The following piece, “A Letter from Dr. King” is written by incarcerated writer Kwaneta Harris, and appears on her Substack, Write or Die.
Excerpts appear below.
My Dearest America,
Why are people allowing folks to co-opt my legacy? I write this letter with profound disappointment and righteous anger at how my words and work have been twisted to serve agendas that stand in direct opposition to everything I fought for. Dr. Cornel West noted that “The sanitization of Martin Luther King Jr’s legacy is one of the most successful propaganda campaigns in America history.” Dr. Peniel Joseph accurately observed that “We have turned King into a Civil Rights Santa Claus, someone who simply wanted everyone to get along.”
The law was never meant to be the only path to liberation, it was one step. But America needs a redemption story, doesn’t it? A sanitized version of me fits perfectly: the myth that racism was overcome because a preacher from Georgia gave a speech. Phew! Now, we’re good, aren’t we? We’ve “overcome,” haven’t we? What a convenient lie.
Look at the reality of 2026: Every single policy victory of the Civil Rights movement has been gutted, rolled back or reined in. Neighborhoods remain segregated. Schools are more segregated now than they were in my time. Its harder than ever to bring discrimination cases against employers. Public schools remain unequally funded. A right-wing commentator arrested for campaign finance fraud had the audacity to compare his “injustice” to my struggle and equated J. Edgar Hoover with Barack Obama.
The time for comfortable myths is over. The time for corporate sponsored sanitization of our struggle is over. The time for using my words to maintain the very systems I fought against is over. Will America listen? History suggests otherwise. But we who believe in freedom can not rest.
With urgent determination,
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
January 19, 2026
You can read the full piece, “A Letter from Dr. King” by Kwaneta Harris on her Substack, Write or Die. Kwaneta Harris is a former nurse, business owner, and expat, now an incarcerated journalist and Movements Against Mass Incarceration Social Change Fellow. In her writing, she illuminates how the experience of being incarcerated in the largest state prison in Texas is vastly different for women in ways that directly map onto a culture rooted in misogyny. Her stories expose how the intersection of gender, race, and place contribute to state-sanctioned, gender-based violence.
