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


  • Electoral Politics Subvert the Peoples Needs
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Electoral Politics Subvert the Peoples Needs
    18 Nov 2022
    President Joe Biden’s student loan debt relief plan has been declared unconstitutional by a federal judge.
  • A Manufactured Crime Panic in New York
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    A Manufactured Crime Panic in New York
    18 Nov 2022
    Ashoka Jegroo is a multimedia journalist who reports on protests and policing.
  • Wakanda Must Fall
    Jared Ball
    Wakanda Must Fall
    16 Nov 2022
    This new film is rightly called a fantasy, and not just because Wakanda doesn't exist. If Black moviegoers are not aware of the dangerous politics it espouses, they will find themselves believing in…
  • Bittersweet Freedom for Mutulu Shakur
    Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    Bittersweet Freedom for Mutulu Shakur
    16 Nov 2022
    Mutulu Shakur has been granted parole, but he is terminally ill. Black political prisoners in this country are held for 30, 40 and 50 years. Reprieve happens only when they are at death's door.
  • MANIFESTO: The Nairobi Manifesto, 1985
    Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    MANIFESTO: The Nairobi Manifesto, 1985
    16 Nov 2022
    In 1985, African women tried to warn us about a world in crisis. Did we listen?
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us