Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire

Dr. King’s Televised Challenge to Obama: Tavis Smiley's Anti-War MLK
Glen Ford, BAR executive editor
31 Mar 2010
🖨️ Print Article
by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
Since the onset of the Obama phenomenon, Dr. Martin Luther King’s birth and death days have been “polluted” by false and ahistorical comparisons between Obama and MLK. The two men represent opposite political poles: one, a radical opponent of imperial war and concentrated economic power, the other, an ally of Wall Street and commander-in-chief of “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” In focusing on King, the man of peace, Tavis Smiley’s PBS special corrects a history that has been distorted, sometimes beyond recognition – not the least by the revisionist and poseur in the White House.

Do you need and appreciate Black Agenda Report articles? Please click on the DONATE icon, and help us out, if you can.


More Stories


  • Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    STATEMENT: Without Immediate Intervention, the Last Reporters in Gaza Will Die, Agence France-Presse/Société de Journalistes, July 21, 2025
    23 Jul 2025
    “Since AFP was founded in August 1944, we have lost journalists in conflicts…but none of us remember seeing a colleague die of hunger.”
  • Becca Renk
    46 Years On, Nicaragua’s Youth Still Lead the Revolution
    23 Jul 2025
    Celebrating 46 years of revolution, Nicaragua demonstrates that it is possible to respect its heroes and also venerate its youth. Following years of cultivating leadership in its young people, the…
  • Abayomi Azikiwe
    Poverty and Declining Real Wages in America: Philadelphia Municipal Strike Highlights Worsening Plight of the Working Class
    23 Jul 2025
    An eight-day strike by municipal employees in Philadelphia disrupted the operations of one of the largest cities in the United States amid systematic attacks on the interests and status of working…
  • Horace Campbell
    The Fraudulent Peace Accord between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda signed in Washington DC, June 2025
    23 Jul 2025
    Campbell interrogates the recent DRC-Rwanda peace accord brokered in the US which he terms fraudulent; and poses the question: can the US and Qatar support peace in Africa amidst the militarization…
  • Caitlin Johnstone
    AOC Is a Genocidal Con Artist
    23 Jul 2025
    She’s actively stopping American politics from moving any further left than the nightmare we see before us.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us