By: Dr. Clemmie L. Harris, Director of Africana Studies and Assc. Professor of History, Utica University. 
What causes so many to only see the side of MLK that focuses on a single day of service? Moreover, how does a single day resolve systemic suffering rooted in unresolved histories of slavery and Jim Crow?
Service to humanity was a means King used-not the end King sought.
I focused on these questions yesterday as I attended two MLK events, and, later, looked at countless posts within my Facebook feed.
During comments at the Rome NAACP MLK breakfast, I sought to place King within historical context as a disruptive, unapologetic, and prophetic force of change.
When seen through the lens of civil rights history today how then do we account for the staggering effects of structural poverty in Oneida County, where I work, and Onondaga County, where I live, where in both counties poverty is well above the national average. And in the case of Onondaga, the highest racialized childhood poverty rate in the nation.
Barbarism within New York State’s criminal justice system another example. The fatal brutal beating of Robert Brooks should produce cries for an investigation led by a special prosecutor on one hand and a statewide investigation of systemic abuse on the other hand. Thus far silence is the only deafening sound.
In Syracuse, a little Black girl, 11 years old, placed in handcuffs, berated, and terrorized by the Onondaga County Sheriff’s Department for a crime she didn’t commit. The persistent and unconscionable justification of the deputies’ actions from the Onondaga County Sheriff should give us pause to see this for what it is-anti-Black racism and the criminalization of Black children.
As a former member of the Erie County Sheriff Department and former criminal investigator with the New York State Police, where in the latter capacity I served as a instructor in the SP Academy, the actions of the Onondaga County Sheriff’s Department to place a child in handcuffs, especially given the absence of immenent threat from violent behavior, are wholly unjustifiable.
At the federal level, a tsunami of illiberalism is rapidly eroding civil rights protections, protections meant for all, all of which stem from the results of hard fought gains from Black led interracial and intergenerational activism that proceeded King’s birth, and that which occurred during his time.
Here, the eradication of Affirmative Action by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2023, the culmination of an effort initiated by conservatives shortly after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed, has now resulted in the elimination of D.E.I. across the federal government. I warned of this attack as well as the present assault against immigration and more during multiple Project 2025 discussions in the 21st and 22nd Congressional Districts last fall.
To not see MLK as a systemic disrupter is a-historical. It is the liberal equivalent to the efforts of hard right conservatives who seek to use King’s words about colorblindness as a weapon to roll back the clock.
Onward!
