Dr. Martin Luther King Jr is remembered for stressing the need for civil rights for Black people, but he constantly fused the concept of legal equality with the rights of workers and the poor.
He pointed to three universal problems in the U.S. — war, racism, poverty. #MLKDay
He pointed to three universal problems in the U.S. — war, racism, poverty. #MLKDay
The rapidly expanding Civil Rights movement used non-violent civil disobedience to put a spotlight on the hypocrisy of the government’s Cold War rhetoric. At a time when the U.S. projected itself as beacon of democracy, the “Negro problem” became an international issue.
Thanks to a decade of tireless work, sharp confrontations and the physical sacrifices of millions—most of whose names will never be known—the civil rights movement succeeded at dismantling Jim Crow segregation.
After the Civil Rights Act was passed, Dr. King emphasized how far the country still was from real justice, asking, “What good does it do to sit at the counter when you cannot afford a hamburger?”
Dr. King was dangerous to the political establishment because he started to draw the connection between different struggles and unite them against a common enemy.
We cannot protest the war in Afghanistan and forget the racist laws directed at the immigrant community; we cannot fight for women’s rights and not speak to the need for full equality for the LGBTQ community.
When we remember Dr. King, we should remember him as a man attempting to connect the various forms of oppression into a single struggle against social injustice. The only way to remove that injustice is to remove the foundation from which it grows.
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