As Martin Luther King said in many of his speeches, most famously at the March on Washington, he was fighting to redeem a promise that the United States had made at its founding. This promise was that all people were equal, and ought to be treated that way under law. So I would argue that it is almost impossible to argue that the things King was fighting for were not important. Part of his appeal at the time and since is the way that his rhetoric appeals to American values, contrasting the realities of racism and racial discrimination with the things that Americans want to believe about themselves. Moreover, while King has been made "safe" by decades of veneration, many of the things he argued for, especially late in his life, are controversial (but no less important) today. He vehemently opposed the Vietnam War, he advocated for a stronger social safety net and a welfare state, and he fought for workers' rights, including those of white workers. It was a sanitation workers' strike, in fact, that brought him to Memphis in April of 1968, when he was assassinated. In short, the battles King fought were battles over the soul of America, and whether it could live up to its promises. They were, and are, important to say the least.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
What was the device called which Faber had given Montag in order to communicate with him?
In Part Two "The Sieve and the Sand" of the novel Fahrenheit 451, Montag travels to Faber's house trying to find meaning in th...
-
The coat in Arms and the Man by George Bernard Shaw serves as a plot device. It gives Captain Bluntschli an excuse to revisit Raina to ret...
-
The amount of heat lost by brass cylinder is transferred to paraffin. The amount of heat loss by the brass cylinder is given as = mass x hea...
-
Here are 10 words you could use to describe Peeta from Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games: 1) Kind - Peeta is a gentleman; when he and ...
No comments:
Post a Comment