HAPPENING NOW

On This Memorial Day

On June 6th, 1966, two years to the day before his death, Senator Robert F. Kennedy addressed a group of South African students on the occasion of their annual "Day of Reaffirmation of Academic and Human Freedom." The speech he gave shook the foundations of apartheid in that country and reaffirmed the power of the individual to change the world:

“Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”

On this Memorial Day, we remember Robert Kennedy and three other giants of American progress, individual citizens who lost their lives because of their "diverse acts of courage" and their willingness to challenge the status quo at home and around the world.

President John F. Kennedy, assassinated on November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas.

Malcolm X, assassinated on February 21, 1965, in New York City, New York.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., assassinated on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee.

Robert F. Kennedy, assassinated June 6, 1968, in Los Angeles, California.

These four men defined the promise of the 1960s, and their loss deformed the course of human history. The example of their courage compels us, in these ever-darkening times, to send forth our own "ripple of hope" for human freedom, and to do so even in the face of our own discomfort or destruction, even in the face of our own despair.

Today, we remember the importance of their lives and fight for the truth about their deaths. Join us and help spread the word: https://www.americantruthnow.org/sign

When the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Easter Sunday Collide

This year, with fitting irony and great poignancy, the anniversary of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination falls on Easter Sunday.

For millennia before Christ, and long before it had been given a name, Easter has marked a time of rebirth, of resurrection from the dead of winter. It celebrates a time when day outlives night.

And yet April can be the cruelest month, and on April 4th, 1968, one of America's leading lights, perhaps its brightest, was snuffed out.

For the crime of opposing a profitable bloodshed in a faraway land, he was brutally silenced. For the transgression of bringing together a divided people to oppose poverty, he was marked for death by the powerful among his own countrymen.

Today, as efforts to divide black from white from brown intensify, as speech is muzzled and the speakers are canceled, as millions who have lost their jobs and small businesses plunge into poverty, as sabres rattle once more and new powers of darkness rise over the earth, we might take some comfort in these words from a sermon Dr. King gave on a long ago Easter Sunday in 1959, with so many struggles already behind him and so many others still ahead:

"And so this morning, let us not be disillusioned. Let us not lose faith. So often we’ve been crucified. We’ve been buried in numerous graves—the grave of economic insecurity, the grave of exploitation, the grave of oppression. We’ve watched justice trampled over and truth crucified. But I’m here to tell you this morning, Easter reminds us that it won’t be like that all the way. It reminds us that God has a light that can shine amid all the darkness."

The Assassination of Malcolm X & the FBI

On February 21, 1965, Malcolm X was shot down in the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem, New York—right in front of an audience that included friends, supporters, his wife, and four young children. Three members of the Nation of Islam were convicted for the murder, though two have maintained their innocence.

Four years after Malcolm X's death, the FBI shared a memo about their counter intelligence program, or COINTELPRO, and its direct effect on the rift between the Civil Rights leader and the Nation of Islam. This program's mission was to spy on, infiltrate, discredit, disrupt, and destroy domestic organizations and individuals it deemed "subversive." At the time of Malcolm X's death, the FBI was directing much of its attention to groups such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and the Nation of Islam.

Official FBI documents, articles, and recommended reading on the Bureau's role in the life and assassination of Malcolm X can be found below.