Search for "Martin Luther King Jr."

Response: What Black Prophetic Politics?

By Jonathan L. Walton

…lvation thus causes him to sound more like Billy Graham than Martin Luther King, Jr. This, according to Willis, demonstrates how evangelical whites, not the prophetic black church, have become the new religious standard bearer, setting the theological tone for black politicians. For the sake of full disclosure, I should say that Professor Willis is a brother beloved, brilliant scholar and even better human being. But on this particular topic, I be…

Yes We Can/Si Se Puede: Remembering and Forgetting Cesar Chavez (March 31, 1927—April 23, 1993)

By Luis Leon

…ice. Upon breaking the fast, Chavez received a telegram from Martin Luther King Jr. declaring that his and Chavez’s movement were actually one—the struggle for human equality. On July 4, 1969, Chavez’s bronze face and dark eyes adorned the cover of Time. The accompanying story dubbed him the “earthy” and “mystical” leader of the new American left—comparing him to the late Dr. Martin Luther King. Chavez is mostly remembered as a Latino hero, commun…

Trayvon Martin and American Exceptionalism

By Mark Hulsether

…Yet one must also grant that exceptionalism can be used (as Martin Luther King Jr. used it, for example) to combat racism, within an underlying logic of “exceptional-democracy-versus-exceptional-racism.” In the work of King at his best, and in many other significant contexts, it has proved its value for anti-racist projects. Could the way that Obama evoked it this morning be another such context? One can hope. Because the exceptionalist discourse…

Stephen King Appeals to Gun Advocates’ Individual Responsibility

By Elizabeth Drescher

…it might be hurting people, and that made it the responsible thing to do,” King said. King’s emphasis on responsibility, which is echoed twice further in the paragraph, allows him to deftly set aside quibbling over inane constitutional questions like whether the Second Amendment’s insistence on “the right of the people to keep and bear arms” is in any way infringed by the Founders’ parallel clarity with regard to regulation, even of eighteenth-ce…

Let There Be Light: Handwritten Draft of King James Bible Reveals Secrets of Its Creation

By Ed Simon

…minster Company at London (and had a hand in the work on Genesis to Second Kings). Though the King James Version would ultimately become the most celebrated English translation of the Bible, the scholars working on it had ample precedent, with eight translations preceding theirs. The most notable versions in sixteenth century England were the Bishop’s and the Geneva Bibles. As is perhaps obvious from their names, the language and the textual gloss…

The Birmingham Church Bombing: How Will We Remember?

By Edward J. Blum

…Church. Only three weeks after the March on Washington, when Martin Luther King Jr. had shared his dream of a future where young white boys and black boys, white girls and black girls, would hold hands, Denise McNair, Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, and Carole Robertson were denied that future. In her remarkable Searching for Zion, published earlier this year, Raboteau describes McNair’s shrine to his daughter’s memory: “a pair of black patent…

Post-Racial? Yes and No.

By Alice Hunt

…movement. Hindsight unsettles the comforts of passivity. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s words from the Birmingham jail still haunt our thoughts and actions: More and more I feel that people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will… We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Racism bedevils our coun…

Bachmann Staffer Likens
Rick Perry to King Saul and Bachmann to anointed
King David

By Warren Throckmorton

…the part of a Old Testament leader but Bachmann has God’s approval, as did King David. In the Old Testament, Saul was the first King of Israel and but had a bad end because he fell out of God’s favor. To replace Saul, God placed His blessing on King David. Here is the Waldron comment in full: The three-part video interview of Waldron on the Herman and Sharron Bailey Show talking about his time in prison in Uganda is up at YouTube. As of this morni…

If Trayvon Martin Were My Son, His Killer Would be in Jail Now

By Joanna Brooks

…lity. It’s a persistent, centuries-old American pattern of imagining what is sacred. Find it in the nineteenth-century novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and find it still in twenty-first century coverage of child murder cases. If Trayvon Martin were a blonde and blue-eyed girlchild, like Uncle Tom’s Cabin’s Little Eva (short for Evangeline) the story of his death would be on everyone’s lips. If Trayvon Martin were my son, truth is, his killer would be in…

Race, Reparations and the Search for Our Molecular Soul

By Michael Schulson

…ults there. Unbeknownst to me, the sons of Marcus Garvey and Martin Luther King, Jr. were also getting their reveals that night. Your test traced your ancestry back to Cameroon. Has getting the ancestry results been meaningful for you? Has it changed the way you think about things? Being a bit flip, do I feel like I have Cameroonian blood coursing through my veins? No. I don’t. But it has made me more interested in Cameroon. My siblings were just…