6/12/19
We need to face the whole truth about Martin Luther King, Jr.
Rounduptags: Martin Luther King, civil rights, FBI, Jr., David Garrow
Jonathon Zimmerman teaches education and history at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author (with Emily Robertson) of “The Case for Contention: Teaching Controversial Issues in American Schools."
It is very old news that Martin Luther King, Jr. was a serial adulterer. But recently declassified government reports suggest that he might also have been an accomplice to sexual assault, which is a much more serious matter. He allegedly watched and laughed while one of his friends raped a woman.
Can we talk about that?
Apparently not. Most of my fellow historians have kept quiet or denounced David Garrow, the scholar who brought the new information to light. Civil rights activists have dismissed the story as a racist plot to discredit King. And most major media outlets have stayed away from the accusation, too, except to raise doubts about it.
Let’s be clear: There was a racist plot against Martin Luther King, Jr., who was illegally wiretapped and harassed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. But the reactions to this latest episode smack of a different kind of conspiracy, which historians should both recognize and resist: the conspiracy of silence.
comments powered by Disqus
News
- Chair of Florida Charter School Board on Firing of Principal: About Policy, Not David Statue
- Graduate Student Strikes Fight Back Against Decades of Austerity, Seek to Revive Opportunity
- When Right Wingers Struggle with Defining "Woke" it Shows they Oppose Pursuing Equality
- Strangelove on the Square: Secret USAF Films Showed Airmen What to Expect if Nuclear War Broke Out
- The Women of the Montgomery Bus Boycott
- New Books Force Consideration of Reconstruction's End from Black Perspective
- Excerpt: How Apartheid South Africa Tried to Create a Libertarian Utopia
- Historian's Book on 1970s NBA Shows Racial Politics around Basketball Have Always Been Ugly
- Kendi: "Anti-woke" Part of Backlash Against Antiracist Protest Movements
- Monica Muñoz Martinez Honored for Truth-Telling in Texas History