“Judge their character and not the color of their skin” was a lesson repeated often throughout my school years. Each January, teachers celebrated Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as the man who single-handedly ended racism and secured equality for all through peaceful protest. Displayed in the room was numerous black-and-white photos of people walking arm-in-arm with him, portrayed as a noble leader who resolved America’s racial tensions with a single speech. The message drilled into us was that racism ended with the March on Washington and that “I don’t see color” was evidence of a post-racial society which provided a false narrative, but was a statement of assurance to white Americans that they were no longer complicit in racism.

What was missing from these lessons was everything that gave rise to the Civil Rights Movement in the first place. There was no mention of the failures of Reconstruction, the broken promises to Black Americans, or the terror of lynching that Ida B. Wells so courageously documented. No teacher explained the immense discipline required to remain nonviolent in the face of inhumane brutality. The expansive power of white supremacy, its reach, its endurance, its daily impact, and how it shifts over time never appeared in my social studies textbooks.

Color-blind statements were woven throughout my education. While I was taught that Dr. King held a special place in American history, I was never given the full picture. Every teacher I had revered him, but I did not truly grasp his magnitude until adulthood, when I began to study his life and legacy for myself.

In my adult years, I entered a period of unlearning or a deconstruction of nearly everything I had been taught about American history. I began to recognize how curricula, textbooks, and teachers uneducated in honest history had offered only fragments of the truth. As I read, researched, and explored on my own, I realized how much I had never been taught: the breadth of the movement, the strategic brilliance behind its campaigns, and the many people, beyond Dr. King, whose courage and sacrifice sustained it.

A transformative experience in my deconstruction of history was visiting the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis. Within the tour, there is a walkway through Dr. King’s room at the Lorraine Motel, preserved exactly as it was on the day he was assassinated. The cigarette ashes in the tray, the rumpled sheets, the stillness of a life abruptly interrupted – as if the door of time was closed to this room. These small details brought a human dimension to Dr. King that I had never felt from school lessons. I had learned facts about him, but not the emotional burden, mental exhaustion, and constant danger he lived with. Despite the weight he carried, he continued to call out injustice daily. He understood his role, and he did not shy away.

As a teacher, I am responsible for the learning of hundreds of students. I reflected deeply on how Dr. King had been taught to me including the information that I did not learn. As I stepped in to the role of building principal, I required educators in my building to use color photos of the Civil Rights Movement, particularly of Dr. King, so that students would see the people involved in the movement as recent history and real, not as something distant and ancient simply because the photos were black and white. Propaganda can enter a classroom subtly, even through images, and students need to understand that the Civil Rights era did not happen that long ago. There is an immediacy and humanity of Dr. King that can be lost in black and white photos coupled with passage of time.

Today, Dr. King’s narrative is often distorted by those who twist his words for political gain. As we approach the holiday that bears his name, one of the most powerful acts to take is to read his own words directly. It is imperative to move beyond sound bites, incomplete curriculum, and selective storytelling. Reading a Letter from Birmingham Jail, in Dr. King’s own words. His letter is perhaps one of the most impactful letters of the 20^th Century. His righteous anger calls out leaders who ask him to “wait for equal rights” and provides an education on 1960’s United States society that felt that living in an unjust society was fine for someone else. You hear the frustration and anger with United States leaders in the letter and the call to action for justice for all.

The simple act of reading his work has fundamentally reshaped my thinking. Each reading allows me the first-hand knowledge of Dr. King in full color. This allows me to cultivate the thinking growing in my mind to ensure that any current political sound bites that use Dr. King’s words to move their own agenda and any public commentary that is in our culture is not the narrative that reverberates in my mind. That the actual words, feelings, and emotions of Dr. King are there to overtake any false narrative I may have. To mark my annual reading of Letter from Birmingham Jail, I highlight in a different color or mark in pen my thoughts. It provides me with new insight on how his teachings ring true in society today. Sometimes the same passages stand out; sometimes new truths emerge. Each reading draws me deeper into his heart, his vision, and his unwavering commitment to justice.

This small act of engagement is justice work. It is returning to his words and letting them speak in society today. It is seeking a fuller, more complete history that challenges the incomplete narratives so easily posted in social networks. The justice work we all need to combat the false information with the truth and is a collective step we can make to honor Dr. King’s legacy and to press forward, now more than ever, the mission he began.