Reply #31: It wasn't MLK! He was just the chosen figurehead when the avalanche was started by others

[bean fidhleir]

Read your civil rights history. Most people don't know, for example, that Ms Parks was not the "poor, tired seamstress" of myth, but a tough NAACP activist. Nor do they know that she wasn't the first to refuse to move. Other women were arrested before her, including a mouthy 15yo. The real mover and shaker was, ironically, a man named Nixon. Edgar Daniel Nixon. He was at the center of the labor and civil rights agitation, and the one who decided that MLK would make a presentable figurehead for the movement. He was ignored by the media, being an unschooled man who was blunt and uncouthy, and died nearly forgotten except by the people who were really at the center of the movement.