number of great projects in the works, including a national organization dedicated to volunteer service, when I look at my community, family, and friends, I don’t see celebration of service.  In fact, outside of the posting of articles or memes on social media, I don’t see much celebration at all. When I look in the mirror, I’m just as guilty.  This year is the first year that I’ve taken part in an event honoring and celebrating the work of MLK, and it took a group of young people to show me the way. On Saturday, I helped carpool six teens to Polk State College Theater in Lakeland to perform at Smart Mouth Saturdays, a monthly poetry event.  Smart Mouth Saturdays is usually an adult show, but in honor of MLK weekend, they teamed up with Upward Bound to raise money for their scholarship fund while hosting a “Freedom Speaks” open mic.  The 2013 Heard Em Say slam team poets were the featured artists of the evening, and they performed some of their best work on racial stereotyping and inequality.  Poems addressed issues from interracial relationships, to stereotypes of black women, to criticizing the ivory tower of university, and the lack of community support for low-income and minority teens.  The audience reaction was varied – at times there was plenty of snapping, clapping and yells of “Rewind!” to encourage poets to repeat favorite lines; but there were also moments of discomfort, awkward silence, and uneasy golf claps. One of the teen poets captured this feeling best when she told me that she thought this was the best way of celebrating MLK: to challenge people’s comfort zones about racial lines and inequalities.  That even though the audience didn’t want to hear every line in every poem and feel uncomfortable at some of them, they needed to hear every line.  Because every line of poetry those young people spoke was truth, whether the audience wanted it to be or not.  It was the truth of their experiences, and the truth of the moments we don’t like to examine too closely. I read a thought provoking piece on MLK’s legacy over the weekend – conveniently re-posted on FB by one of the Heard Em Say poets – and it says that MLK’s greatest achievement was not his speeches or his marching, but his example of standing in the face of his greatest fears, and then overcoming them.  He stood in the face of beatings and arrests and jail time and attempted assassinations, and he refused to stop.  If the holiday named for MLK should have any legacy, it should be this. We need to remember to make ourselves uncomfortable.  [Not in an unsafe way, but in a productive way.]  There are so many conversations that need to happen in the various communities I am part of, but all too often we don’t like to have them.  Why are so few students of color in my classroom at USFSP?  Why are so few of my first generation students not graduating?  Why is school portrayed as the solution to social mobility?  We need to make ourselves uncomfortable having the conversations that aren’t taking place nearly often enough.  We need to make ourselves uncomfortable in service to one another. If you need an example, I’ll lend you mine: the young people who inspire me regularly.  If you need inspiration, just start here. For service ideas or to find projects in your area, check out MLKDay.gov. Like Matter of Cause on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. Liz Prisley is the Executive Editor of Matter of Cause and a board member of I Am Choice. For inquiries, please contact liz@matterofcause.com.