There's been a lot of misuse & mischaracterization of Martin Luther King & Rosa Parks this week to decry the uprisings taking place from Minneapolis to Atlanta. In the interest of historical accuracy, a short thread & reminder of what King and Parks actually said and did:

MLK spoke out repeatedly against police brutality & the differential outrage when it happened in the North. “As the nation, Negro and white, trembled with outrage at police brutality in the South, police misconduct in the North was rationalized, tolerated, and usually denied.”

MLK decried the false focus on Black criminality: “Let us also demand that the white man abide by law ...Day-in and day-out …he flagrantly violates building codes and regulations; his police make a mockery of law; & he violates laws on equal employment & education." His police.

MLK was adamant on the need to disrupt injustice and challenged liberal displeasure with tactics of disruption. "“We do not need allies who are more devoted to order than to justice.........If our direct action programs alienate our friends….they never were really our friends.”

So did Coretta Scott King who reminded the nation of its own violence: “Punishing a mother and her family is violence. . . . Ignoring medical needs is violence. Contempt for poverty is violence. Even the lack of will power to help humanity is a sick & sinister form of violence.”

Rosa Parks was a lifelong believer in self defense. During the 1967 Detroit "rebellion"(as she called it), she noted how "the establishment of white people...will antagonize and provoke violence."She saw the uprising as "the result of resistance to change needed long beforehand."

Rosa Parks served on the People's Tribunal organized by young militants to hold (unindicted) police accountable for killing 3 teenagers at the Algiers Motel the 4th day of the uprising. In a speech she highlighted the similarities between police brutality in Montgomery & Detroit.