Tomorrow is Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday remembered. We remember that Dr. King displayed tremendous courage in opposition to threats of bodily injury, even in opposition, ultimately, to threats of death.
Dr. King was opposed by a very large part of the population wherever he worked. That was in part by his choice, perhaps, doing his work where it was needed the most. It was also largely caused by reality. The reality is that many people reacted to his work by opposing it with hatred. He was not simply opposed by one politician or any other single person.
Dr. King was a fearless and insightful person, and a great leader, but he was only one among many in a larger cause. He was helped by, and he helped, many other people work toward replacing hatred with justice. One of the people who helped him, and one of the people he in turn helped in this effort, was the President of the United States.
That is who Dr. King was, and is.
Frederick Douglass was brave, too. He volunteered to fight the moment the Civil War erupted. Rejected from military service because of his age, he convinced his two sons to enlist. At least one of them served with distinction in the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, a regiment whose glory, much closer to the truth, was displayed on a big screen.
In reality, Douglass's personal history was even more salacious than the altered Douglass recently fictionalized for some reason. Yet Douglass remains a great person in spite of what some might call his sins.
Reality is often distorted in the name of fiction. In the case of Frederick Douglass, a recently popular novel advances the story of a young boy who is called an onion. The onion’s tale did not depend on Douglass at all, so it was never necessary to change Frederick Douglass in fiction beyond what he was in life.
Just as it was never necessary to change Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in fiction beyond what he was in life.
Bias involving both people intrudes on reality however. Both did good things in life. Both have been “fictionalized” into distortions. In both cases, the genre of “historical fiction” became too difficult a medium to represent real life as it is.
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