Comments on: MLK on Social Equality, Fellowship, and Love

By: Dudley

Dudley — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 23:17:24 +0000

Unlike five members of our supreme court, I believe that our society is still deeply racist and inquituous, and in need of a major overhaul.

One would think that simply driving to work through DC each day would be enough to inculcate some minimal measure of compassion in Roberts, et al., but I guess that’s too much to ask for.

By: Mary L. Dudziak

Mary L. Dudziak — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 18:05:12 +0000

In addition to these important works, there is new work on King, including a prize-winning recent book by Thomas F. Jackson, From Civil Rights to Human Rights: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Struggle for Economic Justice (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007). Here’s a link to a review: http://legalhistoryblog.blogspot.com/2007/12/reviewed-jackson-from-civil-rights-to.html

By: Patrick S. O'Donnell

Patrick S. O'Donnell — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 16:25:03 +0000

And I don’t think it in any way detracts from honoring King (his commitment to nonviolence, his courage, his religious faith, his political judgment, indeed, the vision that came to fuse the quest for civil rights to a fight for justice here and abroad) to recall how his political leadership was made possible by many (often forgotten or unknown) others that preceded him as well as untold others of his time and place. Toward that end, the few books noted here are representative of the historical, socio-cultural and political context that help us better appreciate King’s leadership role in the civil rights movement:

Cooney, Robert and Helen Michalowski, eds. The Power of the People: Active Nonviolence in the United States (Philadelphia, PA: New Society Publishers, 1987).

Marable, Manning. Race, Reform, and Rebellion: The Second Reconstruction in Black America, 1945-1990 (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2nd ed., 1991).

Morris, Aldon D. The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement: Black Communities Organizing for Change (New York: The Free Press, 1984).

Payne, Charles M. I’ve Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1995).

I’m assuming familiarity with some well-known and standard works in the civil rights literature by Branch, Carson, Garrow, et al.