Much of Martin Luther King Jr.'s legacy distorted in modern times, says historian

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Civil rights leader MartinLuther KingJr., was a complex man with a distorted legacy, according to historian Nathan Connolly.

On the 50th anniversary of King's assassination, Connolly argued the importance to remember that he was considered a divisive figure, both in his lifetime and after his death.

"Part of the way that we have effectively made him a consensus builder is by making sure that we don't talk about very key parts of his message," Connolly,a professor at Johns Hopkins University, told The Current's Anna Maria Tremonti.

"Martin Luther King was in favour of slavery reparations for Jim Crow. He was very explicit about that.And so those kinds of things are considered, by and large, beyond the pale now."

King's radical ideas didn't make him popular amongmost Americans certainly white Americans, said Connolly.

"A lot of what we now have taken to be the acceptable desegregation message of King and his allies ... was at a time considered to be very, very much out of bounds," he said.

In commemorating King, mainstream American watered down his message and in turn neglected his work, said civil rights activistBree Newsome.

The community organizer told Tremonti the understanding of King's message has been narrowed down to his "I have a dream" speech in 1963 at theLincoln Memorial in Washington.

His true message, she argued,was more complex than simply that speech'sfocus onintegrating black Americans into the wider American society.

"He succeeded in getting the Civil Rights Act [of 1964] and Voting Rights Act [of 1965] passed, but he made very clear in the latter part of his life that he viewed that as simply part one of the civil rights movement,"Newsome explains.

"He felt that in order for America to really transcend issues of racism and poverty and militarism, that the nation itself had to undergo a radical transformation of values."

WWMLKD: What Would MLK Do?

Newsome pointedto King's violent death as having a tremendous impact over the last 50 years.

"There certainly wasn't a sense in 1968 that Martin Luther King had accomplished his mission," she says, adding that the following assassination of U.S. Senator Robert Kennedy in 1968 "dealt another blow to the civil rights movement and to whatever hope people had of those issues being addressed."

Tremontiasked Newsomewhether history could have taken a different turn if King was alive today. But Newsomesaid she's not convinced he would have survived, even if the circumstances of his assassination could have been avoided.

"There was such a concerted effort by the federal government, by many others to undermine the civil rights movement, to target leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. and really to disrupt any efforts to organize for black civil rights," she said.

Beyond marking holidays and commemorating speeches, Connolly saidit's important to focus on the key principles of King's message looking ahead to the future.

"The platform around fair housing, the platform around the poverty, the platform around workers rights all of that needs to still be carried forward," he said.

"Anything that can take up the actual political battles that King was fighting for will be where the next chapter of struggle needs to go."

Listen to the full conversation at the top of this page, where you can also share this article across email, Facebook, Twitter and other platforms.

This segment was produced by The Current's Idella Sturino and Alison Masemann.