MLK Day

VIEWPOINT

By RALPH HARDIN

Evening Times Editor

I learned a new word the other day… mononym. It’s for when someone is known by just one name, like Madonna, Prince, Cher, Bono, etc. Or when they are well-known enough that even though you do know their first and last names, you can just use one and people will know who you’re talking about, like Oprah, Obama, Trump, Elvis, Lebron… cool, right.

Now, there are a few folks who you can refer to by just their initials and just about everyone will know who you mean… JFK, FDR, MJ (although you need a little context for that one, since it might mean Michael Jackson or Michael Jordan), and of course, MLK. In these modern times, you might could add RBG and AOC… does the Notorious B.I.G. count? I decided to look it up and see if there was a cool word for people who are known by their initials, and sadly, there is but it’s

See VIEWPOINT, page A6 VIEWPOINT

From page A4

not nearly as cool as being a mononym. It’s just called an initialism.

Anyway, it’s MLK Day once again, the only American who has a national holiday named after him. It’s hard to imagine our world today if Dr. King had not emerged to lead the Civil Rights Movement.

Surely it would have still happened in one form or another.

Surely at some point over the past 60 years we would have figured out that segregation was bad and that denying someone equal rights because of the color of their skin was wrong… Surely.

How might it have gone differently? If we’re going down the path of alternate history, might Robert Kennedy not have been assassinated and pushed Civil Rights through legislation as president in 1968? Who would we look to todayas the figurehead of that movement?Or what if King had not himself been assassinated the same? What if King had been around in the 1970s to further the Civil Rights agenda? What role might he have played as an elder statesmen in Ronald Reagan’s America of the 1980s?

Would we still be seeing the racial tensions we are seeing now if King had been around even a few years longer?

While we can’t answer that question, we can look to his work and legacy and celebrate the message of unity he would still have us hear in 2025.