Preface from Charles Knight, editor and curator
I am grateful for the opportunity to publish (for the first time in The Vulnerable Advocate) a piece of writing by my friend Kevin Powell. Kevin has generously given me his permission to re-post this essay, first published at Newsweek, where he is a frequent contributor.
Following the essay is Kevin’s bio, which speaks to both his accomplishments across varied pursuits and his heartfelt commitment to a better world.
Here at The Vulnerable Advocate, I have written about the importance, especially for male authors, of what has been called vulnerable writing. Kevin has long demonstrated a knack for vulnerable writing, especially in finding the right balance between the author’s presence and making room for others, crafting articles that build a sense of community with readers.
Please be in touch with your thoughts about this piece and others to follow.
The title of this piece is a question I have avoided for years as I’ve navigated giving speeches about the life and legacy of The Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. throughout America, and as far away as Japan.
In these United States—land of my birth and that of my ancestors dating back three centuries—my talks have been in red states, blue states, cities, the suburbs, and rural environments. I never thought, when I was a youth, Dr. King would become a vital part of my life work, as a writer, as a public speaker, as someone who cares spiritually about everyday people, but here I stand.
Which is precisely why I have dodged questions of what Dr. King, or others long gone, would say about any chapter of the American social experiment. Because we simply do not know. However, I have used much bandwidth absorbing MLK’s journey: His speeches and sermons, his interviews and writings, and endless essays, books, and documentaries produced about him.
Dr. King was not a perfect man, not by any stretch of the imagination. Indeed, he was a very human human being who did and dreamed extraordinary things. This is why I continue to do the lectures every year, why he matters deeply to me, especially now.
Because I am also clear I am a blessed beneficiary, due to Dr. King and game changers like Ella Baker, Fannie Lou Hamer, Bayard Rustin, Malcolm X, Rosa Parks, and countless others, known and unknown, alive or un-alived, who made the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s soar. An energy that transformed, so some thought, America and American democracy, for the better, for the wellness of us all.
I especially think of this when I consider my single mother, a poor Black woman from South Carolina, had her education cut short, because of the gruesome racism, sexism, and classism she endured as a product of segregated America prior to the Civil Rights era. I think of how I, her only child, became a first-generation college student because Tom Kean, a young and moderate white male Republican state assemblyman, born of lineage of privilege, and only in his first year of office, championed legislation in my home state of New Jersey—the Educational Opportunity Fund—which has sent thousands of poor kids like me to college. This bill was signed in July 1968, just months after the assassination of Dr. King in April, and the initiative still exists.
Tom Kean saw what was happening in America, what happened to Dr. King, to Bobby Kennedy Sr. two months later, and decided to do something—not for himself, not for his small circle or brand, but for his neighbors near and far. In 2018, at the 50th anniversary of the program, I was honored to be the keynote speaker. And there was Tom Kean, who had become a two-term Governor of New Jersey during my Rutgers University years. I said aloud how his empathy, compassion, and love transformed more lives than he could imagine, including mine.
It is that empathy, compassion, and love that propelled Dr. King, even in the face of boiling hate, hovering violence, and deafening opposition. I know America had evolved because of the Civil Rights Movement, a bit, and I wonder what the country would have been if that period never existed. But not in my gloomiest nightmares did I think I would be present in a place where the sheer cruelty my mother experienced in the 1940s and 1950s and 1960s would become my reality in this century. I feel, so many of us feel, like unrooted children.
But, alas, here we are. The small-minded will reduce it to Democrats versus Republicans, liberals or progressives versus conservatives or MAGA. No, it is much more profound than that. What we are talking about is what Dr. King spoke of frequently in the last days of his life: the very soul of America. Who are we as a society, and who do we actually want to be? Or do we care, and are, thus, willing to rip each other apart, over ideologies, over identities?
Or, rather, if the videotaped murder of George Floyd in Minnesota in these times was akin to the untaped slaughter of Emmett Till in Mississippi during Dr. King’s day, then the videotaped murder of Renee Nicole Good in Minnesota was akin to the untaped slaughter of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner in Mississippi during Dr. King’s day.
Black, white, Jewish, men, a poet-woman who was a lesbian, Americans each of them, same and different, innocent victims and people who were trying to disrupt injustice, gone, some killed for who they were, some killed because they cared.
Yet those of us with selective amnesia and inhumane indifference will say their lives were disposable, the way we dis the lives and histories of the Indigenous, first walkers of this land, or African Americans, builders of this nation with free, enslaved labor; and the way we turn our heads as modern-day immigrants trek in total terror of ICE, bodies snatched, families smashed by the same kind of masked men who killed my great-grandfather over one hundred years ago, and stole most of his land.
This is America Dr. King and others sacrificed their blood to make better. It is hypocritical, to be mad blunt, to celebrate Dr. King this year or any year, and not acknowledge how far backward we are racing, and not to own that democracy is not democracy until all have chance at full life possibilities, and it is not democracy if all of us do not live in peace to be whoever we are.
This is what I think about daily, what Dr. King said in his final year about community, or chaos. I choose community, I choose love, I choose hope, in spite of everything. Because I know what is possible from my own life, because my mother, nor I, never gave up, and we never will.
I love people, all people. Few things give me the joy I get from helping others, as a servant, and from telling the stories of all kinds of people, especially people who have been ignored, hurt, or forgotten. ~ Kevin
Kevin Powell has one of the most celebrated political, cultural, literary, and hip-hop voices in America. He is a prolific writer and a GRAMMY-nominated poet; Kevin is a heavily sought-after public speaker who has lectured in all 50 states and on five continents. A native son of Jersey City, New Jersey, the human and civil rights activist has been engaged with nearly every democratic movement of the latter 20th and early 21st centuries, either as a servant-leader, a behind-the-scenes advocate, or in leadership positions alongside fellow writers, artists, and change agents. In 2008 and 2010, Kevin ran for the United States Congress in his adopted hometown of Brooklyn, New York.
Kevin was raised by a single mother in abject poverty. At the tender age of three, his mom introduced him to the importance of reading, and that persistent encouragement propelled Kevin beyond his violent and impoverished surroundings. He enrolled at Rutgers University through the Educational Opportunity Fund, an initiative created during the Civil Rights Movement to benefit youth who otherwise lacked access to higher learning. At Rutgers, Kevin’s political education and activism blossomed. He reflects: “Just to be able to get to college, to be exposed to a new world, a new way, changed my life forever, and I am forever grateful.” It was at Rutgers that Kevin found his voice and his purpose, and since then Kevin’s writings, ranging from interviews, celebrity features, social commentary, poems, and blogs, have been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, New York Amsterdam News, CNN, NPR, ESPN, Essence, Ebony, Rolling Stone, Esquire, HuffPost, Utne Reader, The Guardian, Politico, The Progressive, Complex, British GQ, and other outlets.
As an author, Kevin has written 16 books, including Grocery Shopping with My Mother, his third volume of poetry; The Education of Kevin Powell, his critically acclaimed autobiography, which is being adapted for the screen; and his most recent title, The Kevin Powell Reader, which collects over 30 years of Kevin’s literary output. Currently, he is working on a biography of the iconic rapper and actor Tupac Shakur, whom he interviewed several times as a founding senior writer for Quincy Jones’ groundbreaking Vibe magazine.
A vegan, two-time New York City Marathon runner, bicyclist, skateboarder, student of yoga, avid hiker, and member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Kevin is a proud and long-time resident of Brooklyn, New York, and happily married to Evangeline Lawson, photographer, filmmaker, and writer.
Connect with Kevin Powell on YouTube, Instagram, X, Threads, Bluesky, and Facebook at @poetkevinpowell.
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