By A little more than a week before this country marks the 40th federal celebration of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. ‘s birthday, a 37-year-old woman was shot and killed by an ICE officer in Minneapolis. The Jan. 7 death of Renee Nicole Good — captured on a cellphone, disputed by federal officials, and mourned by a community still carrying the psychological scar of George Floyd’s death — has become a national fault line.
Federal authorities claim Good tried to run over officers, labeling her actions “domestic terrorism.” Minneapolis officials, including Democratic Mayor Jacob Frey have called that narrative “bullsh*t.” The FBI is investigating but Minnesota leaders say federal agencies are blocking local involvement. Meanwhile, the Minneapolis Star Tribune identified the ICE agent triggerman as Jonathan Ross. Massive protests have risen and schools in Minneapolis have shut down. All of this is happening not even a mile from where Floyd was murdered, and just days before the nation invokes King’s name in speeches, breakfasts, and service projects.
As is often the case when civilians die at the hands of law enforcement, there’s been a rush on one side to canonize Good as a martyr to the struggle against ICE and its alleged abuse toward citizens, immigrants-at-large and undocumented residents; while MAGA and the Trump administration insists she caused her own death through careless, less-than well-intentioned actions meant to thwart the lawful behavior of an armed governmental unit. Since it happened, the incident has been a lightning rod for rancorous debate and vilification.
Fewer but a growing number of people are learning about the death of Keith Porter Jr., a Black man shot to death by an off-duty ICE agent on Dec. 31. Residing in the same Northridge, CA apartment complex as Porter, the agent alleges the 43-year-old father of two pointed an AR 15-style rifle in his direction, but his family countered he was simply firing the weapon into the air during New Year’s Eve celebrations, not trying to harm anyone. They also say the officer overreacted and never properly identified himself as law enforcement. To date, an estimated 31 civilians have died in ICE custody in the past year, the highest number of losses in nearly two decades.
I don’t know whether Renee Good’s or Keith Porter’s deaths belong on the roster of fallen civil rights fighters, or whether they were simply decent people — a mother and wife; a father and hard worker who died unnecessarily, and violently. I do know that their killings — so close to our ritual celebration and acknowledgement of Dr. King’s life — are no accidents, but reminders that the distance between his moral vision and the spiritual condition of American life is widening, not closing. The struggle for justice and equity must continue.
Cowering from generations of progress
This year’s MLK Day arrives in a political climate that poses the greatest threat to King’s legacy since the holiday was created. The second Trump administration has already been marked by inhumane immigration enforcement, the rollback of DEI initiatives across the federal government as well as in philanthropy and the private sector, and symbolic actions that — according to reporting — include the removal of the MLK bust from the Oval Office and the removal of MLK Day and Juneteenth from the National Park Service’s free-entry days.
The Guardian’s 2025 year-in-review described the administration’s approach to race, diversity, and gender as “a coordinated dismantling,” while The New York Times reported that federal agencies have been instructed to eliminate diversity offices, DEI training, and civil-rights–focused hiring pipelines. The Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s analysis of the administration’s first six months documented a “systematic retreat” from civil-rights enforcement, voting-rights protections, and anti-discrimination oversight.
We are living in a moment when King’s name is invoked more than ever, yet his message is less understood. His moral vision has survived worse: COINTELPRO, segregationist governors, the Vietnam War, and the political sanitizing of his legacy. It can survive this era too — but only if we confront the forces trying to hollow it out.
In 1965, only about 45% of Americans viewed him positively, and by 1966, Gallup found 63% disapproved of him. Many white Americans saw him as a “rabble-rouser,” a disturber of the peace, a man moving too fast and demanding too much. But by 2011, King’s positive rating had soared to 94%, according to Pew researchers. The creation of MLK Day, the opening of the King Memorial on Washington D.C.’s National Mall, and the softening of his image into a symbol of colorblind unity — rather than a critic of American power — have drastically reshaped his public memory.
Today, Pew reports that 81% of Americans say King had a positive impact, but the racial divide remains stark:
- 58% of white Americans say the country has made significant progress toward King’s dream.
- Only 30% of Black Americans agree.
Gallup’s 2025 polling shows similar divides: only 24% of Black Americans say they are satisfied with how Black people are treated in society, compared with 45% of white Americans. On policing, 77% of Black respondents say Black people are treated less fairly than whites; only 54% of white respondents agree.
Admiration is high. Understanding is shallow, and the gap between the King Americans celebrate, and the King who lived grows wider each year.
Fictionalising MLK
Four days after King’s assassination, Michigan Rep. John Conyers introduced the first bill to make King’s birthday a federal holiday. It took 15 years, relentless lobbying by Coretta Scott King, and a cultural push led by Stevie Wonder’s now classic “Happy Birthday,” before Congress finally passed the bill in 1983. President Ronald Reagan grudgingly signed it after conservatives reframed King as a champion of colorblindness, rather than a critic of systemic racism, capitalism, and militarism. Some states paired MLK Day with Confederate holidays. Arizona rejected it twice, and Georgia scheduled Confederate memorials on the same day.
From the beginning, the holiday was a battleground over memory: Which King would America honour — the dreamer, or the disrupter?
Today, King’s legacy is being stretched, sanitised, and weaponized. Far-right commentators invoke “content of their character” to attack affirmative action, DEI, and anti-racism education. King’s radical critiques of poverty, policing, and militarism are erased. Figures like JD Vance, Nick Fuentes, and, before his death, Charlie Kirk, invoke King only to diminish him — cynically, or with outright hostility. Essentially, they flout his legacy and words to use as a cudgel to beat back the very movements he inspired.
Throughout both his first and second terms, Donald Trump has invoked King in ways that reshape King’s legacy to fit contemporary political narratives, including:
- Suggesting his rally crowds surpassed the 1963 March on Washington.
- Comparing his own legal troubles to King’s arrests.
- Using King’s language to oppose DEI and civil-rights protections during his second Presidential inauguration in 2025, which fell on the King federal holiday.
- Signing executive orders on inauguration day that reversed policies designed to support minority communities.
Donald Trump has blatantly taken steps that diminish King’s visibility in federal spaces — including relocating the MLK bust and removing MLK Day from NPS free-entry days. The second Trump administration has intensified policies that conflict with King’s core principles. Pew’s 2025 report on race and policing shows that five years after George Floyd’s murder, Black Americans overwhelmingly believe the country has moved backward on racial equality. King’s vision of nonviolence, economic justice, and shared humanity stands in stark contrast to these developments.
The killings of Renee Good and Keith Porter Jr. are tragic reminders that the struggle for universal civil rights which Martin Luther King Jr. led is not history — it is now. Their deaths expose the ongoing dangers faced by marginalized communities, the expanding reach of state violence, and the moral urgency of his call for nonviolence and justice. Based on the footage we’ve seen of Good’s fateful encounter with ICE officers in Minneapolis, I doubt she consciously sacrificed her life to a higher cause, or even suspected the words she spoke to the ICE officer who ended up killing her moments later would be her final ones: “That’s fine dude, I’m not mad at you.” Thousands, perhaps more, are increasingly chanting, “Say her name!” as we celebrate Dr. King and reflect how much farther America has gone with its own reckoning. Below the radar of awareness for most American onlookers and commentators, the investigation into the death of Keith Porter Jr., led by the LAPD, is ongoing.
A Risk and a reckoning
On December 10, 1964, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. became the first Black American ever to receive a Nobel Prize in Oslo, Norway when he accepted the prize for peace, a distinction our current President so desperately seeks and would not credibly receive in normal circumstances.
Invoking the collective spirit of the then 22 million “Negroes” on whose behalf he accepted the award, Dr. King observed that:
“…When our days become dreary with low-hovering clouds and our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, we will know that we are living in the creative turmoil of a genuine civilization struggling to be born…” and in his final words he took the Nobel “in the spirit of a curator of some precious heirloom … in whose eyes the beauty of genuine brotherhood and peace is more precious than diamonds or silver or gold.”
Seemingly haphazardly and inelegantly, the United States is involved in more than a dozen conflicts around the world — most recently and controversially in Venezuela — under the pretense of bolstering peace, regional stability, and national security — though critical resources including oil and natural minerals inevitably are revealed as catalytic motivations. Building on the tenor and tone of the first administration, Donald Trump and his MAGA supporters are unapologetically turning the country against itself, without pause.
Those of who have been historically disenfranchised, “alienated,” and compelled to believe the lies and misinformation about who they are and how they belong in this country, must force themselves and America to look in the mirror and truly reckon with where the national journey has taken us. Martin Luther King Jr. and the countless warriors for equity and justice who preceded and immediately followed him were willing to do that unapologetically, through non-violence, through grace, through compassion and love. And so must we. Jimmie Briggs is a Baltimore-based writer and lecturer. His 2005 book “Innocents Lost: When Child Soldiers Go to War” took readers into frontline war zones and the everyday lives of child combatants in Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Colombia, Uganda, and Rwanda. His next will explore manhood and masculinity in the 21st Century . (The Amsterdam News)
