MLK Day as a Saving Grace: Bernice King on Politics, Justice, and Hope
Against a backdrop of political division and upheaval, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s daughter says the holiday honoring her father’s legacy arrives as “somewhat of a saving grace” this year.
“I say that because it inserts a sense of sanity and morality into our very troubling climate right now,” the Rev. Bernice King said in an interview with The Associated Press. “With everything going on, the one thing that I think Dr. King reminds people of is hope and the ability to challenge injustice and inhumanity.”
The holiday comes as President Donald Trump is about to mark the first anniversary of his second term in office. The “three evils” — poverty, racism and militarism — that the civil rights leader identified in a 1967 speech as threats to a democratic society “are very present and manifesting through a lot of what’s happening” under Trump’s leadership, Bernice King said.
King, the CEO of the King Center in Atlanta, pointed to efforts to roll back diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives; directives to scrub key parts of history from government websites and remove what officials call “improper ideology” from Smithsonian museums; and immigration enforcement operations in multiple cities that have turned violent and resulted in the separation of families.
“Everything President Trump does is in the best interest of the American people,” White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said in an email. “That includes rolling back harmful DEI agendas, deporting dangerous criminal illegal aliens from American communities, or ensuring we are being honest about our country’s great history.”
Maya Wiley, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, one of the nation’s oldest and largest civil rights coalitions, said King’s words “ring more true today.”
“We’re at a period in our history where we literally have a regime actively working to erase the Civil Rights movement,” Wiley said. “This has been an administration dismantling intentionally and with ideological fervor every advancement we have made since the Civil War.”
Wiley also recalled that King warned the prospect of war abroad undermines the beloved community globally and diverts resources from caring for people at home. Trump’s administration has engaged in military strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats and captured Venezuela’s president in a surprise raid earlier this month.
Bernice King said she is unsure what her father would make of the United States today, nearly six decades after his assassination.
“He’s not here. It’s a different world,” she said. “But what I can say is his teachings transcend time and he taught us, I think, the way to address injustice through his nonviolent philosophy and methodology.”
Nonviolence, she added, should be embraced not only by protesters but also by immigration agents and other law enforcement officers. The King Center previously developed a curriculum that it now plans to redevelop to help officers carry out their duties while still respecting people’s humanity.
Even amid what she described as a “troubling climate,” Bernice King said the nation has made undeniable progress. The civil rights movement her parents helped lead brought more people with compassion and sensitivity into mainstream politics, she said. Despite efforts to scrap DEI initiatives and deport people from around the world, “the inevitability is we’re so far into our diversity you can’t put that back in a box.”
To honor her father’s legacy this year, King urged people to look inward.
“I think we spend a lot of time looking at everybody else and what everybody else is not doing or doing, and we’re looking out the window at all the problems of the world and talking about how bad they are and we don’t spend a lot of time on ourselves personally,” she said.
She encouraged participation in service projects on the holiday because they foster connection and help people better understand one another, but said the day should also serve as a point of reflection for the year ahead.
“I think we have the opportunity to use this as a measuring point from year to year in terms of what we’re doing to move our society in a more just, humane, equitable and peaceful way,” King said.
