MLK's Niece Gives Valuable Advice to Statue-Destroying Protesters: 'Step Back'
There is a lot more for Americans to worry about than statues, according to one niece of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
“We’re fighting over statues now and whose statues should be up and whose should be not,” Alveda King told Fox News host Neil Cavuto during Monday’s broadcast of “Your World.”
“Statues actually can become idols, regardless to whether we like the person depicted or not,” she said.
“And if you’re going to take one statue down, you have to take all statues down. And that’s not going to work.”
King agreed with a point made by attorney Benjamin Crump, who represents the family of George Floyd, that tearing down statues is not the way to makes needed changes in society.
She suggested leaving the statues in place with plaques that read, “This is when Americans did not understand that we’re one human race. We get that now.”
King said the battle over monuments is misplaced.
“I don’t believe that we should fight over the statues,” she said. “I do feel like statues can be idols. That’s a problem. Some people even idolize Martin Luther King Jr. Some people admire Martin Luther King Jr. Some people hate Martin Luther King Jr.”
Cavuto asked King what her uncle and her own father, Alfred Daniel Williams King, would think of the current anti-statue craze, given that they launched the civil rights movement in the heart of a region deeply rooted in Confederate memorials.
“They actually preached the Bible along with their dad,” she said, referencing Martin Luther King Sr., her grandfather. “They taught us to learn to live together as brothers and sisters and not perish together as fools.”
“The more we communicated and began to see each other as human beings, my granddaddy coined the phrase ‘Atlanta is a city too busy to hate.’ So we decided not to hate and not to fight,” she said.
King went on to discuss the controversial statue of former President Theodore Roosevelt in New York City that will be coming down because it is considered offensive.
Roosevelt Statue to Be Removed From Museum of Natural History
We’re just sitting back and allowing history to be erased before our eyes. https://t.co/PlemXiPynt
— John Cardillo (@johncardillo) June 21, 2020
“I believe it’s very important even with the Teddy Roosevelt statue with an African-American and a Native American Indian side by side, saying, we need to see this whole issue. And these are all Americans,” she said.
“So that’s really what they would encourage us to do and they would encourage us to pray, communicate, love each other,” she said.
King also said getting along with other people is far more important than attacking inanimate objects.
“If you find yourself fighting and going into a rage over a statue, step back and re-examine the human heart and what we can do together to discuss and resolve this without destruction and without violence.”
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