Dr. Martin Luther King’s radical critiques of Northern racism have largely been erased, allowing his legacy to be weaponized against our movements today. We hosted a conversation with Jeanne Theoharis about her new book, King of the North: Martin Luther King Jr.’s Life of Struggle Outside the South.
This is a story of a King who challenged white Northerners to walk the walk and address the segregation and inequality rife in their own cities.
It is a story of a King who well understood the gaslighting and tokenism, as well as the demonizing of local activists, as key white liberal resistance tactics. It is a story of a King who saw police brutality as a systemic problem, challenged legalized housing and school segregation, and highlighted the profit made from segregation and immiseration.
It is a story of how King came of age in graduate school in the segregated North and fought alongside a phalanx of Northern Black activists from the late 1950s onward to highlight this structural racism with little systemic change or federal intervention resulting.
It is, in short, a story of a King who saw — from the outset of his activism — the necessity of the Black freedom struggle in every corner of the United States. Learn More
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