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FESTIVAL NEWS
Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day
This Monday is Martin Luther King Jr.Day!
To this day, the struggle for true equality in the United States continues to be fought. WITNESS's Books Not Bars underscores the racial inequality prevalent in the criminal justice system, in which youth of color or far more likely to be incarcerated than their white counterparts.
This type of overt institutionalized racism is reinforced when educators distort history. A recent article by William Jelani Cobb called The Good Old Days of Slavery reveals that "a North Carolina high school is still teaching that American slaves were happy and carefree willing servants."
Fortunately, independent filmmakers are dedicated to telling civil rights history accurately. Kids on the Hill's Children of Birmingham is a youth-produced animation that vividly tells the story of the young people who participated in the civil rights struggle in Birmingham in 1964. The short highlights the risks involved in the children's participation and their unrelenting commitment to continue fighting until the system was changed.
Grassroots media helps continue the dialogue around civil rights history, which is still very much a part of public discourse. Just a few weeks ago, Edgar Ray Killen, accused of kidnapping and killing three civil rights workers in 1964, was put back on trial in Philadelphia, Mississippi. As Patrik Jonsson wrote in the Chiristian Science Monitor, "So began the latest, and perhaps the biggest, in a series of recent reckonings of civil rights era crimes - a turn of events that some see as a hopeful sign of righting old wrongs, some decry as a pointless dredging of the past."
On Martin Luther King Jr. Day we encourage you to think about the past and also to critically examine the present. Most importantly, don't just sit there!
Take action:
Volunteer on MLK Day!
Learn more about Birmingham and the civil rights movement at Africanaonline.com.
Join the movement of student-led activists for social change at Sound Out.
Support the enforcement of Civil Rights at civilrights.org.
Published on January 14, 2005
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