King's Words Research Articles

Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Legacy of Boston Personalism

Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Legacy of Boston Personalism

Free and Brave

Free and Brave Caroline Knight (bio) For the land of the free, and the home of the brave.where brave means taking a step outside of my parents' homeand recognizing i'm in a target zone.my leg, 2 cops go free unknown.my stomach, 4 cops.my neck, 6 stomps crushing my bones.my head? no need. i'm already dead.it shouldn't make sense that i'm so tense,that i literally shake in the presence of civil defense,that my life is a story and it's always full of suspense,because tomorrow is not a promise to me and the black community.i have a degree in police brutality,taken 16 years of this native language, spoken internationallyyet i don't enunciate fluently because je ne comprends pas pourquoi le racisme est ici. brave means attending an institutionthat uses the mathematical art of substitutionto replace black excellence with the laws of isaac newton.i speak in proper english for i only wishpeople could see me as perfect.it's a different tongue i use around the school,not to look cool, but so i look more pronounced and stand out in the college application pool.i utilize every opportunity propelled, kicked, shot at meand collect the information in its entirety.do you see my broad vocabulary?secondary resources is what i rely on to succeedbecause i can't change the fact that my education cost whiteTEEN.99this system's education was not built for a black girl named caroline; a girl who believesin the idea of diversity, but has yet to see her wish of appreciation for her melanin skin come true. [End Page 557] 5 plus 6 equals 11, the year that SATs are in session,meaning college board is getting their wealthbut somehow forgotten that this amountwas the number of times eric garner screamed for help.i can't breathe, i can't breathe, i can't breathe, i can't breathe,i can't breathe, i can't breathe, i can't breathe, i can't breathe,i can't breathe, i can't breathe, i can't breathe.he can no longer speak for the man is deceased.may his soul rest in peace. sometimes, i just have to wonder,what would francis scott key thinkif he were to witness what happened in our world today:"the land of the free and the home of the brave"?when writing those words, did he imaginethat those phrases were a lie?that they defy the foundation this country was built on?he should've written"for your white supremacy and the home of the slave." free means i proudly speak of black historywith no restraints. this is not the first time the truthhas disappeared because of this system's fear that we are here, together,white and minority ears hear the same message, "change is near."it is everywhere we acknowledge that posting isn't enough andmurdering is beyond too much.it is white people memorizing dr. king's words:"injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."it is understanding that protests are peaceful until the police become lethal.it is knowing the names of every single slave that survived the plague known as today. we don't demand justice, we deserve it.it shouldn't be some prize we have to idolize, rather a goal we can control.much like how the national guard proposes the use of guns and horsesto trample our justified ideals and hopes, to reveal that black lives matter should be real. [End Page 558] george floyd gasped for air, not only because he couldn't breathe, but because he couldn't seea future where his family was not screaming due to the knee of a white man serving the system's police.regis korchinski-paquet was falling for a few seconds, but some see that time as worthless because it's all the life she had left.our skin is confident, our being is prominent,and i will not stop writing until we are not seenas approximates...

The Last Testament of Martin Luther King Jr

This essay looks at Martin Luther King Jr.'s last will and testament, found in his final publication, The Trumpet of Conscience. The summation and new direction of his vision is divided into five chapters, each of which presents fresh and provocative developments in King's intellectual and faith journey. He truly had become a global citizen rooted in the everyday struggles of his community and that of the poor. The question remains: how do King's words and legacy sound today?

In B.B. King's Words. . .

In B.B. King's Words. . .

The Beloved Community: How Faith Shapes Social Justice, from the Civil Rights Movement to Today

Speaking to his supporters at end of Montgomery bus boycott in 1956, Martin Luther King, Jr., declared that their common goal was not simply end of segregation as an institution. Rather, the end is reconciliation, end is redemption, end is creation of beloved King's words reflect strong religious convictions that motivated civil rights movement in South in its early days. Standing courageously on Judeo-Christian foundations of their moral commitments, civil rights leaders sought to transform social and political realities of twentieth-century America. In The Beloved Community, Charles Marsh shows that same spiritual vision that animated civil rights movement remains a vital source of moral energy today. The Beloved Community lays out an exuberant new vision for progressive Christianity and reclaims centrality of faith in quest for social justice and authentic community.

History, Collective Memory, and the Appropriation of Martin Luther King, Jr.: Reagan's Rhetorical Legacy

This article argues that President Ronald Reagan appropriated Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s words and memory to suggest equal opportunity in the United States had been largely achieved. Individuals—rather than the government—now had to take responsibility for any additional progress. By arguing that the dismantling of federal civil rights laws and social programs was actually consistent with Dr. King's words, President Reagan advanced his own agenda for civil rights in direct violation of Dr. King's intentions, while narrowing the purview of civil rights to eliminate government intervention in employment, education, and other arenas.

Border Confluences: Borderland Narratives from the Mexican War to the Present (review)

Rosemary A. King, Border Con.uences: Borderland Narratives from the MexicanWar to the Present Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2004, xvii + 170 pp. In BorderCon.uences, RosemaryKing offers a comparative analysis of the literature of the borderlands with specific attention to geopoetics, which she characterizes as a way of reading the representation of place and space within a specific genre. King begins her study with narratives that capture the legal debates of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848. Subsequent chapters look at the production of fiction about theMexican Revolution in 1910, as well as post-Second-World-War narratives that contemplate the costs of assimilation. In surveying one hundred fifty years of Mexican-American, Native-American, American, and Mexican writing, King brings into focus historical, legal, and cultural elements of life on the frontier. Her selection of texts is appropriate and illuminates her theory of geopoetics. In the introduction, King maps out her terminology and the scope of her scholarship, which includes the narratives of twelve authors. In order to locate her discussion in concrete terms, she notes the variety of names associated with the region between theU.S. andMexico and the connotations of those names:Herbert Eugene Bolton's coining of the termborderlands,Americo Paredes's idea ofGreaterMexico, as well as Richard Bauman's reading of the border as Mexico de Adentro (inside the country of Mexico) and Mexico de Afuera (Mexico outside its borders). Chapter 1 explores how the theme of cultural difference operates in the nineteenth-century romance, concentrating on the work of three women writers in order to discuss places and national divides. King examinesHelenHunt Jackson's wildly popular novel, Ramona (1884), and Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton's The Squatter and the Don (1885), both of which take place in southern California. King also addresses Jovita Gonzalez's Caballero: A Historical Novel (1996), which is set in Texas in the 1840's. Border Con.uences adds depth to the relatively recent scholarship on Jackson, Ruiz de Barton, and Gonzalez. The author's treatment of Ruiz de Burton, in particular, reminds readers that Mexican-American writing dates back to the nineteenth century, a fact frequently ignored in contemporary scholarship, which usually begins with the twentieth. Helen Hunt Jackson, who was a white reformer for Indian rights in the nine-teenth century, offers in Ramona a Native-American counterpoint to Harriet Beecher Stowe's treatment of slavery in Uncle Tom's Cabin. Ramona articulates, in King's estimation, the absolutist elements (good / evil or hero /villain) needed for a romance; Ramona draws on such binaries to enrich her description of conflicts betweenAnglos, Mexicans, and Indians. ForKing, intercultural disputes and negotiations in the novel take place in the domestic sphere. With that in mind, King addresses Indian dispossession by following the flight of Ramona and her husband Alessandro from the Moreno estate and on to various towns and villages, each of which ultimately gives way to the authority of white settlers. King identi.es in a triangulation of SenoraMoreno (aMexican of Spanish ancestry), Ramona (of Scottish and Indian), and Alessandro (of Indian) the nineteenth century racial hierarchies that privilege Spanish blood over Indian blood and, to some extent, Indian blood over that of the mestizo or mestiza. Along with her reading of Ramona, King's interpretation of Ruiz de Barton's The Squatterand the Don fits nicely within the framework of geopoetics. The novel centers on lawsuits over Don Mariano's ownership of the Alamar ranch and how, in King's words, Ruiz de Burton creates an us-or-them mentality between the American squatters and the Mexican ranchers. The chapter contextualizes the struggle between the two groups when King observes that whether one farms wheat or raises cattle makes a difference in the novel, as it did historically in the 1870's when the local economy of southern California was changing from cattle ranching to agriculture-based capitalism (King 19). …

Spiritual Reading in Milton's Eikonoklastes

This essay argues that Milton's Eikonoklastes succeeds as an educative polemic, though not as a piece of political propaganda. In Eikonoklastes, Milton advances a strenuous and suspicious mode of reading Charles I, which seeks variance between the king's words and his deeds. Furthermore, Milton includes his readers in the process of demolishing Eikon Basilike. This essay examines Milton's process of spiritual reading and argues that Eikonoklastes attacks the very idea of uncritical reading. Milton successfully presents a critical process guided by the spirit within as a preferable alternative to the unquestioning acceptance of a comforting civil and spiritual servility.

The Widening Gap between Education and Schooling in the Post 9/11 Era

Mwalimu J. Shujaa likens the educational tensions of the post 9/11 era to those of the Viet Nam period. He argues that is a process of culture and identity transmission while is intended to ensure that status quo power relationships are maintained. For persons of African descent, education, unlike schooling, means consciously developing knowledge bases grounded in the culture and history of the African world and concomitantly interpreting reality through those knowledge bases. In the post 9/11 era, educators who take the moral initiative to interrogate the interests of the powerful and evaluate these in the interest of the African world are at risk of being attacked as subversives. My thoughts about the of people of African ancestry in the United States in the era following September 11, 2001, have drawn me spiritually to Martin Luther King, Jr. and the courageous stance he took in opposition to the United States' against Viet Nam. The speech he delivered called A Time to Break Silence continues to pervade my consciousness. Here is some of what King said at Riverside Church in New York City on April 4, 1967, exactly one year to the day before he was assassinated: Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world. (1967/1986, p. 231) The war on terror that U.S. President George W. Bush has declared is a context in which conformist thought is given sanction under the banner of patriotism. King's words and actions in the Viet Nam War era are sources of inspiration and guidance. In this post 9/11 era, we face similar challenges in speaking truth to power and, more to the point, speaking among ourselves about power and how we are affected by its uses and abuses. The incredible technologies of surveillance and near absolute authority to use them produce a climate that is unfriendly to dissent. It is a time when those who control the media of mass communication have circled their wagons against dissenting voices. Fearing ostracism, many find it prudent to speak softly about the social contradictions that limit the life chances of people of African ancestry. In times such as these, when those with the power to do so spin and distort truth to suit their interests, can be perceived as subversive. In the post 9/11 era, an honest discussion about the of people of African ancestry must address the manipulation of to create conformist thinking and the role of such thinking in maintaining existing power relationships. The tendency of conformist thinking is toward inaction when action is needed. It produces resignation to the status quo when change is needed. I contend that education and schooling are different processes and that, while it is possible for them to overlap, most people of African descent in the United States receive more than education, (see Shujaa, 1994). GROUNDING ASSUMPTIONS My thinking about post-9/11 is grounded in four assumptions about the social order that exists in the United States. First, the United States is a nation-state in which multiple and differing cultural orientations exist among the members of its society. Second, unequal power relations exist among the culture groups within the society. Third, the elite members of the politically dominant culture strategically impose their knowledge and worldview priorities. Fourth, despite incredible efforts to manage information and produce mass thought and predictable behavior in the United States, there is no perfect form of cultural imposition. Throughout human history, truly educated, critically conscious people emerge who demonstrate the capacity to see through nonsense, grow in wisdom, and share knowledge with others. …

Criminal Children

The child of the law, like the man of the law, is a particular kind of legal young person who bears no necessary relationship to a “real” young person. Children are, nevertheless, very much present in the law. This chapter examines the ways in which the language of the law, expressed in statutes relating to child welfare and juvenile justice, has articulated particular notions of the criminal child and deviant childhood. The object, using the words of King and Piper, is to find out how the law has “thought about” children.

“THE NEW SYNANTHEROLOGY” — A CASE IN POINT FOR POINTS OF VIEW

We should like to extend our compliments to the authors of an article which recently appeared on the pages of this journal (The New Synantherology. R. M. King and H. Robinson. Taxon 19(1): 6-11). Had we not been adequately informed by these authors, we might never have known that the standard approaches to plant systematics are passe and not to be trusted. Indeed, we now eye with suspicion recent revisional work which was based solely on such bankrupt techniques as morphology, palynology, cytology and biochemistry. As you might suspect, our compliments come tongue-in-cheek. Far from convincing us that the compound microscope is the new-found panacea for all those who would research the Compositae, Messrs. King and Robinson seem to reveal a vast lacuna in their own knowledge of modern systematics. This is particularly apparent in their analysis of the methods presently used in the study of the Compositae. First, morphology is the proven backbone of all practical plant taxonomy (with the possible exception of certain so-called lower plants). We have not noticed that the prevailing opinion seems to reject morphological Nor can we accept their statement that morphology been just successful enough... to allow the perpetuation of the method into modern times. On the contrary, morphology has been perhaps the most successful single research tool of all the approaches. We ought rather to accept as exceptions the times when this approach is misleading. Probably no other research approach presents as much information to the taxonomist with such ease of observation. It is, therefore, not surprising to find that other approaches seem to be pursued with the intent of supporting and corroborating with general morphology. Second, it seems strange to us that while discussing palynology, the authors do not happen to mention recent developments which are the result of the use of the scanning-electron microscope. This is particularly disturbing because the authors, in their efforts to champion the cause of microcharacters, have completely ignored the one tool which would greatly improve their own approach. Presumably anyone knowledgeable enough to editorialize on the new synantherology would be acutely aware of the potential of this relatively simple approach. Third, cytology is far from old hat regardless of who said so. It also involves more than chromosome counting and has proven extremely useful in the study of apomictic complexes. Furthermore, ultra-structure is not without taxonomic significance although it is seldom studied with the sole purpose of elucidating taxonomic relationships. Even so, chromosome counts have greatly aided the taxonomist and are manifestly not, in the words of King and Robinson, yielding few practical results. Authorities in this field have these much more plausible words which appeared concurrently with King and Robinson's article. ... No 'bandwagon' in the evolutionary field has ever been more active or shown vitality so great. (Love and Love, 1970).