blackhistory

From the Courier-Journal: Sue Livers remembers how little she knew about the world the day she met the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

One of only a handful of black students at tiny Manchester College in northeast Indiana, Livers and two other black students as well as a few professors had been invited to attend a lunch with the civil-rights leader following his Feb. 1, 1968, speech.

“I was a nervous wreck,” Livers recalled. “I was such a small town girl.”

Now a hospital foundation director and a well-regarded civic leader in Madison, Ind., Livers said the King encounter, and the events that followed, changed her life.

“You cannot meet somebody that’s that kind, yet so powerful, who has impacted history in so many ways, for both whites and blacks, and not want to take some of that away,” she said. “I wanted to be part of that.”

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King's Last Speech 1968: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1L8y-MX3pg

I live in the area and can't wait to see this completed. They still need several million more dollars to finish, so If you are able, I hope you'll think of them when you make your charitable giving plans.

Vid from today's Washington Post site:

Can't get the embed to work, so here's the link to the video.

Article

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So, I am almost done reading the book, but I thought I'd get the discussion post up first.

We'll cover the first half of the book right up until her initial meeting with Gene Roddenberry and her casting session for Star Trek.

The highlights:

-Talks of her father's parents, her grandfather the son of a wealthy white plantation owner in the South and how he and his wife, a black woman, had difficulty settling down because of racism towards interracial married couples. They settle near Chicago, Robbins? I think. An all-black town.

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I WANT TO MARRY NICHELLE NICHOLS!! I am totally fangirling this woman. Amazing. TELL ME YOUR THOUGHTS PEOPLE!!!

Young Nichelle in the '50s

ETA: Next Beyond Uhura Book Club Discussion: 11/02!

**This was initially posted at spock_uhura on 10/26.**

If anyone posts Martin Luther King's 'I Have a Dream' speech or video of it...I will CUT YOU!! /rant

The man is much more than that speech and I'm tired of it getting so much play on MLK Day. Time to find something new. PLEASE.

Thank you.

‘"America I AM: The African American Imprint’ to open on King holiday

PHILADELPHIA - A letter from President Lincoln guaranteeing Frederick Douglass' safety, Malcolm X's Quran and diary, and Muhammad Ali's robe from the "Rumble in the Jungle" are among the artifacts in a new touring black history exhibition.

"America I AM: The African American Imprint" will open at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia on Jan. 15, Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday. Presented by TV personality Tavis Smiley, the show includes more than 200 items from every period of U.S. history. It will travel to nine more cities over the next four years.

Other artifacts on display include the key to King's jail cell and the stool on which he sat in Birmingham, Ala., where he composed his famous "Letter From the Birmingham Jail"; the "Doors of No Return," through which Africans trod before boarding slave ships in what is now Ghana; the desk that literary pioneer Phillis Wheatley used to write "Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral," which was published in 1773; and Mary McLeod Bethune's walking cane, which once belonged to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and was given to Bethune by former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt.( Read more...Collapse )

40 years after his death, MLK’s rougher edges re-examined

Near the end of his life, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. felt cornered and under siege. His opposition to the Vietnam War was widely criticized, even by friends. He was being pressured both to repudiate the black power movement and to embrace it. Some of his lieutenants were urging him to jettison his urgent new campaign to uplift the poor, believing that King had taken on too much and was compromising support for the civil rights struggle.

Today students learn of his powerful "dream" that children be judged not "by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." Politicians and private citizens of all ideologies summon King's soaring oratory as the inspiration that challenged the nation to better itself. But this beleaguered young man -- he was only 39 when he died -- was not just the icon celebrated at Martin Luther King Day programs and taught in U.S. schools.( Read more...Collapse )

MSNBC Source