This Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, the nation mourns in the midst of continued violence. We talk about Dr. King as if he were settled history, not an unresolved indictment.
This Day in History: The Selma to Montgomery March Begins
Led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., between 3,000 and 8,000 participants crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge from Selma to Montgomery.
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This Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the nation mourns as the violence continues uninterrupted. We talk about Dr. King as if he were settled history, not an unresolved indictment.
His name is invoked not to alarm but to reassure, to indicate moral inheritance rather than moral obligation. What I remember is not the pressure of his demands, but the comfort of his words. Memory is not considered a place of rest, but something that is used and engaged in the present. History shows that power does not weaken when left unchecked. That in itself is refined. Learn how to apologize without giving in. Learn how to tolerate exposure.
America has always been a country adept at violence. Founded by a revolution that sacralizes power as an origin story. What changes is not the violence itself, but its framework. Who is allowed to use it? Who is expected to endure it. And how quickly this country learned how to monitor without intervening. In Minneapolis, that fluency is palpable.
George Floyd was killed in broad daylight in 2020 under the knee of a police officer on a public road across state lines as strangers begged him to breathe. The killing was captured, disseminated, slowed, paused, replayed, absorbed into the bloodstream of the nation. Many believed this visualization marked a turning point. Witnessing it will force change. That’s enough to see. It wasn’t.
Cameras did not interfere with the killing. They documented it. The footage did not bring down the system. It fed it. Circulation replaced intervention. Anger replaced power. America has learned that it is possible to return to normalcy even after suffering repeatedly.
American rituals of violence resume in Minneapolis
In recent weeks, Minneapolis has once again been the scene of public murders. Renee Good was shot and killed by federal agents in public in a city where the shadow of Floyd’s death still lingers. The ceremony has resumed.
Renee Goode was not a black American. This fact is important because violence against black people has long been normalized and rarely remains confined to black people. State power tests its reach in areas where resistance has historically been neglected. For generations in this country, black life has served as a testing ground for that. What is practiced there becomes portable. What is justified there will expand outward. Black Americans understand this not as a theory, but as a heredity.
There was a time when America didn’t cover up public murders. Lynching was not an anomaly. It was a civil ceremony. A crowd gathered. Children were also present. The bodies were on display. Photographs were taken and distributed as evidence and warning. The violence was not spontaneous. It was instructive. The lesson was clear. Power can take lives in public and expect recognition or silence afterwards. Death was never the only goal. The purpose was for demonstration.
Public killings announced the hierarchy. It clarified who is subject to state protection and who is under it. The text is now a message delivered without objection. The rope is gone. The logic remains.
In the 1970s, Gil Scott-Heron warned that revolutions would not be televised.. He wasn’t talking about technology. He was talking about power. He understood that real change does not come as a spectacle. It cannot be consumed passively. It does not repeat on the loop. What America has done instead is reverse the warning. Acts of violence are televised. The murder will be broadcast on air. I can feel the pain. And seeing is mistaken for participating.
The memory of Martin Luther King Jr. must be cut off.
Today, the institutional term for public violence is “use of force.” “We have perceived a threat.” “Police-involved shooting.” “Internal review pending.”
Crowds were replaced by screens. The spectacle continues. Death is dissected, discussed, shared, monetized, and slowly normalized. Black suffering becomes satisfaction. Anger will be temporary. Memory becomes scrollable. This is what has changed and what hasn’t changed.
Martin Luther King Jr. was not a violent person. He was a disciplined practitioner of nonviolence in a violent nation. He believed that public moral restraint could expose the brutality of power. He believed that love stripped of sentimentality could destabilize injustice.
That’s why he was being watched. That’s why he was isolated. He was killed after opposing the Vietnam War and naming the United States as the world’s largest supplier of violence.
On January 6, 2021, the nation witnessed a different kind of violence unfold across the board. A white mob stormed the U.S. Capitol, assaulted police officers, threatened elected officials, and attempted to overturn a democratic election. I hesitated for hours to answer. The language was uncertain. Its meaning was discussed. This contrast was instructive.
The same states that responded to black protests with armored cars and mass arrests were also at pains to monitor and label attacks on their own positions of power as “insurrections.” “Riot.” “Protest failed.”
The definition has become distorted. Time was given. My understanding has deepened. America has learned once again how flexible its standards of violence can be.
The murder of George Floyd was a defining moment in American history. That’s why the promised calculations turned out to be very thin. The system only needed to absorb the shock. New training has been announced. A new phrase has been introduced. A monument, or rather a mural, was erected and people were able to paint on it. The deeper structure of permissions remained intact. Public lynchings begin to be shown on television. And America learned how to see.
If this Martin Luther King Jr. holiday is to have meaning beyond ritual, it must demand a rupture. It’s not a rhetorical break, but a structural break. Breaking away from the habit of continuing to create the same images, the same statements, and the same funerals.
If not, we’ll get together again. We march with signs. I would like to speak to you solemnly. I’ll keep scrolling. I will share it with you. And the violence will not be hidden, it will not be incidental, it will be fully visible, waiting for the next moment when America decides to monitor it again.
Dr. Imari K. Parris Jeffries, He is President and CEO of Embrace Boston, a national organization that promotes belonging as essential to a multiracial democracy.
