I'm not so convinced about this article, for a whole bunch of reasons. I agree that it's important for people to read, because I think there are lots of people who don't understand the horrors of lynching, or how recently it was active, but at the same time (and I ran this by I.H., a mutual friend of ours yesterday who's a person of color and he agreed) I don't think King was such a crucial figure in "ending" it, to the extent that it has ended. Any article that credits the ending of lynching to one person is suspect. Ida B. Wells, whose biography I read a few years ago, played a key role. Walter P. White played a key role. I.H. pointed out, very accurately, that Emmett Till's mother played a key role. I imagine there were dozens more that I can't name.

I felt like this article was basically trying to make white people feel guilty while reinforcing the "great man" theory of history and putting King in the center of something he was certainly a part of.