"If the legends fade, who will teach the children?" This was a refrain often expressed by Tom Hendrix - a beloved member of my extended family and of my home community. To say that he was treasured by many is to underestimate the love and respect each of us had for him, and now for the legacy he has left to us.

Today I revisited Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter From a Birmingham Jail," which I recommend that you also revisit (or read for the first time). As I listened to King's voice reading the letter, it became undeniably apparent that we as a culture have largely sanitized Dr. King in such a way that his legacy fits neatly within our preferred narrative. It's human nature to do this but it's not necessarily helpful, particularly at this time in America, to look at history through such a lens. We give ourselves too much credit and reduce the story of black and white, to black and white. Have we mythologized and scrubbed clean his image to make us feel safer and better about our own actions, or lack thereof?