mlk day
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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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Episode 1: Our Video Series Shares Never-Been-Told Stories of the Memphis Sanitation Workers
In Memphis, Tenn., 1968, 1,300 sanitation workers braved the bitter cold to engage in a revolutionary 65-day action to defend their right to personhood. These men struggled against the noose of white supremacy to proclaim their dignity. They stood, shoulder to shoulder, armed with picket signs and perseverance, determined to declare to the world, “I…
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Racists Commemorate MLK Day by Hitting Northern Virginia Community With KKK Flyers
In Northern Virginia, racists are commemorating the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, too—by spreading Ku Klux Klan flyers attacking the slain civil rights leader. Residents in Leesburg, Va., which is located about an hour west of Washington, D.C., first reported seeing the flyers late Friday night, according to WTOP-FM. The local radio outlet reports that…
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Okla. State Students Celebrate MLK Day in ‘Blackface’ … or Was It Just a Face Mask?
Two Oklahoma State University students decided that the best way to celebrate not having classes because of Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday was to paint their faces black. The photo posted by a student presumably named “Abbey” was posted to Instagram and immediately caught the attention of black students at Oklahoma State. Not everyone assumed…
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8 Shot at Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Park in Miami During MLK Day Celebration
A Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration in Miami went awry after a shooting left eight people injured, WSVN reports. According to the Miami-Dade Fire Rescue, three juveniles and three adults were shot during the celebration at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Park. Two other juveniles were grazed by bullets and were treated on…
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What to Say When ‘Wypipo’ Bring Up MLK
Whenever a black person diverges from the path of respectability and voices an opinion contrary to the mainstream narrative, the keepers of the status quo will quickly shout them down with the same, recognizable refrain. Sometimes it sounds so familiar, one might think the people who sit atop America’s totem pole must have trained one…
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Black Lives Matter Chicago and Martin Luther King Jr.
“This is a terrible thing. I’ve been in many demonstrations all across the South, but I can say that I have never seen—even in Mississippi and Alabama—mobs as hostile and as hate-filled as I’ve seen here in Chicago.” —Martin Luther King Jr. text On Nov. 5, 2016, Joshua Beal was in Chicago for his cousin’s…
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City of Biloxi, Miss., Renames MLK Day and Surely Regrets It Now
The city of Biloxi got serious flak last night when it announced on its Twitter account that city offices would be closed Monday in “observance of Great Americans Day.” Non-emergency municipal offices in Biloxi will be closed on Monday in observance of Great Americans Day.— City of Biloxi (@CityofBiloxi) January 13, 2017 Great Americans Day,…