It’s been nearly 50 years since civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered in Memphis at age 39.
Had he lived, King would have turned 87 this week in an America that’s dramatically different, in some ways, from the one he knew during the 1960s. The country has an African-American president, for example, and the Confederate flag has finally begun to fade into the mist of history.
Still, there also are distressing echoes of King’s time. Many see voting rights for minorities imperiled again and hear an update of George Wallace’s harsh “us vs. them” rhetoric at Donald Trump rallies. And the murders at a black church in Charleston last summer recall the deaths of four little girls in the 1963 Birmingham church bombing.
Read it all.
(Charlotte Observer) Tim Funk–What would Martin Luther King Jr. think of the America of 2016?
It’s been nearly 50 years since civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered in Memphis at age 39.
Had he lived, King would have turned 87 this week in an America that’s dramatically different, in some ways, from the one he knew during the 1960s. The country has an African-American president, for example, and the Confederate flag has finally begun to fade into the mist of history.
Still, there also are distressing echoes of King’s time. Many see voting rights for minorities imperiled again and hear an update of George Wallace’s harsh “us vs. them” rhetoric at Donald Trump rallies. And the murders at a black church in Charleston last summer recall the deaths of four little girls in the 1963 Birmingham church bombing.
Read it all.