Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2025 Must Be More Malcolm Than Martin

By Aswad Walker

MLK Day 2025 (Jan. 20) is already set to be one for the ages. Why? Because in the irony of ironies, the annual day set aside to honor Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., our “Drum Major for Justice,” will see this nation inaugurate arguably the most unjust person to ever serve as POTUS.

Whatever adjectives you ascribe to MLK’s life and legacy—courageous, sincere, righteousness-seeking, spiritually-grounded, humanity-serving, etc.—Donald Trump is the living embodiment of the exact opposite.

Yet, the two figures and all they stand for will be intertwined for all the world to see come Martin Luther King Day 2025. 

I say, we Blackfolk, really give the world something to see. At the very least, we need to shout an inspiring message to ourselves.

And what message is that? It’s Nation time! As in, Black people fully commit to building and doing for themselves.

To do that, MLK Day 2025 needs to be more Malcolm X than Martin.

DIFFERENT APPROACHES

What do I mean? King is erroneously classified as someone who fought for integration, meaning living next to and going to school with whites. A more accurate read of MLK’s movement shows that he believed Blacks should enjoy all the rights, protections, and privileges that come with being citizens of this nation. That’s not necessarily integration.

And sure, MLK said, “I fear I may have integrated my people into a burning house.” But the movement for which he served as spokesman was for equal access. Period. Blackfolk had less desire to live next door to whites than whites had to live near Black people. We simply wanted equal access and MLK called upon the engines of government to deliver that access to its darker citizens.

Malcolm X, like MLK, wanted for Black people all the “things” (quality education, protection from violence, and the freedom to fully enjoy life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness). However, unlike MLK, Malcolm had little faith that a white-led, white-controlled institutional power system would deliver those supposed constitutional rights to Black people.

Instead, Malcolm called for Black people to build those structures, opportunities, and institutions for ourselves. Brother Malcolm called for self-determination—Black people building and doing for self.

TRUMP INAUGURATION

Months away from Trump’s inauguration, he was already bragging that he has 350 executive orders lined up and ready to be unleashed on Day 1. That’s 350 MAGA-driven, Project 2025-inspired orders that will go into effect immediately without needing congressional approval.

Publicly, he’s downplaying his Day 1 plans. 

But according to his campaign rhetoric, cabinet appointments, and promises of “retribution and revenge,” there’s much more to those executive orders than simply addressing economics and energy issues. 

In other words, on MLK Day 2025, Trump is ready to “let injustice roll down like water, and white violence and revenge like a mighty stream” (to paraphrase one of MLK’s favorite scriptures). That day will mark the official end of the Second Reconstruction, the period of rising protections, rising expectations, rising incomes, and opportunities for Black people. All are protected by law.

On MLK Day 2025, as soon as Trump’s inauguration festivities are done, he’ll begin officially ending all legal protections and programs that protected Blackfolk from pre-1960s Jim Crow-level injustices.

It’s going to get ugly.

DIFFERENT STRATEGIES

Back in the day, MLK deployed marches and protests as part of his strategy to win Blackfolk equal access for multiple reasons. First, he deployed those tactics to make white America look bad on the international stage when countries across the globe were trying to figure out if they were going to roll with the U.S. or Russia during that time period’s Cold War (look it up). MLK believed that stain on America’s global image would push lawmakers to make policy changes to reflect that Black Lives Matter.

Second, MLK believed those marches and protests could engender enough white guilt and tap into enough white humanity to inspire policy changes that would allow Black people to gain equal access.

Marching on Washington in 2025 and asking the three branches of the federal government—all MAGA-controlled—to come to our rescue would be as foolish as begging a serial abuser to stop abusing. There is no white guilt or white humanity to tap into. This past presidential election showed all that exists in America now is white anger, hostility, and grievance. They have been duped into believing that everything bad happening to them (job losses, factory shutdowns, opioid addiction, etc.) is because we (Blackfolk) have stolen “their” America. And they want us to pay for their pain.

So, MLK’s marching and protesting strategy will only set us up to feel the state-sanctioned “retribution and revenge” Trump and the MAGA world have been waiting to unleash.

Brother Malcolm called for a different strategy, one we should heed today. He called for us to build our own everything. Successfully doing so would give us all the institutional support we need to live our lives. No protesting required. The only marching we need to do is toward our own communities to build whatever needs building.

MALCOLM, MARTIN TEAM-UP

Malcolm, like Marcus Garvey before him, recognized the danger of Black people settling for being “allowed” into other folk’s institutions. Because if they can one day decide to let us in, on another day, they can decide to keep us out. But if we own and control our own, that ceases to be an issue.

Malcolm recognized the critical importance of Black people doing our own thing. But come to think of it, so did MLK. In fact, during those last three years of his life (1965 – 1968), MLK often sounded more like Malcolm than Malcolm.

MLK started declaring “Black is beautiful,” calling Black people to bank Black and buy Black. MLK even issued a call for us to “redistribute the pain” of a racist system by withholding our dollars from white businesses that neither hired Black people nor honored our humanity.

In reality, MLK Day 2025 can be like Malcolm and Martin because they each charged us to move toward self-determination, nation-building, and creating our own economies and networks (for food, financing, clothing, housing, legal services, etc.).

Let’s get to work on this now, so come Jan. 20, 2025, as the MAGA world thinks they’re dancing on our “grave,” we’re resurrecting the power in us that built the world’s first civilizations. There’s no reason why we can’t do it again.

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