Black Agenda Radio - 06.10.19

Welcome to the radio magazine that brings you news, commentary and analysis from a Black Left perspective. I’m Glen Ford, along with my co-host Nellie Bailey. Coming up: India will soon be the most populous nation in the world, but what role will it play global affairs, and how has India figured in the African American liberation movement? And, why do preachers figure so highly in the African American freedom struggle? We’ll hear from the author of a new book on social gospel activism.

Reparations has become an issue in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. The main organization that has kept the demand for Black American reparations alive is N’COBRA, the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America, which is holding its 30th annual convention in Detroit, June 20th through the 23rd. Kam Howard is the National Male Co-Chair of N’Cobra.

The students, teachers and activists of the Philadelphia Saturday Free School spent much of last year immersing themselves and the entire city in the life and works of the great scholar, WEB DuBois. This time, the Free School is celebrating the “Year of Gandhi,” the Indian activist and philosopher. Dr. Anthony Montiero, the Duboisian scholar, says the Saturday Free School will kick off the year-long activities at Philadelphia’s Church of the Advocate, on June 14th and 15th.

The Black struggle in the United States cannot be understood without an examination of the role of ministers of the “social gospel, personified in modern times by the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  Garry Dorrien is a professor of Social Ethics at Union Theological Seminary, in New York City, and author of the book, “Breaking White Supremacy: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Black Social Gospel.” Professor Dorrien says Dr. King’s civil rights work in the Fifties and Sixties was rooted in previous generations of Black social gospel activism.