Knowingly or unknowingly, many young black civil rights activists—unlike Dr. King—have taken ownership of their story.
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Many parallels have been drawn recently between African-American civil rights activists of the past – like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. – and those who take to the streets in the 21st Century under the banner of the Black Lives Matter movement. One of the starkest commonalities noted between generations is their use of radical, disruptive tactics in protest, though the mainstream media, for quite some time, has gone above and beyond to sanitize and dilute the aggressiveness of Dr. King and his peers.
The white-washing of black civil rights leaders’ legacy and image is, in part, the reason for the biggest difference between generations: the ownership of the story. In contrast to how Dr. King relied on corporate-owned media to build public awareness of the injustices African-Americans faced, today’s activists, like Mr. Deray McKesson – who gained notoriety while documenting the uprising in Ferguson, Missouri, after the police killing of Mr. Michael Brown, Jr., a black teen – are relying on their own storytelling capabilities and non-traditional media to inform and engage the public.
“Twitter and the classroom are the last two radical spaces in America,” Mr. McKesson, who considers the social networking site an “incredible organizing tool” and a sublime platform for telling stories in a way that pushes back on the dominant culture narrative, said in October of 2015 while visiting Philadelphia.
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Other than owning the story as way to combat media bias, activists like Mr. McKesson leverage social media tools due to the absence of media.
“The fact that there wasn’t a storyteller, made us storytellers,” Mr. McKesson said.
When Dr. King and others were staging sit-ins, marches and rallies, there were plenty of storytellers on the ground. And though those storytellers utilized their mediums – television, print and radio – successfully to generate awareness, participation and, in some cases, outrage, the long-term impact of the dominant culture narrative did Dr. King and allies more harm than good. The result of 20th Century black civil rights activists relinquishing ownership of their stories is a tame and docile portrayal of people who were anything but.
“Dr. King has been reduced to this catchphrase ‘I Have a Dream,’ it wasn’t even his best speech,” Ms. Ava Duvernay, the award-winning director of SELMA, said in December of 2014 to a group of media-makers in Philadelphia.
What’s widely known in America and abroad about Dr. King is not the truth, suggested Ms. Duvernay, but rather a “fantasy of what he is.”
“He was a radical; he was a man of faith who was sometimes unfaithful,” she said. “He was a charismatic; he was guilty sometimes; he had an ego; he got jealous; he was a prankster; he was a human being like all of us, and yet he’s been deified and encased in marble and I think it does him a disservice… it’s a shame on us, as a country, that we’ve allowed it to happen.”
It’s heartening to know that, in the case of black (youth) activism, history may not repeat itself, as many of today’s black activists have full ownership of their stories and images. It appears they have learned the lesson, knowingly or unknowingly, that history taught: if you don’t own your story, you become a character in someone else’s.
CLICK HERE to listen to ‘Exploring Generations of Black Activism,’ a podcast from The Dr. Vibe Show featuring a panel of black male thought-leaders.
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Keep a look out in January 2016 for an NPR Music documentary starring Grammy Award-Winner Mr. Christian McBride and co-starring Mr. Christopher “Flood the Drummer” Norris.
Thanks for reading. Until next time, I’m Flood the Drummer® & I’m Drumming for JUSTICE!™
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Photo: Getty Images