Cliff Notes on the News

Cliff Notes on the News

Veteran San Diego news director and reporter Cliff Albert shares his thoughts on the latest news and stories each weekday at 7:22am. Full Bio

 

WATCH: Year to Remember Those Words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

This year’s holiday that honors Dr. Martin Luther King Jr comes following a year that saw the issue of race in America become front and center in a way that maybe it hasn’t been since the 1960’s.

That’s when the Reverend Dr. King led marches and preached non-violence as he pushed for changes in state and federal laws against discrimination leading to the historic Civil Rights Act in 1964.

Up until then, restaurants, bathrooms and drinking fountains for so-called “colored people” were still seen in parts of our country.

In a San Diego Union Tribune story this weekend, the San Diego History Center describes those times back then as when San Diego was known across the Black community as “the Mississippi of the West” due to its record of discrimination in housing, employment, lending and other things.

And it was during an address by Dr. King at San Diego State in 1964, when a local group was passing out leaflets calling Dr. King a communist, that he said this: “The law can’t force you to love me, but it can restrain you from lynching me.”

And now more than a half a century later, as our country confronts today’s issues of race and racism, that have boiled to the top of public debate, it would be wise for us to remember those famous words by the Reverend Dr. King from his "I Have a Dream" speech in 1963.

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by their character.”

(Photo Getty Images)

Cliff Notes 1/18/2021

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