Reclaiming King
By HASAN JEFFRIES Few people are more deserving of the praise they receive than Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. His commitment to social justice and racial equality was unshakable. His belief in nonviolence was unwavering. His courage in the face of danger was inspiring. And his sacrifice on behalf of others was unconditional. But far […]
What Would King Do? Learning from King’s Approach to Black Power
BY ASHLEY FARMER By 1966, calls for “Black Power” electrified the nation. In the preceding year alone, black Americans had witnessed the assassination of Malcolm X, riots it Watts, the black section of Los Angeles, and the shooting of civil rights activist James Meredith, during his attempt to march from Memphis, Tennessee to Jackson, Mississippi […]
Dr. King’s Dream Deferred: Poverty, & Economic Human Rights
By Amy Nathan Wright In May 1967, Dr. King announced to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), “We have moved from the era of civil rights to the era of human rights,” from a “reform movement,” into “an era of revolution.” In his final book, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, King […]
Picking up King’s Legacy: Reverend William Barber and the Launching of a New Poor People’s Campaign
By Jeanne Theoharis The air was hot and sticky. Surrounded by clergy, Rev. William Barber lambasted the voter suppression that had compromised the 2016 presidential election. “Long before Russia hacked our election, our government was hacked by racism.” Since Barack Obama’s election in 2008 and the Supreme Court’s 2013 stripping of the Voting Rights Act, […]
Martin Luther King’s ‘Creative Maladjustment’ Resonates Today
By Yohuru Williams Seeking perspective on the current chaotic state of U.S. politics, I reread a powerful speech delivered fifty years ago by the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., in September 1967. King, who was delivering a keynote speech to the annual conference of the American Psychological Association, noted how psychologists had given the world the […]
Black Women, Civil Rights and the Struggle for Bodily Integrity
By Danielle L. McGuire On September 3, 1944, Mrs. Recy Taylor, a slender, copper-colored and beautiful twenty-four-year-old mother and sharecropper, walked home from a church revival in Abbeville, Alabama. Just past midnight, a gang of armed white men, kidnapped her off the street, forced her into their green Chevrolet and drove her to a […]
Defining the Dream
Each generation looks at history from a different perspective. As someone who came of age in the 1960s, I followed King’s agenda closely. When he urged young men to refuse the draft, I became a conscientious objector. When he called on us to confront racial and economic inequality, I went on a bus from Pontiac, […]
Reclaiming King II
By Ibram X. Kendi When Americans remember Martin Luther King Jr., we first and foremost remember his “dream” that “my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” When we celebrate and observe King’s dream […]
Martin, Sidney, and Oscar
By Aram Goudsouzian As Sidney Poitier strode across the stage of the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, the audience erupted in cheers. People stood, they clapped, they whistled and roared, they yelled Bravo! The elegant, tuxedo-clad actor stepped behind the podium, holding a composed smile as the applause washed over him.[1] The occasion was the […]
The Legacy of King’s Influence from Black Power to Black Lives Matter
By Jakobi Williams Several political and media pundits have drawn parallels between activists of the Black Power movement of the 1960s and the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement of today. However, few have included the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s influence upon and connection to both periods of struggle as the foundation of […]
Poverty, Racism, and the Legacy of King’s Poor People’s Campaign
By Keri Leigh Merritt Reflecting back upon the fifty years since the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., one singular point always stands out, a searing reminder of what was – and still is – America’s grossest injustice: that in one of the richest nations in the world, so many millions of people […]
The Harbinger of Housing & Human Rights in the 21st Century
By Rhonda Y. Williams Wherever I turn, housing is. Obvious, you might say. But, I am not talking simply about housing in the most apparent sense of literal wood, steel, or brick-and-mortar structures – but housing as a rousing harbinger of dire and distressing realities. Profit over people, profoundly persistent racial and economic inequalities, […]