The Chasm Between Racial Optimism and Reality
Five decades after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., equality, for many, remains a distant dream.
KING
In This Issue
Martin Luther King Jr. on poverty, racism, and war, including his landmark “Letter From Birmingham Jail.” Plus John Legend and Jesse Williams on art as activism, an interview with John Lewis, Jesmyn Ward on racism in Mississippi, a photo essay by LaToya Ruby Frazier, an introduction by Bernice A. King, and more.
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Flip Schulke / Corbis / Getty My Father Chose Nonviolence
During another polarizing period in America’s history, Bernice A. King lays out three actions that she thinks her father would offer today.
Lettering by Adé Hogue The Young Man Who Became a Civil-Rights Icon
Before he led the Montgomery bus boycott or marched on Washington, Martin Luther King Jr. was a chain-smoking, pool-playing student at Crozer Theological College just discovering his passion for social justice.
Francis Miller / The LIFE Picture Collection / Getty The Arc of a Life
A timeline
Steve Schapiro How Martin Luther King Jr. Recruited John Lewis
The Georgia congressman on what it was like to know the iconic activist
Bettmann / Getty Coretta Scott King and the Civil-Rights Movement’s Hidden Women
She was far more than her husband’s helpmate, but along with many other leaders of the era, her leadership was hidden in plain sight.
AP ‘Martin Luther King Jr.’s Unfinished Work on Earth Must Truly Be Our Own’
Five days after King was assassinated, his “spiritual mentor” Benjamin Mays delivered a eulogy for his former student.
Santi Visalli / Getty Martin Luther King Jr. Saw Three Evils in the World
Racism was only the first.
II. Racism
Steve Schapiro / Corbis / Getty On Equality
In 1967, the civil-rights leader foresaw that white resistance to racial equality would stiffen as activists’ economic agenda grew more ambitious.
Paul Schutzer / The LIFE Picture Collection / Getty Racism Is ‘Built into the Very Bones’ of Mississippi
Jesmyn Ward reflects on choosing to raise her children in her home state.
Paul Sequeira / Getty 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.
Bettman / Getty ‘Let My People Vote’
In June 1965, the Voting Rights Act languished in the House Rules Committee after passage in the Senate. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote this letter to the New York Amsterdam News urging its passage as the first step in ensuring access to the ballot.
G L Askew II Jesse Williams and John Legend Talk Race in America
“America is cool because of black people. Our music is black. Our aesthetic is black … We are as American as you can be, and what do we get for it?”
III. Poverty
Three Lions / Getty The Crisis in America’s Cities
Martin Luther King Jr. on what sparked the violent urban riots of the “long hot summer” of 1967
Bettmann / Getty Where Have All the Rioters Gone?
Good jobs in black communities have disappeared, evictions are the norm, and extreme poverty is rising. Cities should be exploding—but they aren’t.
LaToya Ruby Frazier The Geography of Oppression
Shooting from a helicopter, the artist LaToya Ruby Frazier documented how King’s assassination affected the physical structures of cities.
Flip Schulke / Corbis / Getty How Much Had Schools Really Been Desegregated by 1964?
Ten years after Brown v. Board of Education, Martin Luther King Jr. condemned how little had changed in the nation's classrooms.
Bettmann / Getty Still Separate and Unequal
The civil-rights activist’s vision for education was far grander than integration alone. How disappointed he would be.
Jim Peppler / Alabama Department of Archives and History Martin Luther King Jr.’s Call For a Poor People’s Campaign
In early 1968, the activist planned a massive protest in the nation’s capital.
Jill Freedman / Getty America’s Moral Malady
The nation’s problem isn’t that we don’t have enough money. It’s that we don’t have the moral capacity to face what ails society.
Bettmann / Getty How the Civil-Rights Movement Aimed to End Poverty
“A Freedom Budget for All Americans” proposed spending billions of federal dollars to provide jobs and basic welfare to all citizens.
IV. Militarism
Don Cravens / The Life Images Collection / Getty; Bettmann / Getty Martin Luther King Jr.’s ‘Letter From Birmingham Jail’
“We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation, because the goal of America is freedom.”
Associated Press Freedom Ain’t Free
Martin Luther King Jr. was bailed out of Birmingham Jail by a millionaire. Incarcerated people today aren’t so lucky.
Richie Pope The Civil-Rights Movement’s Generation Gap
Activist Bree Newsome on bridging the divided perspectives of the young and old.
'Birmingham World' / Alabama Department of Archives and History Martin Luther King Jr.’s Protest Against a Racist Court System
On Easter Sunday in 1958, the civil-rights leader led a “prayer pilgrimage” in Montgomery, Alabama, to protest the inequality of a young man's death sentence.
© Kara Walker, courtesy of Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York How Kara Walker Recasts Racism’s Bitter Legacy
The artist’s works turn the brutality of history inside out.
Bettmann / Getty Martin Luther King Jr. on the Vietnam War
“The greatest irony and tragedy of all is that our nation, which initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world, is now cast in the mold of being an arch anti-revolutionary.”
WG600; Stephen F. Somerstein / Getty; Lukas Maverick Greyson
