#civil rights leader

[mimi-0007]

Gloria Richardson leader of the Cambridge, Maryland Nonviolent Action Committee..

[troythecatfish]

[aaliyahunleashed]

Happy Heavenly Birthday to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

January 15, 1929 - April 4, 1968

[longlistshort]

(photograph by Richard Avedon from The New Yorker’s website)

Above is Richard Avedon’s portrait of Martin Luther King Jr. with his father, Martin Luther King, and his son, Martin Luther King III, 1963. The image is part of the 1964 book Nothing Personal, Avedon’s collaboration with writer James Baldwin.

[astraphel]

🎉IT'S ELIZABETH PERATROVICH DAY

She was the Tlingit Civil Rights Leader responsible for the first (US) anti-discrimination law of the 20th century, which passed in 1945!

“Have you eliminated larceny or murder by passing a law against it? No law will eliminate crimes, but at least you, as legislators, can assert to the world that you recognize the evil of the present situation and speak your intent to help us overcome discrimination.”

Elizabeth Peratrovich, Ḵaax̲gal.aat, was a member of the Lukaax̱.ádi clan under the Raven moeity. Her Tlingit name means "person who packs for themselves."

Elizabeth held the position of Grand President of the Alaska Native Sisterhood (ANS), a partner organization of the Alaska Native Brotherhood (ANB). Founded in 1912 to address racism against Alaska Native peoples in Alaska, the ANB is one of the oldest Native-led Civil Rights Organizations in the world, followed closely by the ANS, established just three years later.

A restaurant in Juneau, Alaska, in 1908, advertises that its staff is White only. The Nelson Act (1905) had passed in Alaska three years earlier, segregating education systems between Whites and Alaska Natives. Mixed children weren't initially allowed in school, but this changed thanks to an ANB member. Playgrounds, theaters, and other public places were also segregated.

Today honors the fateful day she took the Senate floor and swayed the overtly racist Senate to pass the Alaska Equal Rights Act of 1945. This law made Alaska the first Territory in the United States to abolish Jim Crow laws.

"Fighter in Velvet Gloves: Alaska Civil Rights Hero Elizabeth Peratrovich" (2021). Tlingit Author Ann Boochever reads from her book, which was written in collaboration with Peratrovich's family. Skip to 38:46 in the video for what happened that day in the Senate.

Portrait of Elizabeth Peratrovich

Alaska State Legislature House of Representatives

A Recollection of Civil Rights Leader Elizabeth Peratrovich 1911-1958

Alaska Celebrates Civil Rights Pioneer (PDF)

For the Rights of All: Ending Jim Crow in Alaska (Video)

Celebrating Elizabeth Peratrovich (Google Doodle)

Overlooked No More: Elizabeth Peratrovich, Rights Advocate for Alaska Natives

Treasury urged to mint 5M Peratrovich coins

1945: Alaska’s territorial legislature adopts anti-discrimination law

Alaskans and the Nation Celebrate Elizabeth Peratrovich

Anti-Discrimination Act of 1945 and Elizabeth Peratrovich

Sealaska Corporation

[linusjf]

Martin Luther King Jr: Cruel Jest

“It’s all right to tell a man to lift himself by his own bootstraps, but it is a cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps.” —Martin Luther King, Jr., civil-rights leader (1929-1968).

[stimtickle]

“Each of us are taught in ways both cunning and cruel that we are inadequate, incomplete. And the easiest way to combat that feeling of not being enough is to find somebody ‘less than,’ less than because they’re poorer than us, or because they’re darker than us, or because they desire someone our churches and our laws say they should not desire. When we tell ourselves such lies, to live and believe such lies, we do the work of our oppressors by oppressing ourselves.”

“On the day I was born black I was also born a homosexual. They either believe in freedom and justice for all or they do not.”

☮️🏳️‍🌈👍🏾

[professorambrius]

Remembering Dr. King, 2024

Today, we remember the great man, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

[bargainsleuthbooks]

#KingThelifeofMartinLutherKingJr #JonathanEig #BookReview #May2023Books #AudiobookReview #SimonandSchuster # FarrarStrausandGiroux

Have you picked up the new #MartinLutherKingJr biography by #JonathanEig? It's 800+ pages of well-researched work. I opted for the #Audiobook version. #KingThelifeofMartinLutherKingJr #BookReview #May2023Books #AudiobookReview #SimonandSchuster

The first major new biography of Martin Luther King Jr in over 40 years, Jonathan Eig’s superb King is based on years of research, hundreds of interviews with those who knew him and many thousands of previously unreleased documents, including a huge cache from the FBI. Eig reveals King’s story to be more compelling and more complex than we knew. For too long, his radical vision for the future…

[worldlibertytv]

Jefferey Peck Great Grandson of W.E.B. Du Bois , attends Civil Rights Activist W. E. B. Du Bois, Museum Foundation Luncheon NYC-2022 See in our World Liberty TV @  https://www.worldlibertytv.org/civil-rights-activist-w-e-b-du-bois-museum-foundation-luncheon-nyc-2022/

[dewitty1]

AP News: Bill Russell, NBA great and Celtics legend, dies at 88

Bill Russell, the NBA great who anchored a Boston Celtics dynasty that won 11 championships in 13 years — the last two as the first Black head coach in any major U.S. sport — and marched for civil rights with Martin Luther King Jr., died Sunday. He was 88.

His family posted the news on social media, saying Russell died with his wife, Jeannine, by his side. The statement did not give the cause of death.

“Bill's wife, Jeannine, and his many friends and family thank you for keeping Bill in your prayers. Perhaps you'll relive one or two of the golden moments he gave us, or recall his trademark laugh as he delighted in explaining the real story behind how those moments unfolded," the family statement said. “And we hope each of us can find a new way to act or speak up with Bill's uncompromising, dignified and always constructive commitment to principle. That would be one last, and lasting, win for our beloved #6.”

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said in a statement that Russell was “the greatest champion in all of team sports."

“Bill stood for something much bigger than sports: the values of equality, respect and inclusion that he stamped into the DNA of our league. At the height of his athletic career, Bill advocated vigorously for civil rights and social justice, a legacy he passed down to generations of NBA players who followed in his footsteps," Silver said. "Through the taunts, threats and unthinkable adversity, Bill rose above it all and remained true to his belief that everyone deserves to be treated with dignity.

[alwaysbewoke]

[notaplaceofhonour]

I don’t know who needs to hear this but famed civil rights leaders Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X were not talking about pogroms or shooting up music festivals and daycares when they said “a riot is the language of the unheard” and resistance “by any means necessary” respectively.

[bubblinelovechild]

The RWBY fandoms treatment of Adam makes me very uncomfortable

This is very long sorry I was rambling <3

There’s something really odd about the dedication RWBY fans have to hating Adam. So much so that they’ll admit the writing of the WF is racist but refuse to admit that Adam a member of the white fang also suffered from that racist writing.

There’s this weird dedication to pretending there are no problems with the choices made around Adams character and vilifying literally everyone who tries to talk about it, for the sake of continuing to blindly hate him. The fandom seems to struggle with understanding that the show is fictional and everything that happens in it is a direct choice of its writers. Y’all talk about Adam like he is a real person who has personally offended you irl. Just a huge lack of media literacy tbh.

A white man wrote a civil rights group, that he admittedly based off the black panthers, as the generic bad guys of his shitty anime knockoff and made a central theme of the show the idea that fighting against your oppression violently makes you just as bad if not worse than your oppressors. Then he mad the leader of that group a generic abusive meanie bad guy. Who essentially is what white supremacists think civil rights activist are all the way down to being the fictional equivalent of a black supremacist.

When there was backlash to this he made a knockoff Malcom X and then killed her in her only scene and made a character whose ideology is basically sit down and lick the feet of your oppressors and had the audacity to say he was based off of MLK. How the fuck do you base a character off of somebody without doing basic research on them because contrary to what people seem to believe MLK was not a doormat and this is a conversation for a different day but I’m sick and tired of his memory being weaponised against black people.

What’s worse is that Adam is the only character portrayed as actually doing something to fight racism. Ghira’s faction is only ever seen fighting against other groups. I don’t know if y’all know this but that’s not how the civil rights movement worked. Most of the leaders didn’t agree on methods but they coexisted because the main goal was the liberation of black people and they knew they had to coexist. MLK did not go around calling the cops on revolutionaries he disagreed with.

The problems with Adam and the WF are not separate and cannot be. Most of what’s wrong with the Faunus plot line is the way the show handles Adam. The choices made with his writing cannot be separated from those they made with the WF overall. Adams choice to kill his attackers to keep himself and other Faunus safe, from people literally trying to kill them, is treated the way it is because of the stance they took with WFs writing. When Adam kills a human supremacist trying to kill Ghira you’re supposed to see it as an extreme and the beginning of his turn to evil. Adam isn’t a real person every descisiom he makes is informed by the white writers of the show. Why would the bias they displayed writing the WF not apply to him?

Some of you have been abused and relate to Blake in that sense, a lot of you seem to be projecting your abusers onto Adam. I’m sorry you went through that but you are not excused from buying into racist rhetoric. It’s incredibly uncomfortable as a black person to watch people talk about how “healing” it was for them to watch a civil rights leader admittedly inspired by black people slapped around and killed by two white women. It is anger inducing to watch fans celebrate “queer representation” dancing on the corpse of a monumental disrespect to black people and our history.

RWBY doesn’t even handle abuse well tbh and most of the queer rep is not that great, there are many shows that do it so much better, there is actually no excuse for hanging on to the black people are bad for fighting against racism show.

[swizziee]

Malcolm X & Muhammad Ali. (1964)

[blackstar1887]

The Courageous Sacrifice of Bunchy Carter and John Huggins: Inspiring the Fight for Justice