By Jill Yesko , University Relations
Contact (336) 334-3890
Posted: 2-19-07
GREENSBORO, N.C. – Dr. Thomas Jackson, associate professor of history, has been awarded the Liberty Legacy Foundation Award for his recently published book “From Civil Rights to Human Rights: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Struggle for Economic Justice.”
The award is sponsored by the Organization of American Historians and is given annually to the best book on any historical aspect of the struggle for Civil Rights in the United States from its founding to the present.
“Past recipients of this award have all focused on rich local contexts of social struggle”" Jackson said. “I endeavored to follow in their footsteps, so we could more fully understand the social movement and radical traditions that gave rise to this famous charismatic leader, who is usually written about in narrowly biographical or political contexts.”
While King’s words such as his iconic “I Have a Dream Speech” are well chronicled, less well-remembered is his non-violent opposition to the Vietnam War and visit to India to study the teachings of Mohandas Ghandi along with King's early opposition to militarism.
“At his most radical, King charged that the U.S. military was simply a tool of American corporate interests abroad,” Jackson said. “America's and Vietnam's poor suffered terribly as a result.”
King believed that economic security was the key to peace the world over, Jackson notes.
“The lessons of Dr. King are important only if we understand how he spoke not just as an inspiring visionary or tactician of protest, but as a political leader whose defeats sometimes overshadowed his successes,” Jackson said.
Jackson holds a PhD in U.S. history from Stanford University. He was a visiting scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation and the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities at the University of Virginia.
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