It’s that time of year. With every award season comes inevitable questions about the accuracy of factual-based contenders. This season, the target is shaping up to be Paramount’s Selma. The Golden Globe nominee for Best Film and Best Director follows the 1964 civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, led by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King […]
The Tom Joyner Morning Show is down in Gulfport, Mississippi this morning. What many don’t know is that aside from its historical traditions, it’s also the birthplace of author/radio and TV host/activist Tavis Smiley. The author of the book Death of A King about the last year of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s […]
Yes, Tavis Smiley will trade his tailored suits for a dance costume on Dancing With the Stars, but there is one thing he won’t be doing. “You will not see me twerking,” he says. “Y’all can stop that nonsense,” he says. “I will not be looking like Emmit (Smith) with nothing shiny on. I will […]
The Children’s Crusade march in Birmingham, Ala. offered the world a firsthand look at the extreme bigotry and violent resistance the Civil Rights Movement faced. On May 2, 1963 a peaceful protest escalated into a brutal show of force from racists determined to snatch equal rights from the hands of young Black people. In 1963, […]
The Poor People’s Campaign was an effort started by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Leadership Christian Conference (SCLC) in response to President Lyndon B. Johnson’s “War On Poverty” initiative. The SCLC was upset that President Johnson diverted government funds originally intended for the war on poverty to the Vietnam War instead. […]
The shot that killed Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968 was presumably fired from Jim’s Grill, a café on ground floor of a rooming house. James Earl Ray, King’s assassin, was staying there. But in 1993 Loyd Jowers, who ran Jim’s Grill, told ABC that he had received $100,000 from a man named […]
Perhaps someone needs to organize a march to protest the King family mess. Bernice King, the daughter of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., held a press conference last week where she pleaded with her brothers not to sell their father’s Bible and Nobel Peace Prize. “I implore you to consider the magnitude of this moment […]
Historian Taylor Branch has written several books, including a trilogy on Dr. King that begins with “Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-1963,” which won the Pulitzer Prize and “The King Years: Historic Moments in the Civil Rights Movement” released earlier this year. His essay “Remembering the March” was excerpted in USA Today. […]
If you’re heading down to DC for the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington on Saturday, August 24, there are few things you need to know. Events actually begin on the 22nd and are spread throughout the city. The actual anniversary date of the 1963 March is August 28th and on that day, there […]
Pastor Donnie McClurkin says that it was wrong of the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington organizers to remove him from the lineup of a concert last weekend celebrating the anniversary. The Long Island, N.Y. based pastor made national news when he was asked by Washington, D.C. Mayor Vincent C. Gray’s office to leave […]
With the continuing challenges of Black America in mind, despite our first African-American president, it’s a good time to come together. This year marks the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. In commemoration of that historic day 50 years ago, there will be […]
