His legacy, summed up, is peace and love. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. truly wanted the world to be a better place. All of the things he did, the things he was involved in were a reflection of that.

 

His life began on January 15, 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia where he was born to the Reverend Martin Luther King, Sr. (1899–1984) and Alberta Williams King (1904–1974). From as early as age six, he began to notice the unnecessary injustices in American society caused by fear and ignorance. One of his first friends, who was White, was taken from him by such notions, as the boy’s father forbade them to play together once they started school.

 

 

He became skeptical after that, he once said, of some of Christianity’s tenets. However he said, the Bible has "many profound truths which one cannot escape" and decided to enter the seminary. Before then, in high school, King was becoming known for his public speaking skills as part of Booker T. Washington High’s debate team. He also became the youngest assistant manager of a newspaper delivery station for the Atlanta Journal in 1942 when he was 13.

 

 

 

During his junior year, he won first prize in an oratorical contest sponsored by the Negro Elks Club in Dublin, Georgia. But returning home to Atlanta by bus, he and his teacher were ordered by the driver to stand so that white passengers could sit down. King initially refused, but complied after his teacher told him that he would be breaking the law if he did not submit. King said that during this incident, he was "the angriest I have ever been in my life.

 

During King's junior year in high school, Morehouse College, a respected historically black college, announced that it would accept any high school juniors who could pass its entrance exam. At the age of 15, he passed the exam and entered Morehouse.  The summer before his last year at Morehouse, in 1947, the 18-year-old King chose to enter the ministry. He had concluded that the church offered the most assuring way to answer “an inner urge to serve humanity.”

 

And, serve he did.

 

The Bus Boycott / Civil Rights Movement

 

In the 1950s, when fellow activist Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a White person on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, King helped kick of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. After the Supreme Court overturned Alabama’s bus segregation laws in 1956, King co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and promoted nonviolent action for civil rights throughout the South. He was influenced by the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi and traveled to India in 1959.

 

Letter From a Birmingham Jail / I Have a Dream

 

The young King continued to use his voice throughout the 1960s in America, to speak out against segregation, violence and racism. In 1963 he was involved with coordinated marches and sit-ins against racism and racial segregation in Birmingham, Alabama. The nonviolent campaign was coordinated by the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR) and King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). On April 10, Circuit Judge W. A. Jenkins issued a blanket injunction against "parading, demonstrating, boycotting, trespassing and picketing." But leaders of the campaign announced they would disobey the ruling.  King was arrested with SCLC activist Ralph Abernathy, ACMHR and SCLC official Fred Shuttlesworth and other marchers.

 

The protesters experienced hard conditions in the jail. An ally smuggled in a newspaper from April 12, which contained “A Call for Unity”: a statement made by eight white Alabama clergymen against King and his methods. The letter provoked King, and he began to write a response on the newspaper itself. King writes in Why We Can't Wait:

 

“Begun on the margins of the newspaper in which the statement appeared while I was in jail, the letter was continued on scraps of writing paper supplied by a friendly black trusty, and concluded on a pad my attorneys were eventually permitted to leave me.”

 

In 1963, King delivered his most famous and notable speech: “I Have a Dream”, during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. He presented America with a call to consciousness… asking America to acknowledge the discontent of African Americans mired in poverty and its debilitating effects.

 

“We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, ‘When will you be satisfied,’” he said.

 

“We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one.

 

“We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating for whites only. We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters  and righteousness like a mighty stream…”

 

King left a lot for America to ponder. He campaigned for the poor, the disenfranchised, the downtrodden. He was loved, because his heart was open to loving and helping people, some of the same people who did not want to be exposed to his light. On March 29, 1968, King went to Memphis, Tennessee, in support of the black sanitary public works employees, who were represented by AFSCME Local 1733.

 

The workers had been on strike since March 12 for higher wages and better treatment. In one incident, black street repairmen received pay for two hours when they were sent home because of bad weather, but white employees were paid for the full day.

 

On April 3, King addressed a rally and delivered his “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” address at Mason Temple, the world headquarters of the Church of God in Christ. King's flight to Memphis had been delayed by a bomb threat against his plane. 

 

Notably, are words here, from the last speech of King’s life:

 

 

 

“And then I got to Memphis. And some began to say the threats, or talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers?

 

 

 

“Well, I don't know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. So I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord…”

 

 

King was fatally shot at 6:01 p.m., April 4, 1968, as he stood on the Lorraine Motel balcony in Memphis, Tennessee. A bullet entered through his right cheek, smashing his jaw, then traveled down his spinal cord before lodging in his shoulder. After emergency chest surgery, King died at St. Joseph's Hospital at 7:05 p.m.

 

 

 

Just days after King’s assassination, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1968. Internationally, King’s legacy includes influences on the Black Consciousness Movement and civil rights movement in South Africa. King’s work was cited by and served as an inspiration for South African leader Albert Lutuli, who fought for racial justice in his country and was later awarded the Nobel Prize.

Love it or hate it, 2017 will be a year not soon forgotten.

 

Barack Obama, a constitutional law professor, Nobel Peace Prize winner and the nation’s first Black president, graciously handed the keys to the White House to a reality TV star who has been accused of sexual assault.

 

Shortly after his inauguration, President Donald Trump began signing dozens of executive orders that threatened to rollback much of the progress that was made during the previous eight years under the Obama Administration.

 

And, it was the Trump Administration that not only slashed funding for advertising during the open enrollment of the Affordable Care Act, but also cut the enrollment period for signing up for coverage through the federal healthcare exchange from 90 days to 45 days.

 

Despite those challenges, the ACA, also known as “Obamacare,” is still the law of the land and, this year, nearly 9 million people signed up for coverage through the federal healthcare exchange.

 

With the GOP tax reform bill, which was endorsed by Trump, the Republicans scored a win for corporations at the expense of nearly everyone else.

 

According to CNN Money, “The final bill still leans heavily toward tax cuts for corporations and business owners. But it also expands or restores some tax benefits for individuals relative to the earlier bills passed by the House and Senate.”

 

CNN Money article continued: “The individual provisions would expire by the end of 2025, but most of the corporate provisions would be permanent.”

 

In February, when NSA chief Mike Flynn was forced to resign after lying to Vice President Mike Pence, Trump said to then-FBI Director James Comey, “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go."

 

As a highly-politicized investigation into whether or not Russia meddled in the 2016 presidential election began to heat up, Trump fired Comey. Later, Flynn cut a deal to cooperate with special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian election meddling. Federal prosecutors charged Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort, campaign adviser Rick Gates and former foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos with various crimes, including lying to the FBI and money laundering.

 

During “Black Press Week” in March, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas), expressed a desire to draft articles of impeachment over Trump’s actions in the White House and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) called on the real estate mogul to resign.

 

Meanwhile, the Black Press celebrated its 190th anniversary and the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA) elected a new national chairman, Dorothy Leavell, the publisher of the Crusader newspapers in Chicago and Gary, Indiana.

 

“We are suffering and with a new administration in the White House, it will take someone who isn’t afraid, someone who will raise a lot of hell,” the fiery Leavell said after she was elected.

 

In 2017, Carolyn Bryant, the woman who accused young Emmett Till of grabbing and verbally harassing her 62 years ago, finally admitted that she lied during the trial of Till’s murderers. An all-White jury found her husband Roy Bryant and his half-brother JW Milam not guilty of the crime.

 

The Guardian reported that Bryant said Till had grabbed and verbally harassed her in a grocery store.

 

“I was just scared to death,” she said during the trial, according to The Guardian.

 

“That part’s not true,” Bryant confessed to Timothy Tyson, the author of a new book, “The Blood of Emmet Till,” The Guardian said.

 

In June, comedian Bill Cosby went on trial for a 2004 incident involving a former Temple University employee, who claimed the star drugged and raped her. A jury failed to reach a unanimous decision and a judge, who declared a mistrial, ordered a new trial for next spring.

 

In October, celebrated movie producer Harvey Weinstein was exposed as a serial sexual harasser and abuser with more than 100 women—including actresses like Gwyneth Paltrow and Ashley Judd—among his accusers.

 

The firestorm around the accusations ignited a movement and scores of women and men across the world shared their harrowing stories of abuse on social media using the hashtag #MeToo.

 

Celebrities and media personalities including Matt Lauer, Bill O’Reilly, Metropolitan Opera conductor James Levine, Charlie Rose, Louis C.K. and hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons were also accused of sexual harassment or assault and have either lost their jobs or stepped down from their companies.

 

Politicians like U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore (R-Ala.), Senator Al Franken (D-Minn.) and Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) also faced allegations of sexual misconduct.

 

The Trump-backed Moore lost a close special election senate for Alabama’s vacant senate seat in December after African American voters turned out in droves to support Democrat Doug Jones.

 

Meanwhile, several women have emerged with claims against Trump.

 

“People” magazine writer Natasha Stoynoff accused Trump of attacking her in 2005 at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida.

 

“It doesn’t surprise me at all that Mr. Trump would criticize someone else’s inappropriate sexual behavior and not address his own,” Stoynoff told the magazine.

 

Another Trump accuser, Melinda McGillivray, told “People” that Trump “is a complete hypocrite.”

 

While the sexual harassment storm stirred across the country, many won’t soon forget the devastating hurricanes that ravaged Texas, Louisiana, Florida, the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico in the summer and early fall.

 

Critics of the federal government’s response to devastation caused by the hurricanes noted that more than 30 percent of Puerto Ricans still lack access to electricity.

 

The president also took heat as he seemed to compare the actions of White supremacists to peaceful protesters after a woman was killed during a White nationalists’ rally in Charlottesville, Va.

 

“This week it’s Robert E. Lee. I noticed that Stonewall Jackson is coming down,” Trump said in defending the Confederate monuments. “I wonder, is George Washington next week and is it Thomas Jefferson the week after that? You really do have to ask yourself: ‘Where does it stop?”

 

The president even found time to criticize NFL players for silently protesting police brutality and racial injustice in predominately Black and minority communities.

 

Trump blasted players and said that team owners should get rid of them.

 

Colin Kaepernick, who remains unsigned and is suing the NFL owners for colluding to keep him out of the league, has been recognized with several awards including Sports Illustrated’s Muhammad Ali Legacy Award, which was presented to him in December by Beyoncé.

 

In October, O.J. Simpson was released from prison in Nevada after serving nine years for a robbery conviction.

 

The NAACP named Derrick Johnson president and CEO of the oldest civil rights organization in America.

 

Johnson told NNPA Newswire that it’s important that organization work with the National Newspaper Publishers Association to keep the Black community informed. Congressional Black Caucus Chair Cedric Richmond (D-La.) also pledged to work closer with the Black Press in 2017 and beyond.

 

The NNPA and Chevrolet sponsored eight students from Historically Black Colleges and Universities in Atlanta and Washington, D.C. to participate in the 2017 Discover The Unexpected (DTU) journalism fellowship program.

 

The 2017 class of DTU journalism fellows included: AlexaImani Spencer and Noni Marshall from Howard University; Kelsey Jones and Taylor Burris from Spelman College; Jordan Fisher and Tiana Hunt from Clark Atlanta University; and AyronLewallen and Darrell Williams from Morehouse College.

 

The eight fellows were rewarded for their intrepid, diligent work in the Chevrolet-backed program that provides students from HBCUs scholarships and summer internships at NNPA member, Black-owned newspapers.

 

Civil rights icon the Rev. Jesse Jackson also announced that he has Parkinson’s disease.

 

 

A tumultuous 2017 also saw TV One announce the cancelation of the popular Roland Martin’s NewsOne Now news show in December.

 

In 2017, the Black Press lost two of its most devoted freedom warriors. Walter “Ball” Smith, the publisher of “New York’s Beacon” and the “Philadelphia Observer” died on Friday, November 10.

 

He was 83.

 

One month earlier on Oct. 22, Bernal E. Smith II, the president and publisher of the Tri-State Defender and a well-known civic leader in Memphis, Tenn., also passed away.

 

Smith was 45.

 

Other Black icons also were mourned in 2017.

 

Among them were Della Reese, 86, and Earle Hyman, 91, both of whom died in November; Robert Guillaume, 89, and Fats Domino, 89, died in October; the rap star Prodigy, 42, who died in June; while singer Al Jarreau, 76, died in February; and activist Roy Innis, 82, died in January.

 

In December, Simeon Booker, a trail-blazing Black journalist who covered the Civil Rights Movement for the iconic African American magazines EBONY and Jet and who was the first black person to work as a full-time Washington Post reporter, also died.

 

He was 99.

 

On August 19, 2017, activist and comedian Dick Gregory died at the age of 84.

 

“During the past six decades, Dick Gregory, would periodically write essays and editorials for the Black-owned newspapers of NNPA members across the nation,” NNPA President and CEO Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis, Jr., wrote in a tribute to Gregory. “His pen and his voice were always on the side of the oppressed, who dared to speak up and stand up for freedom. Today, in Dick’s memory, we all are obligated to do no less.”

 

Chavis continued: “Every breath that we take, we should gain more and more strength to speak truth to power and to stand against all injustice.”

 

 

 

From Crystal Stairs, to the Assembly and now to the Senate, California Senator Holly Mitchell has had one main goal. That is, to make sure that working families access all they need to be contributing members of California’s economy… that they can access all of the things they need to thrive, she said. The Sentinel caught up with Mitchell recently to talk about her role as a state senator, the challenges that come with overseeing a budget, and some of the new legislation going into effect January 1.

“What is most important to the core fabric of a civil society,” Mitchell asked during her recent interview with the Sentinel.

“What kind of California can we build and invest in, that’s the kind of California that I want to grow old in, that I want to raise my son in. That’s the lens I bring to my work as budget chair. Fortunately this last year, we’re coming out of a deep recession that many of your readers experienced first hand.

“Our general fund is in the black thanks to the combined work of the administration, Governor Brown and the legislature. We have two rainy day funds. And, we’re starting to invest again in California. We’ve invested in K-12 education, we’ve invested in early care and education, in healthcare, in our infrastructure, in public transportation…

“This last year’s budget was the largest in state’s history, $183 billion. Some of my colleagues wince at that number but we’re the most popular state in the nation. Those dollars are investments in California’s future.”

What goes into creating a budget is a challenging work, that constituents are not privy to, Mitchell explained.

“The budget process is by January 10,” she said.

“Our state constitution requires that the governor bring forward to the legislature, his budget.

“Both the assembly and the senate, we have budget hearings and sub committees that delve into specific subject matters (ie. Education, public safety, etc.) The assembly and the senate will pass two different budgets so we have to come together and address that. So, there are a lot of moving parts. Everyone has their priorities (education, health care, reentry), so its figuring out how to budget for these things…”

A third-generation native Angeleno, Mitchell is the daughter of career public servants and the protégé of community leaders who instilled in her a passion for services, she said. She continued her family legacy of “firsts” when she was named the first African American to chair the powerful Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Committee in December 2016.

Since 2010, she has authored dozens of landmark laws. These include: ending policies that drove families deeper into poverty; limiting unfair seizures of personal assets; decriminalizing prostitution for child victims of sex trafficking, and substantive reforms to the juvenile justice system.

“[As far as]our criminal justice package… We did something kind of novel and different this year,” Mitchell said.

“I partnered with some of my colleagues from the Latino Caucus. [I talked to] Senator Ricardo Lara, whose district is a little further Southeast than mine. We came together, which is unique, under the hashtag #equityand justice and literally coauthored each other’s bills.

“We looked at juvenile justice reform. We know that the war on drugs was a failed war. It was a war that criminalized young people, poor people and people of color. We know that the disproportionate number of black and brown people who are in prison and county jails today is a direct result of the war on drugs. This package of bills was really attacking some of those issues.”

Mitchell has also been instrumental in facing the cannabis issue head on, she said, working with colleagues to hammer out important aspects of the new legislation.

“This is a dicey situation,” Mitchell explained.

“The country hasn’t experienced this since we legalized alcohol. The voters passed the initiative. The voters didn’t ask the legislature, ‘how long do you think it will take to develop regulations and set up a system?’ They didn’t. They gave us a date.

“So we have had to work double time to get ready. So, if you think about it. A substance that was previously illegal, we are now making it legal and expect to be able to tax it. So, our taxing system has to be ready, the regulation system to guarantee safety, our system of rolling back the criminal justice laws… things like, if you’re caught with an open container in a vehicle, what does that mean?

“Research has not caught up yet.  There isn’t a specific kind of blood level that law enforcement can say, like with alcohol, ‘oh .08. you’re inebriated.’ I had no idea, how complex and multi layered this was going to become to be ready to implement.  There is a state level, county, city…

“On the law enforcement end, we had to establish some policies at the state level, so it’s consistent across the state. Like with alcohol, you don’t want to be driving through Yolo County, into Sacramento County, into L.A. County and have different laws and expectations as you cross county lines.

 

“It’s not going to be perfect. We will be doing clean up legislation for years to come, just as I assume, when alcohol became legal. The issue of financing in this area [for example] you can’t bank dollars from this industry, so this has to be a cash industry so that complicates matters even further…”

With more than 50 bills signed into law, Mitchell’s other groundbreaking successes include improving human services, expanding access to healthcare, defending the civil rights of minorities and the undocumented, and reducing the numbers of children growing up in poverty.

She sits on the Senate Health Committee; the Joint Committee on Rules; the Public Safety Committee; the Labor and Industrial Relations Committee; and the Insurance, Banking and Financial Institutions Committee. She also chairs the Senate Select Committee on Women and Inequality, which she founded.

Mitchell has been cited for her outstanding leadership by nearly two dozen community and business groups, including the Courage Campaign, Sierra Club, United Cerebral Palsy Association and the Greater Los Angeles African American Chamber of Commerce. She was named the 2017 Lois DeBerry Scholar by Women in Government Leadership and this year received the first Willie L. Brown Jr. Advocacy Award from the California Black Lawyers Association. The National Conference of State Legislatures last summer elected her to its national Executive Committee. Her advocacy on behalf of the expansion of mental health services earned her the Legislator-of-the-Year Award from the National Alliance on Mental Illness California.