Today, on this remembrance of the life of Martin Luther King, Jr., what strikes me, 54 years after King’s assassination, is not the legacy of the work that King completed before his death, but the the loss of all that King could have accomplished over the last 54 years. There were brilliant leaders who were able to step up after King’s death and continue the work, but they continued the work in their own way, based on their vision, based on their history, based on their lived experience. They were not Martin Luther King, Jr., and therefore they could not continue his work in his way. The best they could do for America was to continue his work in their way.

Often I look at the modern ascendancy of the right, which began with Senator Joseph McCarthy in 1950. But McCarthy was weak and he had to move carefully because in the 1950s there was push back to McCarthy’s radicalism. There was resistance to his assertion that there were communists in all aspects of American society, including Hollywood, the media, and inside the Federal Government itself. But McCarthyism was strong, and ripples of McCarthyism were certainly felt during the Trump Presidency, and even now, as our 2023 McCarthy, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, begins to “investigate the investigators” an eerie call back to 1950 McCarthy’s the “enemy within.” 2023 McCarthy promises to root out the “deep state,” which is synonymous with radical left wing, i.e. Socialist or Communist, infiltration in all aspects of the Federal Government.

The 1960s was the American left’s refusal to step backwards in time. It was the left wing youth refusing to be hopeless, refusing to see everyone around themselves as an “enemy within.” But then in a series of targeted assassinations the hope of the 60s ended. I think it is difficult for people who did not live through it to understand how completely the 1960s were ripped away from us. I was born in 1962, so I was just 6 years old when King was assassinated. My sister, myself, along with our mother, had flown from Cleveland to Philadelphia. The death of King was announced while we were in the air. By the time we landed in Philadelphia parts of the city were in flames. Police were blocking the entrances to the airport and we were told it would not be safe for us to leave the airport. We slept that night in the Philadelphia airport.

John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. Malcolm X was assassinated in 1965. Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated in April of 1968. Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in June of 1968. And while it happened a little more than 12 years later, John Lennon was assassinated in 1980. No political movement before or since has ever suffered the loss, so quickly, of so many critical leaders. It was a loss that destroyed the left in this country, a loss that the left has yet to recover from.

And the power vacuum was filled by the right. This set up American Democracy for Nixon, Regan, Bush, Bush, and Trump. And the three Democratic administrations spent all of their time running away from radical idealism. Carter, the ultimate bureaucrat, Clinton the “I smoked but did not inhale” candidate, and Obama. Each so fearful of being labeled a radical, a Socialist, a Communist, that they kept the radical left wing branch of their party isolated and powerless. All the time while the radical right gained even more strength.

So what I am reflecting on, on this Martin Luther King day, is that the leaders who came after King; the leaders who came after JFK; the leaders who came after Malcolm; the leaders who came after Bobby Kennedy; were all brilliant and gifted leaders, but, they could not carry on the political movements in the same way that the leaders they replaced would have, because these new leaders were their own people, with their own weaknesses and their own compromises.

Every New Years Eve after the ball drops in Times Square some current singer takes the stage to sing John Lennon’s “Imagine.” This always brings a tear to my eyes. But it is not because the song is timeless, or beautiful, of prophetic. The song is all of these things. But my eyes tear up because the person signing the song is singing it in their way. It is coming from their life experiences. It is a different song!

And that is my experience since the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., it is that the song that has continued is fundamentally a different song.