Sixty years have passed since Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his momentous “I Have a Dream” address during the landmark 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. While the event has come to be linked with the causes of desegregation and voting rights, it sought to highlight an array of racial and economic injustices, many of which still resonate today – in education, housing and criminal justice reform.
So how does today’s movement differ from its predecessor? First of all, in name: Julie Buckner Armstrong, an English professor at the University of South Florida in Tampa who has written several books about the Civil Rights Movement, said it’s not fair to use the same term to describe today’s efforts.
“Doing so minimizes the distinctiveness of what happened during the 1950s and 1960s,” Armstrong said.
Adriane Lentz-Smith, an associate professor of history at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, said the contemporary movement is both a continuation of and heir to previous struggles. While many issues remain the same, she said, today’s activists face a political mainstream that not only has shifted significantly to the right but that “no longer has competition with the Soviet Union pressuring it to make good on the promise of democracy.”
“Activists have drawn on and refined organizational models from the past, just as white supremacy has retooled to mask racialized power in colorblind language,” Lentz-Smith said.
Armstrong compared today’s specter of white supremacy to the mythical Hydra, whose heads, when cut off, grow two more in one’s place.
“Just as white supremacy evolves over time,” she said, “the fight must adapt and change. … That Hydra is behind the rise of mass incarceration disproportionately targeting Black and brown men, and it’s behind efforts to prevent educators from talking about diversity, equity, inclusion and even racism itself.”
Explore the series:MLK’s ‘I have a dream’ speech looms large 60…
Read the full article here
