LEWISTON – A noted champion of civil and human rights told a large Bates College audience he wants to correct a “national amnesia” about the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

The Rev. John Mendez said, “It appears to be a paradoxical intention that the Martin Luther King we embrace and celebrate as a nation is also the King that we fear and reject.”

Mendez, who is pastor of the Emmanuel Baptist Church, Winston-Salem, N.C., delivered the keynote address for Bates College’s annual celebration of King’s life and work. His remarks Monday morning at the Bates Chapel emphasized that we tend “to ignore and forget the last crucial and probably the most important years of his life.”

Mendez said, “The nation appears determined to hold our national hero captive and confined to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial of the March on Washington in 1963 with its never-ending repetition of the oratory and eloquence of the I Have a Dream’ speech, as if Dr. King had nothing else to say, profound or prophetic, to us following that momentous event.”

He said he believes “the powers that be” in current society “operate under the illusion that it is easier to manage and control the Martin Luther King Jr. of the civil rights movement before 1965 than the King that had come of age in terms of making economic justice and social transformation a priority during the 1965 to 1968 years.”

Mendez said today’s memory of King has become “blurred, blunted and romanticized by the difficult times of the 70s and 80s to his vision and goals for America.”

Mendez recounted King’s legacy in civil rights and, with increasing fervor, he spelled out King’s ultimate evolution as a champion for all forms of equality.

“As King continued to march toward new strategies to challenge the government and nation to make a real commitment to justice and equality, the reality of Vietnam began to prick King’s conscience,” Mendez said.

“Dare we forget today the man who told us that a nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death?” he asked. “To forget King is to move from Let Freedom Ring’ to blame, blame, blame.”

Mendez listed what he sees as a “three-fold threat” to America today. Those threats are an unregulated, run-away and unbridled free market economy, an aggressive militarism and an escalating authoritarianism that has led to “a repression of too many hard-earned rights and hard-fought civil liberties.”

“We must not forget King’s warning – it’s either non-violence or non-existence,” he reminded the audience.

“We are challenged to not just talk about the dream of Dr. King but to fight for and implement his vision,” he concluded.

A native of New York City, Mendez has served as a consultant on many fact-finding missions, including investigations of Hawaiian land rights; pollution on Vieques Island, Puerto Rico; alleged U.S. war crimes in Nicaragua and El Salvador; peace initiatives in Angola; the Mount Graham Apache Sacred Site; and the land rights of the Black Hills Lakota.

Mendez is a founding member of Re-framing the Dialogue on Racism, an organization that recruits, trains and builds a community of 100 white clergy from different denominations across the country to create strategies, ministries and programs at the congregational level to address racism in the white community. He has received numerous awards for his activism and community service.

Classes at Bates were suspended on Martin Luther King Jr. Day to allow attendance at events which included performances, workshops, exhibitions, and a debate with Morehouse and Spelman colleges from Atlanta, Ga., and Bates debaters.