For King, how was the civil rights movement, and the sacrifices of civil rights workers, a continuation of the work of our Founding Fathers?

The assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis on April 4, 1968, continues to reverberate throughout the nation in large and small ways almost 50 years later. In many ways our nation is still trying to recover from King’s death and the opportunities for racial equality, economic justice and peace — what King referred to as a “beloved community”— that seemed to recede in its aftermath.

Fifty years after King’s assassination, struggles for racial equality appear as acute now as they did then, except the juxtapositions between signs of racial progress and the reality of continued racial injustice are even more stark.  The “post-racial” symbolism in the election of Barack Obama as the nation’s first black president existed uneasily alongside the harsh reality of mass incarceration of black and brown men and women, boys and girls. Just as 1968 ushered in the last of the long hot summers that began in Birmingham, Ala., in 1963, the deaths of Michael Brown and Freddie Gray triggered urban rebellions in Ferguson, Mo., and Baltimore that recalled the fits of racial unrest that gripped the nation 50 years ago.

Explanation:

Your welcome