Civil rights activists and Martin Luther King Jr’s family spoke at the event in Washington DC.
It seemed so easy at the time.
Now, with increasing online division and polarisation we’re getting further and further away from that dream.
It absolutely did NOT seem easy at the time. People were lynched and churches were bombed. The same way people talk about BLM “rioting” today, they talked about King at the time. In 1968, King had an UNfavorability rate of nearly 75%.
Whitewashing and romanticizing history does not help.
And King was not unsympathetic to the rioters.
And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the negro poor has worsened over the last twelve or fifteen years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity.
He also didn’t wholly disagree with Malcolm X.
While we did not always see eye to eye on methods to solve the race problem, I always had a deep affection for Malcolm and felt that he had a great ability to put his finger on the existence and root of the problem.
