Let’s not censor Dr. King’s life even as we glorify him

As another year passes with celebrations marking the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, I worry about the dangers of neutering Dr. King’s life, turning him into a “dreamer” who became a martyr.

We shouldn’t forget that Dr. King was a leader, a man of conscience and of action. He sought to transform America and that forced him to be a disrupter — and to bear the wounds of being unpopular in a just cause.

With segregation the law of the land and voting rights suppressed, Dr. King understood the...