From our First Draft of History Department comes an on-the-scene account of the day in June 1967, when Martin Luther King, Jr. came to Harlem to speak to hospital workers: “We shall overcome. No lie can live forever.”
Originally published June 22, 1967
“The spirit of Gandhian agape that hung like a halo over Selma, with its nuns and angelic-faced students, was gone, replaced by a clenched militancy fueled by a despair expressed by Martin King's admission that his dream of Washington 1963 has turned into a nightmare.”
Originally published June 30, 1966
“To put it crudely, America would not exist without 244 years of black slavery, 85 years of Jim and Jane Crow, and now, one of two black kids caught in a violence-infested life of poverty.”
Originally published September 17, 1991
“Only by creating loyalties to something more universal than our immediate tribe — to ideas and values like community, tolerance, pluralism, and equality — can we begin the process of reciprocity and reconciliation between blacks and Jews.”
Originally published March 20, 1984
Speaking truth to power: ‘No lie can live forever’
January 18, 2019
‘I celebrate having been a witness to her life, and mourn her passing because she was special, and we may not see her equal again’
Originally published August 17, 2018
Fifty-one years ago today, Martin Luther King Jr. visited New York to declare that the Vietnam War was poisoning America’s soul
April 4, 2018
If Dr. King were alive today, he’d be…fighting against identity politics? Wha?
January 16, 2018