In commemoration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, UNMC Today will feature a series of photos and quotations from the civil rights leader. In today’s excerpt, King proposes a Bill of Rights for the disadvantaged.
Acclaimed veteran African American journalist and talk show host Tony Brown will present the Martin Luther King Commemorative Presentation on Monday, Jan. 19. The program, which is free to the public, will be from noon to 1 p.m. in the Storz Pavilion, lower level of Clarkson Hospital. There will be free refreshments available for the first 300 people. Overflow audience members will be able to see a live video simulcast in the Wittson Hall Amphitheater.
In 1963, Brown was coordinator of a march King led in Detroit, Mich. Forty years later, Brown has created a video documentary reflecting his relationship with King and the lessons learned. “Tony Brown’s TV Essay on Martin Luther King (A Personal Account)” is being aired nationally, Jan. 16-22, on the PBS network, as well as DirecTV and Dish Network. It will not be aired locally on NETV, however, excerpts will be screened in the Storz Pavilion before the MLK Day program begins. Complete transcripts of the video documentary are available via e-mail at mail@tbol.net.
“No amount of gold could provide an adequate compensation for the exploitation and humiliation of the Negro in America down through the centuries. Not all the wealth of this affluent society could meet the bill. Yet a price can be placed on unpaid wages. The ancient common law has always provided a remedy for the appropriation of the labor of one human being by another. This law should be made to apply for American Negroes. The payment should be in the form of a massive program by the government of special, compensatory measures which could be regarded as a settlement in accordance with the accepted practice of common law. Such measures would certainly be less expensive than any computation based on two centuries of unpaid wages and accumulated interest. I am proposing, therefore, that, just as we granted a GI Bill of Rights to war veterans, American launch a broad-based and gigantic Bill of Rights for the Disadvantaged, our veterans of the long siege of denial.”
I May Not Get There With You: The True Martin Luther King, Jr.
Michael Eric Dyson, Author