Kansas City overwhelmingly votes to remove Martin Luther King's name from historic st

[GMDino]

(11-06-2019, 10:14 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: They renamed a street here to MLKJ Blvd a few years back (which  was against because I think it is stupid to name things in a city for someone that never even set foot in the place). At the time, an older gentleman had recently moved to the area to be near his son, a professor of music at the university. His name was Fred Gibson and he was a classmate of King's in seminary and worked with him throughout the rest of his life, marching alongside him. He and I got to know each other as we lived in the same building and went to church together. It wasn't long before his passing in 2015 that we were chatting about the renaming that had occurred and he said "you know, one thing that no one ever talks about whenever things are named after MLK is that he would have hated it. He would've hated having things named after him because it puts the focus on him and that is never where he wanted it to be."

We had a lot of interesting conversations about his work with King and his time trying to carry on the legacy and the mission King left him with after his passing.

I think we get caught up in these things as "memorials" for what the person "represented" and are willing to overlook that the person was hum and flawed.  I don't mind naming a road after MLK anymore than naming one after Reagan.  If the people who live there want it and it's done "the right way".  

I get that King may not have wanted it...I don't know that that matters as much as promoting a legacy of the ideals he stood for.  Leaders have to take the heat of the focus being on them because they are the leaders.  Nature of the beast stuff.  But it makes for interesting debate on whether we should do these things or not.