Today's Democracy Now! focuses on MLK.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 1929-1968
Today is Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Day. He was born in 1929. Last week, he would have turned 76 years old. In the early 1960s, King focused his challenge on legalized racial discrimination in the South where police dogs and bullwhips and cattle prods were used against Southern blacks seeking the right to vote or to eat at a public lunch counter. After passage of Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, King began challenging the nation's fundamental priorities. He maintained that civil rights laws were empty without "human rights" -- including economic rights.
