Hope Is Not The Same As Optimism, A Psychologist Explains − Just Look At MLK’s Example

BY KENDRA THOMAS

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF PSYCHOLOGY

HOPE UNIVERSITY

On April 3, 1968, standing before a crowded church, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. painted his vision for justice. “I’ve seen the Promised Land,” he said. “I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land.”

Twenty-two hours later, he was assassinated.

King’s prophetic words express the virtue of hope amid hardship. He was not optimistic that he would reach the “Promised Land,” yet he was hopeful about the ultimate goal.

In conversation, “hope” and “optimism” can often be used as synonyms. But there’s an important gap between them, as psychology research suggests.

One of the most common tools to measure optimism asks people how much they agree with statements such as, “In uncertain times, I usually expect the best.” Those who strongly agree are regarded as highly optimistic.

But optimism can rely on a sense of luck over action. Self-help books on optimism are lined with hacks – like imagining your greatest possible self or focusing on the best-case scenario.

My psychology research studies how people perceive hope and justice. Long-term hope is not about looking on the bright side. It is a mindset that helps people endure challenges, tackle them head-on and keep their eyes on the goal – a virtue that King and other community leaders exemplify.

We, not me

Hope is often defined in psychological research as having strong will to succeed and plans to reach a goal.

Hope is stronger than optimism at predicting academic success and people’s ability to cope with pain. Plenty of scientific evidence suggests that hope improves individuals’ health and boosts their well-being.

But branding hope as a self-improvement tool cheapens this long-established virtue. Hope has benefits beyond the self. Thus, many psychologists are expanding the study of hope beyond personal success. My research team defines this “virtuous hope” as striving toward a purposeful vision of the common good – a hope often shaped by hardship and strengthened through relationships.

Many leaders, including King, have channeled that lesson to inspire change. Centuries of spiritual and philosophical work describe hope as a virtue that, like love, is a decision, not a feeling.

The myth of time

King wasn’t known for looking on the bright side or expecting the best from others. He faced repeated waves of criticism, and, at the time of his death, fewer Americans approved of him than of the Vietnam War.

In “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” King lamented the optimism of moderate white Americans who said they supported his goals but took little action. There is a “strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills,” he wrote. “Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively.”

He chastised society for believing that improvement would simply happen on its own. When he said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice,” he was not describing its natural trajectory, but what people have the power to change. You cannot expect greener pastures if they are not tended today.

King was not alone in leveraging virtuous hope for justice. Brazilian educator Paulo Freire described hope as an “existential imperative” that promotes action. Nelson Mandela, who spent 27 years in prison, called hope a “powerful weapon.”

Forged in adversity

What makes hope a virtue is not its ability to promote happiness and success but its commitment to a greater good beyond the self.

I study virtuous hope in a South African Zulu community, where there are few reasons for optimism. South Africa has the world’s steepest inequality. Unemployment is high, and social mobility is low. This is the part of the country where HIV is most widespread, with the percentage near 50% in some communities.

We studied several people seen as embodying hope, based on their reputation and community suggestions. These individuals demonstrated an unwavering focus on striving for a better future, often unglued from expectations of personal success.

One local farmer nominated by his community struggled to buy seeds for his crops but still helped others apply for grants to buy them. Even when his own future was uncertain, he was not hoarding. He described his hope as a commitment to help others. His hope is not a positive expectation but a moral commitment.

Our interviewees did not describe hardship as a suppressor of hope but as its context to grow.

One unemployed young woman said she had applied for jobs for four years and would continue, though she was not naïve about the tough future. She said applying for jobs and reading to her child were her acts of hope. Her hope didn’t expect a quick improvement, yet it warded off paralysis.

Many of our interviewees anchored their hope in their Christian faith, as did King. King often referenced St. Paul, one of the first Christian writers, who wrote, “Suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character produces hope. Now this hope does not disappoint us.”

Hope, in other words, plays the long game: enduring suffering with integrity. Like King’s, it manifests in hardship and is refined in adversity. Hope enables communities to march for justice and democracy even while tasting the danger of dictatorship, apartheid or oligarchy.

Hope knows it may take another generation to reach the Promised Land, but it acts today to bend the moral arc toward justice.

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Dexter Scott King, Son Of The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Dies Of Cancer At 62

Dexter King son of slain Civil Rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., pictured in background speaks to the news media during a news conference Thursdat, Feb. 13, 1997, in Atlanta in which the King family asked that James Earl Ray be brought to trial for the murder of Martin Luther King Jr. (AP Photo/Alan Mothner, File)

ATLANTA (AP) — Dexter Scott King, the younger son of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King, died Monday after battling prostate cancer.

The King Center in Atlanta, which Dexter King served as chairman, said the 62-year-old son of the civil rights icon died at his home in Malibu, California. His wife, Leah Weber King, said in a statement that he died “peacefully in his sleep.”

The third of the Kings’ four children, Dexter King was named for the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, where his father served as a pastor when the Montgomery bus boycott launched him to national prominence in the wake of the 1955 arrest of Rosa Parks.

Dexter King was just 7 years old when his father was assassinated in April 1968 while supporting striking sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee. In his 2004 memoir, “Growing Up King,” Dexter King recalled his father’s slaying as the end of a carefree childhood.

“Ever since I was seven, I’ve felt I must be formal,” he wrote, adding: “Formality, seriousness, certitude — all these are difficult poses to maintain, even if you’re a person with perfect equilibrium, with all the drama life throws at you.”

As an adult, Dexter King became an attorney and focused on shepherding his father’s legacy and protecting the King family’s intellectual property. In addition to serving as chairman of the King Center, he was also president of the King estate.

In addition to his work with the King Center, Dexter King was known for the striking resemblance he bore to his father. They looked so much alike that the son ended up portraying his famous father in a 2002 TV movie about Parks.

Coretta Scott King died in 2006, followed by the Kings’ oldest child, Yolanda King, in 2007.

“Words cannot express the heart break I feel from losing another sibling,” the Rev. Bernice A. King, the youngest of the four, said in a statement.

His older brother, Martin Luther King III, said: “The sudden shock is devastating. It is hard to have the right words at a moment like this. We ask for your prayers at this time for the entire King family.”

Gospel singer Mahalia Jackson made a suggestion during the 1963 March on Washington − and it changed a good speech to a majestic sermon on an American dream

THE CONVERSATION

Mahalia Jackson performing in Copenhagen, Denmark, in April 1961. Lennart Steen/JP Jazz Archive/Getty Images

BY BEV-PREDA JACKSON

Every now and then, a voice can matter. Mahalia Jackson had one of them.

Known around the world as the “Queen of Gospel,” Jackson used her powerful voice to work in the Civil Rights Movement. Starting in the 1950s, she traveled with Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. throughout the South and heard him preach in Black churches about a vision that only he could see.

But on Aug. 28, 1963, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, something didn’t quite sound right to Jackson as she listened to King deliver his prepared speech. King was reading from his prepared remarks when she made a simple suggestion.

“Tell them about the dream, Martin,” she urged King, “tell them about the dream.”

Inspired, King cast aside his prepared remarks and ad-libbed from his heart. For the estimated 250,000 who joined the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom that day, they heard King deliver one of his seminal sermons.

“I have a dream,” King preached, “that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”

Though most memorable, King’s voice wasn’t the only one that day 60 years ago. The other voice, the one King listened to and heeded, belonged to Mahalia Jackson.

“A voice like hers comes along once in a millennium,” King once said.
An international phenomenon

Born on Oct. 26, 1911, in New Orleans, Jackson had a contralto voice that first won fame as a gospel singer in the choir at Greater Salem Baptist Church on Chicago’s South Side during the 1940s.

Among her earliest hit recordings were “I Can Put My Trust in Jesus,” “In the Upper Room,” “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands,” “Move On Up A Little Higher” and “Even Me Lord.”

Before long, Jackson was appearing in major concert venues in the U.S. and Europe. In 1956, she was the first gospel singer to perform at Carnegie Hall. In 1961, Jackson sang at the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy. The popular “Ed Sullivan Show” made Jackson a household name by frequently asking her to perform.

But international fame did not make Jackson forget her religious upbringing and commitment to fight for equal rights.

In “As the Spirit Moves Mahalia,” prominent Black writer Ralph Ellison wrote about the meaning of Jackson’s voice.

“The true function of her singing is not simply to entertain,” he explained, “but to prepare the congregation for the minister’s message, to make it receptive to the spirit, and with effects of voice and rhythm to evoke a shared community of experience.”

Ellison further wrote that Jackson was “not primarily a concert singer but a high priestess in the religious ceremony of her church.”

Mahalia and Martin

Jackson and King first met at the National Baptist Convention in Alabama in 1956. King asked her if she could support his work there by singing and inspiring civil rights activists during the 381-day Montgomery Bus Boycott.

From there, she became the first woman to serve on the board of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, a prominent civil rights group led by King, and became one of King’s most trusted advisers. In a 1962 press release, King wrote that Jackson “has appeared on numerous programs that helped the struggle in the South, but now she has indicated that she wants to be involved on a regular basis.”

She shared his vision for breaking down the barriers of segregation and fighting for equitable treatment for African Americans. In her own right, Jackson became a visible fixture within the Civil Rights Movement.

Jackson died in 1972 at the age of 60.

Jackson’s voice in a movement

If music was the soul of the movement, strategic thinking was at its core. As psychologist Asa Hilliard later explained, among those strategies were moral suasion, litigation, grassroots organizing, civil disobedience, economic boycotts, the solicitation of corporate sponsors and the use of television.

The March on Washington was considered the culminating event of the historic Civil Rights Movement. The march was rooted in the ideal of economic justice and intentionally held on Aug. 28 to commemorate the lynching of Emmett Till in Mississippi on the same date in 1955.

Till’s death and the subsequent acquittal of three white men charged with the brutal murder was one of the turning points of the movement.

Among the building blocks of the Civil Rights Movement was music. It spoke to the soul, and Mahalia’s gift comforted the masses. King often called her during trying times and asked her to sing to him over the telephone.

King called her “a blessing to me … and a blessing to Negroes who have learned through her not to be ashamed of their heritage.”

It was no surprise then that Jackson felt comfortable enough to make a suggestion to the civil rights leader during a sermon.

Before he appeared on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Jackson had sung her rendition of “I have been buked and I have been scorned” and after he finished, she sang “We Shall Overcome.”

But her most important line that day might have been, “Tell them about the dream, Martin.”

Tens Of Thousands Expected For March On Washington’s 60th Anniversary Demonstration

On the day before the 60th memorial of 1963 march on Washington, Bernice King, Martin Luther King Jr.’s daughter, visited her father’s monument in Washington to reflect on the march and family legacy.

AARON MORRISON

WASHINGTON (AP) — Martin Luther King III, along with his wife, Arndrea Waters King, and their 15-year-old daughter, Yolanda, have developed a set of traditions for this time of the year.

Each August, they rewatch the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s rapturous address to the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Even if the civil rights icon’s legacy is closer to the Kings than it is for most other families, they see march anniversaries as a teaching moment.

“We are like any other family, in the sense that we want to teach our daughter about this moment in history,” Arndrea said. “And then we also try to connect it with movements or people that are doing things in the present.”

This year, the Kings will join an expected crowd of tens of thousands of people, who are gathering Saturday at the Lincoln Memorial in the nation’s capital to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the late reverend’s “I Have A Dream” speech.

The event is convened by the Kings’ Drum Major Institute and the National Action Network. A host of Black civil rights leaders and a multiracial, interfaith coalition of allies will rally attendees on the same spot where as many as 250,000 gathered in 1963 for what is still considered one of the greatest and most consequential racial justice and equality demonstrations in U.S. history.

On Friday, Martin Luther King III, who is the late civil rights icon’s eldest son, and his sister, Bernice King, each visited their father’s monument in Washington.

“I see a man still standing in authority and saying, ‘We’ve still got to get this this right,’” Bernice said as she looked up at the granite statue.

The original march, which featured their father as a centerpiece, helped till the ground for passage of federal civil rights and voting rights legislation in the 1960s.

Organizers of this year’s commemoration hope to recapture the energy of the original March on Washington – especially in the face of eroded voting rights nationwide, after the recent striking down of affirmative action in college admissions and abortion rights by the Supreme Court, and amid growing threats of political violence and hatred against people of color, Jews and the LGBTQ community.

“What we know is when people stand up, the difference can be made,” Martin Luther King III told The Associated Press in an interview ahead of Saturday. “This is not a traditional commemoration. This really is a rededication.”

The event kicks off with pre-program speeches and performances at 8:00 a.m. ET. The main program begins at 11 a.m. ET., followed by a march procession that will begin through the streets of Washington toward the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial.

Featured speakers include Ambassador Andrew Young, the close King adviser who helped organize the original march and who went on to serve as a congressman, U.N. ambassador and mayor of Atlanta. Leaders from the NAACP and the National Urban League are also expected to give remarks.

Several leaders from groups organizing the march met Friday with Attorney General Merrick Garland and Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the civil rights division, to discuss a range of issues, including voting rights, policing and redlining.

The gathering Saturday is a precursor to the actual anniversary of the Aug. 28, 1963 March on Washington. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris will observe the march anniversary on Monday by meeting with organizers of the 1963 gathering. All of King’s children have been invited to meet with Biden, White House officials said.

For the Rev. Al Sharpton, founder of the National Action Network, continuing to observe March on Washington anniversaries fulfills a promise he made to the late King family matriarch Coretta Scott King. Twenty three years ago, she introduced Sharpton and Martin Luther King III at a 37th anniversary march and urged them to carry on the legacy.

“I never thought that 23 years later, Martin and I, with Arndrea, would be doing a march and we’d have less (civil rights protections) than we had in 2000,” Sharpton said.

“We’re fulfilling the assignment Mrs. King gave us,” he said. “We are having to march, saying we can’t go backwards, and we’ve got to go forward.”

Coming out of the march on Saturday, Sharpton says he will lead a voting rights tour in the fall in states that are trying to erect barriers ahead of the 2024 presidential election. He also plans to meet with major Black entrepreneurs to create a fund to finance the fight against conservative attacks on diversity and inclusion initiatives.

Bernice King, said she sympathized with those who have grown weary over the continued fight to preserve civil rights. But they need to remember her mother’s words, in addition to her father’s famous speech, she said.

“Mother said, struggle is a never ending process,” said Bernice, who is CEO of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center For Nonviolent Social Change, which was founded by her mom after the civil rights icon’s assassination in 1968.

“Freedom is never really won – you earn it and win it in every generation. Vigilance is the answer,” she said. “We have to always remember, it’s difficult and dark right now, but a dawn is coming.”

Her father’s March on Washington remarks have resounded through decades of push and pull toward progress in civil and human rights. But dark moments followed his speech, too.

Two weeks later in 1963, four Black girls were killed in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, followed by the kidnapping and murder of three civil rights workers in Neshoba County, Mississippi the following year. The tragedies spurred passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

And the voting rights marches from Montgomery to Selma, Alabama, in which marchers were brutally beaten while crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge in what became known as “Bloody Sunday,” forced Congress to adopt the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

“Unfortunately, we’re living in a time when there’s a younger generation who believes that my daddy’s generation, and those of us who came after, didn’t get enough done,” Bernice King said. “And I want them to understand, you are benefiting and this is the way you’re benefiting.”

She added: “We can’t give up, because there’s a moment in time when change comes. We have to celebrate the small victories. If you’re not grateful, you will undermine your progress, too.”

The Associated Press receives support from several private foundations to enhance its explanatory coverage of elections and democracy. See more about AP’s democracy initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

MLK’s Vision Of Social Justice Included Religious Pluralism – A House Of Many Faiths

Martin Luther King Jr., left, speaks during a Chicago news conference with the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh in May 1966. AP Photo/Edward Kitch

BY ROY WHITAKER

The life and legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. have been the subject of ongoing debate ever since his assassination on April 4, 1968.

Today, those invoking King’s memory range from Black Lives Matters organizers and President Joe Biden to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Educators trying to teach Black history call on his principles, even as their opponents claim that lessons about systemic racism go against King’s desire not to judge people “by the color of their skin.”

In an age of polarization, it is worth remembering that one of the pillars of King’s philosophy was pluralism: the idea of multiple communities engaging one another, acknowledging their differences and shared bonds, and striving to create what King called a “Beloved Community.”

As an African American philosopher who studies comparative religion, I am especially interested in what role religious pluralism played in King’s fight for civil rights in the United States of America and human liberation around the world.
A chorus of faiths

King’s worldview was deeply nurtured by his experiences in the Black Church, where the Bible’s stories of freedom and oppression are central. The Book of Exodus, for example, tells the story of Hebrew slaves seeking deliverance, and the message has been a frequent theme in Black hymns and preaching for centuries. In the Book of Amos, the prophet cries out, “Let justice roll down like waters” – which is a line King famously quoted in his “I Have a Dream” speech.

Building off the work of other pioneering Black Christians, King embraced interfaith leadership. His mentor Howard Thurman, who founded the Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples, traveled to India to meet with activist Mahatma Gandhi, who was Hindu.

Gandhi’s approach to nonviolent protest was also influential for Mordecai Johnson, president of Howard University, whose sermon on the subject after a trip to India in 1949 profoundly shaped King’s religious philosophy.

The religious diversity of King’s coalitions was evident in events like the 1965 March on Selma, where some participants were severely beaten by police on “Bloody Sunday.”

Marchers came from a chorus of faiths that included priests and nuns, Episcopal seminarian, high-profile Unitarian Universalists like James Reeb, who was murdered days later, as well as Jewish leaders like Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel.

Complementing his Black Church upbringing, King was inspired by wisdom across continents and cultures, from the Greek classics and Gandhi to Buddhist leaders like Thich Nhat Hanh. Despite their differing dogmas, he hoped leaders from across the religious spectrum and those of no particular faith would join efforts to promote economic and racial justice and stand against imperialism.
‘The great world house’

When King used the word “pluralism,” he assumed that its ideal of belonging had both religious and racial connotations. For example, King praised the Supreme Court’s decision in Engel v. Vitale, which concluded that public schools could not sponsor prayers, and which segregationist Alabama Governor George Wallace opposed. “In a pluralistic society such as ours, who is to determine what prayer shall be spoken, and by whom?” King said in a 1965 interview.

More than a decade earlier, during his time at seminary, King had written a paper exhibiting a keen awareness of Christianity’s connections with other faiths: “To discuss Christianity without mentioning other religions would be like discussing the greatness of the Atlantic Ocean without the slightest mention of the many tributaries that keep it flowing.”

Other vivid imagery like “the great world house” underscored how King interpreted all persons and all faiths as living in an interconnected web. Identifying common themes in the discrimination against Indian Dalits, the castes formerly known as “untouchable,” and the plight of African Americans in the U.S., King surmised, “I am an untouchable.” He also saw parallels between the African American struggle for freedom and the work of labor unions such as the National Farm Workers Association.

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” King insisted.
King then, today, tomorrow

King wanted people to embody the highest forms of their own religion and morality. Religion at its best, he thought, promoted peace, understanding, love and good will. This is true of “all of the great religions of the world,” he wrote in a statement for Redbook magazine.

Those were the kinds of ethics King hoped to fulfill in his own Christian ministry, as is clear in his wishes for what might be said at his own funeral.

“I’d like somebody to mention that day that Martin Luther King Jr. tried to give his life serving others,” he said. “I’d like for somebody to say that day that Martin Luther King Jr. tried to love somebody. … I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity.”

Yet King’s goal of a world without hunger, war and racism remains unrealized. Poverty persists. War continues. Black people’s safety is still imperiled.

Resolving current social and political crises in America may require the real integration and power-sharing that King’s radical vision demanded.

However, the debate about King’s pluralist legacy is not only about him, but also about us. How do we want to be remembered? What world are we leaving future generations?

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Inspiring Prayer Service Centered On Unity And Love Among Walk The Walk Week Highlights

BY SUE RYAN

From start to finish, the annual University of Notre Dame Walk the Walk prayer service featured inspiring song and rousing words and prayer on Sunday (Jan. 22). The prayer service was part of a weekend of events beginning Walk the Walk Week, a series of campus-wide activities and discussions designed to invite reflection about diversity and inclusion and honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr from January 19-27.

Following a moving rendition of “Lift Every Voice and Sing” led by the University’s Voices of Faith choir, President Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., exclaimed, “Great start!” before offering a warm welcome to the standing-room-only audience of students, faculty, administrators and staff, along with many visitors from the community, including the Most Rev. Michael Bruce Curry, presiding bishop and primate of The Episcopal Church, and other members of The Episcopal Church’s national and local clergy.

Father Jenkins began the service with these words: “Holy God, today, we remember Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s struggle for equality, justice and dignity for African Americans, a struggle that inspired so many other reform movements seeking to highlight the plight of the oppressed in society. We pray that all who serve in civil and religious authority remember that we have all been created in your image, and that the intrinsic dignity within each of us calls for uplifting every person. May your Holy Spirit remind us all that you show no partiality towards nationality, race, ethnicity or gender. For us to do so is to go against your great commandment of love toward one another. We pray that the Church will not be complicit in injustice by being silent, but that it can rise up with a prophetic voice that speaks with integrity and advances the values of your kingdom.”

Guests filled the Basilica of the Sacred Heart to hear the sermon from Bishop Curry. A prophetic leader and skilled orator, he delivered an engaging, emotional and sometimes humorous 40-minute address that moved the audience to witness, applaud and nod along throughout.

Bishop Curry began his sermon recounting the life of Hebrew prophet Jeremiah and quoting from him, “‘Blessed are those who trust in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream. It shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green; in the year of drought it is not anxious, and it does not cease to bear fruit.’”

He continued the analogy of the tree and went on to tell of an ancient, giant and now famous tree in Ghana, West Africa, that grows along a slave death march route that many passed when being sent to ships along the coast for transport to the Americas. He told the history of the tree and significance of its growth in the dry conditions near the Sahara Desert.

“There’s a lesson in that tree,” Bishop Curry said. “The key to that tree and its life, no matter what the weather, its life, its ability to have branches wide and diverse and inclusive, was that it was connected. It had roots, deep in the soil, going to the very source of life itself.

“We got troubles. No need to kid each other. But I am so thankful that you are raising up students to take their place in this country and the countries of the world. They must help us create the loving community from our jangles of discord and disharmony.”

Then, quoting Dr. King, he said, “‘We must learn to live together as brothers and sisters or we will perish together as fools.’ The choice is ours — chaos or community. My sisters and my brothers, I want to suggest tonight that if we would discover and find the beloved community, we must go deep. Deep in the soil. Deep in our roots to the very source of light, life and love itself. Dig deep!”

He later concluded by encouraging love for all, saying, “Leave this sacred Church this day and help this world become God’s beloved community.”

The prayer service included additional musical interludes by the Voices of Faith and a touching version of the Prayer of the Faithful where six students of various nationalities read intercessions in their native languages.

Father Jenkins concluded the service by praying: “O God, you made us in your own image and redeemed us through Jesus your Son: Look with compassion on the whole human family, take away the arrogance and hatred which infect our hearts, break down the walls that separate us, unite us in bonds of love, and work through our struggle and confusion to accomplish your purposes on Earth. We ask for your blessing on all of us gathered here tonight; that you guide us in your good time and perfect example so that all may serve you in harmony around your heavenly throne; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

As attendees recessed from the Basilica, they collected a lit candle and processed to the Sacred Heart of Jesus statue to place the candle in a silent moment of reflection.

---------------NOTRE DAME NEWS

MLK’s Vision Of Love As A Moral Imperative Still Matters

B Y JOSHUA F. J. INWOOD

More than 50 years after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., the United States remains divided by issues of race and racism, economic inequality as well as unequal access to justice. These issues are stopping the country from developing into the kind of society that Martin Luther King, Jr. fought for during his years as a civil rights activist.

As a result King’s words and work are still relevant. I study the civil rights movement and the field of peace geographies. Peace geographies thinks about how different groups of people approach and work toward building the kind of peaceful society King worked to create. Americans faced similar crises related to the broader civil rights struggles in the 1960s.

So, what can the past tell us about healing the nation? Specifically, how can we address divisions along race, class and political lines?

Martin Luther King Jr.‘s understanding of the role of love in engaging individuals and communities in conflict is crucial today. For King, love was not sentimental. It demanded that individuals tell their oppressors what they were doing was wrong.

King’s vision

King spent his public career working toward ending segregation and fighting racial discrimination. For many people the pinnacle of this work occurred in Washington, D.C., when he delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.

Less well-known and often ignored is his later work on behalf of poor people. In fact, when King was assassinated in Memphis he was in the midst of building toward a national march on Washington, D.C., that would have brought together tens of thousands of economically disenfranchised people to advocate for policies that would reduce poverty. This effort – known as the “Poor People’s Campaign” – aimed to dramatically shift national priorities to address the health and welfare of working people.

Scholars such as Derek Alderman, Paul Kingsbury and Owen Dwyer how King’s work can be applied in today’s context. They argue that calling attention to the civil rights movement, can “change the way students understand themselves in relation to the larger project of civil rights.” And in understanding the civil rights movement, students and the broader public can see its contemporary significance.
Idea of love

King focused on the role of love as key to building healthy communities and the ways in which love can and should be at the center of our social interactions.

King’s final book, “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?” published in the year before his assassination, provides his most expansive vision of an inclusive, diverse and economically equitable U.S. nation. For King, love is a key part of creating communities that work for everyone and not just the few at the expense of the many.

Love was not a mushy or easily dismissed emotion, but was central to the kind of community he envisioned. King made distinctions between three forms of love which are key to the human experience: “eros,” “philia” and most importantly “agape.”

For King, eros is a form of love that is most closely associated with desire, while philia is often the love that is experienced between very good friends or family. These visions are different from agape.

Agape, which was at the center of the movement he was building, was the moral imperative to engage with one’s oppressor in a way that showed the oppressor the ways their actions dehumanize and detract from society. He said,

“In speaking of love we are not referring to some sentimental emotion. It would be nonsense to urge men to love their oppressors in an affectionate sense[…] When we speak of loving those who oppose us […] we speak of a love which is expressed in the Greek word Agape. Agape means nothing sentimental or basically affectionate; it means understanding, redeeming goodwill for all men, an overflowing love which seeks nothing in return.”

King further defined agape when he argued at the University of California at Berkeley that the concept of agape “stands at the center of the movement we are to carry on in the Southland.” It was a love that demanded that one stand up for oneself and tells those who oppress that what they were doing was wrong.

Why this matters now

In the face of violence directed at minority communities and of deepening political divisions in the country, King’s words and philosophy are perhaps more critical for us today than at any point in the recent past.

As King noted, all persons exist in an interrelated community and all are dependent on each other. By connecting love to community, King argued there were opportunities to build a more just and economically sustainable society which respected difference. As he said,

“Agape is a willingness to go to any length to restore community… Therefore if I respond to hate with a reciprocal hate I do nothing but intensify the cleavages of a broken community.”

King outlined a vision in which we are compelled to work toward making our communities inclusive. They reflect the broad values of equality and democracy. Through an engagement with one another as its foundation, agape provides opportunities to work toward common goals.

Building a community today

At a time when the nation feels so divided, there is a need to bring back King’s vision of agape-fueled community building and begin a difficult conversation about where we are as a nation and where we want to go. It would move us past simply seeing the other side as being wholly motivated by hate.

Engaging in a conversation through agape signals a willingness to restore broken communities and to approach difference with an open mind.

This is an updated version of an article originally published on Nov. 16, 2016.

Joshua F.J. Inwood is a member of the American Association of Geographer

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On King’s Holiday, Daughter Calls For Bold Action Over Words

A large group gathers to watch a wreath-laying ceremony at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial on Martin Luther King Jr. Day in Washington, Monday, Jan. 16, 2023. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

BY BILL BARROW

ATLANTA (AP) — America has honored Martin Luther King Jr. with a federal holiday for nearly four decades yet still hasn’t fully embraced and acted on the lessons from the slain civil rights leader, his youngest daughter said Monday.

The Rev. Bernice King, who leads The King Center in Atlanta, said leaders — especially politicians — too often cheapen her father’s legacy into a “comfortable and convenient King” offering easy platitudes.

“We love to quote King in and around the holiday. ... But then we refuse to live King 365 days of the year,” she declared at the commemorative service at Ebenezer Baptist Church, where her father once preached.

The service, sponsored by the center and held at Ebenezer annually, headlined observances of the 38th federal King holiday. King, gunned down in Memphis in 1968 as he advocated for better pay and working conditions for the city’s sanitation workers, would have celebrated his 94th birthday Sunday.

Her voice rising and falling in cadences similar to her father’s, Bernice King bemoaned institutional and individual racism, economic and health care inequities, police violence, a militarized international order, hardline immigration structures and the climate crisis. She said she’s “exhausted, exasperated and, frankly, disappointed” to hear her father’s words about justice quoted so extensively alongside “so little progress” addressing society’s gravest problems.

“He was God’s prophet sent to this nation and even the world to guide us and forewarn us. ... A prophetic word calls for an inconvenience because it challenges us to change our hearts, our minds and our behavior,” Bernice King said. “Dr. King, the inconvenient King, puts some demands on us to change our ways.”

President Joe Biden was scheduled Monday to address an MLK breakfast hosted in Washington by the Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network. Sharpton got his start as a civil rights organizer in his teens as youth director of an anti-poverty project of King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

“This is a time for choosing,” Biden said, repeating themes from a speech he delivered Sunday at Ebenezer at the invitation of Sen. Raphael Warnock, the senior pastor at Ebenezer who recently won re-election to a full term as Georgia’s first Black U.S. senator.

“Will we choose democracy over autocracy, or community over chaos? Love over hate?” Biden asked Monday. “These are the questions of our time that I ran for president to try to help answer. ... Dr. King’s life and legacy — in my view — shows the way forward.”

Other commemorations echoed Bernice King’s reminder and Biden’s allusions that the “Beloved Community” — Martin Luther King’s descriptor for a world in which all people are free from fear, discrimination, hunger and violence — remains elusive.

In Boston, Mayor Michelle Wu talked about a fight for the truth in an era of hyper-partisanship and misinformation.

“We’re battling not just two sides or left or right and a gradient in between that have to somehow come to compromise, but a growing movement of hate, abuse, extremism and white supremacy fueled by misinformation, fueled by conspiracy theories that are taking root at every level,” she said.

Wu, the first woman and person of color elected mayor of Boston, said education restores trust. Quoting King, she called for overcoming the “fatigue of despair” to enact change. “It is sometimes in those moments when we feel most tired, most despairing, that we are just about to break through,” Wu told attendees at a memorial breakfast.

Volunteers in Philadelphia held a “day of service” focused on gun violence prevention. The city has seen a surge in homicides that saw 516 people killed last year and 562 the year before, the highest total in at least six decades.

Some participants in the effort’s signature project, led by Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, worked to assemble gun safety kits for public distribution. The kits include “gun cable locks and additional safety devices for childproofing,” according to organizers. They also include information about firearm storage, health and social services information, and coping in the aftermath of gun violence.

Other kits being assembled highlighted Temple University Hospital’s “Fighting Chance” program and included materials to enable immediate response to victims at the scene of gunfire, organizers said. Recipients are to be trained in the use of the materials, which include tourniquets, gauze, chest seals and other items to treat critical wounds, they said.

In Selma, Alabama, a seminal site in the civil rights movement, residents were commemorating King as they recover from a deadly storm system that moved across the South last week.

King was not present at Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge for the initial march known as “Bloody Sunday,” when Alabama state troopers attacked and beat marchers in March 1965. But he joined a subsequent procession that successfully crossed the bridge toward the Capitol in Montgomery, punctuating efforts that pushed Congress to pass and President Lyndon Johnson to sign the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The Pettus Bridge was unscathed by Thursday’s storm.

Maine’s first Black House speaker urged residents Monday to honor King’s memory by joining in acts of service.

“His unshakable faith, powerful nonviolent activism and his vision for peace and justice in our world altered the course of history,” Rachel Talbot Ross said in a statement. Talbot Ross is also the daughter of Maine’s first black lawmaker, and a former president of the Portland NAACP.

“We must follow his example of leading with light and love and recommit ourselves to building a more compassionate, just and equal community,” she added.

At Ebenezer, Warnock, who has led the congregation for 17 years, hailed his predecessor’s role in securing ballot access for Black Americans. But, like Bernice King, the senator warned against a reductive understanding of King.

“Don’t just call him a civil rights leader. He was a faith leader,” Warnock said. “Faith was the foundation upon which he did everything he did. You don’t face down dogs and water hoses because you read Nietzsche or Niebuhr. You gotta tap into that thing, that God he said he met anew in Montgomery when someone threatened to bomb his house and kill his wife and his new child.”

King, Warnock said, “left the comfort of a filter that made the whole world his parish,” turning faith into “the creative weapon of love and nonviolence.”

While echoing Bernice King’s call for bolder public policy, Warnock noted some progress in his lifetime. As he’s done through two Senate campaigns, Warnock noted he was born a year after King’s assassination, when both of Georgia senators were staunch segregationists, including one Warnock described as loving “the Negro” as long as he was “in his place at the back door.”

But, Warnock said, “Because of what Dr. King and because of what you did ... I now sit in his seat.”

— Associated Press journalists Will Weissert in Washington, David Sharp in Portland, Maine, and Ron Todt in Philadelphia contributed.

INFLUENTIAL BLACK RIGHTS CASES IN COURT TV HISTORY

COURT TV

BY KATIE MCLAUGHLIN

On the third Monday of each January, America remembers Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a prominent civil rights leader in the fight against racial discrimination in both federal and state law.

In honor of Dr. King’s legacy, here’s a look back at some cases involving Black rights that Court TV has covered over the years, as well as some of the network’s reporting on legal stories that shaped Black history.

THE DEATH OF GEORGE FLOYD

On May 25, 2020, bystanders in Minneapolis captured cell phone video of police officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on the neck of George Floyd during an arrest. Two other cops — Thomas Lane and J. Alexander Kueng — held Floyd down while a third, Tou Thao, attempted to keep horrified onlookers at bay.

Chauvin kept his knee on Floyd’s neck for 9 1/2 minutes, even though he said he couldn’t breathe. Floyd died there in the street.

All three former officers are currently behind bars, having been convicted of both criminal and federal charges. Chauvin faced the most serious charges, and is currently serving a 22 1/2 year state sentence for murder and manslaughter. He also received a 21-year federal sentence for civil rights violations, and will serve that sentence concurrently.

THE KILLING OF AHMAUD ARBERY

On February 23, 2020, Ahmaud Arbery was jogging in Brunswick, Georgia when he was chased by Gregory and Travis McMichael, who were in a truck. Neighbor William “Roddie” Bryan followed in his own truck and filmed the altercation.

The McMichaels, a father and son, boxed Arbery in with their truck while trying to make a citizen’s arrest. They thought Arbery was responsible for recent neighborhood break-ins.

Travis shot Arbery at close range with a shot gun. He collapsed and died in the street. Travis claimed it was self-defense.

The McMichaels and Bryan were all convicted of murder on the state level and all got life sentences. They were later convicted on federal hate crime charges with the McMichaels receiving life sentences and Bryan getting a 35 year sentence.

BREONNA TAYLOR BOTCHED RAID

In the early morning hours of March 13, 2020, Breonna Taylor was gunned down by officers executing a no-knock warrant in a narcotics investigation. When the cops kicked in the door to Taylor’s Louisville apartment, her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, fired his own legally-owned gun, believing the home was being broken into.

Two officers — Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly and Detective Myles Cosgrove — returned fire, striking Taylor, 26, who was standing in the hall with Walker when she was struck by eight bullets. Taylor, who was an EMT, bled to death. Walker was not harmed.

Another officer on the scene, Brett Hankison, was standing outside the apartment during the raid. None of Hankison’s bullets struck Taylor, but he did go on trial for charges unrelated to Taylor’s death, facing three counts of wanton endangerment for recklessly firing into a neighbor’s apartment. Hankison was found not guilty.

Mattingly and Cosgrove were not indicted. Their claim that they shot in self-defense was deemed justifiable because Walker fired first.

Additionally, it turned out that the narcotics investigation focused on an ex-boyfriend of Taylor’s who never lived at her address.

THE DEATH OF DAUNTE WRIGHT

On April 11, 2021, Minnesota police officer Kim Potter pulled Daunte Wright over for having an expired vehicle registration, as well as an air freshener hanging from his rear view mirror (Minnesota law prohibits motorists from hanging objects from rear view mirrors).

Potter soon learned Wright had an outstanding gross misdemeanor warrant. As she attempted to take Wright into custody, he got back in his car. Potter then shot Wright in the chest with her service weapon, which she claimed she mistakenly grabbed instead of her Taser.

Wright drove a short distance before colliding and dying at the scene. Potter was found guilty of first and second-degree manslaughter. She’s currently serving a two-year prison sentence.

THE BEATING OF RODNEY KING

Just after midnight on March 3, 1991, the savage beating of unarmed motorist Rodney King was caught on a bystander’s video camera. King, 27, had been speeding in Los Angeles and refused to pull over for cops.

He eventually stopped, and multiple police cars descended upon him. When King refused to lie on the ground, officers kicked, punched, Tased and attacked him with batons.

Four officers –Laurence Powell, Stacey Koon, Theodore Briseno, and Timothy Wind — were charged in connection with the beating. All four officers were tried for use of excessive force. All four were acquitted. Those not guilty verdicts kicked off the LA Riots. In their federal trial, however, Wind and Briseno were acquitted, while Powell and Koon were convicted of violating King’s rights and sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison.

THE KILLING OF AMADOU DIALLO

Just after midnight on February 4, 1999, plainclothes-cops shot at Amadou Diallo 41-times. The officers were members of the New York Police Department’s now-shuttered Street Crime Unit.

Diallo, 23, an immigrant from West Africa, was struck by 19 of those 41 bullets. He died on the stoop of his Bronx apartment building.

Officers Kenneth Boss, Sean Carroll, Richard Murphy, and Edward McMellon later admitted they mistook Diallo for a rape suspect. That said they believed Diallo was reaching for a gun when they fired their service weapons. Diallo was unarmed.

The officers were eventually found not guilty of his murder.

THE DEATH OF TRAYVON MARTIN: 10TH ANNIVERSARY LOOKBACK

Trayvon Martin, 17, was visiting his father in a gated Florida community in 2012. While walking home from a convenience store where he had purchased candy and iced tea, the unarmed teen was shot and killed in a physical altercation instigated by neighborhood watch member George Zimmerman, who was later acquitted of second-degree murder.

LANDMARK SUPREME COURT CASE: HEART OF ATLANTA MOTEL v. U.S.

In 1964, newly-enacted legislation prohibited discrimination in public spaces based on race, sex, color, religion, or national origin. The Heart of Atlanta Motel challenged that new law, and the Supreme Court rejected that challenge, ruling that Congress had the right to prohibit discrimination in public accommodations.

According to the high court, African-Americans were unfairly shut out from accommodations across the country. In short, the ruling stated that owners of public accommodations have no constitutional right to pick and choose their guests.

LANDMARK SUPREME COURT CASE: PLESSEY v. FERGUSON

Louisiana businessman Homer Plessey had one African-American grandparent, and was therefore Black in the eyes of the law. While traveling by train in 1892, Plessey refused to sit in a car for Black people, which was required by law in Louisiana at the time.

Upon his arrest, Plessey petitioned the Louisiana Supreme Court for a writ to stop trial court judge John H. Ferguson from going forth with proceedings. Plessey was convicted and appealed to the United States Supreme Court, arguing that the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause allowed him to sit where he wanted. The state argued that separating people by races ensured public safety.

In a 7-1 decision, the Supreme Court upheld Louisiana law, stating that as long as the accommodations were equal, the federal government could not interfere. Thus, “separate but equal” became law, upholding the constitutionality of racial segregation. That “separate but equal” doctrine was finally overturned 60 years later by Brown v. Board of Education in Topeka, KS in 1954.

BLACK AND BLUE: A COURT TV SPECIAL

This hour-long Court TV special took a deep dive into the criminal justice system’s history and relationship with African Americans.

How the distortion of Martin Luther King Jr.‘s words enables more, not less, racial division within American society

In this 1965 photo, President Lyndon B. Johnson discusses the Voting Rights Act with Martin Luther King Jr. Hulton Archive/Getty Images

BY HAJAR YAZDIHA

U.S. Rep. Chip Roy of Texas is just the latest conservative lawmaker to misuse the words of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to judge a person on character and not race.

In the protracted battle to elect Rep. Kevin McCarthy as speaker of the House, Roy, a Republican, nominated a Black man, Byron Donalds, a two-term representative from Florida who had little chance of winning the seat. Considered a rising star in the GOP, Donalds has opposed the very things that King fought for and ultimately was assassinated for – nonviolent demonstrations and voting rights protections.

Calling Donalds a “dear friend,” Roy noted the selection by Democrats of another Black man, Hakeem Jeffries of New York, and invoked King’s words.

“For the first time in history, there have been two Black Americans placed into nomination for speaker of the House,” Roy said. “However, we do not seek to judge people by the color of their skin, but rather, the content of their character.”

As a scholar who researches social movements, racial politics and democracy, I have seen the consequences of the misuse of King’s words play out everywhere from the halls of Congress to corporate diversity training sessions to local school board meetings.

In Roy’s case, the invocation of King’s legacy was an attempt to hide Donalds’ outspoken right-wing political views, including his vote with 146 others to overturn the 2020 presidential election results. Roy’s speech also omits Donalds’ support for voting reform laws in Florida that many Black civil rights leaders understood as efforts to disenfranchise minority voters.

As scholars, civil rights activists and King’s own children have long pointed out, uses of King’s words, especially by right-wing conservatives, are too often attempts to weaponize his memory against the multicultural democracy of which King could only dream.

A sanitized MLK

As every Martin Luther King Jr. Day nears on the third Monday in January, politicians across the political spectrum – including those who opposed establishing the national holiday in 1983 - issue their heartfelt dedications to King or quote him in their own speeches.

Yet January is also a month that commemorates a darker, more recent memory of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by right-wing extremists.

The two issues – misuses of King’s memory and the Jan. 6 attacks – may seem like unrelated phenomena.

Yet in my book, “The Struggle for the People’s King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement,” I show how there is a direct line from distortions of King’s words and legacy to right-wing attacks on multicultural democracy and contemporary politics.

The misuses of King are not accidental.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, a sanitized version of King was part of a conservative political strategy for swaying white moderates to support President Ronald Reagan’s reelection by making King’s birthday a national holiday.

Even after Reagan finally signed the King holiday into law in 1983, he would write letters of assurance to angry political allies that only a selective version of King would be commemorated.

That version was free of not only the racial politics that shaped the civil rights movement but also of the vision of systemic change that King envisioned. In addition, Reagan’s version left out the views that King held against the Vietnam War.

Instead, the GOP’s sanitized version only comprises King’s vision of a colorblind society – at the expense of the deep, systemic change that King believed was needed to achieve a society in which character was more important than race.

Weaponizing America’s racist past

This interpretation of King’s memory would become a powerful political tool.

Increasingly through the 1980s, right-wing social movements – from the gun rights and family values coalitions to nativists and white supremacists – deployed King’s memory to claim they were the new minorities fighting for their own rights.

These groups claimed that white Christians were the real victims of multicultural democracy and in fact were “the new Blacks.”

This false version of social reality eventually evolved into the “great replacement theory,” the far-right conspiracy theory, espoused by public figures like Tucker Carlson on Fox News, that white people are being demographically and culturally replaced with nonwhite peoples and that white existence is under threat.

In these distortions, gun rights activists called themselves the new Rosa Parks, anti-abortion activists declared themselves freedom riders and anti-gay groups claimed themselves protectors of King’s Christian vision.

These distortions of the past were not just rhetorical.

Over time, these political strategies had powerful effects and generated what appears in my view as an alternative social reality that, for many white Americans, began to feel like the only reality.
Misinformation threatens democracy

Through the making of these alternative histories, right-wing strategists such as Steve Bannon could stir up white right-wing voters to “reclaim” and “take back” America.

Such was the politics that led to Donald Trump’s 2016 election and shaped a presidential administration that rolled back civil rights, emboldened white supremacists and banned anti-racism training.

Through the misrepresentation of the racial past, this alternate social reality hardened.

Ultimately, these revisionist narratives have fractured the collective understanding of who we are, how we got here and where we go next. In my view, moving forward means honestly confronting the often ugly past and the deep roots of white supremacy that shaped it then and now.

It is only by facing, rather than ignoring, the complexity of America’s history that the “beloved community” that King once envisioned can be realized.

This article was updated to correct the year of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

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Former AP Civil Rights Reporter Kathryn Johnson Dies

In this May 1964 file photo, Associated Press journalist, Kathryn Johnson sits at her desk in Atlanta. Johnson, a trailblazing reporter for The Associated Press, died Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2019, at the age of 93, in Atlanta. Her intrepid coverage of the civil rights movement and other major stories led to a string of legendary scoops. Johnson was the only journalist allowed inside Martin Luther King Jr.'s home the day he was assassinated. (AP Photo, File)

BY ALLEN G. BREED

Kathryn Johnson, a trailblazing reporter for The Associated Press whose intrepid coverage of the civil rights movement and other major stories led to a string of legendary scoops, died Wednesday. She was 93.

Her niece, Rebecca Winters, said Johnson died Wednesday morning in Atlanta. Johnson was the only journalist allowed inside Martin Luther King Jr.’s home the day he was assassinated. When Gov. George Wallace blocked black students from entering the University of Alabama, she sneaked in to cover his confrontation with federal officials. She scored exclusive interviews with 2nd Lt. William L. Calley Jr. before he was convicted of his role in the My Lai massacre.

“I was never ambitious, really, anxious to make money ...,” she told an interviewer for an AP oral history project in 2007. Johnson said she didn’t’ want to be bored and added, “in most of my career, I really wasn’t.”

That career spanned a half-century, from the era of reporters racing each other to pay phones to the birth of 24-hour cable television news.

In this 1968 file photo, Associated Press reporter Kathryn Johnson, right, interviews Coretta Scott King in her office in Atlanta. Johnson, a trailblazing reporter for The Associated Press, died Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2019, at the age of 93, in Atlanta. Her intrepid coverage of the civil rights movement and other major stories led to a string of legendary scoops. Johnson was the only journalist allowed inside Martin Luther King Jr.'s home the day he was assassinated. (AP Photo, File)

She began covering King when he was a little-known Baptist preacher from Atlanta. She had also written about his wife, Coretta, who was a talented singer.

The evening of April 4, 1968, Johnson and a date were on their way to the movies when news of the assassination came over the radio.

When she arrived at the King house, two reporters were chatting with a police officer on the porch. The front door opened, and Johnson could see Coretta Scott King in a pink nightgown, standing in the hall. “She spotted me and said, ‘Let Kathryn in,’” she recalled.

Johnson was at the home every day, giving the AP several scoops — including an 11-hour beat over archrival United Press International on the funeral arrangements.

She later wrote the book “My Time With the Kings,” which was published in 2016 and recollected her time covering the civil rights movement.

Born in Columbus, Georgia, Johnson graduated from Agnes Scott College, a private, all-woman school in Decatur, Georgia, in 1947. In December of that year, she dropped by the local AP office looking for a job; she was offered a secretarial position.

Twelve years later, after the American Newspaper Guild interceded, Johnson was finally given a writing job. She said she got the civil rights beat because the men “did not want to cover a black movement.”

Her first big story was Charlayne Hunter’s integration of the University of Georgia in January 1961. Still youthful looking at 34, she impersonated a student to get close to Hunter.

In June 1963, Johnson was in Tuscaloosa, where Wallace blocked the entrance of the University of Alabama’s Foster Auditorium to black students. She and the other reporters were ushered into a large room and locked in. She went to the door and told the young patrolman that she had to use the “ladies room.”

She went to the front doorway where Wallace and Deputy U.S. Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach were talking, and slipped under a large table set up for microphones. She was just a couple of feet from Wallace’s legs.

For Christmas in 1969, Johnson was asked to interview the wives of Navy men missing in action or held captive in North Vietnam. From late 1970 to early 1971, she covered the hearings and courts-martial stemming from the March 1968 massacre of Vietnamese civilians at the village of My Lai, and developed a rapport with Calley, the officer charged with the slaughter.

Before the verdict, she persuaded Calley to give her two interviews: One for an acquittal, another for a conviction.

She left the AP in 1979 to take an associate editor’s position at U.S. News & World Report. In 1988, she joined CNN, working there full time until 1999.

Associated Press writer Bernard McGhee in Atlanta contributed to this report.

AP Explains: Rebooting Poor People's Campaign 50 Years Later

Sign-carrying participants in the southern leg of the Poor People's Campaign march through Atlanta. Thousands of anti-poverty activists have launched a campaign in May 2018 modeled after Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Poor People's Campaign of 1968. Like the push 50 years ago, advocates are hoping to draw attention to those struggling with deep poverty from Appalachia to the Mississippi Delta, from the American Southwest to California's farm country.

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — Thousands of anti-poverty activists have launched a campaign in recent weeks modeled after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Poor People's Campaign of 1968. Like the push 50 years ago, advocates are hoping to draw attention to those struggling with deep poverty from Appalachia to the Mississippi Delta, from the American Southwest to California's farm country.

The latest effort is led by the Rev. William Barber of Goldsboro, North Carolina, and the Rev. Liz Theoharis of New York City, who are encouraging activists in 40 states to take part in acts of civil disobedience, teach-ins and demonstrations to force communities to address poverty. They say poverty continues to be ignored and only a "moral revival" can bring it to the nation's consciousness.

The new campaign also has brought new attention to the tumultuous summer of 1968 when the two leading backers of the campaign — King and Robert F. Kennedy — were assassinated two months apart. Here's a look at the two campaigns:

THE ORIGINAL CAMPAIGN

 Before his assassination, King sought to organize a campaign to direct the country's attention toward poverty. He felt attacking poverty was the next phase of the civil rights movement and the 1968 campaign would push for a guaranteed income, the end to housing discrimination and reducing the nation's growing trend toward militarism.

At the time, around 13 percent of U.S. citizens lived in poverty. King reached out to Mexican-American, Native American and Appalachia white leaders to build a multiethnic, multiracial coalition that would come from their hometowns on "mule carts" and "old trucks" to Washington, D.C., to dramatize the plight of the poor.

Following King's assassination in Memphis, members of the coalition began to fight with each other. Thousands of poor people set up a shantytown they called "Resurrection City" on the Washington National Mall but became demoralized by racial tensions, a lack of leadership and eventually, the assassination of Kennedy.

THE REBOOT

 Organizers of the 2018 campaign said they wanted to use the 50th anniversary of the 1968 effort to restart conversations around the struggles that poor people continue to face, especially since the U.S. poverty rate is roughly back to around 13 percent.

This time, Barber and Theoharis said the campaign won't be centered solely in Washington and would include events around the country. For 40 days, demonstrators planned to hold acts of civil disobedience like blocking traffic and refusing to leave public buildings every Monday nationwide. Hundreds of activists, including the Rev. Jesse Jackson, have been arrested so far.

Theoharis said the purpose is to build "a season of organizing" to create a long-term movement aimed at restoring the Voting Rights Act, ending gerrymandering and helping bolster the minimum wage. She said organizers also hope to influence the midterm elections this November and the 2020 presidential election.

Because the nation is more diverse than in 1968, Barber said the new campaign also calls for protection of immigrants, LGBT residents and refugees from the Middle East. THE CHALLENGES Barber said media coverage of poverty has been ignored and overshadowed by what he calls "Trump porn" — excessive coverage of President Donald Trump's tweets, the investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 U.S. election and the legal fight with adult film actress Stormy Daniels.

Small newspapers that used to cover poor rural areas like Linden, Tennessee, and the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota also have faced cutbacks. Not since Kennedy's 1968 presidential campaign have national politicians regularly visited rural, poor areas and focused on poverty in their platforms.

In addition, Barber said many Christians have ignored the plight of the poor since megachurches regularly focus on the "prosperity gospel." Others have been focused solely on abortion and fighting gay rights, he said.

Barber said the multifaith campaign seeks to reaffirm messages that religious figures like Jesus were primarily concerned about helping the poor and that the country has a moral obligation to tackle poverty.

He also promised that organizers plan to pressure for media coverage of U.S.-Mexico border areas like El Paso, Texas, and Native American communities like San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation in Arizona.

Associated Press writer Russell Contreras is a member of the AP's race and ethnicity team. Follow Contreras on Twitter at http://twitter.com/russcontreras

Rev. Ralph Abernathy, leader of the Poor People's Campaign, looks through the barred window of a bus after he was arrested in Washington for leading a group of demonstrators onto the grounds of the U.S Capitol. Thousands of anti-poverty activists have launched a campaign in May 2018 modeled after Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Poor People's Campaign of 1968. Like the push 50 years ago, advocates are hoping to draw attention to those struggling with deep poverty from Appalachia to the Mississippi Delta, from the American Southwest to California's farm country.