Well, the trolls are certainly out today. “The woman.” How better to erase someone from history than take away her name? It makes it so much easier to dismiss her tragic murder.
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I think we’re long past the point in which religion was not political.
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Well we certainly have never had a real accounting on the conspiracy to kill Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The most we seem to have seen was the 1979 House Select Committee did conclude it was in fact a conspiracy. And then they sealed all their records (“which had a half-life of a car left overnight in the South Bronx” in the words of Norman Mailer before he turned to the dark(er) side) and everyone was sworn to secrecy. In the end, I suspect, this road will lead to J. Edgar Hoover.
Excellent points!
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The detailed information you have provided is very helpful, thank you. If it had been summarized in the original article it would have been a better article.
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There are definitely better ways out there to examine this event and put it in a legitimate historical context:
At that time, there weren’t political discussions around gun culture/gun violence and mental health the way there are now.
Also, the inherent vulnerability of places of worship (again, that decades later we are now all too familiar with).
The attitude that a mentally deranged Black guy is not newsworthy, and that (being facetious here) he stuck to his own community instead of rudely trespassing into white territory, is what makes news editors and producers merely shrug? Was the lack of historical importance possibly due to a racist assumption that black-on-black crime is expected, and not to be concerned about? Could do some digging on this attitude and make an argument.
Anyway, a quick google to find background on the shooter completely ruins the “assassination” claim. A second victim was also killed-just wrong place, wrong time.
It’d be interesting to hear the opinion of the King family on this.
That’s your opinion? Racist much?
I am surprised by how many comments here are so focused on the quality of the headline or the lack of stories about the women mentioned in the article. I read the article wondering where the story of Mrs. King was as well, but to me the feature of the article was the trivialization of the contributions of black women to the history of the United States. It is true, that until fairly recently, contributions of any women to history in general has been virtually non-existent.
As I read the article the point is that in our culture, contributions of non-white, non-males is principally ignored. Though some progress has been made in this vein in the past 50 years, it is still telling that history is mostly about the achievements of men. This is particularly true about black women because they are black and women.
While the article did not give you the stories of the women noted in the article, perhaps it should be read to encourage the reader to look up those stories and others as well. As a 75 year old retired white male, I learned many years ago that when a women had successfully achieved to my level (financial services executive), they had work harder and were more talented than most of there peers. Think about the struggles of women striving to change history carrying the added burden of being their own Sisyphus walking up that hill bearing their gender, their color and their sexual orientation as a de facto weights adding to their trials.
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Point taken, but the article reads a little better 7 years later, IMHO. A comprehensive treatment of African American history might include this murder, though the race and mental issues of the perpetrator lead to a more complex narrative.
I happen to be reading a book on Japanese history now. I agree that US popular conceptions of both history and heck international relations have stadium sized blind spots. I try at least to master my ignorance - to identify what areas I know little or nothing about.
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The author’s ignorance of history is nobody’s fault but his own. King’s mother’s murder was not a political assassination; so dishonest to imply that it was. It was just another black-on-black crime. This article is beneath TPM standards.
I see. So, if Jacqueline Kennedy had been shot to death a few years after JFK, it wouldn’t be “history”, because she, as a woman, had “no historical significance”? The news media would have listed it on the Obit page, or not at all? (It would definitely have gone unremarked by the NYT…)
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You are purposefully misinterpreting his words to make your point. It would be history, just as Jackueline Kennedy’s death was history when it occurred after a long life and a second, happier, marriage. But it wouldn’t be historical, in the sense that JFK’s assassination was a pivotal moment in America’s history, not just his own or his family’s history. Princess Diana’s death was no, more or less history than jacqueline, but it was more historically significant in Britain due to her long mistreatment by the British press and that institutions willingness to pay for photo’s of her at obvious risk to her own safety. It was revealing of 2 important institutions, the press and the monarchy.
If she had died in a random traffic accident, it would have been less of a historical event, though no less tragic for her children, and other loved ones, as well as many Britians. No less that MLK’s mother’s death was probably a well known tragedy at the time in many black families (and probably some white families as well) but did not have the historical resonance that would lead us to teach it in school’s today.
The author’s overall point about women often being missing from history is completely accurate, but his primary example was was deeply misleading, and frankly partially derailed a discussion on an important subject. But heck, he got more clicks.
Whoops! Didn’t realize the post was from2015. 
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While I respect your desire for more substance in articles and I am not a subject matter expert on this topic, it does seem to me that “assassination” is the correct label for this. She was targeted as a Christian leader and murdered while acting in that role. Yitzhak Rabin’s murderer was mentally ill as well, and we could probably name many other assassins with severe mental health issues (Sirhan Sirhan, for example). I love TPM and while I would like to see more depth in some articles, there are notable deep dives that are done within the site.
This article could have been better written, but the author’s main point is that Black history has neglected Black women’s roles in that history, just as nearly all other types of history have failed to note females in vital roles. The author also chose to make his point by giving examples of his own experience of education about Black history and how easy it was to think he was being educated about Black history even though women were seldom mentioned. I certainly came away from the article thinking more about how I could expand my awareness beyond the surface of the things I read. And truthfully, your comments have also been informative – I will read more critically in the future, noting the degree to which authors/editors provide background and other details about their stories.
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Still worthy of discussion
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Aurin Squire:
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Mr. Squire uses the word assassinated in his lead paragraph.
I think it’s a poor word choice: martyrdom more closely fits the circumstances than assassination, but that’s my opinion. The author’s free to have his opinion, but I think he owes it to the reader to explain how her death was a political murder.
But I think the lead paragraph is being used as a springboard (speaking for the author now: "I know something about Black history. How in the hell do I not know this? What else don’t I know?) into the article’s real thesis, which is that standard tales of Black history (like standard tales of history generally) tend to ignore women. The rare exceptions that forced themselves into the books (Harriet Tubman among Black women, Queen Victoria [not the first Queen Regnant of England/UK: that would be Mary Tudor], Jeanne d’Arc, Marie Curie [compare Rosalind Franklin, who produced and interpreted the X-ray crystallographic images that showed DNA has a double helical structure but didn’t get a Nobel for it] etc.) merely prove the rule.
That’s how the title should have read. But, woulda, shoulda, coulda…
I feel like I knew about this at some point but I can’t remember exactly…
Thank you, Goldspinner, for that review of Mother King’s story!
I kept thinking that this history of the King family could be so well told, in its broad sweep, from Alberta Williams’ point of view. It has a range of emotions through which to engage with its message, hope, joy, tragedy. And the political and social issues and questions it raises are layered and relevant: who gets amplified, who gets silenced.
Musically, the longer span of time covered by the story offers a wealth of styles from which to gain inspiration and to which a composer could give reference.
Mr. Squire, you may not have meant this as an elevator pitch, but if you are looking for an idea that attracts broad interest, I would say this one does! For a composer and librettist it would be a big challenge, but well worth it for just the reasons you’ve begun to express in this essay for TPM.
(Wow! Just thinking about it gets me imagining some of the choruses full of controversy and counterpoint—just reading the comments here!—or a septet of sisterhood… Damn! I better stop! But really: Do it!)
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I feel dumber for having read this article.
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