As a child of the post-civil rights era, for me Martin Luther King Jr. has always been a dead man still speaking, already gone but eerily present. Perhaps this sense of haunting presence is attributable to the fact that my first memory of him involves seeing his picture on a hand fan distributed at church. The location of this fan in the house of worship and its imagery, which included not only a picture of the assassinated Martin King himself but also one of his martyred mother, Alberta Williams King, made him an icon, a symbol of religious significance.
As I grew older, I became increasingly aware that the man on the fan had been a preacher and orator, and that what he was saying bore witness to a hope and vision for America that still resonates.
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