Happy black history month!!! :)

[djstcktn326]

Just wondering, who's your most influntential black person in history. Mine is Martin Luther King Jr. I want to be like him one day and spread the message and the love that he had for everyone.

[SagaciousNJ]

Desmond Tutu, Neil Degrasse Tyson, and of course MLK Jr.

Tutu for his thoroughgoing civil rights activism, he never tripped up or decided that "now I've got my rights I can afford to support the oppression of others" I generally don't trust religious figures but His humanitarianism is obviously Soul Deep.

Tyson for his popularization of science while also making substantive contributions in the fields of astronomy and cosmology. He isn't a pretend or mascot scientist, he's just super busy. For too many black people professions in or near academia are the path of "most resistance", and Tyson helps alleviate that or at least turn attention to the problem.

Martin Luther King Jr. actually lost some of my esteem in his treatment of Bayard Rustin but you could argue that it was necessary. While I agree with his message of peace, I most laud him for the acute political and social understanding; of which his nonviolent resistance was only a part.

As much as he spoke to the conscience of america, its more noteworthy that he removed terror of from the lives of blacks in the south. It was a time when being black anywhere but especially the south meant living with the fear that you'd take a wrong turn or a white woman would make an accusation and then you or worse your family could be killed.

King's protests did what Gandhi promoted for India. It taught us that if we acted at once and remained solid the worst evil could do was sic dogs, fire-hoses, beatings and jail-time on us. Some of us died but the world we lived in could not be destroyed by the oppression we faced. It was discovering that the human heart could stand against anything if that suffering bore the the promise of freedom.

[Sunsetting]

Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive. ~ Howard Thurman

Howard Thurman - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[TheEdend]

^ That's a beautiful quote.