'The destruction of black communities — left acutely vulnerable to the pandemic by 'decades of willful neglect, policy malfeasance and the criminalization of the poor' — imperils the vision civil rights activists fought for in the 1960s.' (via CNNopinion)
Peniel Joseph is the Barbara Jordan chair in ethics and political values and the founding director of the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, where he is also a professor of history. He is the author of several books, most recently"The Sword and the Shield: The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr." The views expressed here are his. View more opinion articles on CNN.
What Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. referred to as the"promise of American democracy" at the 1963 March On Washington is receding against the twin burdens of a highly racialized pandemic and anti-government sentiment -- fueled by no less than the president of the United States -- that apes the"states' rights" rhetoric of the Civil War.
Peniel JosephKing's dedication to achieving black citizenship went hand-in-hand with Malcolm X's quest for black dignity. Despite ideological differences over tactics and strategies, the two leaders found a shared symmetry in speaking truth to power. Their words proved oracular: they became the two biggest critics of white supremacy, racial inequality, war and poverty in American history.
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