The Struggle for the People's King

Black in Boston and Beyond

In this episode Dr. Hettie V. Williams is in conversation with Dr. Hajar Yazdiha about history, memory, and identity. Williams is the current director of the William Monroe Trotter Institute for the Study of Black Culture at University of Massachusetts Boston. Yazdiha is Assistant Professor of sociology and affiliate faculty of the Equity Research Institute at the University of Southern California. She is also the author of the recent book The Struggle for the People’s King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement recently published by Princeton University Press in 2023. Yazdiha uses a myriad of sources to elaborate on her thesis in this book about how the story and image of Martin Luther King, Jr. is used and abused by contemporary Americans to serve a political or social agenda. This is an important work squarely within the current expansion of King Studies (or studies of MLK one of America’s greatest activist moralists). In this text she argues that “wide ranging groups have made civil rights claims that echo those made by Black civil rights activists of the 1960s” including those on the far right. The right, in particular, she claims especially white, right wing social movements such as the family values advocates and the alt-right misuse the memory of King to redefine themselves “as the newly oppressed minorities.” These efforts ultimately work to distort history and undermine the move toward multicultural democracy Yazdiha argues. For more about Dr. Yazdiha click here Dr. Hajar Yazdiha and to secure a copy of her book click here: The Struggle for the People's King