#martin luther jr

[padawan-historian]

Text: Don’t act like everyone loved my father. He was assassinated. A 1967 poll reflected that he was one of the most hated men in America. Most hated. Many who quote him now and evoke him to deter justice today would likely hate, and may already hate, the authentic King.

[dominiqueramseyart]

Today we remember Martin Luther King and the ongoing fight for civil rights here in the Unites States.

[democracyunderground]

[afriblaq]

“I’m tired of marching for something that should be mine at birth.” —Martin Luther King Jr.

He not preaching he's venting 😢

[cyarskj1899]

From IG annabodneydesign

[liberalsarecool]

I honor Martin Luther King Jr. today and every other day. Respect.

[liberaljane]

[profeminist]

“Again we have deluded ourselves into believing the myth that Capitalism grew and prospered out of the Protestant ethic of hard work and sacrifice. The fact is that capitalism was built on the exploitation and suffering of black slaves and continues to thrive on the exploitation of the poor – both black and white, both here and abroad.”

—  MLK, “The three evils of society,” 1967

[creatingblackcharacters]

Fun fact: MLK was a huge fan of Nichelle Nichols' Lieutenant Uhura! Even one of the most famous Black activists, in the midst of the movement, was looking to see his people in the stars. Representation matters!

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by IE (@intersectionalenvironmentalist)

This upcoming (really every!) MLK Day, I want us to actually take the time to read what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. actually said! His legacy is often wielded against Black activists as a form of "acceptable, peaceful protest", when the reality is that his beliefs and actions were so uncomfortable, so societally unacceptable and threatening to the status quo that he was assassinated 😬.

It is a show of respect to him, his memory, and his works that we actually listen to and promote the voice and values of the man himself. Letter From a Birmingham Jail is short but poignant, a good starting point. In honor of MLK this year, let's be willing to get uncomfortable, to confront our potentially harmful beliefs, for that better world he dreamed of 🙏🏾.

[saydesole]

Happy Black History 🤎

[fandomshatepeopleofcolor]

Okay, since the Spielberg post blew up, I need to clear up something because I can see in the notes that pple think that Spielberg owns the rights to MLK speeches and I don't want to spread any misinformation. This is what the Vice article says:

In 2009, Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks company paid the estate for film rights to King's words, along with his life rights, which allow a person or company to make content based on an individual's story. DreamWorks has yet to produce or direct Spielberg's planned King biopic, but the rights have caused complications for numerous filmmakers. (Neither Spielberg's literary agent nor King's estate returned Broadly's request for comment.)

This means that while the MLK estate still owns the original copyright for the speeches, Spielberg actually bought and now owns the film rights to MLK's speeches. However, this doesn't erase how problematic it it is since this means that Spielberg is the only filmmaker legally allowed to use MLK's speeches word for word in his films. A White filmmaker is essentially holding onto the film rights, at the expense of Black filmmakers. The article talks about how Ava Duvernay had to write original speeches from scratch for Selma.

King has received only one major biopic, 2014's Selma, directed by Ava DuVernay [...] Instead of using King's speeches, DuVernay wrote original monologues that sounded like soliloquies the civil rights leader could have given. [...] When asked about the changes in 2014, DuVernay told the Washington Post, "We knew those rights are already gone. They're with Spielberg."

The article also mentioned that Spielberg bought life rights and according to this Forbes article, this means that Spielberg also bought the rights to MLK's life.

By paying the Estate for the film rights to Dr. King's speeches along with life rights, Spielberg obtained unprecedented filmmaking access to Dr. King’s life — supported by Dr. King’s extraordinary intellectual property (the right to use Dr. King’s actual words.)

Hope this clarifies everything!

- mod sodapop

[twixnmix]

Martin Luther King Jr. playing baseball with his children Martin Luther King III and Yolanda King in the backyard of their home in Atlanta on November 8, 1964.

Photos by Flip Schulke

[blondebrainpowered]

Martin Luther King, Jr., arrested for “loitering,” Montgomery, Alabama, 1958

Photographer: Charles Moore

[wowbright]

Toward the end of the Reconstruction era, something very significant happened. That is what was known as the Populist Movement. The leaders of this movement began awakening the poor white masses and the former Negro slaves to the fact that they were being fleeced by the emerging Bourbon interests. Not only that, but they began uniting the Negro and white masses into a voting bloc that threatened to drive the Bourbon interests from the command posts of political power in the South.

To meet this threat, the southern aristocracy began immediately to engineer this development of a segregated society. I want you to follow me through here because this is very important to see the roots of racism and the denial of the right to vote. Through their control of mass media, they revised the doctrine of white supremacy. They saturated the thinking of the poor white masses with it, thus clouding their minds to the real issue involved in the Populist Movement. They then directed the placement on the books of the South of laws that made it a crime for Negroes and whites to come together as equals at any level. And that did it. That crippled and eventually destroyed the Populist Movement of the nineteenth century.

If it may be said of the slavery era that the white man took the world and gave the Negro Jesus, then it may be said of the Reconstruction era that the southern aristocracy took the world and gave the poor white man Jim Crow. He gave him Jim Crow. And when his wrinkled stomach cried out for the food that his empty pockets could not provide, he ate Jim Crow, a psychological bird that told him that no matter how bad off he was, at least he was a white man, better than the black man. And he ate Jim Crow. And when his undernourished children cried out for the necessities that his low wages could not provide, he showed them the Jim Crow signs on the buses and in the stores, on the streets and in the public buildings. And his children, too, learned to feed upon Jim Crow, their last outpost of psychological oblivion.

-Martin Luther King, Jr., March 25, 1965, Selma to Montgomery March, State Capitol steps, Montgomery, Alabama (x)

[apersonnamedel]

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day!

Remember and celebrate all what we are fighting for! Remember and celebrate all the wonderful black figures in your life and in history.

Remember what we are fighting for.

Don’t fall victim to trump’s narrative.

[afriblaq]

"That dream that I had that day, has in many points, turned into a nightmare."