I have worked to expand voting rights since I was a student organizer in college. But I am, at the center of my being, a preacher. And the Scriptures that I have been called to preach remind me that in times like these, we have no right to despair.
The dominant and distorted scholarship framed Reconstruction as an illegitimate enterprise that failed to sustain multiracial democracy. For much of the 20th century, this bogus history was used to justify denying Black people full citizenship.
“The Fifties,” by James R. Gaines, a former managing editor of Time, People and Life, reminds us that a trip in time to much of America then would resemble “The Handmaid’s Tale” more than “Ozzie and Harriet.”
The fact that Black Americans are still fighting the same battles against voter suppression, inequality and the right to have a dream almost 54 years after his death is the most accurate measure of what this nation thinks about Martin Luther King.
King spent his last birthday organizing poor people of all races against immoral spending priorities. We need that revolution today.
The Civil Rights Movement did have its shortcomings, it did not fail because we successfully carried the torch a significant distance down Freedom Road. Now, we hand off to the next generation, and all the generations of freedom fighters to come.
Sidney Poitier broke the mold of what a Black actor could be in Hollywood. The most fascinating aspect of Poitier’s career was his political and racial symbolism, intertwined with the civil rights movement.
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Martin Luther King called himself a democratic socialist. He believed that America needed a “radical redistribution of economic and political power.” He challenged America’s class system and its racial caste system. He opposed US militarism
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