Panelists dispel myths about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights movement.

Group Discusses Unfinished Civil Rights Issues

By: Heather Murdock

Posted: 1/31/08

More than 100 people gathered in the Student Union Theater Wednesday to hear panelists dispel myths about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and discuss the unfinished business of the Civil Rights Movement.

"Many of us have been - I don't want to say hoodwinked or bamboozled," said panelist Jeffrey Ogbar, the director of the Institute for African American Studies, "but many of us have a very narrow myopic understanding of what Dr. Martin Luther King was."

The speakers also included Davita Silfen Glasberg, the head of the sociology department, and Manisha Desai, the director of the women's studies program. Ronald L. Taylor, the vice provost of multicultural and international affairs hosted the event.

Desai and Glasberg discussed some of the current civil rights issues that would have concerned King. Predatory lending, according to Glasberg is a "modern example of the legacy he left of economic justice." Predatory loans have interest rates that can increase to a level that makes it impossible for borrowers to meet their monthly payments, she said. As a result, banks repossess their homes.

Racism in lending practices, according to Glasberg, is rampant. "In stark terms, African American borrowers in Hartford are three times more likely to receive high cost mortgages, regardless of their income." This inequity is echoed by studies done in many other cities, she said.

Desai discussed the relationship between King and the pacifist Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi. She called their work "unfinished revolutions in both racial injustice, in particular, and social justice, more generally."

A key to finishing those revolutions, she said, would be to reexamine King and Gandhi's approaches to reform. Both leaders focused on non-violent protest, a "consistency between the ends and the means," and the relationship between the powerless and the powerful. They worked to defeat unjust systems, not unjust individuals.

Ogbar talked about remembering King's legacy within the context of his time. He said that most Americans were "bamboozled by a very sanitized version of what civil right were about in the first place." The legendary bus boycott in Montgomery, Ala., and the fight against segregation in public spaces are how people remember the civil rights movement, he said. Considering the "gross human rights abuses in the United States" at the time, "these were the least of their concerns."

Terrorism, church bombings, sexual assaults, hospitals that refused black patients and housing and job discrimination were far more immediate concerns at the time, he said. "The message of King is more powerful when you consider that they were up against such violent forces."

When King became a figurehead in the struggle against discrimination, according to Ogbar, he also did not believe in the peaceful resistance that is the cornerstone of his legacy.

"When King became the leader of this movement, terrorists bombed his house. One of the first things Dr. King did was go out and get a gun - he didn't pray."

King later led massive non-violent demonstrations, and despite the continued violence he preached, "love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend."

"Globally, when you think about how people who are oppressed respond to violence with violence," Ogbar said, "you see how exceptional this is."

Todd Esson, a 7th-semester urban and community studies major said he was surprised, but the story made sense. "It's a normal human reaction if you are attacked."

King remains the "most influential leader of the Civil Rights Movement," according to Taylor. As a person, however, his memory has also been distorted by history. "At the time of Dr. King's death, we forget that he was hanging by a thread - that his moral authority had frayed."

King faced opposition from whites resistant to change, militant blacks and the liberal establishment because of his opposition to the Vietnam War, Taylor said. We forget "King the radical, the disappointed prophet who spoke toward the end of his life of America as a nightmare, who referred to the United States as the 'greatest purveyor of violence in the world,'" he said. "That King has been replaced by a more sanitized version of the man."

Adam Nemeroff, a 2nd-semester history major, however, was not put off by the Taylor's grittier version of King. "I think that we face, as a nation, so many different issues at this time … individuals may find a sense of hope and optimism revisiting his ideas."

Contact Heather Murdock at

Heather.Murdock@UConn.edu.