The 74
“I grew up in the shadow of Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy. You could say every black kid born after 1960 did. While the jackboot of outright racism in America was being lifted from the neck of people of color during this time, black parents, mine and others, were always beating into me that the repressive reality of Jim Crow and burning crosses was our recent — not our ancient — history.
When you ignore the past you’re doomed to both repeat it and learn nothing from it. And in looking back at King’s famous letter from the Birmingham jail, the similarities between the era’s quest for black freedom and the current battle to improve education for black children rings similar. So it has to be asked: Have the white moderates he spoke of then turned into today’s white progressives who oppose change in education?”