Much was made last week of a feud within the family of Martin Luther King Jr. Though the seamlessly right-wing mainstream media would love to besmirch Dr. King's legacy — by harping on the bickering of his sons and widow in Atlanta — they will never wipe out what he did for us, every single one of us.
I grew up in Atlanta and worked as a bus boy at a steak house in the city. Most of the staff was black, and those who weren't were wannabe hippies like me. The head cook was a squat but rock-hard former boxer who took a shining to me because of my bottomless well of idealism (read: naivete). He ended every political discussion with me by saying, "You just uh white crackuh," then picking me up over his head and pretending to put me in the oven with the baked potatoes. I crossed the line with him one day when I — as only a self-righteous, ill-informed teen can — insisted that Dr. King hadn't been militant enough, that he'd turned his back on the Black Panthers, blah blah blah. This was two years after his murder, the wounds still fresh in the city's black community. Rather than pick me up and put me in the oven, the cook turned his head away. I could see, to my shock and dismay, that his eyes were filled with tears. I cursed myself but I have never doubted Dr. King´s legacy from that moment.
Dr. King was many things, of course, but, before he was the leader of the civil rights movement, he was a father and husband. What people may forget is that these children, at a formative time in their lives, lost their father to a racist sniper. As dysfunctional as the King family has apparently become, it's important to remind yourself of that fact before you guffaw at their misery.
This situation reminded me of Marcus Aurelius (121-180), the moral philosopher and Roman emperor whose "Meditations" is still capable of changing lives and offering solace. Few realize that Marcus wrote the "Meditations" for his son, the aptly named Commodus, a wastrel and scoundrel every bit as unhinged as Nero. He hoped the words of wisdom he provided in these writings would be taken to heart by his heir.
But Commodus was more like our own American emperor. His personal habits (and eventual rule) was as corrupt as Marcus' was incorruptible. Commodus drank, gambled, spent lavishly, inflicted wanton cruelty on cripples and "women devotees of Isis," and kept a harem of 300 women and 300 boys. Fathers and sons. Generations passing into generations, a tale as old as Abraham. All a parent can do is hope that benevolence will be passed on to their children and that greed will not. The saddest thing is that there's no guarantee of this coming to pass.
