The Martin Luther King Junior of popular memory vanquished Jim Crow in the South.  But in this myth-shattering book, award-winning and New York Times bestselling historian Jeanne Theoharis argues that King’s time in Boston, New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago—outside of Dixie—was at the heart of his campaign for racial justice.  King of the North follows King as he crisscrosses the country from the Northeast to the West Coast, challenging school segregation, police brutality, housing segregation, and job discrimination.  For these efforts, he was relentlessly attacked by white liberals, the media, and the federal government.

In this bold retelling, King emerges as someone who not only led a movement but showed up for other people’s struggles; a charismatic speaker who also listened and learned; a Black man who experienced police brutality; a minister who lived with and organized alongside the poor; and a husband who—despite his flaws—depended on Coretta Scott King as an intellectual and political guide in the national fight against racism, poverty, and war.

King of the North speaks directly to our struggles over racial inequality today.  Just as she restored Rosa Park’s central place in modern American history, so Theoharis radically expands our understanding of King’s life and work—a vision of justice unfulfilled in the present.  Please pick up a copy of both, to be enlightened of your history.

Epilogue

Be careful what you wish for:  The willful ignoring of Dr. King’s challenge to Northern Racism.

                              If our most dedicated ancestors

                        could look us alive in the eye right now

                        what kinds of apologies would we make

                        for invoking their names posthumously.

                                                                             --Darius Simpson

Reckoning with King’s lifelong, critique of American structural racism—how he insisted that white liberal politicians, Northern residents, social scientists, and journalists be held to account—is sobering.  With his eloquent preacher voice and nice suits, King decried Northern racism and supported Northern movements for a dozen years.  At times, Northern officials gave him awards, welcomed him to their podiums, and condemned the South.  But they largely did not listen, let alone act, when he challenged their own segregation, demonizing him and the movements he supported locally.  Recognizing King’s lifelong critique of Northern liberalism contextualizes the bleakness and boldness of his tone in the last years of his life.  Over and over, he had raised his voice on the structural racism endemic across the country, pursued disruptive nonviolent direct action alongside organized Northern Black communities across the country, and called on white liberals and the nation to walk the talk in their own cities.  And over and over, most Northerners and the nation’s leaders had side-stepped those calls or criticized him for it, smug in a sense of their own goodness.

It is easier to tell a history that King focused on the South.  It is easier to think that injustice highlighted by a noble movement with an eloquent spokesman is injustice corrected in the United States.  It is easier to frame Northern Black communities as angry and alienated rather than reckon with the myriad nonviolent movements and community institutions they built.  It is easier to think that King was naïve or didn’t have clear targets, that Northern young people refused organized non-violent movements, or that Northern racism was more complicated—than it is to reckon with the extent many Americans went to protect and preserve American apartheid.  It is easier to claim to love King than to listen to him.

The reality is far more complicated.  As Harry Belafonte and Stanley Levison eulogized, “In the luminescent glare of the open streets he gave a lesson to the nation revealing who was the oppressed and who was the oppressor.”  During his own lifetime, King was embraced and simultaneously rejected by many white politicians, journalists and citizens who were proud to sit next to him, bring him to their cities or religious organizations, and at times decry Southern racism.  But by and large, many had little interest in acting when he highlighted the similar systemic problems in their own cities—school segregation, housing segregation, police brutality, job discrimination—and rejected movements there.  The mainstream media that covered his work more seriously and fulsomely in the South largely ignored, distorted, and demonized movements and King’s work across the North.

But Martin Luther King and his political partner Coretta Scott King persisted, joining with movements challenging “the plank in their own eye,” as the scripture called it, and calling out Northern hypocrisy,  He listened, and that listening meant that his ideas deepened and that he loved and was cherished by a large swath of Black people, South and North, young and old, even many who didn’t always agree with his nonviolence.  Those Northern activists and Martin and Coretta themselves had immense freedom dreams and concrete plans to address America’s slums and structures of racism, poverty, and militarism.

The problems we face today—segregated schools, police brutality and rampant injustice in the criminal legal system, environmental racism, unequal city services, lack of decent, affordable housing, poverty wages—were issues for which many people, including Dr. King, had tangible solutions.  What if the 1964 Civil Rights Act has actually been enforced against Northern school districts and their money had been taken until they desegregated their schools, addressed overcrowding and decrepit facilities, and changed teacher hiring?  What if the media had covered Northern massive resistance—Proposition 14 proponents of white antibusing moms in Brooklyn—like massive resistance in the South?  What if growing movements against police brutality in the early 1960s well before the uprisings had been taken seriously, leading to structural changes in policing and civilian oversight, instead of more policing, further weaponization, and new “tactical” units?  What if a robust 1966 Civil Rights Acts had passed in 1966, forcing Daley and white Chicagoans and New York City, Los Angeles, and other cities to implement policies that addressed unequal housing, and the Black freedom struggle had scored another win with an alive King?

Well, then, we would be living in a very different United States today.  King insisted the United States needed to be honest about its history—that Black migrants to the North in the twentieth century found a new “Egypt.”  Long after the end of slavery, white people gained benefits of land, home loans, more resourced primary education, access to college, and neighborhoods with well-kept sanitation, parks, and municipal services.  These created the floor for white success—but were benefits Black people largely couldn’t access in the South or in the North.  In other words, the inequality we live with today is modern, sanctioned, and reinforced, not simply a relic from a bygone time—and not so complicated that it is beyond state remedy.

During our own lifetime, this side of King has been hidden in plain sight.  He is America’s Black friend—held up and mythologized to punish activists who push too hard against the status quo—the “ultimate gaslight,” students say, to today’s activists.  Our textbooks mark the success of Birmingham in 1963 and ignore the fierce school desegregation movements in Boston, Detroit, Chicago, and Los Angeles.  They highlight the Watts uprising but not the myriad movements in LA before it. The March on Washington is pictured as a shining example of the power of American democracy and not also the inauguration of relentless FBI surveillance of Martin Luther King.  Northern liberal politicians, journalists, and white citizens are seen as pivotal actors for racial transformation in the South—and not also crucial players preventing change in the North.

Reckoning with this side of King is urgent, particularly because this mis-history of the civil rights movement is regularly weaponized against contemporary movements.  Be more like King, they tell young activists, when King was treated as “unreasonable,” accused of “inciting violence,” relentlessly policed, and harangued by the media and more moderate Black leaders.  Be more like King, they tell young activists, when perhaps the greatest gift of his leadership was his embodied belief in the power of each person’s action.  Convinced that the systems of injustice before us did not have to stand, he insisted that we are enough to step forward and that what some cast as unimaginable could become possible.

Be careful what you wish for. Dr. King called out Northern hypocrisy in praising the movement in the South and decrying Black activism at home.  He highlighted structural racism endemic across the country and denounced the pattern of police brutality and the ways it was countenanced by Northerners and the federal government, despite ongoing Black protests.  He chastised allies more devoted to order than to justice, stressing that if “our direct action tactics alienate our friends, they never were really our friends.”  He rejected personal responsibility as a public philosophy, saw the leadership potential of criminalized gang members, and challenged Black faces in high places beholden to white power.  He was committed to building real Black political power and the power of poor people to get the nation to respond.

Be careful what you wish for. He continued to speak truth to power to Northern mayors, public officials, and President Johnson himself, saying you can’t consider yourself a friend of civil rights and not do what is necessary here.  Resisting calls to be more pragmatic and less aggressive, he critiqued public officials, scholars, local citizens, and journalists who loved to focus on “Black crime” and cultural pathology” rather than on state policies that produced segregation, slums, and police abuse.  He saw that liberalism too often turned into a comfortable pose, rather than an on-the-ground commitment.

Like many activists today, he insisted that disruption and direct action were necessary to expose the urgency of injustice, that you don’t blame the doctor for pointing out the cancer.  He saw the power of young people’s courage to pull adults into the struggle.  He was resolute and steadfast, outraged, and impatient, and deeply moved by people’s suffering.  He lambasted those who asked why Black people were so angry.  Black people had the right and reasons to be angry.  Why weren’t they angry too?

Be careful what you wish for.  When we tell young people to be more like King, this country needs to be honest about what being like Dr. King truly entails and the comprehensive measures he challenged the nation to undertake.

Jeanne Theoharis is Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Brooklyn College of City University of New York.  She is the author of the New York Times bestselling The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks and winner of the 2014 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work Biography/Autobiography and the Letitia Woods Brown Award from the Association of Black Women Historians.  Her book has been adapted into a documentary of the same name, executive produced by Soledad O’Brien for Peacock where Theoharis served as a consulting producer.  The film won a Peabody Award and a Television Academy Honor Award.  Her young adult adaptation with Brandy Colbert, The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks for Young People, was included in the Best Books of 2021 by the Chicago Public Library and Kirkus Reviews.  Her book A More Beautiful and Terrible History:  The Use and Misuses of Civil Rights History won the 2018 Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize in Nonfiction.  Theoharis’s writing has appeared in the New York Times, The Washington Post, MSNBC, The Nation, Slate, The Atlantic, and many more. 

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I am honored to share my thoughts on the WCTS/NWHS Alumni and Friends Association, Inc. 2025 Spring Gala. The former school was an absolute necessity for our African American ancestors who not only needed an education but absolutely wanted an education. The continued celebration and memory of this great school is paramount and truly continues to show the love for and the value of it.

Another reason for my honor is that the Alumni Association invites “friends” to become members.  Sincerely, I am a “friend” who has chosen to become a life member. My affection for this school stems from the fact that many family members and friends have attended and received their education.

As our speaker, Mrs. Chelsa Jennings so eloquently cited in her speech, “The Glow-Up: Rise, Inspire, Give Back”, “the strength and resilience of the Alumni Community.”  She emphasized the journeys taken, the challenges overcome and the legacies that are continually being built.

I would be remiss if I failed to mention that giving back is ongoing for this great organization. I would like to cite some examples in which this “pillar of education’ is still involved. High school graduating youth, who meet the criteria, are awarded scholarships. There are enrichment and tutorial programs available for youth of all ages.  Our senior citizens receive food baskets and other needed items.

I would like to further emphasize from her speech that the spirit of the evening was and still is to be “bold, proud and full of purpose thus reminding everyone that the three glow-ups are rising, inspiring and giving back”.

Let us one and all continue to carry the banner through action, faith and above all love for this former African-American school of greatness – WCTS/NWHS.

By Roberta Smithwick Scott

 Keeping the Legacy Intact

Greetings Aggie Nation,

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, a former Prime Minister of Pakistan once said, “If things do not change, there will be nothing left to change.” This point can be illustrated by looking at the Fortune 500 Top 10 Companies by revenue in 1983, when the first organized school reunion for Warren County Training School-North Warren High School (WCTS-NWHS) took place, and comparing it with the Fortune 500 Top 10 Companies by revenue in 2021.

1983 Top 10 Companies                                 2021 Top 10 Companies
1 Exxon Mobil                                                 1 WalMart
2 General Motors                                            2 Amazon
3 Mobil                                                            3 Apple
4 Texaco                                                         4 CVS Health
5 Ford Motor                                                   5 UnitedHealth Group
6 IBM                                                              6 Berkshire Hathaway
7 Chevron Texaco                                          7 McKesson
8 DuPont                                                        8 Amerisource Bergen
9 Gulf Oil                                                        9 Alphabet
10 Amoco                                                      10 Exxon Mobil

Some of these businesses have been bought out by other businesses and no longer exist as a standalone entity, while others remain operational but no longer a top performer. Past success is no guarantee of future sustainability.

2022 marks the 100th Anniversary of the WCTS-NWHS. This is a noteworthy achievement that is being celebrated by Aggies throughout the land. The theme for the occasion is “Celebrating 100 Years of Community Involvement”. That theme is captured superlatively via the handmade quilt the local members of the Alumni Association constructed under the leadership of Martina Goode Williams. That theme resounds throughout the pages of the Souvenir Journal that was produced under the leadership of Carrie Hendrick Hill. That theme is superbly captured in the pictures comprising a set of three collages assembled under the leadership of Henry L. Durham, Jr. The deeds and legacy of the WCTS-NWHS resonates deeply within the hearts, minds, and souls of those with a connection to the school.

Judges 2:10 (NIV) reads, “After that whole generation had been gathered to their ancestors, another generation grew up who knew neither the LORD nor what He had done for Israel.” As our generation exits the stage, another generation has grown up who knew neither the WCTS-NWHS nor what it has meant to the community. If the legacy of the school is to be preserved there must be a change to the way things are being done.

Change is never easy and can be threatening. Most people feel comfortable with a routine where there are no surprises, and the outcomes are predictable. However comfortable such a routine can be, there is always the danger of stagnation. The WCTS-NWHS Alumni and Friends Association, Inc. cannot afford to be come stagnant. There is too much at stake.

In sports, when the owner of the team fires the coach or manager, the owner gives as justification, “We needed to go in a different direction.” In the Alumni Association, I say, “We needed a new vision.” A new vision starts with the leader. I have been privileged to be the leader for ten years. It is now time for a new vision.

WCTS-NWHS Alumni and Friends Association, Inc.

PO Box 122

Telephone number: 252-456-2031

Email: wctsnwhsalumni@embarqmail.com