This year the CBC Massey Lectures celebrates fifty years with bestselling author, essayist, cultural observer, and famed New Yorker contributor Adam Gopnik.
His subject is
winter - the season, the space, the cycle. Gopnik takes us on an intimate tour of the artists, poets, composers, writers, explorers, scientists, and thinkers, who helped shape a new and modern idea of winter.
Listen to Winter: Five Windows on the Season Streaming files for this years lecture will be available until Friday, November 18. [more inside]
posted by infinite intimation
on Nov 14, 2011 -
11 comments
The Washington Mall welcomes another hero. The Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial is unveiled. Sitting directly between the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials, "the composition of the [King] memorial utilizes landscape elements to powerfully convey four fundamental and recurring themes throughout Dr. King's message: justice, democracy, hope and love."
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posted by darkstar
on Aug 22, 2011 -
72 comments
It is not our role to take power. It is our role to make the powerful frightened of us. And that's what we've forgotten. Give up that dream! Chris Hedges talks neoliberalism and neofeudalism, the civil rights movement, Camden, Obama, Clinton, Tea Parties, moral nihilism, inverted totalitarianism and corpocracy, NAFTA, welfare reform, health care, labor, poverty, Yugoslavia, post-industrial capitalism, economic crisis, imperial collapse, socialism, and democracy, among other things.
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posted by gerryblog
on Apr 24, 2010 -
51 comments
MLK Jr: The First Attempt : Nearly 10 years before he was assassinated, as Dr. King signed copies of his book
Stride Toward Freedom,
Izola Ware Curry, a part-time maid from Georgia, stabbed him in the chest with a letter opener, nearly puncturing his aorta. Though she was eventually indicted for attempted murder, Ms. Curry was found
incompetent to stand trial and committed to Matteawan State Hospital for the criminally insane. Characteristically, Dr. King
forgave her and requested that she be rehabilitated as a productive member of society.
[more inside]
posted by Alison
on Jan 18, 2010 -
7 comments
Happy Birthday Dr. King. Today is Martin Luther King Day. He was born 80 years ago, on January 15th, 1929. He was assassinated on April 4, 1968, at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. He was just thirty-nine years old.
Tomorrow, more than four decades after Dr. King’s death, Barack Obama will take his oath of office to become the 44th president of the United States and the first African American president in US history. The Reverend Joseph Lowery, a civil rights icon who co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with Dr, King, will deliver the benediction at the inauguration ceremony. Obama accepted the Democratic party nomination on the 45th anniversary of Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, arguably his most famous address.
While Dr. King is primarily remembered as a civil rights leader, he also championed the cause of the poor and organized the Poor People"s Campaign to address issues of economic justice. Dr. King was also a fierce critic US foreign policy and the Vietnam War. [more inside]
posted by caddis
on Jan 19, 2009 -
30 comments
"I have a dream..." Take 17 minutes out of your day and remember. And then maybe take a look at this
NY Times slide show of murals depicting Dr. King.
Feel free, in fact please do, add appropriate links and suggestions in the comments section.
posted by brookeb
on Jan 21, 2008 -
40 comments
A year to the day before his death, Dr. Martin Luther King delivered
this speech at Riverside Church, New York City. In the last years of his life, King moved beyond anti-segregation activism to a broader indictment of American class structure and foreign policy. This is
The Martin Luther King You Don't See on TV.
posted by Mister_A
on Jan 15, 2007 -
56 comments
The King Dream Chorus and Holiday Crew Twenty years ago various rap artists got together to honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (taking some inspiration from
Artists Against Apartheid). You'd think Grandmaster Melle Mel, Kurtis Blow, and Run-D.M.C. would be enough. But you'd be wrong. Lisa Lisa, Teena Marie, Fat Boys, and El DeBarge wanted in, too. All kinds of youtubey goodness here, including Ricky Martin as part of Menudo, and several solos by a scrumptious Whitney Houston.
Lyrics are
here, and you can buy the single
here
posted by Kibbutz
on Jan 14, 2007 -
2 comments
Dora McDonald, Martin Luther King's private secretary from 1960 until his death, has
died at age 81. While few have heard of Ms. McDonald, she was a very important figure in King's work, and was the one who had to tell
Coretta Scott King that her husband had been murdered.
posted by cerebus19
on Jan 14, 2007 -
6 comments
Remember Segregation -
Founded in the core belief that segregation is, was and has always been wrong, this campaign is intended to make people stop, think and perhaps get a little uncomfortable in the process of realizing the modern day importance of Dr. King's life.
posted by bluedaniel
on Jan 16, 2006 -
28 comments
Weatherman fired for on-air MLK day racial slur. I hope someone has video because I wouldn't mind seeing this dood go out like a sucka.
posted by wbm$tr
on Jan 17, 2005 -
106 comments
Two score years ago, a great American, whose birthday we celebrate every year with a three-day weekend, stood in the shadow of the
Lincoln Memorial and uttered
those famous words, "I Have A Dream." Five years later, older and weary, saddened and yet emboldened for a new task, that man was assassinated in Memphis. He has rightly become an American icon, a symbol of all that we consider great about our nation. And yet is is the very fact of his
apotheosis that has done his dream the most damage. Safely iconized and sanitized, MLK has been used cynically by his most bitter opponents, to ends he very clearly opposed during his life. The man who considered himself a
democratic socialist, and who supported both reparations and affirmative action is used by conservatives to stymie the efforts of his philosophical and activist heirs. Some of them, like U2's
Bono, want to
save Africans from AIDS. Others, like
Dr. Michael Eric Dyson, suggest a
10-year moratorium on the famous speech, so that we can pay attention to
other,
more important statements.
King's last great effort was not a march to combat racism but rather a new initiative to end poverty, the
Poor People’s Campaign. Thirty-five years later, the
gap between rich and poor is larger than ever in this country, and our president, who claims to follow the same religion that underwrote all King said, did and thought, is conducting a war not on poverty, but
on the
poor. How many of
us who, like G.W. Bush,
pay lip service to the ideas of King and of
Christ will stop stalling and
stand up for justice?
posted by eustacescrubb
on Jan 17, 2003 -
47 comments
Thank Mahalia Jackson for King's "I have a dream." "On August 28, 1963, under a nearly cloudless sky, more than 250,000 people, a fifth of them white, gathered near the Lincoln Memorial in Washington to rally for 'jobs and freedom.'... Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had originally prepared a short and somewhat formal recitation of the sufferings of African Americans attempting to realize their freedom in a society chained by discrimination. He was about to sit down when gospel singer
Mahalia Jackson called out, 'Tell them about your dream, Martin! Tell them about the dream!' Encouraged by shouts from the audience, King drew upon some of his past talks, and the result became the landmark statement of civil rights in America--a dream of all people, of all races and colors and backgrounds, sharing in an America marked by freedom and democracy."
posted by Carol Anne
on Jan 21, 2002 -
16 comments
2 students shot in MLK Jr. HS yesterday. "A gunman sneaked into Martin Luther King Jr. HS yesterday through a side door - evading 14 safety agents, two cops and metal-detectors - and shot and seriously wounded two boys headed to class, officials said. "
"The fact that the shooting occurred on King’s birthday was a "cruel irony," said [Manhattan Board of Education member Irving ] Hamer. King and the school stand for non-violence, he said, and "instead, we get a shooting."
posted by bkdelong
on Jan 16, 2002 -
13 comments
Two words: Bad Taste The Washington Post today is running an article on Alcatels new pitchman, Martin Luther King, Jr! Yes! MLK joins the likes of John Wayne and Alfred Hitchcock as undead spokespeople.
posted by cornbread
on Mar 28, 2001 -
47 comments
"I was there!" If you read the comments about Bob Doran's death threats against Clinton in
this thread, you may get a kick out the photo of him "marching with Martin Luther King Jr." that's on Doran's site.
posted by gluechunk
on Aug 10, 2000 -
7 comments
