Happy Martin Luther King Day

[filkertom]

As Barry Crimmins says, "It honors a great man, and it annoys racist nitwits."

The King Center has released a huge amount of archival material, everything from correspondence with royalty and the draft of his Nobel Peace Prize speech to letters from children to Dr. King to the wide range of public opinion about him and his causes. If you have a

Comments

[redaxe]

Via Balloon Juice, here's some recently recovered audio of a speech MLKmade at an Ohio high school in 1967. Good stuff.

[ixias]

Happy Martin Luther King Day! (Thank you Dr. King for getting my birthday turned into a day off from work. :)

[gardnerhill]

My favorite MLK quote - the polar opposite of the neo-cons' appropriation of "content of their character" (i.e., Let's Keep Pretending to Our White Selves That The Playing Field is 100% Equal) is this one:

"Nothing is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and heartfelt stupidity."

I try to work on mine every day - because like most liberals my problem isn't white racism, but trying to become aware of the vast invisibility of white privilege - the 1001 things, great and small, that ensure that I have less of a burden to bear every day than people of color. "You get pulled over 3 times a week because you bought a new car? Jeepers, that's never happened to me!" (White Privilege #238.)

[annearchy]

Here in Wisconsin, Governor Scott "Union Buster" Walker made an appearance at the annual MLK celebration in the capitol, read a plaque, and listened (I bet uncomfortably) to a college professor who talked about how Dr. King would not have liked draconian voter ID laws, union busting, etc. Then Walker sang along to We Shall Overcome (which was originally a union song). I guess he felt he had to.

[alverant]

I went back to the food bank yesterday for a volunteer shift since I had the day off. People were glad to see me and happy I did find work. There was a volunteer group there but some of them wound up getting moved to other areas after a while and I got saddled with minding 3 stations next to each other. At least it was a light day.