The Rev. Bernice King, CEO of the King Center in Atlanta and daughter of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., said the federal holiday honoring her father arrives this year as “somewhat of a saving grace” — a moral counterweight, she said, to rollbacks of diversity programs, changes to government historical content, and immigration enforcement she described as turning violent.
King’s remarks, made in an interview with The Associated Press ahead of Monday’s federal holiday, frame how some civil rights leaders are interpreting the early period of the Trump administration’s second term and what they say her father’s teachings require of the public in response.
ATLANTA — The Rev. Bernice King said this year’s federal holiday honoring her father arrives as “somewhat of a saving grace” for a nation she described as caught in a turbulent political moment.
“I say that because it inserts a sense of sanity and morality into our very troubling climate right now,” King, CEO of the King Center in Atlanta, said in an interview with The Associated Press. “With everything going on, the one thing that I think Dr. King reminds people of is hope and the ability to challenge injustice and inhumanity.”
King said the “three evils” — poverty, racism and militarism — that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. identified in a 1967 speech as threats to a democratic society “are very present and manifesting through a lot of what’s happening” under President Donald Trump’s leadership.
She cited efforts to roll back diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives; directives to scrub key parts of history from government websites and remove what she described as “improper ideology” from Smithsonian museums; and immigration enforcement operations in multiple cities that she said have turned violent and resulted in family separation.
White House spokesperson Davis Ingle, responding via email, said: “Everything President Trump does is in the best interest of the American people. That includes rolling back harmful DEI agendas, deporting dangerous criminal illegal aliens from American communities, or ensuring we are being honest about our country’s great history.”
Civil rights advocates respond
Maya Wiley, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights — one of the nation’s oldest and largest civil rights coalitions — said King’s words “ring more true today.”
“We’re at a period in our history where we literally have a regime actively working to erase the Civil Rights movement,” Wiley said. “This has been an administration dismantling intentionally and with ideological fervor every advancement we have made since the Civil War.”
Wiley also recalled that King warned the prospect of war abroad undermined the “beloved community” and diverted resources from domestic needs. The Trump administration has engaged in military strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats and conducted a surprise capture of Venezuela’s president earlier this month, she noted.
King’s call for nonviolence and inward reflection
Bernice King said she does not know exactly what her father would make of the United States today, nearly six decades after his assassination.
“He’s not here. It’s a different world,” she said. “But what I can say is his teachings transcend time and he taught us, I think, the way to address injustice through his nonviolent philosophy and methodology.”
She said nonviolence should be embraced not only by those who protest against perceived injustices but also by immigration agents and other law enforcement officers. The King Center previously developed a nonviolence curriculum and now plans to redevelop it to help officers carry out their duties while respecting the humanity of those they encounter, she said.
Even amid the current climate, King said the nation has “made so much progress.” The civil rights movement her parents helped lead brought people with sensitivity and compassion into mainstream politics, she said. Efforts to reverse that progress face a deep structural reality, she added: “The inevitability is we’re so far into our diversity you can’t put that back in a box.”
King urged those observing the holiday to direct attention inward rather than outward.
“I think we spend a lot of time looking at everybody else and what everybody else is not doing or doing, and we’re looking out the window at all the problems of the world and talking about how bad they are and we don’t spend a lot of time on ourselves personally,” she said.
She endorsed participation in service projects, saying they foster connection and sensitize people to the struggles of others. She asked supporters to also consider what they might do over the coming year to advance her father’s teachings.
“I think we have the opportunity to use this as a measuring point from year to year in terms of what we’re doing to move our society in a more just, humane, equitable and peaceful way,” she said.