Martin Luther King

The Uppity Negro

Civil rights leader Dolores Huerta speaks during the final day of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. As the election of Donald Trump sets in, some dispirited black and Latino liberal activists are looking to veterans of the Civil Rights Movements on how to respond to strong disappointment amid uncertainty over voting rights, immigration reform and police shootings. (AP/Paul Sancya)

When this writer first heard of the slogan ‘Black Lives Matter’ he winced. Sounded ignominious, humiliating, undignified, embarrassing, pleading, definitely not noble, not appropriate to repeated murdering of innocent folks and children and other inhuman behavior.

This is an edited version of an older article, exploring the life and legacy of Malcolm X, including in relation to Martin Luther King and the two Kennedy assassinations. It is also about the 1960s as a cultural era, about his adoption of Sunni Islam and later Pan-Africanism, and about the time he almost brought […]

There is no figure in recent American history whose memory is more distorted than Martin Luther King Jr. Every year, in January and April, we commemorate the extraordinary career of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. But there is probably no figure in recent American history whose memory is more distorted, whose message is more bowdlerized, whose powerful words are […]
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Snowden as Samson, bringing the puzzle palace down around his head; Manning as Prometheus, tortured for her gift to mankind by ceaseless humiliation at the hands of dim jarhead martinets; the men who exposed the drone-massacre sweatshops, beggared by government decree; the helpless black witnesses of Ferguson and Baltimore, always photographed silhouetted by leaping flames like victims of auto-da-fé instead of killer cops.

Snowden as Samson, bringing the puzzle palace down around his head; Manning as Prometheus, tortured for her gift to mankind by ceaseless humiliation at the hands of dim jarhead martinets; the men who exposed the drone-massacre sweatshops, beggared by government decree; the helpless black witnesses of Ferguson and Baltimore, always photographed silhouetted by leaping flames like victims of auto-da-fé instead of killer cops.

On the Monday in January 2015 marked in the U.S. by many to commemorate the life of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the organization called Healthcare-Now in the U.S.

The reason the dispossessed turn to violence is because violence is the only thing power understands.
Baltimore is burning, embroiled in riots and protest against the city’s horrifically racist and oppressive police. That it took the death of Freddy Gray, a young man whose spine was severed in police custody, to spark the violence is perhaps less important than the fact that the explosion was inevitable.

In one of the blurbs for Ben Kamin’s book, Dangerous Friendship: Stanley Levison, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Kennedy Brothers, Hamilton Sides writes “Kamin continues his keen yet loving exploration into little-known aspects of King’s life and legacy.” While the comment is certainly true, it is important to explain further that similar to his previous books, Ben Kamin provides us with the human stories that surrounded both Martin Luther King’s “life and his legacy.” In addition, Dangerous Friends