‘It reminds us of the king’s spirit’

The coincidence of Martin Luther King Jr. Day landing on the same Monday as Donald Trump’s inauguration is not cause for concern, according to Bernice King, the late civil rights icon’s daughter.

In an interview with MSNBC’s “The Weekend” on Saturday, she said the timing offers an opportunity to reflect on her father’s legacy as the United States transitions to a new administration.

“It’s wonderful that this is happening on the King holiday, the inauguration, because it reminds us of King,” said Bernice King, the youngest of Martin Luther King’s four children, who was 5 years old when her father was assassinated in 1968. points us back to King. It says: ‘As we move forward, we need to do so in the spirit of King.’

An overlap between the federal holiday — established in 1983 and first observed in 1986 — and Inauguration Day has occurred only two other times. The first was during President Bill Clinton’s swearing-in in 1997, and the second was during Barack Obama’s in 2013. Obama also took his oath of office using a Bible that had belonged to King himself.

Bernice King, who has previously been critical of Trump for his divisive rhetoric, addressed those who feel “defeated” amid the looming inauguration, urging Americans to “stay focused on the goal” of nonviolence, a value that her father champions.

“We have to strategize. We have lacked the strategy. We have lacked the spirit of Dr. King,” said Bernice King. “Dr. King’s spirit is nonviolence. And nonviolence is not just a posture, it is a mindset. For us, we define it as a love-centered way of thinking, speaking, acting and engaging that leads to personal, cultural and societal transformation.”

Martin Luther King III, King’s eldest son, also spoke about the timing, urging Trump to “engage with everyone,” not just his supporters.

“If you said you would be a unifier, then those who did not support you must reach out to them or allow them to reach out to you,” the younger king said on “Meet the Press” on Sunday. “We don’t reflect the ‘USA’ of America right now, in my estimation.”

The King family has long been outspoken in its criticism of Trump. In August, Trump compared the audience at his “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 6, 2021 — before his supporters stormed the Capitol — to the 1963 March on Washington, when King delivered his legendary “I Have A Dream” speech from the Lincoln Memorial.

“If you look at Martin Luther King when he gave his speech, his great speech, and you look at ours, same real estate, same everything, same number of people,” he said during a news conference at Mar-a-Lago.

Although Trump acknowledged that official estimates recorded a smaller crowd size at his rally compared to the March on Washington, he said, “You look at it and you look at the picture of my crowd … we actually had more people.”

Bernice King outright denied the comment, calling it “absolutely not true.”

“I really wish people would stop using my dad to support fallacy,” she wrote on X at the time.

Trump’s crowd was about 53,000 people, according to congressional committee January 6. That’s about a fifth of it 250,000 that was estimated to be at King’s address in 1963.

During the 2018 Martin Luther King Day celebration, the civil rights leader’s children condemned then-President Trump, particularly the disparaging comments he made about African countries during a meeting with senators on immigration.

“When a president insists that our nation needs more citizens from white states like Norway, I don’t think we even need to spend time talking about what it says and what it is,” said Martin Luther King III then. “We must find a way to work on this man’s heart.”