- Barrington Salmon Florida Phoeni
Florida State University student activists in November 2023 demonstrated outside a university board of trustees meeting to demand divestment from Israel. (Christian Casale)
Last year, a survey by the Pew Research Center conducted before the 60th anniversary of the landmark March on Washington showed that 81% of American adults believe that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had a positive impact on the country.
It wasn’t always that way.
“In the May 1963 Gallup survey, for example, 92% of Black Americans but only 35% of white Americans had a favorable opinion of the civil rights leader,” Pew researchers said. “As more white Americans learned who King was over the next three years, a higher share of them viewed him unfavorably. Around four-in-ten white adults (41%) had an unfavorable view of King in May 1963 – a figure that rose to 69% by August 1966.”
The young King ultimately attracted and served as the leader of legions of children, teens and young adults to the crusade, all seeking to destroy Jim Crow and segregation, fight centuries of violence and push the country toward justice, equality and fairness for all Black people.
In retrospect, King – and his ground troops, allies and brain trust, including Stokely Carmichael, Lawrence Guyot, Dorie and Joyce Ladner, Diane Nash, Jim Bevel and Marion S. Barry – were ahead of their time. They were young people impatient with the slow pace of change and pushing public officials, policymakers and institutions to accede to their demands.
In 2024, a generational divide and friction caused by disparate ideas of what society owes us is wide and widening. There are stark disagreements about how the government spends our money, who has a voice and most of all, who benefits.
America has long prided itself on being the only country in the world with the level of freedom, sovereignty and independence that its people enjoy. But a peek under the rug makes it clear that the length and breadth of freedom that Americans supposedly enjoy is a myth.
Millennials and Gen-Xers in Florida and across the country have been at the forefront of this generation’s civil rights struggle. In response, Gov. Ron DeSantis has introduced and made law a batch of barely legal McCarthyite policies aimed at controlling young people while ruthlessly suppressing and crushing dissent. That includes efforts forcing educators to teach a whitewashed curriculum on race and gender identity.
Fortunately, the courts have been keeping DeSantis from running roughshod over Floridians he doesn’t like or seeks to control. Recently, a court curbed the excesses of “Don’t Say Gay.” And earlier in March, a federal court blocked the “Stop Woke Act,” which banned classes or instruction in schools or the workplace which dealt with racism, discrimination or white privilege.
DeSantis and his Republican cabal are undeterred, moving ahead with eliminating any semblance or shred of diversity, equity and inclusion in the state’s educational infrastructure as part of a crusade to kill off these programs that ensured parity, a place and a platform to treat underrepresented or marginalized communities fairly.
Florida has also become a very dangerous place for those who speak their mind or support causes that Republican elected officials oppose. Case in point, the Israel-Gaza conflict.
College students and young people in Florida and across the U.S. have been the most vocal critics of the death toll of innocent Palestinians who are facing starvation, disease and unsanitary conditions. But American politicians – the majority of whom are stanch supporters of Israel and the Netanyahu government – have pushed back hard.
Even DeSantis bragged about banning a Palestinian student advocacy group from state universities. This justification and the sidestepping of Israeli atrocities are common.
There have been lawsuits from organizations on First Amendment grounds, but the issue hasn’t yet been resolved. Despite the hostility from all corners of the political, social and educational universes, those calling for an unconditional cease-fire have been attacked, lambasted, sanctioned and fired from their jobs, all in an attempt to silence their voices.
Arab and Muslim Americans, a segment of African Americans and legions of young people, have been outspoken in their criticism of the Biden administration’s unconditional support of Israel militarily and diplomatically.
Palestinian American Congressperson Rashida Tlaib has been attacked and censured by her colleagues in Congress, but neither she nor those supporting a humane U.S. policy toward Palestinians are backing down.
“Whether they fail to mention Palestinians, question our death tolls, attack our students and protests, or censure the only Palestinian American representative in Congress, their attempts to silence us won’t work,” said Ahmad Abuznaid, executive director of the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USPCR). “As much as they wish us to disappear, we are here and will be here, and they will be seeing much more of us moving forward.
Barrington Salmon
In the future, I expect historians, political experts and others to view these social justice activists in the same way that King is viewed.
Their positions are moral, principled and humane and they, by their actions, are pulling the U.S. toward the arc of justice.
Barrington Salmon is a journalist who lived and wrote in Miami and Tallahassee, Fla., for nearly 20 years. He is currently a freelance writer for the National Newspaper Publishers Association/Black Press USA, the Trice Edney Newswire and The Washington Informer, among others.
