✊🏿🖤☮ #ArtIsAWeapon A revolutionary brilliant Black king was born 95 years ago today (January 15, 1929). I do not have the words to adequately convey my deep gratitude, respect and admiration for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s service, sacrifice, courage and love. Thank you @berniceaking for continuing your father and mother's work.
I do not know when or where Dr. King made the speech from which this clip was taken (I have researched for several years). I watch this often - especially when I hear white supremacists and white liberals alike attempt to sanitize Dr. King's radical, revolutionary messages to us. Watch him speaking more of these powerful, transformative words on @youtube: https://youtu.be/voV9ld-Qooc
"I come here tonight to plead with you. Believe in yourself and believe that you are somebody. I said to a group last night: Nobody else can do this for us. No document can do this for us. No Lincolnian emancipation proclamation can do this for us. No Johnsonian civil rights bill can do this for us.
If the Negro is to be free, he must move down into the inner resources of his own soul and sign with a pen and ink of self-assertive manhood his own emancipation proclamation.
Don’t let anybody take your manhood. Be proud of our heritage…we don’t have anything to be ashamed of.
Somebody told a lie one day. They couched it in language. They made everything Black ugly and evil. Look in your dictionaries and see the synonyms of the word Black. It’s always something degrading and low and sinister. Look at the word White, it’s always something pure, high and clean. Well I want to get the language right tonight.
I want to get the language so right that everyone here will cry out: ‘Yes, I’m Black, I’m proud of it. I’m Black and beautiful!'" - Dr. King
Images and caption reposted from @zebablay I am honestly so deeply depressed and disgusted by everything at the moment. But, a few thoughts on this day: Allyship should not be transactional. Genocide is not and never will be justifiable. And, there is something so deeply perverse about how Western imperial powers harass, surveil and ultimately kill freedom fighters/leaders like MLK only to sanitize and sloganize their messages, then suppress/weaponize their legacies in the name of genocide and empire. This country did not deserve Martin Luther King Jr. Did not. Enjoy your day off or whatever.
1. Coretta Scott King gazes into the eyes of Bernice King, then 5-years-old, at MLK’s funeral
3. Excerpt from Nikki Giovanni’s “Reflections on April 4, 1968”
4. MLK on the scam that is settler colonialism
5-7. Excerpts from Michelle Alexander’s 2019 NYT op-ed “Time to Break the Silence on Palestine”
9. Mother and daughter, grieving
#BlackandBeautiful #DrKing #MLK #revolutionary #AmericanHero #MartinLutherKingJr #ImBlackAndBeautiful #FreedomFighter #BlackBrilliance #RadicalLove #NationalDayOfService
