Today on Sojourner Truth, our special honoring the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
On Monday, January 20, millions of people across the United States marked Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day, which is observed on the third Monday of January each year. It took a hard-fought grassroots campaign to win the establish of Dr. King's birthday as a holiday. The movement for Dr. King's birthday as a national holiday was met with great resistance, but the first MLK National Holiday was finally won and marked in 1986.
Today, there continue to be efforts to sanitize Dr. King and hide the revolutionary who he was. It was ironic that the White Supremacist-in-Chief in the White House and his vice president were obliged to visit the MLK Memorial yesterday. This, after leading the way for rolling back rights won in the Civil Rights, Black, Brown and environmental movements.
What is often hidden is that Dr. King put forward democratic socialism and that he called for a general strike. When he came out against the War in Vietnam in 1967, he was vilified in mainstream media and denounced by Civil Rights leaders. Funding for his movement was pulled, but Dr. King didn't step back. He put together his fight against racism with being anti-war and called for a Poor People's Campaign. It was at that point that he was assassinated. His ability to bring people together across the divides of race and issues was considered dangerous by the FBI, which made efforts to discredit Dr. King, including by threatening him. By April 1968, just months after he called for the Poor People's Campaign, he was assassinated.
Today, we focus on what the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stood for and how his legacy and demands are being carried out today and by whom.
Our guests are Dr. Peniel E. Joseph and Bettie Mae Fikes. Dr. Joseph is the Barbara Jordan Chair in Political Values and Ethics at the LBJ School of Public Affairs and founding director of the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy at the University of Texas at Austin. His latest book, "The Sword and the Shield: The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.," will be published by Basic Books on April 7, 2020. Bettie Mae is a civil rights icon who was known as "The Voice of Selma." She joined the civil rights movement in Selma, Alabama, as a young teenager and her singing voice riveted a movement. It was known to inspire those preparing to be arrested along with Dr. King.
