MLK Was Corrupt, But America’s History is Filled with Black Heroes

Today is Martin Luther King, Jr. day. It has been corrupted by the radical left to try and play up the accusations of America as a racist country, and to push Marxist critical race theory, but even apart from that I’m going to make the controversial argument that Martin Luther King, Jr. is not the ideal representative of civil rights heroism in American history. There are few people more interested in exposing the truth of the racism of America’s past and in honoring black American heroes as I am, but I think as patriots we should take today to remember the numerous other unsung black heroes of American history, whose courage and virtue made this country what it is. You probably haven’t heard of many of them.

I wrote an article last summer for The Rogue Review about black American heroes of the Revolution. There are so many—including the black soldiers of Washington’s Indispensables and Immortals and the slave/spy Cato. But I focused on four in particular: Salem Poor and Peter Salem, soldier heroes of the Battle of Bunker Hill; Phillis Wheatley, the slave who became a Revolutionary Patriot poetess and America’s first published black author; and James Armistead Lafayette, the brilliant slave-turned-Patriot double agent whose spy work was so essential to the American Revolution’s success. 

There are so many others. Harriet Tubman, heroine of the Underground Railroad. Ida B. Wells, civil rights champion and fearless journalist. Booker T. Washington, former slave, educator, and moving orator. Augustus Tolton, America’s first black Catholic priest, who inadvertently ripped the mask off the false religiosity of so many racist “Christians.” Medgar Evers, the first state field secretary of the NAACP in Mississippi who was assassinated for his civil rights activism.  Samuel J. Lee, the former slave and outstanding attorney who served as the first black speaker of the South Carolina House (and sadly “lost” a congressional seat through fraud and cheating by racist Democrats).  Hattie McDaniel, the talented actress who was the first black Academy Award winner. Sidney Poitier, the first black actor to win the Best Actor Oscar. The all-black (including all-black officers) 370th Infantryin WWI, whose outstanding courage in battle earned them the nickname “Harlem Hellfighters” and the prestigious French military award, the Croix de Guerre.

There’s the Tuskegee Airmen, the first black U.S. military flying unit that won over 850 medals for their heroism.  Dorie Miller, the first black American awarded the Navy Cross. Clarence Thomas, the Supreme Court justice who has held the line on Constitutionality as so many of his fellow justices ignore or violate the Constitution shamelessly. I wish I had the space to tell their stories, and many others’, in detail. Frederick Douglass, escaped slave turned civil rights champion. George Washington Carver, scientist and inventor.