Watch: My Black History: Michael Eric Dyson on How MLK’s Assassination Opened His Eyes

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An NAACP flyer campaigning for the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill, which passed the U.S. House of Representatives in 1922, but was filibustered to defeat in the Senate. Dyer, the NAACP, and freedom fighters around the country, like Flossie Baily, struggled for years to get the Dyer and other anti-lynching bills passed, to no avail. Today there is still no U.S. law specifically against lynching. In 2005, eighty of the 100 U.S. Senators voted for a resolution to apologize to victims' families and the country for their failure to outlaw lynching. Courtesy of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Some Exhibits to Come – One Hundred Years of Jim Crow

Bibliography – One Hundred Years Of Jim Crow

Claude, age 23, just months before his 1930 murder. Courtesy of Faith Deeter.

Freedom’s Heroes During Jim Crow: Flossie Bailey and the Deeters

Souvenir Portrait of the Lynching of Abram Smith and Thomas Shipp, August 7, 1930, by studio photographer Lawrence Beitler. Courtesy of the Indiana Hisorical Society.

An Iconic Lynching in the North

Claxton Dekle – Prosperous Farmer, Husband & Father of Two

Ancient manuscripts about mathematics and astronomy from Timbuktu, Mali

Some Exhibits to Come – African Peoples Before Captivity

Shackles for Adults & Children from the Henrietta Marie

Some Exhibits to Come – The Middle Passage

What I Saw Aboard a Slave Ship in 1829

Life After Hate: A Former White Power Leader Redeems Himself

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February 23, 2017

From: The Root

Video Created by: P.J. Rickards

To commemorate the month of February and its celebration of Black History, Michael Eric Dyson (author, professor, and ordained minister) reflects on how the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. changed Dyson’s perspective on racial injustice.

Dyson’s lesson learned from MLK’s assassination is best summarized as he states,

“…his death, which gave rise to so much in the aftermath, his blood mixed in the soil from it sprouted an entire new awareness and consciousness that led from his assassination to 40 years later to the inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDeMevOwB7s&feature=youtu.be

Read more about Michael Dyson’s full reflection here.

To learn more about social justice organizations and leaders during the Civil Rights Movement click here.

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