The Boston Traveler

Forty years ago yesterday, on April 4, 1968, civil rights leader Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. The very next night, “Soul Brother Number One” and “Godfather of Soul” James Brown (1933–2006) was scheduled to perform a concert at the Boston Garden in Massachusetts.
Yet, after word of the reverend’s murder spread, riots quickly erupted in more than 100 cities across the United States. As a result, Boston’s newly elected mayor at that critical time, Kevin White, was left with the difficult task of preventing widespread disorder in the city.
His original …read more

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What American who was at least a teenager, or possibly even younger, at the time doesn’t remember 1991? In October of that year, brave yet reluctant attorney Anita Hill was called before the Senate Judiciary Committee during the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas.
Her appearance led to testimony regarding allegations that Thomas had sexually harassed her when they worked together in the 1980s. As profoundly tedious as I’ve always found most formal government and political proceedings, even I tuned in for parts of that very public, unseemly, televised sideshow.
Fortunately, Hill moved on to a highly successful …read more

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Today is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in the United States, an official federal holiday that commemorates the January 15th birthday of one of the country’s most well-known civil rights leaders.
Among the minister’s famous speeches is the one that still resounds around the world almost 45 years after it was originally delivered at the Lincoln Memorial on the occasion of the August 28, 1963, March on Washington.
I’m speaking of “I Have a Dream,” of course, wise words that are enjoying massive circulation on the Internet today. This post is therefore just one of many, which is a good thing …read more

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