mlk day 2018
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Yara Shahidi Performing Assata Shakur Is More #BlackGirlMagic Than Our Hearts Can Stand
As media partners for the Blackout for Human Rights-produced MLK Now event at New York City’s Riverside Church on Monday, The Root found a lot to be inspired by this Martin Luther King Day. But at The Glow Up, we were pleasantly surprised to also find #BlackGirlMagic in full effect. From actress Lupita Nyong’o reciting…
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Cory Booker Looked Poised for 2020 as He and San Juan, Puerto Rico, Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz Were Honored by the King Center in Atlanta
Oprah Winfrey may rule out a 2020 run to end President Donald Trump’s reign of terror over this country, but Cory Booker might not. In Atlanta Saturday, the U.S. senator from New Jersey was a thunderous presence at the King Center’s annual Salute to Greatness Awards Gala, where he was the main honoree. Introduced by…
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Mike Pence Turned Beet Red During MLK Service as Black Preacher Went Off About ‘Shithole’ Remarks
Everyone in the black community knows that there are three people who can dismantle your soul and crush your spirit using nothing but words: the oldest barber at any barbershop, a black mother whose child forgot to take the chicken out of the freezer and—worst of all—a black Baptist preacher. According to the Colt 45…
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Hey, Democrats: MLK Was Talking About You, Too
Today, on social media, I’ve seen quite a few white Democrats admonish Republicans not to pretend to honor the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy on MLK Day if those same Republicans haven’t spoken out against Donald Trump’s racist “shithole” statement. This is a valid, necessary point; conservative hypocrisy should be called out at every…
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Watch: Is MLK’s Legacy Under Attack?
In November, President Donald Trump’s administration released declassified FBI documents on President John F. Kennedy’s assassination. But the release also included a batch of Martin Luther King Jr. documents filled with allegations of “abnormal” sexual behavior and of being a “slow thinker” and a “Marxist” (pdf). The Root spoke with Clayborne Carson, the Martin Luther…
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What Does It Mean to Have a ‘Gentrified’ Martin Luther King Jr. When Some Blacks Are the Gentrifiers?
My first real experience with the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. happened in 1980, just 12 years after his tragic assassination in Memphis, Tenn. I was a 14-year-old freshman at Loyola High School, a prestigious Jesuit all-boys school in Los Angeles built on the philosophy that rigorous academic training would produce the next generation…
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Dressing Coretta: We Honor the Woman Who Helped Mold a Movement as Costume Designer Ruth E. Carter Revisits Selma
In the 50th year since his assassination in 1968, much has and will be said about Martin Luther King Jr., the civil rights leader and icon whose legacy of nonviolent resistance inspired the world—while compelling some to distort and dilute his message of activism. But Coretta Scott King, the great woman consistently behind and beside…
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What Martin Luther King Jr. Would Say About White People and Their ‘Shithole’ Silence
Noor Salman has never killed a human being. She has never injured anyone. She doesn’t even have a criminal record. But after her husband massacred 49 people in Orlando, Fla.’s Pulse nightclub on June 12, 2016, an FBI agent said that he “realized that she knew” about the attack. The FBI also discovered that Salman…