Martin Luther King Jr has been paraphrased for the sake of space on his memorial statue.
Carved on the north face of the thirty-foot-tall granite statue, the memorial reads “I was a drum major for justice, peace and righteousness.”
But that’s not exactly what the great man said…
What he really said was:
If you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter.
And with the paraphrasing, critics like Maya Angelou are saying it makes him sound like an “arrogant twit.”
She passionately continues:
The quote makes Dr. Martin Luther King look like an arrogant twit. He was anything but that. He was far too profound a man for that four-letter word to apply. He had no arrogance at all. He had a humility that comes from deep inside. The ‘if’ clause that is left out is salient. Leaving it out changes the meaning completely. [It] minimizes the man. It makes him seem less than the humanitarian he was. It makes him seem an egotist. He would never have said that of himself. He said ‘you’ might say it.
Although it is less than he deserves, we doubt the people doing it did it intentionally to hurt his memory.
They probably weren’t thinking with harm, but they should have been thinking with more consideration.
He was a great public figure who stood for an entire movement in history.
What do U think?
[Image via AP Images.]
-
Categories
