Martin Luther King’s I Have a  Dream Speech has rightfully taken on mythic status in American history.  In the process of becoming mythic, it has been stripped of much of its depth and content.  Most people will know one or two lines, and I’d wager most Americans can conjure in their heads echoes of King’s voice as as he intoned “I have a dream . . .”  The full text can be found here.  It’s not accidental that so many of the people interviewed over the weekend at Whitestock talked about the myth of King, the myth of American unity.  The entire event is a prime example of the ways in which some people experience myth.

As human creatures we experience the mythic – it is part of how we live and relate to one another.  We hear and trade stories of the past which both shape and express our understanding of the world.  As for example, I think every school child in America has heard the story about George Washington and the cherry tree.  It’s part of our American myhthos.  These myths serve mutliple purposes and are believed partly because they are consonant with who how we perceive their subjects but they also serve as moral instruction for us – want to be president you must be great from birth, you must be honest, humble . . . blah, blah blah.  Not for nothing, this tendency actually creates problems – if the leaders of the past were such great men, then our leaders today cannot possibly measure up.

In the 1960s, the US produced three mythic leaders – John F. Kennedy, his brother Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr.  All three men were originally seen as liberal icons but they have moved into mainstream American mythology, they belong to all of us.  JFK and RFK seem to embody the same myth – the great leader cut down before his time of greatness, the myth of great hopes dashed.  For MLK the myth is different – his assassination seems to not figure much into the myth around him, rather he is remembered for the phrase “I have a dream” and a generalized perception that he wanted to unite all Americans.  Generally when we think of these figures, we think of them as “good guys.”  Conservatives have dedicated a huge amount of time and effort to create a similar mythology around Ronald Reagan.  They have been partly successful – among conservatives Reagan is regarded as one of the greatest presidents ever; the mainstream has yet to agree to that consensus (although Reagan is regarded generally positively); actual historians are less sanguine.  It’s probably ancillary but I think it’s interesting that Reagan’s greatness arises from the perception of his foreign policy successes while the Democratic leaders are regarded positively for their domestic policies. Read the rest of this entry »