Since Independence Day is tomorrow, it’s fitting to talk about freedom and American history and, well, independence. The freedoms sought by our slave-owning founding fathers in the Declaration of Independence, the adoption of which is commemorated by tomorrow’s holiday, didn’t apply to black Americans until long after 1776. As we prepare to celebrate the accomplishments of Thomas Jefferson, et. al., we should also celebrate some of the people who bravely used their resources to try to win for black people the freedom that the Declaration of Independence promised but didn’t deliver. To the left is Ida B. Wells, a journalist who refused to give up her seat on a train 71 years before Rosa Parks and used her newspaper to shed light on lynchings. Below, check out a small selection of our many forefathers and foremothers.

It was back to the drawing board last month for sculptor Lei Yixin and the team charged with creating the Martin Luther King, Jr., memorial statue after the Federal Arts Commission said that their depiction of MLK — with his arms cross and a stern look on his face — was too “confrontational” and recalled “a genre of political sculpture that has recently been pulled down in other countries.”

The team came back this week with a new version (on the far right), that pulls the granite forward a few inches. After the jump, see a photo of the face of the statue, which they altered by softening his brow and giving him a hint of a smile.

CONTINUED »

MLK’S LEGACY LIVES ON It’s hard to believe, but the very first grandchild of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Coretta Scott King was born Sunday in Atlanta to Martin Luther King III and his wife Andrea. “We are excited about our precious gift from God and cannot express how fortunate we feel to have our beautiful baby girl. It is truly the happiest day of our lives. I know my parents are smiling down from heaven,” the new father said in the statement. They named the child after MLK’s eldest daughter Yolanda, who died almost exactly a year ago.

The Martin Luther King, Jr., memorial statue that is set to take a place of prominence on the Tidal Basin in Washington, D.C., has been plagued with controversy from its inception. Many people didn’t like that a Chinese sculptor was commissioned to create the memorial. Others argued that that way of thinking was sort of contradictory to Martin Luther King’s dream.

Now, a federal arts commission that has final approval over the memorial says that the statue is too “confrontational and that “the colossal scale and Social Realist style of the proposed statue recalls a genre of political sculpture that has recently been pulled down in other countries.” Are they thinking of that statue of Saddam Hussein that was toppled over by U.S. troops a few years back? No one could mistake MLK for a ruler of a totalitarian state.

The executive architect of the memorial said that they were aiming for something that was a powerful yet reflective representation of MLK. He says its hard for him to understand where the criticism is coming from. [WP]

Forty years ago today, Martin Luther King, Jr., was murdered in Memphis, Tenn. He was assassinated before his work was done, but his role as a revolutionary has never been forgotten nor have some of his most famous words. There’s a lot of talk on the web today about how far we’ve come or haven’t come — and I think we both know and mostly agree with the arguments on both sides of that coin. But where could we have really benefited from his words, his influence, and his activism in the present day? We have only to look back at some of his speeches to see how his wise words could have helped us out of some of our deepest quagmires, if only we had listened…

CONTINUED »

Suddenly, black people and race issues are all television news producers can think about. No one needs to think too hard about it to figure out why this is, but it’s fascinating to see the effort the networks are putting into understanding and reporting on “the black experience.” NBC Nightly News received some praise and some harsh criticism for their brief-but-ultimately-well-meaning series on African American women late last year.

CNN will launch a four-month-long on-air and online series called CNN Presents: Black in America tonight with Eyewitness to Murder: The King Assassination, a two-hour documentary commemorating the 40th anniversary of MLK’s death. Two more documentaries, one about black women and the other about black men, will air in July.

• Aretha Franklin’s son: probably a really bad Christian rapper. [NYMag]

• More than 1/5th of blacks surveyed believed that the reputation of Memphis, Tenn., suffered after Martin Luther King’s assassination there in 1968. Only 1/10th of whites believe this. Oh. Okay. [JS]

• White people portraying black people in television and film is “risky [and] rarely successful?” Agreed. [PI]

• Legislating sagging pants is “selective law enforcement” and is completely ridiculous? Agreed. [SS]

• Thanks for the new Outkast, Kanye! [KW]

AN ASSASSIN’S BROTHER’S NEW BOOK James Earl Ray didn’t kill Martin Luther King. He wasn’t racist. And he knew in the weeks leading up to MLK’s murder that he was being set up for some sort of plot. So says his brother, John Larry Ray, in a new book in which he tries to clear his brother’s name and blame his arrest on a wide government conspiracy. Larry tells [the New York Daily News]: “James may be gone, but I have to continue his fight for justice and dignity before the ink dries on history.” This might come as a shock, but the King family had no comment.

“Should Barack Obama end up winning his party’s nomination, he will give his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention in Denver on August 28 — 45 years to the day Martin Luther King delivered his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.”

Martin Luther King, Jr., although he’s been dead for 40 years, is a guy whose name has never left the forefront of any discourse on race or civil rights or even American heroism. Nevertheless, his name has been dropped a lot more than usual in the past few weeks. Why? Because in addition to his general importance, MLK has been used as a political tool by more than one presidential frontrunner. They want to be identified with the man’s positive legacy — they just end up looking sort of foolish.

CONTINUED »

• Today is supposed to be the most depressing day of the year. Did the people calculating this know it was a three-day weekend? [Time]

• Today is the day for everyone to measure how much race relations have changed since MLK’s day. Hmm, maybe this most-depressing-day thing has merit. [DMN]

• Forget about this election splitting democrats apart. Is it splitting black voters apart? [KHOU]

• Mike Huckabee wins an endorsement from the leader of the Coalition of African American Pastors and is the only presidential candidate set to attend services at Dr. King’s church today. The world feels all topsy-turvy. [AJC]

• No worries. Obama gave a speech at King’s church yesterday. [WP]

• At least one person isn’t using MLK’s name for political gain. [NYT]

Although most of you are probably sitting back and enjoying your day off in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. — this eliminates the need to procrastinate on the Internet — those of you who can’t go a day without your favorite blog* (ha!) can use this clip of MLK delivering his last speech before his assassination to reflect on the life and legacy of a man who helped change America. Unfortunately, one only has to look at the comments under the video on YouTube to come to the conclusion that his infamous dream has not been fully realized.

*Your favorite blog is on a shortened schedule today, so don’t be alarmed!

• Picket lines? Beyonce doesn’t care about no stinkin’ picket lines. [LAT]

• Officials at a Colorado school realized that it probably wasn’t part of the dream to always send a segregated group to an annual MLK event. [CBS4]

• Hillary Clinton invokes MLK’s legacy in Compton. The candidates need to stop “invoking” him, period. But with the holiday around the corner, it’s probably unavoidable. [LAT]

• One would expect this sort of behavior from a German “gangster rapper.” [PR-I]

• Racial strife in Ohio! [NYT]