Today, UNMC Today caps its six-part series of Martin Luther King Jr. photos and quotations with the civil rights leader discussing cultural roots. In commemoration of the holiday, acclaimed veteran African American journalist and talk show host Tony Brown will be on campus today.
Brown will present the Martin Luther King Commemorative Presentation at noon in the lower level of the Storz Pavilion. Free refreshments will be available for the first 300 people. Overflow audience members may watch a live video simulcast in the Wittson Hall Amphitheater. Excerpts of Brown’s documentary, “Tony Brown’s TV Essay on Martin Luther King (A Personal Account,)” will be shown prior to his presentation.
“So often in the Negro middle class you find a brother who is ashamed to identify with his relatives. He doesn’t like to read poetry that’s written by Negro poets, and Negro art doesn’t have any meaning to him, and he doesn’t like listening to Negro spirituals, because you see this reminds him of the fact that he has a slave and an African heritage. He doesn’t want to be identified with that. So he goes and tries to identify with all the values of the white middle class, and he’s rejected by the white middle class, so he’s left out there in the middle with no cultural roots. And he ends up hating himself and he tries to compensate for this through conspicuous consumption – Cadillac cars, fine houses, foreign mink coats. This is this brother’s problem.”
The Preacher King: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Word that Moved America
Richard Lischer, Author