In a new campaign ad, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden says that “Rioting is not protesting. Looting is not protesting. And those who do it should be prosecuted.” Last week, in a major campaign address in Pittsburgh, Biden hammered on the same point, declaring that looting is “wrong in every way . . . It makes things worse across the board, not better. No, it’s not what Dr King or John Lewis taught. And it must end.”
Martin Luther King Jr III offered a different view in a tweet earlier this year: “As my father explained during his lifetime, a riot is the language of the unheard.” A number of people felt they knew King’s father well enough to respond, tweeting that King père would never “condone the riots.” “Violence is not what he stood for.” After all, one tweeter noted, “he never once rioted.”
So what did King really think about riots? Is Biden on solid ground in invoking the great civil rights leader to have his Sister Souljah moment?
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