'Bigotries emerge not merely out of ignorance, but from an accompanying lack of curiosity and courage,' writes essayist JamilSmith. 'Nothing nurtures that ignorance and cowardice quite like comfort.'
“Today, we remember a man committed to the vision that people should be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin.”
Bernice King helped me spend her father’s birthday productively two years ago when she invited me to share a stage with an assortment of speakers and deliver remarks at her father’s church, Ebenezer Baptist in Atlanta . At this year’s edition of the same assembly, prior to her response to Blackburn, shethe “comfortable and convenient” reshaping of Martin’s legacy. “A prophetic word calls for an inconvenience because it challenges us to change our hearts, our minds and our behavior,” she said.
I do this because I, too, received an insufficient education concerning the civil rights movement and King’s life. It has been nearly 40 years since I last saw my seventh-grade U.S. history book, a thick volume with a giant bald eagle on the front cover, but I may never forget one page in particular. It was the only one that I recall mentioning the Civil Rights Movement.
You only needed one hand and another thumb to count all the Black schoolchildren in my private school’s grade, and depending upon the class, I was at times the only one in the room. And this was the book that was going to help us learn about America? Even at 12 years old, I could recognize how ludicrous that was.
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