About
“MLK Didn’t Die For This” is an expression used to denounce an act or display of racial prejudice by implying that it goes against the wishes of Martin Luther King Jr., the renowned American civil rights activist who was assassinated while leading the civil rights movement in the 1960s. On Twitter and Vine, the phrase is more often used in jest to highlight images and videos that can be interpreted as unintentional metaphors for racism against black people, in a similar vein to the use of “that’s racist”.
Origin
One of the earliest comedic uses of the phrase dates back to a comment posted by LurkerFAQs[1] forum member SADsyn in a thread titled “breasts” on June 22nd, 2011. In the thread, forum member SADsyn wrote:
Why are you guys discriminating against hairy breasts? MLK didn’t die for this. For people to have this type of mentality. That hairy breasts shouldn’t be accepted along with the hairy breasts. You all ought to be ashamed with yourselves.
On August 29th, 2013, The first notable pairing of the phrase with an image was submitted by Twitter user @ambessadc[4], which featured a photograph of an automatic pencil sharpener with a sticky note that reads “No Colored Pencil” (shown below).
Other Usage
On January 17th, 2013, on the day of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Briana Ford wrote a post titled “MLK Didn’t Die For This” on her blog Black And Married With Kids[2], which criticized the trend of commercially exploiting the civil rights activist’s images among club promoters. On August 15th, 2013, Bossip[3] published an interview article titled “Scrappy Urges Blacks To Stop Killing Each Other Because Whites Want Us Gone ‘MLK Didn’t Die For This!’” featuring a public service announcement against black-on-black violence by rapper Lil’ Scrappy.
Spread
On September 1st, 2013, Redditor PenguinBallZ submitted the image of the pencil sharpener to Imgur[6] and /r/funny[5], where it garnered more than 916,000 views and over 1,660 upvotes prior to its archival. But the phrase didn’t see its first major breakout until January 2014, when Twitter users began using the phrase as a caption for “accidentally racist” images. On January 7th, 2014, Redditor TheTrueMuffinMan submitted a screen-captured tweet of two cake batter mix packagings for vanilla and chocolate flavors respectively named “white” and “devil’s food” in a /r/teenager[14] post titled “MLK didn’t die for his. 2Chainz didn’t rap for this. Mandela didn’t fight for this,” garnering over 1,800 upvotes. On January 20th, American reality TV celebrity Kylie Jenner[8] tweeted a photograph of an ice cream pint with unequal chocolate and vanilla-flavored portions along with the caption (shown below, right), racking up over 3,600 retweets and 6,800 favorites.
Various Examples
Search Interest
External References
[2]Black and Married With Kids – MLK Didn’t Die For This
[3]Bossip – Scrappy Urges Blacks To Stop Killing Each Other Because Whites Want Us Gone “MLK Didn’t Die For This!
[4]Twitter – @Ambessadc’s Tweet
[5]Imgur – MLK Didn’t Die For This
[6]Reddit – MLK Didn’t Die For This
[7]Twitter – @TheFunnyRacist’s Tweet
[8]Twitter – @KylieJenner’s Tweet
[9]Twitter – @EllenDegeneres’ Tweet
[10]Twitter – @Ridiculousness’ Tweet
[11]Reddit – MLK Didn’t Die For This
[12]Imgur – MLK Didn’t Die For This
[13]LOLTrap – MLK Didn’t Die For This
[14]Reddit – MLK didn’t die for his. 2Chainz didn’t rap for this. Mandela didn’t fight for this
[15]Vine – Martin Luther King Didn’t Die For This
[16]BuzzFeed – Here’s Why It’s OK To Turn Up On MLK Day