It is always an awkward moment, finding yourself emerging from the fugitive hideouts of Black anticolonial thought just to come upon the scene of the annual graverobbing of Dr Martin Luther King Jr.Awkward not chiefly because it is a macabre scene: stealing from a murdered man’s messages and memory whatever can advance the political system he was killed for opposing. But because, as part of that segment of the Black population who is not smiling – the unfriendly “Black folk” birthed of the intellectual tradition of slave revolts, marronage and anticolonialism – you get the sense that you are trespassing.The digging up of King’s meaning, the tug-of-war battle over who has the right to say what he meant, is really none of the Black anticolonialists’ business.
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