Martin Luther King Birthday and the Civil Rights Movement

In my Public Policy textbook I cite the civil rights movement as perhaps the most important social movement of the 20th century. With that in mind, this interesting article from the Raleigh News and Observer provides some context in North Carolina. These sort of stories are, of course, very common around the Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday, but the accumulation of these stories is a worthwhile way for younger people to learn about this movement, and for older people to remember their roles, however big or small, in that movement.

Indeed, the struggle to make MLK's birthday a national holiday would, itself, be an interesting case study. I will see if I can find a good treatment of this debate.

Why most journalism is poor evidence

In most cases, I don't accept newspapers as sources in my students' analytic work. This article from Slate, on the Washington Post's coverage of the local drug problem, reveals why. I would accept journalism as an example of how journalism tends to dramatize problems with little or no context, but, as this Slate article suggests, most daily journalism is not a reliable source of actual facts or data. It is said that "journalism is the rough draft of history," but in this Washington Post case, it's very rough indeed. Of course, I would accept this Post article as an example of the problems of daily journalism.