Tag Archive for ‘martin luther king’

Harry Belafonte, Most Charming Revolutionary

Over the last twenty years, I occasionally shared the limelight with Harry Belafonte, in the early 1990s in particular, as the campaigns on behalf of Haitian refugees denied asylum in the United States and democracy in Haiti joined to tilt the Clinton Administration’s hand towards democracy and human rights in Haiti. Belafonte spoke with the wisdom of a man who had seen his share of injustice and faced them with the conviction that comes from a place deep within.

Ella Baker: A Political Organizer’s Organizer

Baker, born on December 13, 1903 died in New York City on December 13, 1986. During the Great Depression, she became involved with the Young Negroes Cooperative League. Afterwards, she joined the NAACP, but jumped at the chance of working with the SCLC at its inception. Baker was instrumental at helping to establish the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) — from which Congressman John Lewis emerged to become a leader –, and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party.

What was her philosophy and from which principles did she draw strength from?

VISA says: Alleluia, Amen, Black is Beautiful. Yikes!

Just as the United States was readying itself to celebrate the Rev. Martin Luther King’s birthday and Barack Hussein Obama’s ascendance to the Presidency, VISA, the credit card company jumped on the bandwagon without missing a beat. With a full-page ad in Sunday’s NY Times Magazine, it introduced the “exclusive VISA Black Card.”

Martin Luther King: First Among Equals

Since that faithful day in 1955 when he stepped forward to speak on behalf of the clergy and lead the bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, Martin Luther King never ceased to inspire the struggle for civil and human rights in the United States and the rest of the world. He made many speeches in the 13 years that followed his arrival on the political scene, the most famous and remembered being “I have a dream,” the speech he made in August 1963 in Washington before what was then the largest crowd that had assembled to advocate for civil rights and equality for all

Our climb will be even steeper than expected

The most memorable sentence in Barack Obama’s speech on election night in Chicago is the following: “Our climb will be steep.” Then, it appeared that in deference to the Reverend Martin Luther King and all the civil rights leaders who preceded him and made possible his victory at the polls, Obama meant to say that though he’s reached the mountaintop there were still miles to go before we all rose to the top.