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Martin Luther King Jr.

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The Dig

MLK, Political Philosopher.

Martin Luther King, Jr. is often remembered for his soaring oratory. But the commonplace emphasis on his rhetoric in place of his ideas too often allows enemies of King's agenda to domesticate him or, worse, to weaponize his taken-out-of-context words to bolster the very forces of racism and oppression that King had struggled to defeat. This episode discusses King’s views on nonviolence, the Black Power movement, gender, hope, political economy, Beloved Community, and more.

The Whitewashing of King's Assassination

The death of Martin Luther King Jr. wasn’t a galvanizing event, but the premature end of a movement that had only just begun.

Restoring King

There is no figure in recent American history whose memory is more distorted than Martin Luther King Jr.

Seeing Martin Luther King as a Human Being

King should be appreciated in his full complexity.

Martin Luther King’s Radical Anti-Capitalism

As King’s attention drifted to the problems of the urban north, his critiques came to focus on the economic system itself.
Martin Luther King Jr. speaking into news microphones.

Martin Luther King Jr. Spent the Last Year of His Life Detested by the Liberal Establishment

King was roundly denounced for his stances against the Vietnam War and injustices north of the Mason-Dixon line.
Martin Luther King Jr.

MLK Now

The canonical image of Martin Luther King Jr. neglects many of his most important intellectual, ethical, and political critiques.

The Strike That Brought MLK to Memphis

In his final days, King stood by striking sanitation workers. We returned to the city to see what has changed—and what hasn’t.
Reagan signing the bill establishing Martin Luther King Day.

The Sanitizing of Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks

On the uses and abuses of civil rights heroes.
Caricature of Martin Luther King's head

The House of the Prophet

Martin Luther King Jr. was the galvanizing voice of the civil rights struggle, an uncompromising, complicated figure who soared in the pulpit.
Martin Luther King, Jr. being arrested in Montgomery, 1958.

Martin Luther King Was a Law Breaker

On the second anniversary of MLK's assassination, political prisoner Martin Sostre wrote a tribute emphasizing his radical disobedience.

Lessons in Training, Strategy, and Discipline From the Civil Rights Movement

Tactical excellence without a strategic understanding is a recipe for failure.
A protestor climbs the flagpole to remove the American flag during an Anti-Vietnam War rally in 1971.

Another Country: Visions of America

The rise of a violent authoritarian state under Trump unveils a deep uncertainty over what America is.
Police turn fire hoses on nonviolent youth civil rights demonstrators in Alabama.

Minnesota Had Its Birmingham Moment

In 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. outlined a strategy to expose official brutality. Anti-ICE protesters are following it—and it’s working.
African Americans walk to boycott the segregated bus system in Birmingham, Alabama.

What We Get Wrong About the Montgomery Bus Boycott – and What We Can Learn from It

The movement’s success was never a given. It took much longer and required tremendous sacrifice without certainty it would work
Pictures of Martin Luther King Jr. with a red background, and with words talking about his assassination.

The Man Who Was Supposed to Kill Martin Luther King Jr.

For years, one man complicated the official story of who murdered the civil-rights leader. Just before he died in October, he offered a jaw-dropping revelation.
William Lloyd Garrison.

From William Lloyd Garrison to Tolstoy, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr.

There has been a long history of nonviolent resistance in the United States, from William Lloyd Garrison to Martin Luther King Jr.
Coretta Scott King sitting in front of a portrait of Martin Luther King Jr.

America Has Gotten Coretta Scott King Wrong

Her ghostwritten autobiography diminishes her, and I found out why.
Lerone A. Martin

Christian Nationalists Don’t Want Us To Remember the Real MLK

The same Christian ideology that inspired J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI to surveil MLK is alive and well in the Trump administration.
Jimmy Carter waving and smiling at a crowd of supporters, surrounded by men in suits.

Jimmy Carter’s Improbable Road to the Presidency

The Southern president, who kept his head down following Brown v. Board of Education, would eventually declare that “the time for discrimination is over.”