Mary Lou Finley, Bernard LaFayette Jr., James R. Ralph Jr., and Pam Smith, editors.The Chicago Freedom Movement: Martin Luther King Jr. and Civil Rights Activism in the North.

2016 ◽  
Vol 121 (3) ◽  
pp. 1055.3-1055
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
The North ◽  
Freedom Movement ◽  
Martin Luther King

‘The Impossible Possibility of Love’: Reinhold Niebuhr’s Thought on Racial Justice

2020 ◽  
pp. 175508822097900
Author(s):  
Liane Hartnett
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
North American ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
Public Intellectual ◽  
Normative Theory ◽  
Racial Justice ◽  
Reinhold Niebuhr ◽  
The North ◽  
Cornel West ◽  
Martin Luther King

Love has been long lauded for its salvific potential in U.S. anti-racist rhetoric. Yet, what does it mean to speak or act in love’s name to redress racism? Turning to the work of the North American public intellectual and theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971), this essay explores his contribution to normative theory on love’s role in the work of racial justice. Niebuhr was a staunch supporter of civil rights, and many prominent figures of the movement such as James Cone, Jesse Jackson, Martin Luther King Jr., J. Deotis Roberts and Cornel West drew on his theology. Indeed, Niebuhr underscores love’s promise and perils in politics, and its potential to respond to racism via the work of critique, compassion, and coercion. Engaging with Niebuhr’s theology on love and justice, then, not only helps us recover a rich realist resource on racism, but also an ethic of realism as antiracism.

Redeeming the Soul of America

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary Dorrien
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
The South ◽  
Graduate Degrees ◽  
The North ◽  
Boston University ◽  
Martin Luther King

Martin Luther King Jr. grew up in a black southern clerical family, earned graduate degrees at Crozer Seminary and Boston University School of Theology, and electrified the Montgomery boycott on its first night, becoming a movement leader. His training, temperament, and brilliance enabled him to catalyze and hold together the historic, institutional, mostly secular civil rights movement in the North and the fledgling, dramatic, mostly church-based movement in the South.

Claiming Martin Luther King, Jr. for the right: The Martin Luther King Day holiday in the Reagan era

2021 ◽  
pp. 175069802199593
Author(s):  
Francesca Polletta ◽  
Alex Maresca
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Racial Inequality ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Historical Figures ◽  
General Abstract ◽  
The Right ◽  
Reagan Era ◽  
Martin Luther King ◽  
Roll Back

The article traces how American conservatives laid claim to the memory of Martin Luther King, Jr. We focus on a key moment in that process, when Republicans in the early 1980s battled other Republicans to establish King’s birthday as a federal holiday and thereby distinguish a conservative position on racial inequality from that associated with southern opposition to civil rights. The victory was consequential, aiding the New Right’s efforts to roll back gains on affirmative action and other race-conscious policies. We use the case to explore the conditions in which political actors are able to lay claim to venerated historical figures who actually had very different beliefs and commitments. The prior popularization of the figure makes it politically advantageous to identify with his or her legacy but also makes it possible to do so credibly. As they are popularized, the figure’s beliefs are made general, abstract, and often vague in a way that lends them to appropriation by those on the other side of partisan lines. Such appropriation is further aided by access to a communicative infrastructure of foundations, think tanks, and media outlets that allows political actors to secure an audience for their reinterpretation of the past.

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