A More Beautiful & Terrible History: The Whitewashing & Distortion of Rosa Parks and MLK's Legacies

On February 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his historic “The Drum Major Instinct” sermon at the Ebenezer Baptist Church, two months before his assassination. On Sunday, 50 years later, the words of his sermon were used to in a Dodge Ram truck advertisement at the Super Bowl. The ad sparked widespread criticism for the obvious distortion of Dr. King’s message. But other revisions to civil rights history are often more subtle. For more, we speak with the author of a new book showing how the legacy of the civil rights movement in the U.S. has been distorted and whitewashed for public consumption. Professor and historian Jeanne Theoharis’s new book is titled “A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History.” She is also the author of the award-winning book “The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks.”