Last Thursday, Martin Luther King III responded to the increasingly heated protests spurred by the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police with a quote from his father, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
On Instagram and Facebook, a meme frequently shared by those seeking to depreciate the current protests juxtaposes a photo of King walking arm-in-arm with other civil rights leaders during the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery marches in Alabama with a photo of someone smashing a car window.
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Though it’s not comparable with the intense animosity King generated in his time, Rice said he looks at the attacks directed at ex-NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick for taking a knee during the National Anthem to protest police brutality and wonders: What kind of protest would be amenable to a certain segment of white America?
The less “feel good bits” for white Americans uncomfortable with this current wave of protests include King’s letter from a Birmingham jail.
By the time King raised his voice to challenge systematic racism, he understood “that if we gave the white majority even the tiniest reason to attack us, especially in the South where the Klan was your employer, your white neighbor, the judge, jury and police, we would not live through the level of retaliation they would be able to inflict on us without impunity,” Dungey said.
