This commentary is by Kevin Ellis, a communications consultant based in Montpelier.
The TV advertisement was for the Dodge Ram truck and it aired during the 2018 Super Bowl. It featured a Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. speech on public service and how to make your mark on the world while intercutting glamor shots of the military and a truck barreling through mud.
It was jarring then and it still shocks today — Dr. King, a pitchman for capitalism.
It is the ultimate irony, and disrespect to Dr. King, that the civil rights leader, gunned down in Memphis by a white supremacist, would be used as a vehicle for commerce over conscience.
The ad marked the ultimate power of the United States economy — that somehow, some way, all things beautiful, great or even slightly moral, eventually become a tool for profit.
Bob Dylan sold his songs to Sony. Matt Damon and Tom Brady hawk crypto. Former House Speaker Paul Ryan is a member of the board for Fox News.
Dr. King, without asking his consent, has been subjugated to this very same whitewashing. In our comfort and wealth, we see King as a figure of unity. He was the acceptable black man, especially next to Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael and the more militant members of the civil rights movement.
Malcolm X told his followers to fight back if attacked. Carmichael urged the violent overthrow of the entire capitalist system and championed “Black Power.’’ These men were easy and simple targets for an American media — not to mention the FBI — focused on growing the suburban, white-dominant, post-World War II middle class.
These outspoken black men threatened that ideal and for that they were vilified. Next to them, Dr. King became palatable, the guy you could invite to dinner. The guy who wouldn’t ruffle feathers.
The King we celebrate today is smooth and acceptable. He is the negotiator of political compromise with the Kennedys, the marcher for voting rights, the Nobel laureate, and now, a spokesman for Dodge Ram.
But that portrait of Dr. King fails his memory, American history and our complicity in his assassination.
Because Dr. King — in life — was different.
He was far from the gentle, Gandhian preacher of nonviolent protest we teach in school and celebrate on his birthday. King was a radical. And over the years we have lost sight of his radicalness.
Here’s what we forget if we don’t read the history.
Before 1967, King was cool to white liberals — as long as he stayed in his lane, as long as he stuck to civil rights. But then he turned his attention toward economic justice, a path that led him far beyond the civil rights movement.
He realized that it’s not enough to register black people to vote; it’s not enough to sleep in a hotel or sit in a restaurant. He wanted more. So he turned against what he called the three evils in American society: unfettered capitalism, a runaway military, and racism.
On economics, Dr. King favored a minimum basic income for all Americans and said so in 1967:
“It seems to me that the civil rights movement must now begin to organize for the guaranteed annual income. … (T)his is something which I believe will go a long, long way toward dealing with the Negro’s economic problem and the economic problem with many other poor people confronting our nation.’’
On militarism, he turned against the war in Vietnam and against President Lyndon Johnson. This was a betrayal to Johnson, who had pushed so hard for civil rights on housing, voting and discrimination. “I consider war an evil. I must cry out when I see war escalated at any point.”
And he supported reparations to pay Black people back for the evil of slavery. “It is like keeping a person in prison for 30 years and discovering that the person is not guilty of the crime for which he was convicted. And … you don’t give him any money to buy any any clothes.’’
Dr. King realized the problem, which we are still fighting about today, is that rich people had all the money. When he turned against the central tenets of capitalism and white patriarchy, white America got mad. They told King to shut up and stick to civil rights. Much like Fox News hosts telling LeBron James to “shut up and dribble.’’
In April 1968, King traveled to Memphis to support sanitation workers who were striking for better pay and benefits. “We have an opportunity to make America a better nation,’’ he said.
Later that night, this man, this radical, was shot dead at 38. What he called the “sickness’’ of white America killed him and so many others. And that disease continues today, unleashed by the unfettered capitalism and racism that are the hallmarks of a system designed to benefit white people.
It’s no accident that Bobby Kennedy was killed two months later. King and Kennedy spent their careers sticking to their lane. But in 1967, after years of seeing poverty and war up close, they went all in, risked it all to tell the truth of what was happening in the country. And that is radical.
One of the big questions of my generation is: “If they had lived, what would have happened?”
It’s hard to predict what would have happened. But I like to think Dr. King would still be at it, marching, pushing, making us uncomfortable, calling us out and not telling us to buy trucks on Super Bowl Sunday. We have no choice but to think that, to hope for it. The alternative is too depressing.