Each year, prominent writers and political commentators celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.’s supposedly “colorblind” politics, perpetuating a tiresome assumption that he overlooked race in his public work. This dangerous lie distorts, sanitizes, and mythologizes King’s activism, and de-radicalizes his political legacy. In fact, King’s public statements both before and after the 1963 March on Washington reveal that his rhetoric was far more threatening to contemporary white Americans than popular memory assumes
. America feared King so much that, by his death in 1968, only
Great read. Love how the links lead back to the references, which include some academic journals.
Fantastic piece!