Aaron Bryant, curator at the James E. Lewis Museum of Art at Morgan State University in Baltimore, wrote a blog about how a grant from the Maryland Humanities Council helped bring an almost forgotten part of history back to the forefront.
In October 2008, the James E. Lewis Museum of Art at Morgan State University opened “Most Daring Dream: Robert Houston Photography and the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign.” (more…)
On January 18, Martin Luther King Day, the Maryland Humanities Council recalls that we began our Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: Remembrance and Reconciliation special initiative in 2007 with the question “Where are we 40 years after Dr. King’s assassination?” As Marylanders looked back to consider Dr. King’s legacy and assess how far we have come–as individuals, as communities, and as a nation–our nation elected Barack Obama as President. When the first person of color took the oath of our nation’s highest office, we as a people felt uplifted that the scourge of racism had been ameliorated sufficiently to achieve this result.
In November 2009, at MHC’s culminating program for the Dr. King initiative, “Music of the Movement: A Sustaining Voice,” an audience member questioned if we today live in a post-racial society, now that Obama is President. Program participant Congressman John Lewis answered, “We have come very far since the days of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. But too many people today are left out and left so far behind. We have to continue to agitate, to push–we all have roles to play…”
As we continue to play out these roles, will we look back to the election of 2008 as a new defining moment in the long history of the struggle for racial equality? When MHC asks in 2048, “Where are we 40 years later?” will we view Obama’s election as a benchmark of success equal in symbolic importance to the 1968 assassination of Dr. King?
Let us know what you think.
MHC invites you to visit the Walters Art Museum to view an exhibition of art by Maryland students, based on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Six Principles of Nonviolence.
An exhibition in a subway station? When the subject of the exhibition is Rosa Parks, heroine of the Montgomery Bus Boycott during 1955-56, it seems natural. Check it out at the Charles Center Metro Station through February 2009. (more…)
For over a year the Maryland Humanities Council, as part of its Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: Remembrance and Reconciliation special initiative, has been asking the question, “Where are we 40 years later?”—referring to the years since Dr. King’s assassination. This question has as many answers as it does people offering an opinion. (more…)
Please join MHC staff and Board members on December 1, 2008 at the World Famous Lexington Market Arcade at 10:30am to help celebrate the legacy of Rosa Parks with Sitting Down to Take a Stand—Remembering Rosa Parks.
I was born in the early 80s and grew up (pre-college years) in Richmond, Virginia. It’s a medium sized city or large town, depending upon who you ask, that’s not too different from any other of its category within this country. My childhood memories are a mix of basketball games on driveway courts, outdoor concerts and festivals that smelled like blended incense, jerk chicken and funnel cakes, and frequent trips to the doctor…I had asthma. In the summer we swam and in the winter we hoped that it would snow just enough for my father to take us, my brother and I, to an auto shop where we would pick out the best two inner-tubes and head straight for Fulton Hill…hands down the best sledding( or in our case tubing) spot in the Richmond. (more…)
This is first in a series of blog entries by the Maryland Humanities Council honoring the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on the 40th anniversary of his assassination.
It was April 4, 1968, 40 years ago. I was a third-year student at Howard University Law School. With classmate, Kellis Earl Parker (who would serve as a Professor of Law at the University of California, Davis and Professor of Law at Columbia University, New York City) I was at the office/chambers of the Honorable Spottswood W. Robinson in downtown Washington, DC.
At a point in the early evening, a U.S. Marshall, clearly shaken—and almost disoriented—announced the news that Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had been assassinated, and that many cities, communities and neighborhoods, including Washington, D.C., were being assaulted, experiencing fires, violence and looting.
