Facing south end january 11 2017

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Week of January 11, 2017 Vol 49 • No 48 • www.thechicagocitizen.com

PRESIDENT OBAMA BIDS AMERICA FAREWELL IN CHICAGO +P2

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South End

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SPECIAL MLK COMMEMORATIVE ISSUE

MLK: MILITANT OF THE 21ST CENTURY

By Lee A. Daniels

D

r. Martin Luther King, Jr. hasn’t been this alive since 1968. He’s no longer that visually distant, two-dimensional figure, limited to speaking a single sentence taken out of context and shorn of its true meaning. Instead, the honest scholarship and media commentary considering what King faced and what he did have broken through the obscuring fog of conservative, and yes, centrist, propaganda. In part, that’s because, today the confrontation between the forces of progress and the racist reaction to that progress is sharper than any time since the 1960s. Today, as in the 1960s, American society is grappling with elevating new groups of Americans to full citizenship. Today, as in the 1960s, it’s being forced to confront the meaning of its widespread poverty and joblessness, and its diminished educational opportunity. Today, as in the 1960s, Black Americans’ right to vote is under siege from conservatives, as are women’s reproductive rights. And today, as in the 1960s, the country is debating the extent of government’s responsibility to protect individuals’ access to opportunity. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s words and actions seem relevant again because they’ve always presented a challenge to the status quo and always urged individuals to live up to humanity’s best possibilities. > SEE MORE PAGE 3

King is most famous for his "I Have a Dream" speech, given in front of the Lincoln Memorialduring the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

TRAILBLAZING ASTRONAUT PHYSICIAN TO KEYNOTE MLK OBSERVANCE Dr. Mae Jemison, astronaut, physician and science and technology advocate, will be the keynote speaker at Northwestern University’s 2017 commemoration of the life and legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. Jemison will speak on both the Chicago and Evanston campuses. She will deliver the keynote address at the University-wide MLK

commemoration at 6 p.m. Monday, Jan. 23, at Pick-Staiger Concert Hall, 50 Arts Circle Dr. in Evanston. The annual program will include music and performances from Northwestern student groups. Jemison’s Chicago campus talk will take place at 12 p.m. Monday, Jan. 23, at Hughes Auditorium, 303 E. Superior St., during a

program sponsored by Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and Northwestern Pritzker School of Law. Born and raised on the South Side of Chicago, Mae Jemison broke barriers as the first woman of color in the world to go into space, serving

> SEE MORE PAGE 2

An astronaut, physician and science and technology advocate, Dr. Mae C. Jemison will be the keynote speaker at Northwestern University’s 2017 commemoration of the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

www.thechicagocitizen.com • 51 years of serving the Black community


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