I don’t remember Martin Luther King Jr. being the paragon of Black leadership in my home growing up. I did not go to church regularly or think deeply about Christianity, where King received a decent portion of his appreciation.
My family’s conversations instead mirrored those of the Black Panther Party. We talked more about Malcolm X, Langston Hughes and the Harlem Renaissance than about the Civil Rights Movement and King. It wasn’t until my teenage years, when my father became a Christian in a Missionary Baptist church, that peace, love, and consideration for neighbors became part of our household lexicon. I was a revolutionary-minded young man with a Swahili name, now asked to love the descendants of colonizers, slaveholders, and cultural appropriators.
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