scholarly journals The Prophetic Lens: A Missiological Function of Film for Black Social Movement from Martin Luther King, Jr. to the Camera Phone

2021 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 350-371
Author(s):  
Phillip Allen
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
Camera Phone ◽  
Black Experience ◽  
Technological Advances ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Status ◽  
Just Society ◽  
Martin Luther King

Abstract Through technological advances and its democratization, the camera is found to have dual functionality. It is both a prophetic and a missiological tool used to awaken the collective conscience of a nation apathetic towards the Black experience and to offer a counter-narrative reorienting the US to becoming a more racially just society. This paper considers definitions of gospel, missions, and the prophetic, outlining a framework for how the camera functions in all three. It briefly explores the use of the camera from Martin Luther King, Jr., during the Civil Rights Movement, to the contemporary citizen with a camera phone, all capturing anti-Black violence. As we will see, like the parables of Jesus were to his kingdom message, the content of the camera has proven vital to acquiring justice by exposing the realities of racial injustice, confronting the status quo, and energising viewers to take positive action.

„I Have a Dream“

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eva Werner
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Empirical Study ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Political System ◽  
East Germany ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
The Political ◽  
Church Staff ◽  
Martin Luther King

Martin Luther King and East Germany are connected both directly and indirectly. The Communist Party had the power to make public decisions on agenda-setting topics related to Martin Luther King. The Christian Bloc Party mostly represented the state and published books by Martin Luther King, which churches and the civil rights movement liked to use. Moreover, pacifists and civil rights activists used these books to undermine the political system in East Germany. Church institutions reported by far the most on Martin Luther King. This empirical study, which can also act as a basis for further research on Martin Luther King and East Germany, will appeal to both church staff and admirers of Martin Luther King.

1968: End of The Civil Rights Movement?

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Tuck
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Black Power ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
Black Communities ◽  
Conservative Politics ◽  
Martin Luther King ◽  
New Phase

1968 is commonly seen as the end of the classic era of modern civil rights protest: a year when Martin Luther King Jr. was killed, when violence seemed endemic in urban black communities, when Black Power groups fractured and when candidates opposed to further civil rights legislation made giant strides at the ballot box. 1968 seemed to usher in a decade bereft of major civil rights activity, ahead of a resurgence of conservative politics. And yet a look behind the headlines tells a different story in the post-1968 years at the local level: of increasing civil rights protest, of major gains in the courts and politics and the workplace, of substantial victories by Black Power activists, and calls for new rights by African American groups hitherto unrecognised by civil rights leaders. This chapter argues that in many ways 1968 marked the beginning of a vibrant new phase of race-centred activism, rather than the end, of the modern civil rights movement.

Conclusion: The Long Stride Toward Freedom1

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Kyle Day
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
American History ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
The South ◽  
Postwar America ◽  
Martin Luther King

The conclusion assesses the long term implications of the Southern Manifesto for both the course of the Civil Rights Movement as well as the larger racial dynamic s of Postwar America. Under the circumspect rhetoric of moderation, the Southern Manifesto undermined the efforts of civil rights leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to desegregate the South, and empowered southern officials to ignore the Brown decision for years. This conclusion thus places the Southern Manifesto in proper historical perspective and provides a summary of the implications of this event, the greatest episode of antagonistic racial demagoguery in modern American History.

The Heart of the Movement

2018 ◽  
pp. 54-88
Author(s):  
Elaine Allen Lechtreck
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
White Supremacist ◽  
White People ◽  
Small Minority ◽  
The Face ◽  
Taxi Service ◽  
Martin Luther King

The chapter reveals the violence associated with the Civil Rights Movement, the courage of African American activists (Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Medgar Evers) and the small minority of southern white ministers who joined them. In Montgomery, Alabama, Robert Graetz provided taxi service for demonstrators. Andrew Turnipseed paid the salary of James Love, who signed the Mobile bus petition, when his parishioners would not. No southern white minister would participate in freedom rides, but John Morris organized a Freedom Ride after the violence subsided. The group was arrested. Joseph Ellwanger was harassed in Birmingham. Hundreds of black protestors were arrested and tortured. Martin Luther King, Jr., wrote Letter from a Birmingham Jail. Edwin King was arrested and tortured. The Klan and other white supremacist groups flourished. Black activists and some whites were murdered in Mississippi. As Edwin King commented, “Good white people could do nothing in the face of madness.”

National Review and the Changing Narrative of Civil Rights Memory 1968–2016

2019 ◽  
pp. 174-189
Author(s):  
Robert Greene
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Conservative Movement ◽  
National Review ◽  
Leading Role ◽  
Black Freedom ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Constitution ◽  
Historical Memories ◽  
Martin Luther King

This chapter analyzes the National Review’s shifting narratives and historical memories of the contentious relationship between the modern conservative movement, Martin Luther King Jr., and the US civil rights movement. National Review writers largely opposed the civil rights movement up until the mid-1960s, casting Black freedom activists and their goals as threats to civilized order and the spirit of the US Constitution. Yet, the National Review would ultimately take on a leading role in reconsidering the conservative movement’s animosity toward King and civil rights—drawing parallels between conservative principles and civil rights claims, and even making fraught color-blind conservative claims to King’s legacy.

Aftermath

2020 ◽  
pp. 269-302
Author(s):  
Rodney A. Smolla
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
African American Participant ◽  
American Participant ◽  
Bloody Sunday ◽  
Martin Luther King

This chapter highlights the national outpouring of grief and anger over the death of Heather Heyer. It discloses how Heyer's ashes were buried in a secret location in order to protect the grave from desecration by neo-Nazis. It also mentions the placement of Heather Heyer's name on a memorial wall at the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Alabama that honors martyrs of the civil rights movement. The chapter recalls Martin Luther King Jr. and his civil rights organization that staged demonstrations in Alabama and Jimmy Lee Jackson, an African American participant in the protest demonstrations, who was fatally shot by a white Alabama state trooper. It reviews the infamous “Bloody Sunday” on March 7, 1965 that was stimulated by Jackson's shooting.

The Brothers Rico

2020 ◽  
pp. 77-94
Author(s):  
Robert Miklitsch
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Attorney General ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
Political Unconscious ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Martin Luther King

The paradigmatic ’50s exposé is The Phenix City Story (1955). Phil Karlson’s film, set in Phenix City, Alabama, “The Wickedest City in America,” possesses voice-over narration and location photography like other ’50s exposés, but it also emits a vérité vibe that’s unmatched in the ’50s crime canon. What separates Karlson’s film from every other “city confidential,” not to mention syndicate picture, is its deep racial-political subtext, which, in the martyred figure of Alabama attorney general nominee Albert Patterson, evokes the pacifist, civil rights movement spearheaded by Martin Luther King Jr. Accordingly, if the anti-Communist films of the 1950s can be said to constitute what R. Barton Palmer calls a “national confidential,” The Phenix City Story not only exposes the raced political unconscious of the syndicate picture but also foregrounds its status as both a local and national confidential.

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