Niece of the slain civil rights leader says we need to stop dividing ourselves by race.
Dr. Alveda King, niece of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., rejected the now-viral image showing the late civil rights leader wearing a hoodie just like the one Travyon Martin wore the night of his death.
MLK Hoodie – April 4th, 1968 by Nikkolas Smith courtesy of Deviant Art
“Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would very likely not wear a hoodie,” she said. “I can assure you he would not wear sagging pants.”
Dr. King made this statement on the Andrea Tantaros Radio Show on Tuesday after being asked what she thought of the image entitled MLK Hoodie – April 4th, 1968.
“I can almost promise you Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would not wear a hoodie,” she further emphasized later in the interview.
Dr. King also said that people need to think with grace rather than emotions in reference to the image and the overall backlash to the George Zimmerman verdict.
“There was a reasonable doubt in that case,” she said. “So the case went the ways of the laws of this land, but now we need to go further and look at the human heart.”
Dr. King also called out the mongers in the media and elsewhere who are trying to spin the verdict into racial tensions between Caucasians and African-Americans.
“As far as trying to fit the Caucasians against African-Americans, Mr. Zimmerman is a Hispanic,” she said. “Although we are one blood, one human family, one human race, there’s a lot of deception and emotion in these things that are being spurred.”
“Mr. Zimmerman is not a Caucasian. He’s not.”
Even when her uncle was assassinated in 1968, Dr. King said that it wasn’t fair to blame it on Caucasians.
Right before her father left home in order to retrieve the body of the slain civil rights leader, she said she stood in the kitchen ranting, “I hate white people!”
“Alveda, white people did not kill your uncle,” Dr. King’s father said to her as he held her in his arms. “The devil did.”
From that experience, Dr. King learned to answer violent tragedies with love, not hate.
“We answer with reason,” she said. “We answer with sanity.”
Other people have also rejected the image, which was originally posted at Deviant Art.
“It seems over the years, people have forgotten what exactly he (Dr. MLK, Jr.) was fighting for: equality,” one commenter said.
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