January 20, 2025, is already shaping up to be a memorable MLK Day. Why? In the irony of ironies, this country will inaugurate perhaps the most unjust person to ever hold the office of President on the day that is dedicated to honoring Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., our Drum Major for Justice.
Donald Trump is the live example of every quality that you would associate with MLK’s life and legacy, including courage, sincerity, righteousness-seeking, spiritual grounding, humanity-serving, etc.
However, on Martin Luther King Day in 2025, the two characters and everything they represent will be united for the benefit of everyone on the planet.
We Black people, in my opinion, truly give the world something to look at. We should at least shout a motivating message to ourselves.
And what’s that message? Time for the Nation! In other words, Black people are totally dedicated to creating and achieving for themselves.
MLK Day 2025 must be more Malcolm X than Martin Luther King in order to achieve that.
DIFFERENT APPROACHES
What am I saying? King is mistakenly categorized as someone who advocated for integration, which included coexisting and attending schools with white people. MLK felt that Black people should have access to all of the rights, privileges, and protections that come with being a citizen of this country, according to a more correct interpretation of his cause. Integration isn’t necessarily that.
Indeed, MLK expressed his concern that he might have led his people into a burning home. However, he was a spokesperson for the equal access campaign. For a period. White people wanted to live close to Black people, while Black people didn’t want to live next door to white people. All we needed was equitable access, and MLK urged the government’s machinery to grant its less fortunate citizens that access.
Like MLK, Malcolm X wished for Black people to have access to all of the following: high-quality education, safety from violence, and the ability to pursue happiness and life to the fullest. Malcolm, in contrast to MLK, did not believe that Black people would be granted those purported constitutional rights through an institutional power structure that was led and controlled by white people.
Malcolm urged Black people to create those institutions, opportunities, and structures for themselves instead. Black people should build and do for themselves, according to Brother Malcolm’s call for self-determination.
TRUMP INAUGURATION
Trump boasted that he had 350 executive orders prepared and ready to be issued on the first day of his inauguration, just months before it actually happened. That’s 350 orders inspired by Project 2025 and powered by MAGA that will take effect right away without requiring approval from Congress.
He is downplaying his Day 1 plans in public.
However, his cabinet picks, campaign rhetoric, and vows of vengeance and payback suggest that those executive orders cover much more ground than just energy and economic concerns.
To paraphrase one of MLK’s favorite verses, Trump is prepared to let injustice to cascade down like water and white violence and retaliation to flow like a powerful stream on MLK Day 2025. On that day, the Second Reconstruction—a time when Black people’s rights, expectations, earnings, and opportunities increased—will formally come to an end. The law protects everyone.
On MLK Day 2025, as soon as Trump s inauguration festivities are done, he ll begin officially ending all legal protections and programs that protected Blackfolk from pre-1960s Jim Crow-level injustices.
It will get unsightly.
DIFFERENT STRATEGIES
For a number of reasons, MLK used marches and demonstrations in the past as part of his plan to grant Black people equal access. First, he deployed those tactics to make white America look bad on the international stage when countries across the globe were trying to figure out if they were going to roll with the U.S. or Russia during that time period s Cold War (look it up). MLK thought that by tarnishing America’s reputation abroad, policymakers would be compelled to amend laws to reflect Black Lives Matter.
Second, MLK thought that those demonstrations and marches could generate enough white remorse and white humanity to spur legislative changes that would grant equal rights to Black people.
Marching on Washington in 2025 and asking the three branches of the federal government all MAGA-controlled to come to our rescue would be as foolish as begging a serial abuser to stop abusing. White humanity and white guilt are nonexistent. This past presidential election showed all that exists in America now is white anger, hostility and grievance. They have been duped into believing that everything bad happening to them (job losses, factory shutdowns, opioid addiction, etc.) is because we (Blackfolk) have stolen their America. They also want us to cover the cost of their suffering.
So, MLK s marching and protesting strategy will only set us up to feel the state-sanctioned retribution and revenge Trump and MAGA world have been waiting to unleash.
Brother Malcolm called for a different strategy, one we should heed today. He called for us to build our own everything. Successfully doing so would give us all the institutional support we need to live our lives. No protesting required. The only marching we need to do is toward our own communities to build whatever needs building.
MALCOLM, MARTIN TEAM-UP
Malcolm, like Marcus Garvey before him, recognized the danger of Black people settling for being allowed into other folk s institutions. Because if they can one day decide to let us in, on another day, they can decide to keep us out. But if we own and control our own, that ceases to be an issue.
Malcolm recognized the critical importance of Black people doing our own thing. But come to think of it, so did MLK. In fact, during those last three years of his life (1965 1968), MLK often sounded more like Malcolm than Malcolm.
MLK started declaring Black is beautiful, calling Black people to bank Black and buy Black. MLK even issued a call for us to redistribute the pain of a racist system by withholding our dollars from white businesses that neither hired Black people nor honored our humanity.
In reality, MLK Day 2025 can be like Malcolm and Martin because they each charged us to move toward self-determination, nation-building, and creating our own economies and networks (for food, financing, clothing, housing, legal services, etc.).
Let s get to work on this now, so come Jan. 20, 2025, as MAGA world thinks they re dancing on our grave, we re resurrecting the power in us that built the world s first civilizations. There s no reason why we can t do it again.
