MLK's True Legacy
Our two latest episodes dispel the false narratives inevitably regurgitated by politicians and corporations each year around MLK Day, and make the case for daily reflection on his life and mission.
News Beat is a multi-award-winning podcast that melds hard-hitting journalism with hip-hop to inform, educate, and inspire. We dropped two recent episodes correcting false narratives about MLK, and shining a light on his true legacy.
We’re kicking off 2022 with two sonic shots of truth, straight to the jugular, in commemoration of MLK’s birthday on Jan. 15.
Our very first episode way back in 2017 examined the whitewashing of civil rights pioneer the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Titled ‘MLK: Unfinished Business’ and later re-named ‘MLK: What They Won’t Teach in School,’ it features insights from Rev. Roger C. Williams, pastor of the First Baptist Church in Glen Cove, New York, and original verses from our Artist in Residence, hip-hop maestro Silent Knight. We re-release it annually.
This year, we’re dropping it in tandem with a brand new episode highlighting MLK’s last month and final campaign, involving the Memphis sanitation strike.
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was sooo much more than what politicians and talking heads and corporations and (collective groan) car companies purport. Do not confine him to those infamous four syllables, ‘I have a dream.’
Hopefully, these two episodes will help you understand why.
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As Rev. Williams describes in our aforementioned ‘MLK: What They Won’t Teach in School’ episode:
Like most important figures throughout history, there was so much more to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. than is portrayed in the media and in the classroom. He was a flawed man and a complicated figure who evolved over his lifetime, made many sacrifices and compromises on the way to his many achievements. It’s tempting, I suppose, to allow history to view him through a simplistic but noble lens and just leave it at that. After all, part of the pre-packaged and sold legacy is that he was indeed a moral and transcendent figure who fought the good fight on the right side of history.
Lifelong Newark, New Jersey-based activist Lawrence ‘Larry’ Hamm—whose insights have been featured on several News Beat episodes, including these latest two about MLK—expands on this, asking:
Why do we have a Dr. King holiday and none of the six books that Martin Luther King wrote are required reading in any public school? So what’s the sense of closing the school if the children, the young people, the students, are not going to know what he stood for, what his principles were, what he was fighting about? But people, really, should go to the speeches that Dr. King gave, like 1967 and 1968. If you want to know where Dr. King’s head was, read those speeches. Read ‘A Time to Break the Silence.’ People call it ‘Why I Oppose the War in Vietnam,’ but the actual title of the speech is ‘A Time to Break the Silence.’
Award-winning historian, author, and scholar Michael Honey insists MLK’s true legacy is something to be embraced every day, not simply once a year on the day of commemoration established by the U.S. government—if only because those struggles, those evils he sacrificed his life fighting against persist through today.
What people should think about when they think about King is economic justice: What is racial and economic justice? What is it? And one thing about studying King is that there is so much there in a short life of somebody who died at age 39, just as Malcolm X died at 39. There's so much to learn. And so I'm really glad that Coretta Scott King and Stevie Wonder and other people got this federal legislation to have a Martin Luther King Day on his birthday. In Memphis, we always also mark April 4, when he was killed, we have big marches there. But really, it's something we should talk about every day of the year, which is the legacy of that movement, and not think of it as something in the past. It's part of us. It's part of what we do. It's part of what we need to do.
Why We Covered This Topic
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. demanded justice and equality—two essential truths which still have not been achieved, more than 50 years since his murder on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis.
Furthermore, year after year, without fail, politicians, pundits, and corporations bastardize his image and legacy to their own capitalistic agendas—capitalism and its many evils something MLK fought so relentlessly against.
As with our justification for our inaugural episode, we can not sit idly back in silence and permit these untruths to spread and distort all he died for. Doing so would perpetuate such perversions.
MLK’s spirit and ‘unfinished business’—the original title of our very first drop—fuels us, and resides at the core of all News Beat is and does.
What You’ll Learn in These Episodes
That MLK’s true legacy transcends far, far beyond his “I Have a Dream” speech—and any person or company that states otherwise is contributing to his whitewashing
How one of his chief initiatives prior to his murder, and perhaps one of the top reasons he was assassinated, The Poor People’s Campaign, sought to unite all people—Black, Indigenous, White, and otherwise
Just how central economic justice, for all, was to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s mission of equality
The lesser-known struggles and final campaign of his last month alive, supporting the Memphis sanitation strike
Just how imperative it is to keep MLK’s passion, mission, and legacy alive—especially since many of those atrocities he sacrificed his life fighting against permeate through today!
Who We Interviewed
Rev. Roger C. Williams, pastor of the First Baptist Church in Glen Cove, New York
Michael Honey, award-winning author, historian, Guggenheim Fellow and Haley Professor of Humanities at the University of Washington Tacoma, where he teaches African-American, civil rights and labor history, and specializes in work on Martin Luther King, Jr.
Lawrence ‘Larry’ Hamm, lifelong activist and the chairman of the Newark, New Jersey-based nonprofit People’s Organization for Progress
Additional Resources
Learn more about the First Baptist Church in Glen Cove, New York and its many programs and initiatives.
Check out Michael Honey’s many award-winning books—including Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King’s Last Campaign, recipient of the 2008 Robert F. Kennedy Book Award—films, and much more.
Become involved with Larry Hamm’s group the People’s Organization for Progress and follow him on Instagram at @lhamm1953!
Listen to all previous News Beat podcast episodes, as well as more extraordinary music from hip-hop flamethrower, our Artist in Residence Silent Knight! Follow him on Twitter at @SilentKnightter!
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Audio Editor/Sound Designer/Producer/Host: Manny Faces
Editor-In-Chief/Producer: Christopher Twarowski
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