The surprising ways that Martin Luther King Jr. is now being taught in schools

Plus: the 1970s parallel to a new House Republican committee |

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By Olivia B. Waxman Staff Writer It’s been exactly 40 years since Martin Luther King Jr. Day became a federal holiday in the United States. And in the last four decades, the way that Martin Luther King Jr. has been talked about in schools has remained largely the same—through his “I Have a Dream” speech and his writings like “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” Ahead of Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Jan. 16, I talked to teachers across the country about how classroom discussions about the civil rights leader are changing. In Philadelphia, for example, Keziah Ridgeway, 37, tells her students that while King led nonviolent protests, he realized that such demonstrations would spark violence from white Americans—and change hearts and minds. Nonviolent marches would make white people “so uncomfortable and get so much media attention…[White people] would realize this is a terrible thing that we’re doing—using water hoses, using dogs on people who are peacefully protesting.” Click here to read the full story.

HISTORY ON TIME.COM 10 Things You Still Don't Know About Martin Luther King Jr., According to Historians By TIME Staff Wednesday marks the 50th anniversary of the April 4, 1968, assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. To mark the anniversary of his death, TIME asked 10 historians for facts about the Civil Rights leader that most people still don't know Read More » Why Martin Luther King Jr. Loved Star Trek By Lily Rothman The show—which premiered 50 years ago—had an American icon among its list of early fans Read More » Why Republicans Are Comparing a New House Investigative Panel to the Church Committee By Eric Cortellessa House Republicans hope to link their new panel to the Church Committee of the 1970s, considered 'the gold standard' of congressional investigations Read More » The Unsung Hero of the Underground Railroad By Andrew Diemer In contrast to Harriett Tubman, William Still's work seems less dramatic. It was, however, no less important. Read More » The Media Silenced My Ancestors. I'm Making Sure Our Story Is Heard By Bitaté uru-eu-wau-wau Indigenous people like me have too often relied on outsiders to tell our stories to the world. My community is finally telling our own stories Read More »

FROM THE TIME VAULT This week in 1954: Vice President Richard Nixon “Reminiscing last week about the job that took him to the White House. Harry Truman told a piece of personal history in homely barnyard simile: ‘I tried to argue with those fellows at Chicago [in 1944] that I didn't want to be Vice President. I told them, 'Look at all the Vice Presidents in history. Where are they? They were about as useful as a cow's fifth teat.’ When he first said it, Harry Truman was roughly right; but today, any generalization about the uselessness of Vice Presidents falls over the example of Richard Nixon, 36th Vice President of the U.S., who is one of the busiest, most useful and most influential men in Washington.” (Jan. 18, 1954) Read More » This week in 1989: Real estate tycoon Donald Trump “At 6 ft. 2 in., real estate tycoon Donald J. (for John) Trump does not really loom colossus-high above the horizon of New York and New Jersey. He has created no great work of art or ideas, and even as a maker or possessor of money he does not rank among the top ten, or even 50. Yet at 42 he has seized a large fistful of that contemporary coin known as celebrity. There has been artfully hyped talk about his having political ambitions, worrying about nuclear proliferation, even someday running for President. No matter how far-fetched that may be, something about his combination of blue-eyed swagger and success has caught the public fancy and made him in many ways a symbol of an acquisitive and mercenary age.” (Jan. 16, 1989) Read More » This week in 2000: Cuban refugee Elian Gonzalez “Elian's case has also been influenced by less noble emotions: desire for political gain, greed, hunger for fame. For Miami's Cuban exiles, Elian has become a poster boy--literally, his giant image now hangs over I-95--for everything that's right about America and wrong with Cuba. In a TIME/CNN poll taken last week, 56% of Americans polled agreed with the INS decision to return the boy to Cuba to live with his father, rather than have him live with other relatives in the U.S. But a Miami poll found that 90% of local Cuban Americans felt Elian should remain in the U.S.” (Jan. 17, 2000) Read More »

HIGHLIGHTS FROM AROUND THE WEB Monument watch: WBUR’s Rupa Shenoy reports on the Jan. 13 unveiling of a monument to Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife Coretta Scott King in Boston Common. Family trees: In an essay for the blog Black Perspectives, historian Hilary Green explains what it was like to find a rejected pension application filed by the wife of her Civil War soldier ancestor. Energy: The New York Times’ Hiroko Tabuchi investigates how Exxon employees predicted global warming as far back as the 1970s. Death penalty: For Smithsonian’s website, Robert Klara explores the chilling backstory behind the first photograph of an execution via electric chair to be published by a newspaper in 1928. Fact-checking: Vanity Fair’s Jon Skolnik talks to historians Kevin Kruse and Julian Zelizer about their new book Myth America and tackling the biggest myths about American history.

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