Over the weekend, President Trump held a rally at Mount Rushmore in the middle of a pandemic. A crowd of around 7,500 people, almost everyone without masks and sitting close to each other, listened to a speech in which the President spent most of the time denouncing those Americans who disagree with him depicting them as enemies of our country. Here are some words from that speech:
Their goal is not a better America, Their goal is to end America… Our opponents would tear apart the very documents that Martin Luther King used to express his dream and the ideas that were the foundation of the righteous movement for civil rights…We must demand that our children are taught once again to see America as did Rev. Martin Luther King when he said that the founders signed a promissory note to every future generation. Dr. King saw that the mission of justice required us to fully embrace our founding ideals,,,He called on his fellow citizens not to rip down their heritage but to live up to their heritage.
It seems clear to me that neither the President nor his speech writers bothered to check the source where Dr. King used the image of a promissory note. It comes from perhaps his most famous speech, “I Have a Dream.” However it is not the most familiar part of the speech, so let me quote from a section where he used that image:
In a sense we’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence , they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the “unalienable Rights” of “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.”
It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. And those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. And there will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.
If we changed the reference in the second paragraph from 1963 to 2020 and changed the word “Negro” to “Black,” these words could have been written today. If so, Dr. King would surely have been numbered among the President’s domestic enemies as he was characterized as an enemy of the nation in the 1960’s.
If you want to quote Dr. King, it is essential to know about his actual life and ministry instead of settling for a distorted, mythologized, and domesticated version. The President used Dr. King to promote an agenda of demonizing his enemies. In his own words, the mission of Dr. King’s organization the Southern Christian Leadership Conference was “to save the soul of America.” Living into that mission requires structural changes leading to greater levels of justice for all.
The video below is the actual footage of Dr. King’s speech at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963. The section where he used the image of the promissory note begins around 3:18. The entire speech lasts only 17 minutes and is well worth your time, especially during these challenging days.