Only Obama has come close to King’s popularity. He has now leapfrogged virtually every other contender to be viewed as the greatest black American. King made a comeback in death from the bitter defeats near the end of his life, as the challenge of black militants made him seem increasingly out of touch. His outsized legend eclipsed the life he lived and overcame his enemies’ efforts to erase him from memory. If we fail to understand the difference between the two, we will never appreciate the arc of their social aspiration - or fairly measure King and Obama’s achievements.įorty-five years after he was cut down by an assassin’s bullet, King has become a global icon rivaled by few Americans. When President Barack Obama delivers a speech at the Lincoln Memorial Wednesday, on the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, he will inevitably be compared to Martin Luther King Jr., whose oration that day framed the moral purpose of the civil rights movement.īut there are huge differences between the prophetic icon and the political prodigy that reveal the competing and, at times, conflicting demands of the vocations they embraced.
