The American King
The American King Steve Schmidt Jan 18 Photo credit: AFRO File Photo Martin Luther King Jr. The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. MLK. We celebrate his titanic life tomorrow. We remember what he did, what he stood for, and for what he was laid down in a casket at age 39 with a wife and four young children. He is world famous and broadly revered, but he was reviled by most Americans while he lived. That King was smeared as a “communist, a deviant, an agitator and a traitor” during his lifetime makes clear the “high court of history” renders its verdict far outside the lines of popular opinion and current events. Like King, Abraham Lincoln faced similar scorn in his time. Here was President Harding at the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial in 1923: No leader was ever more unsparingly criticized or more bitterly assailed. He was lashed by angry tongues and ridiculed in press and speech until he drank from as bitter a cup as was ever put to human lips, but hi...