Niama Safia Sandy

Dr. King was a radical critic of racism, capitalism and militarism. He didn't die. He was assassinated. And many, including Regan, fought the national holiday we're not commemorating. If you haven't read, in entirety, his speeches, you've been miseducated & I hope that you will

When the speech was over, Father Pfleger, who had been been cheering me on from the crowd, whispered in my ear: That's what you call the "You Gone Learn Today" speech and I 💀. Because, yeah.

In fact, most white Americans in 1963 opposed the March on Washington where Dr. King gave the "I Have A Dream Speech" with that one line that people oppose to anti-racism like to trot out against those working for racial justice.

I left them with this: People who oppose today what he stood for back then do not get to be the arbiters of his legacy. The real Dr. King cannot be commodified, homogenized, and white-washed and whatever side you stand on TODAY is the side you would have been back then.

Then I read all the names that white Americans called King: charlatan, demagogue, communist, traitor -- and brought out the polling showing more than three-quarters of Americans opposed King at his death while 94 percent approve of him now.

Oh, the uncomfortable silence as I read Dr. King's words at a commemoration of Dr. King's life when people had no idea that these were his words. When I revealed that everything I said to that point was taken from his speeches between '56 and 67... Can you say SHOOK!

"I never cease to wonder at the amazing presumption of much of white society, assuming that they have the right to bargain with the BLACK for their freedom..."

"Why do white people seem to find it so difficult to understand that the Black people are sick and tired of having reluctantly parceled out to THEM those rights and privileges which all others receive upon birth or entry in America?"

"If America does not respond creatively to the challenge to banish racism, some future historian will have to say, that a great civilization died because it lacked the soul and commitment to make justice a reality for all men."

"...for the good of America, it is necessary to refute the idea that the dominant ideology in our country, even today, is freedom and equality and that racism is just an occasional departure from the norm on the part of a few bigoted extremists."

“Whites, it must frankly be said, are not putting in a similar mass effort to reeducate themselves out of their racial ignorance...with each modest advance the white population promptly raises the argument that BLACK AMERICANS HAVE come far enough.”

"The white backlash of today is rooted in the same problem that has characterized America ever since the black man landed in chains on the shores of this nation."

"The step backwards has a new name today, it is called the white backlash, but the white backlash is nothing new. It is the surfacing of old prejudices, hostilities and ambivalences that have always been there..."

"The fact is, there has never been a single, solid, determined commitment on the part of the vast majority of white Americans to genuine equality for Black people."

"Ever since the birth of our nation, White America has had a Schizophrenic personality on the ? of race, she has been torn between selves. A self in which she proudly professes the great principle of democracy and a self in which she madly practices the antithesis of democracy."

"What they truly advocate is Socialism for the rich and Capitalism for the poor... "We know full well that racism is still that hound of hell which dogs the tracks of our civilization."

"These are the same people that now say to black people, whose ancestors were brought to this country in chains and who were emancipated in 1863 without being given land to cultivate or bread to eat; that they must pull themselves up by their own bootstraps..."