Martin Luther King Jr.

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  9/15/2021
  

  Martin Luther King Knew: Fighting Racism Meant Fighting Police Brutality

  by Jeanne Theoharis

  Despite contemporary efforts to portray contemporary movements like Black Lives Matter and radical groups like the Black Panther Party as deviators from the "respectable" movement led by MLK, the SCLC leader insisted on the need to combat police brutality despite the unpopularity of that position,

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• SOURCE: Texas Tribune
  7/28/2021
  

  Texas Lawmakers Used MLK’s Words To Attack Critical Race Theory. MLK III Says His Father’s Work Actually Supports It

  “Yes, we should judge people by the content of the character and not the color of their skin — but that is when we have a true, just, humane society where there are no biases, where there is no racism, where there is no discrimination,” Martin Luther King III said. “Unfortunately, all of these things still exist.”

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  2/8/2021
  

  Martin Luther King Jr.’s Challenge to Liberal Allies — And Why it Resonates Today

  by Jeanne Theoharis

  The present tendency to pigeonhole King's work as a challenge to southern Jim Crow obscures his demands for deep reform to national priorities, emphasis on economic justice, and insistence that liberalism live up to its creed of equality. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  1/18/2021
  

  The Words of Martin Luther King Jr. Reverberate in a Tumultuous Time

  Clayborne Carson, the founder of the Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute is part of a roundup of scholars and activists who point to King's speeches other than 1963's "I Have a Dream" as guiding lights for our time. 

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• SOURCE: Smithsonian
  1/15/2021
  

  A New Film Details the FBI’s Relentless Pursuit of Martin Luther King Jr.

  The new film "MLK/FBI" addresses Americans' failure to remember that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was unpopular, labeled as divisive and subversive, and subject to harassment by federal law enforcement agencies during his life. 

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  1/3/2021
  

  Ebenezer Baptist: MLK’s Church Makes New History In Georgia’s Senate Runoff

  Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church was an incubator of the fight for voting rights; its current pastor seeks election as Georgia's U.S. Senator.

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• SOURCE: Chicago Sun-Times
  10/26/2020
  

  If only Richard Nixon had Listened to Jackie Robinson — The GOP Might be Doing Better than Trump Today

  by Paul Kendrick and Stephen Kendrick

  Despite Jackie Robinson's intercession, Richard Nixon's moment of indecision in 1960 allowed Jack Kennedy to connect his campaign with the cause of Martin Luther King and civil rights. 

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• SOURCE: IndieWire
  9/13/2020
  

  ‘MLK/FBI’ Review: A Damning Look at J. Edgar Hoover’s Attempts to Destroy a Civil Rights Hero

  The most revealing takeaway from a new documentary on the FBI's campaign to take down Martin Luther King, Jr. isn’t that J. Edgar Hoover used every dirty machination at his disposal to take King down, but that most of the country seemed to think it was the right thing to do.

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• 7/26/2020
  

  Can Martin Luther King’s Spiritual Vision Kindle a New Progressivism?

  by Walter G. Moss

  Advocates for a broader social democratic political agenda should consider the spiritual roots of Martin Luther King's activism, which have historically engaged a broad range of political views to reform movements. 

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• SOURCE: TomDispatch
  6/23/2020
  

  Martin Luther King’s Giant Triplets of Injustice

  by Andrew Bacevich

  Without addressing the fundamental evils of economic inequality and militarism American society will continue to fail to realize the promise of racial equality, as Martin Luther King warned in his 1967 speech at Riverside Church. 

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  6/17/2020
  

  The GOP Missed Its Chance To Embrace Martin Luther King Jr.

  by Tim Galsworthy

  Invoking a sanitized and selective memory of Dr. King enables politicians and voters to trumpet order and exhibit faux outrage at disorder, rather than face up to endemic racial inequalities.

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• SOURCE: American Songwriter
  6/10/2020
  

  On the Saddest Song Ever Written, “Why (The King of Love is Dead)”

  Performed with love and sorrow by Nina Simone only days after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., it sadly resonates today as much as ever.

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• SOURCE: Black Perspectives
  6/8/2020
  

  Using MLK to Quell Outrage Distorts His Legacy

  by Jeanne Theoharis

  King has much to say about our contemporary moment, about the persistence of police abuse and the power of disruption, which may account, at least partly, for why this aspect of his politics is considerably less recognized.

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  6/1/2020
  

  What Would Martin Luther King Jr. Say About The Current Civil Unrest?

  by Peniel Joseph

  Many commentators who now invoke Martin Luther King Jr. to condemn angry protesters fail to grasp that King insisted peace and order could not be achieved without addressing deep racial and economic inequality in American society.

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  4/24/2020
  

  Martin Luther King Jr. Predicted This Moment

  by Gene Sperling

  Today, we are forced to confront the dissonance between our nation’s labeling of workers as “essential” and “heroes” and their limited wages, benefits and ability to organize.

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  4/14/2020
  

  What Street Names Say About Us

  A geographer who studies the civil rights movement told Deirdre Mask, “We have attached the name of one of the most famous civil rights leaders of our time to the streets that speak to the very need to continue the civil rights movement.”

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• SOURCE: Time
  1/17/20
  

  Was Martin Luther King Jr. a Republican or a Democrat? The Answer Is Complicated

  by Olivia B. Waxman

  The civil-rights leader’s personal political party affiliation remains a mystery.

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  1/20/20
  

  ‘To India I come as a pilgrim’: Martin Luther King Jr.’s remarkable trip to honor his hero

  by Gillian Brockell

  King first learned about Gandhi as a seminary student in 1949, just a year after Gandhi had been assassinated. He soon wrote about Gandhi in his schoolwork as a person who “greatly reveal[s] the working of the Spirit of God.”

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• 10/27/19
  

  “The Uplift of All” Through Nonviolent Direct Action

  by Michael Honey

  Nonviolence struggle links you backward and forward to generations of people who have changed the world and provides a personal link to others that can sustain a life of activism.

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• SOURCE: Smithsonian Magazine
  9/27/19
  

  Listen to the Stories of Alabama’s Civil Rights Sites

  A new interactive project seeks to preserve oral testimonies connected to 20 historic locations.