MLK I.lesson part II:

“The illiterates of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but, rather those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn.”

-Alvin Toffler

It is not imperative nor an essential learning target to recognize people “behind the scenes”.

Coretta Scott King was monumental in civic activism which enabled Dr. King to preach his message of peace and non-violent protest. 

Dorthy Cotton, activist, “was the only woman in his (Dr. Martin Luther King) inner circle of aides, marched in perilous civil rights demonstrations and was a driving force in getting Southern black people to vote.” NYT 

When asked about what it was like being taunted by a white crowd holding hands with two small girls walking toward water; when asked how her beating left a permanent scar and hearing problems, Dorthy Cotton said:

“People had to be — they had to unbrainwash themselves, because this sense of being less than other people was hard-wired into the culture,” she told NPR in 2009. “And what was hard-wired into the psyche of white people was a sense of superiority.”

And that sense of superiority is hard-wired in education.  We are all culturally culpable.

This lesson can be flipped too.  Empowerers and enablers, those behind the scenes, of riots, violent protests and cover-ups pose demonstrative power.  It takes influential individuals and sometimes mobs to support leaders, politicians and rabble rousers. Famous and infamous would not exist without an entourage. 

Three to six examples of how the most influential people in history could not be so without those “behind the scenes” would suffice as an excitable lesson. 

If this were really a lesson, I would hope at some point a students would ask “so what is our role, as students, in all this?” 

Perfect. Now the bigger lesson can begin.