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


  • Empire’s Fleeting Leadership in Its Yard
    Farooque Chowdhury
    Empire’s Fleeting Leadership in Its Yard
    16 Jun 2022
    The U.S. effort to control the narrative at the Summit of the Americas ended as a diplomatic and foreign policy disaster. The imperative to dominate blew up in the collective faces of the Biden…
  • The Problem with Juneteenth
    Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    The Problem with Juneteenth
    15 Jun 2022
    Juneteenth was a people's holiday with deep meaning for the descendants of enslaved people. But the declaration of an official federal holiday has turned it into an opportunity for corporate…
  • Hubert Harrison, Tribune of the People: Part Two, The Voice of Harlem Radicalism
    Sean I. Ahern
    Hubert Harrison, Tribune of the People: Part Two, The Voice of Harlem Radicalism
    15 Jun 2022
    Hubert Henry Harrison was one of the foremost Black socialist and nationalist thinkers of the early 20th century. He was known as "the father of Harlem radicalism." This is the second of of a…
  • EXCERPT: On the Pan-American Congress, José Martí, 1889
    Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    EXCERPT: On the Pan-American Congress, José Martí, 1889
    15 Jun 2022
    José Martí’s account of the 1889 Pan-American Congress offers lessons for last week’s failed Summit of the Americas.
  • The Trend Toward a Multipolar World is Defined by Class Struggle
    Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor
    The Trend Toward a Multipolar World is Defined by Class Struggle
    15 Jun 2022
    The emerging multipolar world is the result of struggles for national sovereignty and self-determination, which are connected with the world wide class struggle.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us