MLK 40 Years Later

40 years ago last Friday, on April 4, 1968 Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in front of his room at the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis, Tennessee. Hours later, in what was meant to be a presidential campaign rally in Indianapolis, Indiana, Robert F. Kennedy (who would be gunned down barely two months later) broke the news to a gathering of thousands:

So what’s happened since? The Root – Washington Posts’s online magazine for blacks – and Professor Michael Eric Dyson – author of April 4, 1968, a fresh examination of MLK’s death and repercussions – say we’re still searching for the Promised Land.

In a series of interviews, Dr. James Braxton Peterson (a self-professed hip hop scholar with an Ivy League Ph.D. in English, and yeah, that’s his own YouTube channel) talks to Dyson about martyrdom and April 4th as the New Easter, radical MLK messages missed by the hip-hop generation, the Gospel of Prosperity and the dominance of bling, and other provocative topics regarding the late Baptist minister that you’re not likely to catch on broadcast networks.

###After you’ve watched two Ph.D’s discuss Martin Luther King’s legacy, see what the man-on-the-street has to say. In a segment that’s as interesting as The Root’s traditional interviews (though for different reasons), Lindsay Campbell of Moblogic.tv takes a walk around New York City to ask whomever she comes across, “It’s 40 years later.  How’re we doing?”