Restoring King
There is no figure in recent American history whose memory is more distorted than Martin Luther King Jr.
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Restoring King
There is no figure in recent American history whose memory is more distorted than Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Understood Solidarity
Jonathan Eig’s new Martin Luther King biography stirs exhilaration and visceral pain at the unexpected triumphs and vicious violence that King and the freedom movement endured. But it largely leaves out a key piece of King’s legacy: his commitment to labor.
MLK Day Should Be About Continuing Dr. King’s Radical Project
On Martin Luther King Jr Day, rather than embracing a sanitized, deradicalized King, we remember a committed foe of not only racism, but economic inequality and militarism.
What MLK Actually Thought About Israel and Palestine
Some try to paint Martin Luther King Jr as an unswerving supporter of Israel. They're wrong.
The Evolution of Dr. King
By the end of his life, Martin Luther King Jr was an avowed socialist.
The Evolution of Dr. King
By the end of his life, Martin Luther King Jr was an avowed socialist.
The Political Philosophy of Martin Luther King Jr
Martin Luther King Jr wasn’t just a brilliant orator and organizer. He was also a groundbreaking thinker.
The Promised Land Is Still Not Here
The Left struggles to speak with the kind of moral clarity Martin Luther King exemplified — but that shouldn't stop us from trying.
Martin Luther King’s Revolution
50 years ago today, Martin Luther King Jr defied his advisers and declared his opposition to the Vietnam War. Liberal supporters immediately abandoned him.
Selma and the Struggle
Selma isn’t just a great movie. Its sense of history and justice is deeply politicizing.
When the FBI Targeted the Poor People’s Campaign
An FBI scholar argues that recently unearthed surveillance documents aren’t proof of anything about Martin Luther King. They do, however, show how the bureau tried to destroy the Poor People’s Movement.
What Martin Luther King Jr Really Thought About Riots
Joe Biden is trying to use Martin Luther King’s legacy to make the case for a law-and-order crackdown on protests. But King drew a distinction between violence against people and violence against property — and he viewed riots as the product of an unjust social order.
To MLK, Individual Greatness Could Be Found in Attacking Injustice
Martin Luther King argued that the desire for individual greatness marred US society. But he also believed that desire could be channeled into collective action, with everyone acting as “drum majors” for justice against the “triple evils" of racism, capitalism, and militarism.
When King Was Dangerous
Martin Luther King Jr is remembered as a person of conscience who only carefully broke unjust laws. But his militant challenges to state authority place him in a much different tradition: radical labor activism.
Remember: The FBI Declared War on and Tried to Destroy Martin Luther King
In all the celebrations of Martin Luther King’s life, we tend to forget something very important about our country’s greatest civil rights leader: when he was alive, institutions of the US state, especially the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover, constantly harassed, surveilled, and attempted to destroy King.
Martin Luther King Knew That There’s Nothing Peaceful About Nonviolence If You’re Doing It Right
Establishment pundits love to cite Martin Luther King as a way to delegitimize militant protests and shame unruly protesters. But King wasn’t a proponent of passive, compliant protest — to him, nonviolent action was about forging a powerful collective force that could coerce ruling elites into conceding to demands for justice.
The Socialist Tradition Shaped Martin Luther King
Accounts of the life of Martin Luther King Jr often present him as a singularly great individual. Yet MLK was profoundly shaped by a vibrant ecosystem of socialists and labor radicals, from Myles Horton and Rosa Parks to Bayard Rustin and Stanley Levison.
Martin Luther King Jr Dreamed of a Society Without Poverty. We Can Achieve It.
Martin Luther King Jr once said that there’s “nothing but a lack of social vision to prevent us from paying an adequate wage to every American citizen.” Decades after his assassination, we can realize his vision of an economically just society.
MLK Was an Exemplar of a Black Socialist Tradition
Martin Luther King Jr had a rich relationship with socialist politics: he sympathized with but ultimately rejected Marxism, and he settled on a Christian socialism that viewed the struggle against racism and class oppression as fundamentally intertwined.