“I want to hear you say there should be peaceful protests, not violent protests, in the tradition of Martin Luther King,” CNN’s Wolf Blitzer lectured community activist Deray McKesson in a now infamous four-minute interview.
“You are suggesting that broken windows are worse than broken spines,” McKesson answered, contrasting property damage with the injuries that killed Freddie Gray in Baltimore police custody.
Jericho Brown, winner of an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award this year, recoiled at Blitzer’s distortion of King and decided to say so. His essay, “How Not to Interview Black People About Police Brutality,” is posted on the Poetry Foundation’s Harriet blog.
