Maya Angelou: King and Malcolm killed once they included all races of oppressed people in the movement
By Brenda Norrell
Censored News
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com
In tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr., on his day, Censored News quotes Maya Angelou, from an interview with Rosa Guy:
"There was a qualitative growth in Martin Luther King. To me, having just to see him grow from the American Civil Rights Movement, the passive resistance, the non-violent resistance, and to see him grow into one going to Africa, meeting with Nkrumah, return, broadening his sight to include all oppressed people (which is why he was killed, of course), so that his poor people's march said, 'I want Black people, poor white, native American, Mexican American, Asian American; I want everybody who is poor, downtrodden and oppressed, come. We will sit in Washington.' I believe this is why Malcolm was killed. When Malcolm said, 'I no longer believe that by nature a person is born evil. I have seen blue-eyed, blond-haired men who I can call brother with a straight face and an open heart.' The minute he said that, he had to be done. If he
had kept narrow, he would have remained, you know?"Angelou speaks of the movements that followed and how those movements became focused on being "safe," after the massacre of students at Kent State. The women's movement and the free student movement seemed to be safe movements, she said.
"If they were all white, if they were not involved with the Blacks, they thought they wouldn't be killed. And they were right."
From Writing Lives, Conversations Between Women Writers, edited by Mary Chamberlain, Virago Press, 1988.
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