Search

The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr. Volume 1: Called to Serve, January 1929-June 1951,' edited by Clayborne Carson et al.

The article discusses the Naperville movement which was started by Civil Rights activist Martin Luther King Jr's campaign to improve housing for the poor residents of the Naperville suburb in Chicago, Illinois, focusing on African Americans. Topics discussed include initiatives to improve slum housing standing alongside efforts to remove racial bias in the housing market.

The article discusses the history and legacy of the U.S. Supreme Court case Walker v City of Birmingham, particularly its significance to the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the civil rights movement led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Jim Crowism in Alabama under then-governor George Corley Wallace.

This Article reconstructs Lewis F. Powell Jr.'s thoughts on the civil rights movement by focusing on a series of littleknown speeches that he delivered in the 1960s lamenting the practice of civil disobedience endorsed by Martin Luther King Jr. Convinced that the law had done all it could for blacks, Powell took issue with King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail," impugning its invocation of civil disobedience and rejecting its calls for compensatory justice to make up for slavery and Jim Crow. Dismissive of reparations, Powell developed a separate basis for supporting diversity that hinged on distinguishing American pluralism from Soviet totalitarianism. Powell's reasons for defending diversity are worth recovering today, not least because courts continue to misinterpret his landmark opinion in Regents v. Bakke, confusing the use of diversity in higher education with the compensatory goals of affirmative action, a project that Powell rejected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In February 1968, the Memphis city garbage workers went on strike, an event that precipitated Martin Luther King’s coming to the city and his subsequent assassination on April 4 of that year. The city’s morning newspaper, The Commercial Appeal, on its editorial pages denounced the strike and derided King. The newspaper berated union officials, insulted the workers, and emboldened the intransigent mayor. This article is a review of the editorial page copy from the newspaper during the two months of the strike along with other materials that reveal the attitudes of Editor Frank Ahlgren. It shows that the hard-line approach during the first few weeks of the strike came from a fundamental misunderstanding of the black community and an overwhelming dislike for unions. Also, it examines whether the newspaper editorial page has some culpability in King’s death. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the reaction of African Americans to the Cuban Missile Crisis. As will be demonstrated, their reaction was one of strong support for the government's decisions, in spite of the high risks involved and the harsh ongoing domestic struggle for civil rights. Evidence of this support will include examples of personal reactions by prominent black leaders and intellectuals. Also, an episode of segregation which occurred during the crisis will be used to show how in those days of emergency their struggle for equality persisted. The interconnections between domestic civil rights and foreign policy issues will be highlighted. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines the controversy surrounding the renaming of a street for Martin Luther King Jr. in the city of Zephyrhills, Florida in 2003–2004. By paying close attention to the language deployed during a series of contentious city council meetings, the author traces how Zephyrhills’s divisive history and neoliberal spatial order kept white residents from grappling with the city’s legacy of racism, inequality, residential segregation, and memory of the Civil Rights movement. Ultimately, it reveals Americans’ limited capacity to recognize and discuss race in the post–Civil Rights era. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the U.S. Supreme Court's rulings in the cases Walker v. City of Birmingham and Shuttlesworth v. City of Birmingham which deal with African American ministers Wyatt Tee Walker and Fred Lee Shuttlesworth who were reportedly active in a movement protesting segregation in Birmingham, Alabama. According to the article, Shuttlesworth and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. were arrested for defying a court order and leading a parade on Good Friday in 1963.

This study demonstrates how reporter-written obituaries of Black civil rights movement leaders reinforce a limited, facile view of the African American freedom struggle that haunts even today’s race relations. The obituaries remember a movement that Julian Bond characterized as “a morality play” of “Black saints” against “southern White sinners.” What these articles remember—and in some cases forget—is critical because collective memory research shows that obituaries reflect what the present thinks of the past. Five nostalgic, racialized frames emerge from these obituaries: (a) the importance of violence inflicted on Blacks, (b) the importance of the dutiful suffering endured by Blacks, (c) news media’s documentation of White southern oppression, (d) the salience and valence of the early-1960s Martin Luther King Jr., and (e) the idealism of integration over Black nationalist goals. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the impact of a 1968 concert by singer James Brown in Boston, Massachusetts, highlighting the role of a live televised broadcast of the concert in preventing riots in the city following the assassination of civil rights advocate Martin Luther King, Jr. Topics addressed include the Civil Rights Movement in Boston during the 1960s, Brown's popularity and influence among African Americans, and a lack of subsequent media coverage and academic study of the concert.