Which Dr. King do you honor today? The one who said that white Americans had betrayed their professed commitment to ethicality and equality — and that the country had bounced a check to black folks, which black folks were coming to cash — or the bland and sanitized apostle of color-blindness sold to you by […]
Although there was no such thing as polling back then, I suspect that if you had asked a representative sample of Londoners in the early 1770s whether or not the American colonists were getting a fair shake from King George, most would have said yes. It is doubtful they would have thought much about any […]
The following is an essay by author and journalist Stacey Patton, which I have decided to publish on my site for a few important reasons: first, because as with all of her work, this piece is hard-hitting, analytically on-point and presents a vital perspective that needs to be heard; and secondly because despite the above, […]
As we reflect on this past week’s commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, hearing the guttural effluent spewing from the mouths of America’s right-wing makes it clear where they would have stood — and where most of their ideological forbears did — a half century ago. Just as the nation’s most […]
This is so much better, and more important, and more honest than anything said at the actual march this week, John Lewis excepted, perhaps; but I think even Lewis would agree, this is special, and especially because in 1963, the Kennedy Administration tried to intervene to keep Lewis from delivering his own speech, afraid that […]
My appearance today on MSNBC’s The Cycle, along with longtime friend and colleague Barbara Arnwine, discussing the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington and the ongoing struggle for justice Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
So, yeah, when Rush Limbaugh says that people tell him he “sounds like MLK” (or at least more so than the President), yeah, um, neither of y’all do…in Limbaugh’s case, I doubt he’s ever read a single one of MLKs books or listened to any speech beyond the “Dream Speech,” and even then he didn’t […]
Published in LIP Magazine, www.lipmagazine.org, January 21, 2003 Perhaps it should come as no surprise that someone as oft-quoted as Martin Luther King Jr., might occasionally have his words misinterpreted, misunderstood, or taken out of context. King’s status as something of a secular saint only magnifies the willingness and desire of writers, academics, political commentators, […]
A slightly different version of this article was published on ZNet, www.zmag.org, 2/15/02 Another January has come and gone, and with it, another celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. This year, as with the past ten, I once again had the pleasure of addressing a number of audiences during a two-week period of community […]
