April 4, 1968 Quotes

“We should not be post-racial: seeking to get beyond the uplifting meanings and edifying registers of blackness. Rather, we should be post-racist: moving beyond cultural fascism and vicious narratives of racial privilege and superiority that tear at the fabric of "e pluribus unum.”
― Michael Eric Dyson, April 4, 1968: Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Death and How It Changed America

“His dreams were the natural reflex of hope and redeemed curiosity.”
― Michael Eric Dyson, April 4, 1968: Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Death and How It Changed America

“The white establishment is skilled in flattering and cultivating emerging leaders. It presses its own image on them and finally, from imitation of manners, dress, and style of living, a deeper strain of corruption delivers. This kind of Negro leader acquires the white man's contempt for the ordinary Negro. He is often more at-home with the middle class white than he is among his own people. His language changes, he location changes, his income changes, and ultimately he changes from a representative of the Negro to the white man to the white man's representative to the Negro. - Dr Martin Luther King Jr”
― Michael Eric Dyson, April 4, 1968: Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Death and How It Changed America

“The state ofmthe black family life in America evokes grave concern and graver criticism. . . .From the suffering of children in families that struggle to gain sufficient economic support, to the difficult plight of single black women, to the unemployment and overincarceration of black males, the black family is buffeted by a host of brutal social facts that compromise its quality of survival and make a mockery of King's vision of a black Promised Land,”
― Michael Eric Dyson, April 4, 1968: Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Death and How It Changed America

“This gulf between hope and the heartbreak that is the lot of millions of black poor is nowhere better glimpsed than in the social and economic circumstances that batter the black family,”
― Michael Eric Dyson, April 4, 1968: Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Death and How It Changed America

“[In the fight for civil rights]
The threat and reality of death played many roles simultaneously: It is a bitter arena to be played. It was also the producer, director, and often the co-star of many civil rights performances--marches, demonstrations, funerals, rallies, protests, freedom rides, sit-ins, speeches, and eulogies.”
― Michael Eric Dyson, April 4, 1968: Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Death and How It Changed America