To go along with his essay Beyond MLK, Lorenzo Raymond and TNI have produced a list of articles, books and multimedia that elucidate a radical history of MLK Jr, the Selma campaign and its context. It is, of course, partial and only a starting place, but we hope that it can help.
Debunking the Great Leader Myth
Peter Ling on King and the Great Leader Myth
Mumia Abu Jamal on Women Leaders and the Evolution of Martin Luther King
Jonathan David Farley “A Black King Did Not Redeem Us”
Riot, Militancy, and the Context of the Selma Campaign
Associated Press on “The Whirlwinds of Revolt” August 29, 1963
Gloria Richardson’s Campaign in Cambridge, Maryland
A Local Paper Looks Back at the Rochester Riot of 1964
Open Telegram That Malcolm X Sent to the American Nazi Party Before Going to Selma
The Black Commentator on Malcolm X’s Contribution at Selma
Selma Leader Prathia Hall on Nonviolence and Self-Defense
NAACP Chair Roy Wilkins on the Connections Between the Harlem Riot and Selma, “Selma adds to the store of local resentments that build to riot heat.”
Oral History: Civil Rights Movement Veterans Recall Tensions Between King’s SCLC and SNCC at Selma
Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin on Selma, SNCC, and the SCLC
Twitter discussion on #Selma2Ferguson
Beyond Selma
“Beyond Vietnam” Speechwriter Vincent Harding on How Militants Pushed MLK
Tef Poe in Ferguson: The Democratic Party Has Failed Us
"People in Watts Used to be Ashamed”: on the effects of the 1965 riots in Watts, Los Angeles
Young Protesters Talk Back to Oprah and the “black elite”
Adolph Reed, "Black particularity reconsidered" - on "how the management of black dissent by the black American middle-class/professional elite helped restructure capitalism to its own advantage"
Peter Gelderloos, "Learning from Ferguson"
To Watch and Listen
Robert F. Williams and the Militants of the Monroe, North Carolina NAACP Interviewed in 1959
MLK Press Conference on the Harlem Riot of 1964
Malcolm X Addresses Selma Protesters, February 4, 1965
2003 Film ‘Deacons for Defense’, starring Forest Whittaker
Excerpt from No Guns for Negroes on the Deacons for Defense
Eyes on the Prize Episode on Selma, “Bridge to Freedom”
Interview with Robert F. Williams on why the power structure wants us to remember Dr. King
I Mix What I Like: More on the Inconvenient Dr. King and Selma
Giant Steps: Radical Women in the Black Freedom Struggle (part 1, 2)
Books
John Alfred Williams, The King God Didn’t Save: Reflections on the Life and Death of Martin Luther King, Jr. (Putnam, 1970)
Barbara Ransby, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision (University of North Carolina Press, 2003) (PDF)
Timothy B. Tyson, Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams and the Roots of “Black Power” (University of North Carolina Press, 1999)
Christopher Strain, Pure Fire: Self-Defense as Activism in the Civil Rights Era (University of Georgia Press, 2005)
Lance Hill, Deacons for Defense: Armed Resistance and the Civil Rights Movement (University of North Carolina Press, 2006)
Charles E. Cobb, This Non-Violence Stuff'll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible (Basic Books, 2014) (PDF)
Michael Eric Dyson, I May Not Get There With You: The True Martin Luther King Jr (Simon & Schuster, 2001)
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