Opponents of Black Lives Matter misuse civil rights history to claim that today’s activists are not behaving like Dr. Martin Luther King, said political scientist Jeanne Theoharis, author of A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History. “The movements that Dr. King was a part of were deeply disruptive,” said Dr. Theoharis, “and Dr. King was heavily policed and surveilled, with the Kennedy’s agreement.”