The Left Censors Their Own Hero

In his last speech, the Drum Major speech, Martin Luther King approached closure of the speech with the following words:

"Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. (Amen) Say that I was a drum major for peace. (Yes) I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter. (Yes) I won't have any money to leave behind. I won't have the fine and luxurious things of life to leave behind. But I just want to leave a committed life behind. (Amen) And that's all I want to say."

On his memorial his words were quoted thus:

"I was a drum major for justice, peace and righteousness."

Now Maya Angelou and others object. Too arrogant sounding, they claim. So for $700,000 to $800,000, the offensive words are removed, with accompanying "striations" to camouflage the damage. At least the taxpayers aren't hooked for it this time:

The work will be paid for from funds raised to build the memorial that were transferred to the National Park Foundation for repairs and maintenance.

No taxpayer dollars will be used to make the repairs, Vogel said.

I wonder if it was the "righteousness" that bothered Angelou. King was religious, and the Left is not fond of objective "righteousness". It competes with the self-righteous new morality that the moral elites wish to impose on the rest of the Other. So it brings righteous indignation to the fore in Leftists. Angelou has published seven (7) autobiographies; I wonder how she would react to the censoring of at least four or five of those?

Interesting fact about Angelou (from wikipedia with references):

"Angelou has recognized that there are fictional aspects to her books; Lupton agreed, stating that Angelou has tended to "diverge from the conventional notion of autobiography as truth",[123] which has paralleled the conventions of much of African-American autobiography written during the abolitionist period of U.S. history, when as both Lupton and African-American scholar Crispin Sartwell put it, the truth was censored out of the need for self-protection.[123][124] Scholar Lyman B. Hagen has placed Angelou in the long tradition of African-American autobiography, but claimed that Angelou has created a unique interpretation of the autobiographical form.[125]"

So she makes up her own truth, which she calls her life story. How does she get license then to make up truth about MLK's life story? Well, she's a creator of a Narrative. A narrative requires new "facts". And she's up to the job.