The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was born on January 15, 1929. His birthday became an official federal holiday in 1983 and predictably the understanding of the significance of his work is worse due to the designation of this supposed honor.

King’s assassination on April 4, 1968, was one of the most public attacks on the liberation movement. His death was followed by decades-long imprisonment of other liberation fighters, the mass incarceration system, and the creation of a buffer class for the purposes of cooptation. All of these issues should be the subject of remembrance and discussion instead of the maudlin exercises that we are subjected to every January.

It is true that Ronald Reagan signed the federal holiday law under duress, which gave the holiday the appearance of importance. We now sing a Stevie Wonder happy birthday song which came out of the holiday advocacy effort. But making King’s birthday official ended its important role as a people’s holiday. It is now a means for cynical individuals and institutions to pimp off of his memory while acting against all that he stood for.

It can be argued that the most important act of King’s career took place one year to the day before he was assassinated. On April 4, 1967 he publicly broke with President Lyndon Johnson and condemned the........

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