Economic justice was always central to Martin Luther King Jr.’s agenda. But society has moved backward on that issue since his death. By Michael K. Honey, Time — When Memphis sanitation workers went on strike in 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. knew they had a lesson to teach America. “You are reminding the nation,” he told attendees at a March 1968 rally there, “that it is a crime for people to live…
Managing race relations from above. By Adolph Reed Jr., The New Republic — On September 18, 1895, Booker T. Washington gave his famous address to the Atlanta Cotton States and International Exposition. Washington declared before this regional business gathering his acquiescence in the name of the black Southern population to the new regime of almost total black disfranchisement and the abrogation of civil rights within a social, political, and economic…
William Monroe Trotter rejected the view that racial equality could come in stages. By Casey Cep, The New Yorker — The mustache had to go. A classic nineteenth-century handlebar, it was far too recognizable, so William Monroe Trotter shaved it off. In addition to the disguise, he arranged to take a cooking class in his boarding house, evincing a sudden interest that would have surprised his wife, mother, and two…
By Justin Hansford, ACLU — It is common for nations where mass atrocities have taken place to engage in the process of reparation and repair. This process happened in Germany after the Holocaust, South Africa after apartheid, and here in the United States, forty years after the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. As a result, international human rights bodies have sought to lend their expertise to the process, often by…
By Zachary R. Wood, The Washington Informer — “I think the Democratic Party could stand a liberal George Wallace — someone who’s not afraid to stand up and offend people, someone who wouldn’t pander, but would say what the American people know in their gut is right.” Former Vice President Joe Biden uttered these words in an interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer in 1975. But before we proceed, I have…
By Jordan Brasher, The Conversation — The aroma of fried chicken and biscuits roused my appetite as the country sounds of Alison Krauss, Alan Jackson and Johnny Cash played over the loudspeakers. This might have been a county fair back home in Tennessee, but it wasn’t. I was in a cemetery in rural Brazil, at the “Festa Confederada” – the “Confederate Party” – an annual celebration of southern U.S. heritage held each April in Santa Bárbara…
By Nkechi Taifa and Mark Osler — As politicians and office-holders trot out their annual tributes to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., beware of a big lie that has too often been front and center in these speeches. In short, it is this: That there was racism in America, that Dr. King came and solved the problem, and now we are lucky to live in a post-racial America. This narrative…
“I want a country where black people and LGBTQ individuals can walk freely. As a woman, I want to walk around without being afraid I’ll get raped.” By Gislene Ramos, Vice — On Tuesday, October 30, thousands of young people took to the streets of São Paulo, Brazil to protest the far-right ideas of Jair Bolsonaro, the authoritarian candidate who won the country’s presidential elections on Sunday. According to the organizers…
Modern scholarship is reexamining Haiti’s founding father. Julia Gaffield, The Conversation — Crowds cheered as local lawmakers on August 18 unveiled a street sign showing that Rogers Avenue in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn would now be called Jean-Jacques Dessalines Boulevard, after a Haitian slave turned revolutionary general. When Dessalines declared Haiti’s independence from France in 1804 after a 13-year slave uprising and civil war, he became the Americas’ first black head…
A new book argues that King’s suspicion of American capitalism and his passion for economic justice did not represent a turn in his last tumultuous years. They were there all along. By Lynn Parramore, Institute for New Economic Thinking — The Millennial socialists are coming,” declared a June 30 New York Times headline, describing a surprise surge of young female candidates endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America who beat their establishment opponents…
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