Preview

Friday, on Boston Common, there was the unveiling of an unusual sculpture celebrating Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. In contrast to the usual heroic statuary, this piece of public art, called “The Embrace,” depicts the entwined arms of a couple.

The artist, the African American sculptor Hank Willis Thomas, was inspired by a photo of MLK embracing his wife, Coretta Scott King, at a news conference in 1964 when Dr. King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. But Thomas meant the embrace more broadly, as the joint embrace of all who worked together to advance civil rights, of whatever race and background. On the plaza surrounding the piece are the names of others, many of them unsung, who worked for racial justice, here in one of the most racist of Northern cities.

The celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. is a good time to recall that Dr. King was above all an integrationist, both morally and tactically. He understood that the grand strategy of slaveholders and segregationists was to keep poor whites and Blacks with common economic interests divided by racism.

In his epic speech when the Selma-to-Montgomery march of 1965 finally succeeded, Dr. King declared: “The southern aristocracy took the world and gave the poor white man Jim Crow. And when his wrinkled stomach cried out for the food that his empty pockets could not provide, he ate Jim Crow, a psychological bird that told him that no matter how bad off he was, at least he was a white man, better than the black man.”

Dr. King understood better than anyone that if civil rights were to be realized, in Congress and in the hearts of the citizenry, they would need the support of whites as well as Blacks. He was willing to work with a reformed and repentant onetime segregationist, Lyndon Johnson, to that end.

In an era of rising Black consciousness and rising wokeness on the part of progressive whites, mirroring the ever more explicit racism on the part of the far right, it is too easy to forget Dr. King’s call for multiracial coalition. Without it, we will never achieve his dream. It is too easy for a white writer of a certain age to wonder if it’s even OK to say this.

The brilliance of Hank Willis Thomas’s sculpture is that it invites the viewer to read meaning into it. For me, it evokes Dr. King’s strategic brilliance and ethical commitment to a multiracial society.