JOIN US FOR THE NEXT INSTALLMENT OF OUR CRITICALLY BLACK DIALOGUE SERIES, AN ONGOING TALK SERIES THAT EXAMINES THE SHARED PAN-AFRICAN EXPERIENCE FROM A DIVERSE SET OF BLACK LENSES.

This upcoming event will commemorate the life and legacy of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. We’ll take a deep dive into a version of Dr. King that often gets toned down and most likely omitted from the books:  Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. - the Pan Africanist.

Dr. King’s global ministry was birthed during Africa's decolonization period.  Naturally, the radical decolonization and anti-Apartheid movements in Ghana, Nigeria, and South Africa inspired his transnational advocacy. It helped to elevate the Black American Civil Rights Movement and globalize the international human rights movement against racism, colonization, and war. In Dr. King’s speeches, essays, and interviews he consistently drew lines between the struggles on the motherland and the ones endured by African descendant brothers and sisters in South America and the Caribbean. Dr. King boldly embraced his African heritage and even encouraged Black Americans to immigrate to Africa to assist in her development.

Unfortunately, the mainstream representation of Dr. King leaves us with a commodified and more conservative version that portrays him as the voice of “moderation” in the Black community. It omits his beginning as a far more radical leader, especially on matters of labor, poverty, anticolonialism, and economic justice, than we remember.