Sometimes I am amazed that I inhabited this world at the same time as Martin Luther King, even if only for a scant 6 years. And I’m saddened the image of him commonly celebrated on MLK day is so sanitized. He’s been de-radicalized for public consumption, wrapped up in the “I have a dream” sound bite. It’s as though we want to forget what led him to speaking about having that dream – that to be an African-American in the U.S. during that time and long before was nightmarish.<\/p>\n
Thinking of King this week I read Letter from a Birmingham Jail<\/em> and I cried a bit: When you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society<\/em> . . .<\/p>\n