Social movements receive cursory attention, usually highly misleading. The one that receives by far the most attention is the civil rights movement. There is even a national holiday in memory of Martin Luther King Jr. But it is instructive to see how it is handled.
The uplifting rhetoric on Martin Luther King Jr. Day typically reaches as far as his "I have a dream" speech at the huge demonstration in Washington in August 1963. But King did not terminate his activities then. He went on to become a prominent critic of the Vietnam War and to organize and support struggles for housing, workers' rights, and other popular needs in the North. He was assassinated in 1968 while supporting a garbage workers' strike, the day after he had delivered another memorable speech that is barely known. He was organizing a poor people's movement and another march on Washington to demand human and civil rights for all Americans, including Aboriginal and white Americans. None of this was tolerable to establishment liberalism. He was bitterly condemned for supposedly losing his way. It's fine to condemn racist Alabama sheriffs - but "not in my backyard." His major commitments are omitted from the schools and the media. Other movements fare similarly.
- Noam Chomsky in his foreword to Working Class History: Everyday Acts of Resistance & Rebellion, published 2020, page x.