A Review: 50 Years Later: Why the Murder of Dr. King Still Hurts
Earl Ofari Hutchinson’s book focuses on lingering effects of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. assassination
By Renarda Williams
April 4, 2018 will mark 50 years since Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee.
I was a 6-year old first grader at South Alexandria Primary, in Alexandria, Louisiana, when Dr. King was assassinated. On the NBC News, Dr. King lay on the balcony in front of his room, his life ebbing away as the reporter gave the then-known details of the shooting.
I was a confused little boy. I asked my mother why someone would want to shoot Dr. King. All my mother could tell me was that there were people who did not like King because he stood up for the rights of all people in America – Black, Red, Brown and Yellow as well as White – and one those people had shot King.
As a 56-year-old entrepreneur, Pan Africanist/Africentrist, volunteer advocate and lobbyist for African and African American organizations, I am still hurting from that day all those years ago!
I’m not the only one, as Earl Ofari Hutchinson has demonstrated. In his explosive new book, 50 Years Later: Why the Murder of Dr. King Still Hurts (Middle Passage Press, Los Angeles, CA, 2018), Hutchinson discusses the 50th anniversary of King's Assassination and probes King's impact in the era of President Donald Trump.
Hutchinson said President Donald Trump proudly boasted that King ‘was a man I have studied, watched, and admired my entire life,’ Hutchinson states in his press release.
"Despite his professed admiration for King, one year into his first term in the Oval Office, Trump has done everything a president could do to try and roll back the very things that King had fought for during his life. Trump has deliberately and cynically claimed ownership of King's towering legacy.”
An author of multiple books on race and politics in America, Hutchinson is a regular contributor to the Huff Post and other publications. He is an occasional guest commentator on CNN, MSNBC and RT News and hosts the weekly Hutchinson Report on KPFK-FM, 90.7 in Los Angeles, and the Pacifica Network.
In the introduction of 50 Years Later, Hutchinson shares his own memory of April 4, 1968, recounting his mother’s horrified cry: “He’s dead. He’s dead!”
“The scream, the shout and the tears that flowed like flood waters of a raging stream from my mother were so deafening and plaintive that I had to leave the house,” he writes.
I want to salute Hutchinson on a book that should wake up people of all races and locales due to revelations concerning the death of Dr. King (Chapter 1: Who Killed King and Why?), the FBI’s involvement in smearing King’s name (Chapter 2: Sex, Lies, and Tapes); how King was more than just a dreamer (Chapter 3: More Than a Dreamer); his legacy ( Chapter 4: Getting a Piece of the Legacy) and the path King cleared for America’s first Black president (Chapter 7: Obama’s Debt to King).
This book needs to be required reading for those Americans – including some Black ministers, activists and politicians – who turned their backs on King, and those who today could stand to gain some social consciousness. Ideally, they would heed, and benefit, from such chapters as Chapter 5: Ignoring a Holiday and Chapter 6: Cashing in on King. (Chapter 6 took me back to 1993, when I was a columnist/reporter for the Monroe Free Press, a Black weekly newspaper in Monroe, LA. My editor asked if I believed that American retailers would start to cash in on the King birthday holiday; we predicted we’d begin to hear such pitches as: “Come on Down to Our MLK Sale!” and “Check Out our ‘I Have A Dream’ Sale!”)
The food-for-thought chapters continue with Chapter 8: The Other Civil Rights Movement; Chapter 9: The Poor Haven’t Gone Anyway; Chapter 10: Yes to Gay Rights; and Chapter 11: A New Set of Challenges. Chapter 12: King Versus Trump, pulls no punches.
Hutchinson explores the what-if with Chapter 13: What If King Had Lived? and ends the book with a look at another question: 50 Years Later, is King’s Legacy at Risk?
This book is a reminder that we all must, per as the motto by which I live, Do what we can, when we can, and where we can!
Renarda Williams (aka Abari Sankofa) is a native of Alexandria, Louisiana. He attended the University of Southwestern Louisiana (now the University of Louisiana at Lafayette), where he majored in history and minored in political science. He has 33 years of experience as a columnist/reporter and contributing writer for small magazines and newspapers throughout Louisiana, Arkansas, and Georgia, and has more than two decades of experience as a substitute teacher, social worker, and case worker for at-risk children. He is the founder/CEO of The Umoja Network (TUN), a media business.
Williams is a co-author of the Black Christian fiction book A Time to Praise: A Christmas Anthology (FaiththeWorks Publishing, LLC, Brandon, MS, 2016). His blog, The Empowerment Initiative Online Newsletter (TEION), can be found at renarda1961.blogspot.com.
Williams serves as a volunteer and lobbyist with African American and African nonprofit organizations. His passion is empowering the minds of people with his writing for the betterment of humanity. He lives in Little Rock, Arkansas, with his wife, Helaine R. Williams, a features writer and columnist at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Feel free to contact Williams at renarda3@aol.com or (501) 765-1873.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson’s book focuses on lingering effects of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. assassination
By Renarda Williams
April 4, 2018 will mark 50 years since Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee.
I was a 6-year old first grader at South Alexandria Primary, in Alexandria, Louisiana, when Dr. King was assassinated. On the NBC News, Dr. King lay on the balcony in front of his room, his life ebbing away as the reporter gave the then-known details of the shooting.
I was a confused little boy. I asked my mother why someone would want to shoot Dr. King. All my mother could tell me was that there were people who did not like King because he stood up for the rights of all people in America – Black, Red, Brown and Yellow as well as White – and one those people had shot King.
As a 56-year-old entrepreneur, Pan Africanist/Africentrist, volunteer advocate and lobbyist for African and African American organizations, I am still hurting from that day all those years ago!
I’m not the only one, as Earl Ofari Hutchinson has demonstrated. In his explosive new book, 50 Years Later: Why the Murder of Dr. King Still Hurts (Middle Passage Press, Los Angeles, CA, 2018), Hutchinson discusses the 50th anniversary of King's Assassination and probes King's impact in the era of President Donald Trump.
Hutchinson said President Donald Trump proudly boasted that King ‘was a man I have studied, watched, and admired my entire life,’ Hutchinson states in his press release.
"Despite his professed admiration for King, one year into his first term in the Oval Office, Trump has done everything a president could do to try and roll back the very things that King had fought for during his life. Trump has deliberately and cynically claimed ownership of King's towering legacy.”
An author of multiple books on race and politics in America, Hutchinson is a regular contributor to the Huff Post and other publications. He is an occasional guest commentator on CNN, MSNBC and RT News and hosts the weekly Hutchinson Report on KPFK-FM, 90.7 in Los Angeles, and the Pacifica Network.
In the introduction of 50 Years Later, Hutchinson shares his own memory of April 4, 1968, recounting his mother’s horrified cry: “He’s dead. He’s dead!”
“The scream, the shout and the tears that flowed like flood waters of a raging stream from my mother were so deafening and plaintive that I had to leave the house,” he writes.
I want to salute Hutchinson on a book that should wake up people of all races and locales due to revelations concerning the death of Dr. King (Chapter 1: Who Killed King and Why?), the FBI’s involvement in smearing King’s name (Chapter 2: Sex, Lies, and Tapes); how King was more than just a dreamer (Chapter 3: More Than a Dreamer); his legacy ( Chapter 4: Getting a Piece of the Legacy) and the path King cleared for America’s first Black president (Chapter 7: Obama’s Debt to King).
This book needs to be required reading for those Americans – including some Black ministers, activists and politicians – who turned their backs on King, and those who today could stand to gain some social consciousness. Ideally, they would heed, and benefit, from such chapters as Chapter 5: Ignoring a Holiday and Chapter 6: Cashing in on King. (Chapter 6 took me back to 1993, when I was a columnist/reporter for the Monroe Free Press, a Black weekly newspaper in Monroe, LA. My editor asked if I believed that American retailers would start to cash in on the King birthday holiday; we predicted we’d begin to hear such pitches as: “Come on Down to Our MLK Sale!” and “Check Out our ‘I Have A Dream’ Sale!”)
The food-for-thought chapters continue with Chapter 8: The Other Civil Rights Movement; Chapter 9: The Poor Haven’t Gone Anyway; Chapter 10: Yes to Gay Rights; and Chapter 11: A New Set of Challenges. Chapter 12: King Versus Trump, pulls no punches.
Hutchinson explores the what-if with Chapter 13: What If King Had Lived? and ends the book with a look at another question: 50 Years Later, is King’s Legacy at Risk?
This book is a reminder that we all must, per as the motto by which I live, Do what we can, when we can, and where we can!
Renarda Williams (aka Abari Sankofa) is a native of Alexandria, Louisiana. He attended the University of Southwestern Louisiana (now the University of Louisiana at Lafayette), where he majored in history and minored in political science. He has 33 years of experience as a columnist/reporter and contributing writer for small magazines and newspapers throughout Louisiana, Arkansas, and Georgia, and has more than two decades of experience as a substitute teacher, social worker, and case worker for at-risk children. He is the founder/CEO of The Umoja Network (TUN), a media business.
Williams is a co-author of the Black Christian fiction book A Time to Praise: A Christmas Anthology (FaiththeWorks Publishing, LLC, Brandon, MS, 2016). His blog, The Empowerment Initiative Online Newsletter (TEION), can be found at renarda1961.blogspot.com.
Williams serves as a volunteer and lobbyist with African American and African nonprofit organizations. His passion is empowering the minds of people with his writing for the betterment of humanity. He lives in Little Rock, Arkansas, with his wife, Helaine R. Williams, a features writer and columnist at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Feel free to contact Williams at renarda3@aol.com or (501) 765-1873.
