Most Americans today know that Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. was killed in Memphis, Tennessee in 1968, but few know why he was there. King went to Memphis to support African American garbage workers, striking to gain recognition for their union.
The “greatest teacher of nonviolence in America” was a mentor to generations of activists, from Martin Luther King Jr. to today’s union organizers and immigrant rights campaigners.
Martin Luther King's speeches from 1954's Montgomery Bus Boycott to the 1968 Memphis Sanitation Strike. Compiled by Abdul Alkalimat, Prof Emeritus Dept of African American Studies and School of Information Sciences, Univ of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
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Matthew F. Nichter interviewed by Shawn Gude
Jacobin
August 28th was the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington. Ignore the lies and distortions — the reality, as the latest research shows, is that scores of socialists influenced or were themselves key figures in the civil rights movement.
Jonathan Eig’s new Martin Luther King biography stirs exhilaration and visceral pain at the unexpected triumphs and vicious violence that he and the freedom movement endured. It largely leaves out a key piece of King’s legacy: his commitment to labor
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