Last weekend, on the 53rd anniversary of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King's last speech ("I've been to the mountaintop!"), I posted a video of that speech on Facebook. I was immediately banned from posting on Facebook, and my account deactivated, for thirty days for violations of "community standards."
This is not a rare piece of video. I have posted it a half-dozen or more times in the last decade or so, and I've seen it posted elsewhere on social media. Facebook said it was in violation of copyright law, and I responded that, being an educator, I was claiming fair use as a rationale for posting it. That didn't seem to matter, and I now have 28 days to sit quietly in the corner.
In fact, I believe it was my commentary on the video that got me in (good) trouble. The post is gone now so I can't remember precisely what I said, but it was something very much like this:
53 years ago today, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his last speech to striking sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee. He told them that he had "been to the mountaintop" and had seen "the promised land," and he promised them that they would too.
The next day he was murdered.
Here is that video.
So maybe, just maybe, if you're reading this post and watching this video you'll feel like reposting it to one of your social media sites, like Twitter -- or Facebook. And then please tell the nice folks at Facebook how sorry I am for violating their "community standards."
