Despite the popularity of social justice frameworks, today's polarized socio-political environments call for a justice-forward approach where educators blend equity and culturally-responsive pedagogies with experiential approaches to learning. The TALLS (Toward a Liberated Learning Spirit) model for developing critical consciousness infuses…

Equality for all was the dream of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and he knowingly laid the foundation for and inspired the first African-American President of the United States of America, Barack Hussein Obama, who also had the dream of "Change" for America. These men exhibited how working together can make dreams become reality. For the…

The year 1968 denotes a particularly salient moment in American history, not least because it marks the year in which the Civil Rights movement lost its charismatic leader, Martin Luther King, Jr. The assassination of King on April 4, 1968, resulted in widespread and spontaneous uprisings across the country, including one in Kansas City. Not…

Why do people who claim the same epistemological beliefs interpret and express these beliefs in ways that seem diametrically opposed? And how can the author understand tensions in the classroom that arise from such divergent expressions of religious faith, especially in the context of history? There are a number of ways to examine these questions…

The mainstream press frequently characterized the election of President Barack Obama, the first African American US President, as the realization of Martin Luther King's dream, thus crafting a postracial narrative of national transcendence. I argue that this routine characterization of Obama's election functions as a site for the production of…

In 1957, a civil rights organization called Fellowship of Reconciliation created a comic book to teach America's youth about the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Entitled "Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story," the comic book was enormously successful. John Lewis, a young civil rights activist at the time, recalled that the book was…

The purpose of this study was to explore the life and work of LaFayette, nonviolence and conflict reconciliation from an adult education perspective. This study explores LaFayette's life from an early age through his involvement in the Civil Rights Movement, his contributions to adult education, and his current views on social change. The…

While Muhammad Ali has been the subject of countless articles and books written by sports historians and journalists, rhetorical scholars have largely ignored him. This oversight is surprising given both the tradition of social movement scholarship within rhetorical studies and Ali's influential eloquence as a world renowned celebrity espousing…

In this paper, the author challenges stakeholders (i.e., administrators, educators, students) of historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) to examine how HBCUs can continue to serve as sites of resistance against the prevailing cultural norms of materialism, Western masculinity, and spiritual malefaction. The author traces his…

One of the most historical events in American history, the non-violent protest "March on Washington," August 28, 1963, is detailed in an article of remembrance by William P. Jones. His article is crowned by highlights from the "I Have a Dream" speech by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., but also highlights the lessor known role…

On January 20, 2009, essentially 200 years after the enactment of the embargo against the slave trade, 40 years after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., Barack Hussein Obama became the 44th President of the United States of America. Using the one drop rule for racial designation which has prevailed in the USA for most of its history,…

In 2009, Chicago witnessed 458 murders--more than the number of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq or Afghanistan. Many of those killings involved teenagers. Kingian Nonviolence is a training curriculum developed out of the teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. by two of his close allies, Bernard Lafayette Jr. and David Jehnsen. Used in schools,…

With Barack Obama ensconced as the nation's first Black president, plenty of voices in the national conversation are trumpeting America as a post-racial society--that race matters much less than it used to, that the boundaries of race have been overcome, that racism is no longer a big problem. In this article, longtime scholars whose life's work…

Americans have come a great distance since the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The African-American middle class has grown. African Americans, women, and other minorities are in positions of leadership today that they could never have aspired to 40 years ago. In the 2008 election season, an African-American man is a serious contender…

Research indicates that history-based curricula--specifically textbooks and trade books--about Dr. King and the Civil Rights Movement (CRM) are problematic and limited. If race relations are arguably America's long, unsettled tension, then Dr. King was one of its most impactful figures. Using the relevant historical research as a framework and the…