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Amid today\'s global coronavirus pandemic, the widespread crash of the global economy, and insidious efforts of President Donald J Trump to undercut the American constitutional government to win by hook-or-crook the 2020 presidential election, it is difficult to imagine the prospects for a better, different, and more just world But it is possible Martin Luther King, Jr and his small band of close supporters saw hope in the spontaneous acts of many other African Americans to resist Jim Crow laws, voter suppression efforts, and racist abuse by white people during the 1950s and 1960s Believing that nonviolent protest to claim basic human rights is always possible, and sometimes can become transformative, King worked to make it real His oratory and writing in the post-1945 era of growing prosperity suggested it was not \'utopian\' for black Americans and other ethnic minorities to claim their rightful equality with whites in the United States (US) Rather it was a historical promise that had been suppressed by the power of established societies across the Deep South as well as the entire nation, but it still had to be made good through direct action in the streets, halls of government, and court houses across the country
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