The Names We Carry
Field Note: From Wittenberg to Alabama
A Brisbane Welcome
I had just climbed into a cab, the Brisbane heat hitting like a reset after weeks in the North American winter. I was home from visiting family and some speaking engagements in the States, still shaking off jet lag. As we moved through the place where the city thins into leafy suburbs, the conversation turned, as it often does, to my accent.
“Texas, right?” the driver asked. “Tennessee?”
“Ah. Alabama then?”
“There it is,” I smiled.
Cab conversations wander. Ours drifted through the Bible Belt, politics, and then calendars. I mentioned Boxing Day, unfamiliar to most Americans. He asked about the one coming up in the States.
“Martin Luther King Jr. Day. What’s that about then? Just a holiday?”
The question stayed with me long after I stepped into the humid afternoon. For many, MLK Day is simply a name on a calendar. But names carry stories. And some stories carry weight.
The Name That Crossed an Ocean
Most people do not realise that Martin Luther King Jr. was not born with that name.
In 1934, an African American pastor from Georgia, Michael King, travelled overseas. He walked the Holy Land. He passed through Europe. In Berlin, at a Baptist conference, he encountered the story of a German monk who stood before emperors and popes and insisted that conscience belongs to God.
Martin Luther.
The encounter changed him. Michael King returned home and changed his own name. Then he changed his young son’s name.
To his family, the boy was still Little Mike. To history, he would become Martin Luther King Jr.
It was a handoff across four centuries. From a reformer who challenged religious power to a preacher who would challenge racial injustice.
Kindred Spirits of 1929
There is a detail I cannot shake.
Martin Luther King Jr. was born in 1929. That same year, in Germany, Anne Frank was born.
They never met. One grew up under Jim Crow. The other under Nazi terror. One saw Whites Only signs. The other wore a yellow star.
Both encountered the worst of humanity. Both responded with moral clarity.
King spoke of history bending toward justice. Anne, writing from hiding, said she still believed people were truly good at heart.
They died young. Their words did not.
The Trouble with Shared Honour
This is where the story turns.
In my home state of Alabama, honouring Dr King came with a bitter compromise. When Southern states finally recognised a public holiday for him, some chose to “share” the day.
In Alabama and Mississippi, the third Monday of January became King-Lee Day. It placed Martin Luther King Jr. alongside Robert E. Lee, a general often remembered for questions of loyalty, statehood, and order in a fractured nation.
And yet, the pairing remains jarring.
One name represents a movement that pressed the nation toward equal dignity under the law. The other is tied to a cause that sought to preserve an older social order. One in which that dignity was unevenly applied.
The problem is not remembering history in its complexity. The problem is confusing remembrance with endorsement, and honour with agreement.
Jesus once warned about this kind of “honour.” He noted that people often build monuments to prophets while ignoring exactly what those prophets said. Remembering is easy. Obedience is costly.
What Justice Requires
Dr King did not call people merely to avoid prejudice. He called them to pursue justice. Not as a trickle of good intentions, but as something that moves, carries weight, and reshapes the ground it passes through.1
Justice is not a feeling. It is action. Fair wages. Education. Dignity. Systems that protect the vulnerable rather than excuse their neglect.
Sitting in that Brisbane cab, watching the suburban trees blur past, I realised how often I have settled for the “safe” side of the line. It is comfortable to be against prejudice in my mind; it is another thing entirely to be for justice with my life. It is easy to admire a hero from the safety of a back seat; it is much harder to follow him into the breach.
The real question is not whether we remember Dr King.
It is whether we are willing to live in a way that makes his name unnecessary.
What does justice look like in your corner of the world this week?
Amos 5:24