#ORGANIZEBALTIMORE or #MORERIOTS

Marilyn Mosby.  Stephanie Rawlings-Blake.  Caesar R. Goodson Jr.  Garrett E. Miller. Edward M. Nero.  William G. Porter.  Brian W. Rice.  Alicia D. White.  …These are the names you need to be familiar with surrounding the killing of Freddie Gray and pending federal investigation of the Baltimore PD.

So you’re probably wondering why an educator would bring up such a nasty incident of police brutality and subsequent rioting on a blog about education, music, and gaming.  Well, maybe it’s a music thing:  the legendary Prince is releasing a new song and holding a peace rally in Baltimore on May 10^th--- my birthday!! :-D

…Nah, that’s not the reason I’m writing this.  Would’ve been a good excuse, though :-\

Dr. King as a Mild Sedative in the Classroom (No School Nurse Needed)

…I’ve always known we’ve done a poor job of teaching Black history, but as of the last few days it’s so clear to me why history classrooms reference Dr. Martin Luther King almost as if he’s the only significant civil rights activist.  It’s not because of his effectiveness; truthfully speaking, if we wanna talk about effectiveness, we’d do better to talk about the brilliant organizer A. Philip Randolph who, behind the scenes, made that fateful marching day and so many others possible.  Or, we’d talk more about Thurgood Marshall, who won the cases and made the rulings that secured our futures on paper and not just in romantic demonstrations. 

Nope.  We don’t teach Dr. King because of his effectiveness; we teach Dr. King because it’s our way of protecting the status quo.  Our way of reminding the actors in the civil rights stage play of their ‘proper roles’.  “Okay, this is our routine, guys:  we do the brutalizing, and you sit there and take it and catch us on camera, then you give the powerful speech, and that’ll bring the change.”