Sublime

Did anyone notice the irony that at this Martin Luther King Jr. oratorical contest, my free Black life represented Stonewall Jackson High School?

WITH ALMOST the first words of his speech, the audience—the congressmen and Senators with whom he had served, the Cabinet members he had appointed, the black-robed Justices of the Supreme Court, the Ambassadors of other nations, a few in robes of far-off countries as if to dramatize that the world as well as America was listening, the packed galler

white silence is violence. It actively protects the system. It says I am okay with the way things are because they do not negatively affect me and because I enjoy the benefits I receive with white privilege

directly confronting racial and gendered inequalities was a key strategy to eradicate them. As she carefully explained in her 1965 Freedomways

The next name was Martin Luther King Jr. I had never seen his face before, or heard his name, and it was several minutes before I understood that Dr. Kimball didn’t mean Martin Luther, who I had heard of.

Despite his passage of the 1957 and 1960 civil rights bills, “there has been a lingering reservation in the minds of many Negro leaders whether Mr. Johnson, a Texan with close friendships among Southern legislators, whole-heartedly subscribed to the far-reaching Kennedy program,” the New York Times said. His meetings with the five leaders, the Time