Martin Luther King Jr. Day
REST IN POWER | 1965 Civil Rights March, Selma, Alabama | Photographs by: Dennis Hopper
“Our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race. Even before there were large numbers of Negroes on our shores, the scar of racial hatred had already disfigured colonial society. From the sixteenth century forward, blood flowed in battles of racial supremacy. We are perhaps the only nation which tried as a matter of national policy to wipe its indigenous population. Moreover, we elevated that tragic experience into a noble crusade. Indeed, even today we have not permitted ourselves to reject or to feel remorse for this shameful episode. Our literature, our films, our drama, our folklore all exalt it.”
As we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday and the nonviolent movement and protests that championed human and civil rights for people of color, let us not overlook the violence that continues to plague the streets of the United States today. This violence is perpetrated by the same colonial supremacy that brought genocide, ecocide, slavery, and poverty. It echoes the sound of the blue coats and those old Jim Crow laws and the hate speech we’ve heard countless times. Today’s noble crusade involves racial profiling, unlawful detainment, and subjecting Native Peoples, U.S. citizens, and so many others to excessive force and murder. We recognize these songs and have witnessed this dance before. Has America become so spiritually bankrupted, so greedy, and so corrupted that it has forever lost its way?
Learn from King's legacy of nonviolent social change, be the difference!
The Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change