Middle Passage Press
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Dr. King Versus TrumpExplosive New Book on the 50th Anniversary of King’s AssassinationProbes King’s Impact in the Trump EraBoycotts, threatened boycotts, public denunciations and demands, a march, a demonstration. These were all the familiar tactics virtually patented by King in cities and towns across the South during the heyday of the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Nearly fifty years after King’s death these were the tactics used again. This time the target wasn’t a Jim Crow lunch counter or voting booth. The protagonist wasn’t a hardcore, violent prone racist sheriff. The target was Trump. The protest tactics were employed against Trump the instant the White House announced that he would deliver an address at the ribbon cutting ceremony for the opening of the Civil Rights Museum in Jackson, Mississippi on December 9, 2017.Fifty years later, noted political analyst Earl Ofari Hutchinson, in his new book, 50 Years Later: Why the Murder of Dr. King Still Hurts (Middle Passage Press), March 2018, notes that these were the same tactics that Dr. King employed throughout his decade of struggle for civil rights, and against war and poverty in America. Hutchinson takes an in-depth look at the still powerful impact and relevance of Dr. King’s struggles to the Trump era.One year into his first term in the Oval Office, Trump had done everything a president could do to try and roll back the very things that King had fought for during his life, says Hutchinson, “Civil rights leaders especially gagged at Trump’s claim in his remarks that King was ‘a man I have studied, watched, and admired for my entire life’.”Hutchinson details how the FBI stopped at nothing in its relentless, ruthless, no-holds barred campaign to destroy King even considering trying to turn his wife, Coretta Scott King, into an informer against him, “There was a clear method to the FBI’s diabolical obsession with King. It understood the monumental affect the King led movement had on civil rights, politics, heightened awareness of poverty, his crucial relationship with Democratic Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, and the influence he had on other change movements globally and in America, that of Hispanics, Women, and Gays. Hutchinson poses and tackles the poignant question King raised, “Where Do We Go from Here.”50 Years Later: Why the Murder of Dr. King Still Hurts draws from King’s writings, letters, declassified government files, and documents and essays that focus on King’s murder and the half century of change after King’s murder. This includes an assessment of " King Versus Trump" and “What if King Had Lived?”50 Years Later: Why the Murder of Dr. King Still Hurts is not just another of the countless tributes to and reminiscences on the legacy of Dr. King,” says Hutchinson, “It takes a hard look at the murder, the tumult, and the changes both good and bad that his murder directly and indirectly caused in the nation, then and now.”Hutchinson seeks to provide a political signpost where Dr. King would have taken America if he had lived and where the country still should go in the Trump era. “This is more than a book of remembrance,” notes Hutchinson, “it’s a book that asks and tries to answer what Dr. King would say and do about Trump’s America today.”Author BioEarl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is the author of multiple books on race and politics in America. The most recent include; The Obama Legacy, The Trump Challenge to Black America, and From King to Obama: Witness to a Turbulent History. He is a regular commentator on RT News with Ed Schultz and other cable network shows. He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on Radio One. He is the host of the weekly Hutchinson Report on KPFK 90.7 FM Los Angeles and the Pacifica Network.
