Why Should King Be Commemorated?
The Older KingAs seen from the transformation of King from his time at Dickinson College to the Civil War, his attitudes had undeniably shifted and his stance on the topic of equal rights had changed. In his eyes, ideologies pertaining to equal rights were no longer “fanatical” as he had stated as a younger man. This can be seen in 1892, following Congress's passing of the “Geary,” an extension of the Chinese Exclusion Act. King intervened immediately in its denouncement. In an article from the Boston Globe on May 16, 1883, King was quoted in saying, “the question of the Chinese being compelled to register is of greater gravity than appears on the surface,” and later added, “from the prejudice manifested against the Chinese, it seems they have no rights here that Americans are bound to respect.”[1] The language that King used in this article excerpt shows the stunning nature of how he had changed through his paraphrasing of Chief Justice Roger Taney. Taney uttered these infamous words following the U.S. Supreme Court's “Dred Scott decision,” stating that:
“[African Americans] had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit. He was bought and sold, and treated as an ordinary article of merchandise and traffic, whenever a profit could be made by it.”[2] |
King's SignificanceThroughout the history of Dickinson College, many of its alums have profoundly impacted the world they inhabited after graduation. Resultantly, the choice of which of these subjects to commemorate on its campus is one that is highly contested. Although mentioned as a possible subject in renaming one of the residence halls in Dickinson College’s “lower quad” in February of 1992, King’s name was not selected and has been largely ignored in commemoration efforts.[3] Because he was a white student who lacked respect for black people and opposed equal rights, making a case for King’s commemoration might seem challenging. Through deeper historical reasoning and understanding of the importance of contextualizing actions due to a respective time period, a key aspect to historical methodology, there is no more fitting subject than King, especially considering the man he later became. His story is somewhat miraculous in giving insight into not only the transformation of political attitudes but also the attitudes of Union soldiers in the 19th century. As a result of his story, King should be appropriately honored outside East College, a building on the academic quad of Dickinson College. East College was the location in which he wrote each of his daily journal entries from 1854 to 1858, giving his readers an insight into the attitudes and experiences of college life during the 19th century. Furthermore, King’s story provides a valuable example of how Dickinson students, whether past or present, never cease to create their own opinions of the world around them even while they are treading through the discomfort of the unknown
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King's choice to paraphrase Taney's words to express the gravity and wrongfulness of Chinese immigrant exclusion is a clear indication of his changed stance on equality. As seen from both his opposition to the act, his “reversed attitude” towards slavery, and even his later friendship with Beecher, King had undeniably changed as a result of the diverse viewpoints he had gained from his service.
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