Letters from an American – January 18, 2026 – Heather Cox Richardson
Heather Cox RichardsonLetters from an American, January 18, 2026
By Heather Cox Richardson, Jan 18, 2026
You hear sometimes, now that we know the sordid details of the lives of some of our leading figures, that America has no heroes left.
When I was writing a book about the Wounded Knee Massacre, where heroism was pretty thin on the ground, I gave that a lot of thought. And I came to believe that heroism is neither being perfect, nor doing something spectacular. In fact, it’s just the opposite: it’s regular, flawed human beings choosing to put others before themselves, even at great cost, even if no one will ever know, even as they realize the walls might be closing in around them.
It means sitting down the night before D-Day and writing a letter praising the troops and taking all the blame for the next day’s failure upon yourself in case things went wrong, as General Dwight D. Eisenhower did.
It means writing in your diary that you “still believe that people are really good at heart,” even while you are hiding in an attic from the men who are soon going to kill you, as Anne Frank did.
It means signing your name to the bottom of the Declaration of Independence in bold script, even though you know you are signing your own death warrant should the British capture you, as John Hancock did.
It means defending your people’s right to practice a religion you don’t share, even though you know you are becoming a dangerously visible target, as Sitting Bull did.
Sometimes it just means sitting down, even when you are told to stand up, as Rosa Parks did.
None of those people woke up one morning and said to themselves that they were about to do something heroic. It’s just that when they had to, they did what was right.
On April 3, 1968, the night before the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated by a white supremacist, he gave a speech in support of sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee. Since 1966, King had tried to broaden the civil rights movement for racial equality into a larger movement for economic justice. He joined the sanitation workers in Memphis, who were on strike after years of bad pay and such dangerous conditions that two men had been crushed to death in garbage compactors.
After his friend Ralph Abernathy introduced him to the crowd, King had something to say about heroes: “As I listened to Ralph Abernathy and his eloquent and generous introduction and then thought about myself, I wondered who he was talking about.”
Continue/Read Original Article Here: January 18, 2026 – by Heather Cox Richardson
#1966 #Assassinated #CivilRights #CivilRightsMovement #DrMartinLutherKing #HeatherCoxRichardson #heroes #IHaveADream #LettersFromAnAmerican #MartinLutherKingJr #Memphis #RalphAbernathy #Tennessee #WhiteSupremacist
Martin Luther King Jr. Celebrations Overlook His Critiques of Capitalism and Militarism
"...
The last few years of King’s life, by contrast, are generally overlooked. When he was assassinated in 1968, King was in the midst of waging a radical campaign against economic inequality and poverty, while protesting vigorously against the Vietnam War.
..."
I SEE U, Episode 29: Civil Whites Movement [Encore]
Civil Rights activist Joan Mulholland speaks unguarded about being held on death row in a notorious Mississippi penitentiary. This episode is an encore of the December 18th, 2021 broadcast.
#583e31 #6600cc #72b372 #AmericanCivilRightsMovement #BillMaher #c50052 #CivilRightsAct #de4a1d #DeltaSigmaThetaSororityIncorporated #documentaryFilmmaker #DrMartinLutherKing #DrewUniversity #EddieRobinson #Greensboro #HBCUs #HowardUniversity #HPMPodcasts #iSeeU #JoanMulholland #JohnLewis #johnLewisVotingRightsAct #LokiMulholland #MacHuslander #mississippi #News887FM #podcast #racism #sorority #StokelyCarmichael #TheUncomfortableTruth #TougalooCollege #WoolworthSSitIn
I SEE U, Episode 58: Slavery Ties That Bind Freedom [Encore]
Two women, one Black and the other White, connected through slavery, share intimate moments about how they were able to forge a remarkable friendship despite their family’s painful history. This episode is an encore of the September 17, 2022 original broadcast.
#6600cc #72b372 #AmericanCivilRightsMovement #BettyKilbyFisherBaldwin #BrownVBoardOfEducation #ComingToTheTable #Cousins #de4a1d #desegregation #DrMartinLutherKing #EddieRobinson #healing #HPMPodcasts #IHaveADreamSpeech #iSeeU #News887FM #PhoebeKilby #podcasts #racism #reparations #shows #slavery
Two women, one Black and the other White, connected through slavery, share intimate moments about how they were able to forge a remarkable friendship despite their family’s painful history. This episode is an encore of the September 17, 2022 original broadcast.
From Astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson:
August 28, 1963
Sixty years ago today, Martin Luther King Jr. had a Dream -- shared from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Washington, DC.
Today, I too have a dream. [Video: 4m 40s]
#TonyBennett marched with #DrMartinLutherKing and had a strong vision of America's strength in #diversity. Bennett was an #icon.
You hear sometimes that, now that we know the sordid details of the lives of some of our leading figures, America has no heroes left. When I was writing a book about the Wounded Knee Massacre, where heroism was pretty thin on the ground, I gave that a lot of thought. And I came to believe that heroism is neither being perfect, nor doing something spectacular. In fact, it’s just the opposite: it’s regular, flawed human beings, choosing to put others before themselves, even at great cost, even if no one will ever know, even as they realize the walls might be closing in around them.
@NeAlTen @mazeldon
When Rabbi Heschel marched with #DrMartinLutherKing on the Sabbath, Orthodox rabbis berated him for doing so. He responded, saying "Today I pray with my feet."
Pictured is Heschel and King during the march on behalf of voting rights from Selma to the state capitol in Montgomery, March 21, 1965.
The marchers are wearing leis, a gift in the spirit of aloha from Rev. Akaka, who met King a year earlier during King's visit to HI at the University of Honolulu. #MLK
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