I'm going to have to add more to that article. I posted here that my neighborhood went up in smoke after Dr. King was assassinated. Although our city was one of the ones hit the hardest, my area at that, over 30 other cities in America went up in smoke too. Whoever don't think that changed America, they're blind. They called it historic for a reason. Most people alive today don't even remember when King was alive, so they wouldn't know, including the writer of that article. Not trying to take away from the article, but to mention movements since the 40's, 50's, 60's, then skip all the way over to the Rodney King Riots, and not even mention the Dr. King Riots, the one that shook America the most, and the one that came blocks within the White House, she left out one of the biggest parts of history when it came to Black civil unrest. Then to mention Dr. Kings name in the article and not mention how his assassination rocked the country way worst than Ferguson, I feel she should have at least tried to connect one dot, especially since the military was called into both riots. In the King Riots of 68' in DC, if Mayor Walter Washington didn't disobey FBI Director J Edgar Hoovers' orders to shoot the rioters, a lot, and I mean a lot of Black men, women, and children would have been killed. It ain't like that don't matter now, even if it was 46 years ago. But I guess she's doing like me in a sense, not forgetting to mention a part of history that she remembered when talking about Ferguson, which was the Rodney King Riots in her case. But again, didn't she say she received her graduate from Emory University, which is in Atlanta, the birth place of Dr. King?
Anyway this is how I see it. Although there were some people willing to die during the civil rights movement, there were more people in general willing to die after the King assassination and after the resulting riots than before he was shot, and it lasted through the 70's until they put Ronald Regan in office. During the 60's movement, most blacks weren't even participating in those marches or sit-ins. Wasn't nobody about turning no other cheek for real, especially uptown were I was raised, across the street from Malcolm X Park at that. Than the other groups of blacks deemed King a trouble maker, like many black religious leaders did. Anyway, Black unity has taken a spiral turn downwards ever since Regan got in office in 1980.
Comparing the 70's and the 80's of Hollywood, I'd probably identified more with the "Good Times" family (which sometimes seemed like a carbon copy of my family) more so than I did with "The Cosby Show" family...although I enjoyed that show too. Most in my age group would probably identify more with "Good Times" too if they want to be honest. Speaking of Hollywood, I see some songs from Biggie and Tupac were mentioned in the article. But she forgot to mention Biggies', "It Was All A Dream!" Because I never did meet my Thelma Evans or my Claire Huxtable, anyway not when I was available...lol.
So why am I really talking about the 68' riots? Some may think it's because I lived through them. If that was the case, I wouldn't have waited this long to talk about it to this degree. The truth is, since what went down in Ferguson happened, I haven't felt this un-afraid of death since I did after those Dr. King Riots, and I see something similar in the air now with a lot of black people since Michael Brown was murdered like an animal by that racist white cop. I don't mean we need to start jumping in front of bullets, but this no-fear mentality among blacks need to stay. On that note, I'm not advocated burning things up. But to be honest, if they didn't set Ferguson on fire right after Michael Brown was murdered, then you never would have had any news coverage, and none of us would have ever heard of Michael Brown, like many other young black men who die at the hands of police brutality or at the hands of white men working security, that go unnoticed. Trayvon Martin was a prime example, and we didn't hear about him until months after he was murdered. As far as the article, I think she's on the right track, and I too agree that it's time to take an inter-generational approach and combine all of our wisdom to make this the biggest movement yet.
