> Cynically I think there has been a political project to expunge most of King’s ideas from the public memory, leaving only those that everyone is comfortable w

> Cynically I think there has been a political project to expunge most of King’s ideas from the public memory, leaving only those that everyone is comfortable with. I don't think so. I think it's more that things get distilled and simplified in public memory naturally. How much of all of all the activities of other greatly-remembered figures are actually all fully remembered and talked about? Do you think the public has anywhere near a complete perception of all the ideals of Gandhi, Mother Theresa, George Washington, or Abraham Lincoln? Unless you are a scholar in the area, you have done specific research out of curiosity, or you have been personally affected by it, most of what you see is the stuff that echos in the public memory, which is the largest events and purest distillation of the ideals and character of the person in question. Human memory is built on patterns, symbols, and stripping of what seems to be unnecessary extraneous information, and this seems to be much more extreme in cultural memory. I don't think there has been any conscious effort to remove the other ideals that King had, it's just not what he did that people care about most right now.