This week, many of us (not President Trump, it seems) celebrated Martin Luther King Jr. Day. The holiday is promoted as a day of public service. Planting trees, picking up litter, tutoring kids, volunteering at senior centers, serving meals at homeless shelters, that sort of thing.

All important. But if we ignore the reality that King’s holiday is, first and foremost, about his role in the 1960s struggle for racial justice and equality, we’ve missed the main point.

And the Civil Rights movement was emphatically nonviolent. Black people and their White allies got clubbed and arrested for peacefully protesting. Continue Reading →