When President Trump delivered his inauguration speech a 12 months in the past right now, he thanked the Black group for supporting his 2024 re-election marketing campaign and instructed them, “I can’t neglect it.”
Although solely 13% of Black voters supported him over Kamala Harris, Trump invoked the Black group’s most luminary determine, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., vowing that within the civil rights chief’s “honor,” his new administration would “try collectively to make his dream a actuality.”
A 12 months later, Black leaders say Trump’s presidency has been something however finishing up MLK’s dream, which King described as an “oasis of freedom and justice” in his well-known “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963. The truth is, they are saying Trump’s insurance policies have performed the exact opposite, reversing a long time of progress for civil rights and voting rights in America.
“Donald Trump and Martin Luther King, Jr. should not have the identical imaginative and prescient for this nation. They don’t have the identical imaginative and prescient for the individuals of this nation,” stated Jamarr Brown, a Democratic strategist who beforehand served as govt director of the racial justice group Colour of Change PAC.
He instructed theGrio, “Dr. King gave his life, fairly frankly, to be able to make sure that individuals had civil protections; the appropriate to vote, the appropriate to obtain an schooling, the appropriate to make a good wage, proper to work. And we’ve seen Donald Trump do the precise reverse.”
Brown famous that Trump has labored to scale back funding from public colleges and HBCUs, and most notably roll again variety, fairness and inclusion packages that personal firms and organizations throughout the nation started to roll it again consequently.
Throughout a two-hour press briefing on the White Home marking his first 12 months again in workplace, Trump touted his variety rollbacks, regardless of his agenda resulting in Black unemployment skyrocketing to its highest ranges because the COVID-19 pandemic and threatening current document development for Black companies and Black wealth.
“We ended the world lunacy and restored widespread sense, abolished all discriminatory variety, fairness and inclusion, DEI insurance policies, all through the federal authorities and the personal sector,” stated Trump, who added, “Thank God.”
Regardless of Trump’s declare that he would use his time in workplace to advance MLK’s dream, which included true social and financial justice for Black Individuals, King’s personal kids say they see nothing in his insurance policies that replicate their father’s beliefs.
In July 2025, Trump signed into regulation the One, Massive, Stunning Invoice Act, which makes historic cuts to Medicaid and SNAP, which Black and underserved communities disproportionately depend on–all to cowl Trump’s $4.5 trillion tax cuts that consultants say will largely profit the rich and companies.
“It’s in regards to the authorities for all individuals, not only for one group of individuals, not simply the wealthy people,” stated Martin Luther King III, who referred to as out Trump’s $2 billion cuts to psychological well being funding, which the president in the end reversed after backlash.
“I don’t perceive that. How did you abandon these companies?” King instructed theGrio.
The chairman of the Drum Main Institute stated the nation is “shedding our humanity,” including, “That won’t serve anybody nicely, and particularly us. We received to re-employ and re-engage and reassert humanity. As a result of after we try this…It’s true when higher, you sort of do higher.” He added, “Perhaps individuals don’t actually know as a result of they solely listening in their very own little silo and you bought to broaden that. And so a part of our process is to create the local weather for enlargement.”
Dr. King’s daughter, Bernice King, was extra pointed in her criticisms of the Trump administration. Whereas delivering marks commemorating the King federal vacation on Monday, Dr. King’s youngest daughter blasted the president for his current remarks suggesting that the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which her father’s activism helped get handed into regulation, led to the discrimination of white individuals.
“It rewrites historical past in a means that fuels worry and resentment. My father and so many leaders of the motion…didn’t threat their lives to divide this nation,” stated King, who serves as CEO of The King Heart. “They did so as a result of America was denying tens of millions primary rights, the appropriate to work, the appropriate to vote, to stay the place they please, to maneuver by means of society with dignity.”
Rejecting Trump’s politics of white grievance on the expense of racial justice, Bernice King stated, “The Civil Rights Act didn’t give Black individuals particular therapy. It made discrimination unlawful. The identical discrimination you’re attempting to show round and use.”
Regardless of the rollbacks which have jeopardized the progress for Black Individuals made attainable by King and numerous different civil rights leaders, the youngest King little one stated adamantly, “We’re not going backwards.”
