River Towers Senior Apartments, one of the largest senior communities in the City of Detroit that is active in civic engagements, and which houses 430 elderly residents will host a special Martin Luther King Jr. Day Celebration on Thursday, Jan. 15, to mark the actual birthday of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Bankole Thompson, a nationally acclaimed Detroit journalist, standard-bearer for racial and economic justice issues and the inspiration behind the anti-poverty think tank, The PuLSE Institute, will serve as the keynote speaker for the celebration which will be held in the River Towers Community Room from 6pm-9pm.
Kenneth Kabaka Reynolds, the president of the River Towers Tenant Council Inc., said the invitation for Thompson to serve as the keynote speaker for the Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration is because of his history of fighting for equality and championing issues impacting the African American community.
“Bankole Thompson has been the voice of those that have no voice. Most importantly, he has no fear and that’s a unique quality to have when you are on the frontlines of the battle for justice. Hopefully, the creator will keep him around for a long time,” Reynolds said. “Our brother has been writing about the horrors of what goes on with what some call the downtrodden of our society and I’m putting seniors in that category. You can judge any society by the way it takes care of its children and senior citizens.”
Reynolds said given the dispensation that Blacks are currently living in, it is important to ensure that the history of civil rights is not wiped away and that the gains of the six decades are not lost. He recalled his own childhood being raised in Detroit.
“Personally, as I was growing up, I was raised in the church. My stepfather was the chairman of the deacon board of Warren Avenue Missionary Baptist church for 36 years. Sometimes me and my other four siblings would be at early morning service at 7AM and wouldn’t get back home until 6PM in the evening only to have to go into the family room and listen to Dr. King on the radio,” Reynolds said. “Being young I didn’t understand what my father was doing for us back then. Now I know that he was planting seeds and he was the master gardener for making sure that we understood the struggles that our parents and their parents as well as our ancestors were fighting and dying for and making sure that we understood that each and everyone of us will inherit the same things that our ancestors encountered because THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES.”
Thompson, whose latest and fifth book, Fiery Conscience, captures his decades of speaking truth to power, has long been a champion for seniors and giving voice to the challenges that Detroit’s elderly community has been facing especially in the wake of the city’s historic 2013 municipal bankruptcy.
For example, in 2017, he convened and moderated a special town hall in the city attended by hundreds of senior citizens that focused on the aftermath of the bankruptcy and how many in Detroit’s retirement community are still dealing with issues of unaffordable health insurance and other forms of critical care that they need to survive in an unpredictable economy.
“I’m honored to join a community of senior citizens at the River Towers to observe the birthday of Dr. King. The sacrifices of Detroit’s senior citizens in getting us this far must never be forgotten,” Thompson said. “Their wisdom is even needed now more than ever especially at a time when we seem to be wallowing in the corridors of inequality with no exit sign.”
Thompson added, “This is a time to stand and be counted so that generations from now can look back at this time and said we did not look the other way when it mattered most and when it was time to champion the vexing issue of economic justice.”
Thompson is the host of the podcast, Bankole’s Nation. He is a twice-a-week opinion columnist at The Detroit News, where his column on the presidency, public leadership and socioeconomic issues appear on Mondays and Thursdays.
He is a member of the National Press Club of Washington D.C. One of the first Black editors in the nation to conduct a series of exclusive sit-down interviews with former President Barack Obama, Thompson, is the former longtime editor of the Michigan Chronicle which he helmed for almost a decade.
Thompson is also a sought-after multidimensional speaker who has appeared before leading institutions in the country.
In 2022, he was the keynote speaker for Brown University Forum on Race and Democracy: Why Major Institutions Must Address the Fierce Urgency of Racial Justice, during which Brown President Christina Paxson delivered the welcome and closing remarks.
In 2020, he delivered the 20th Keynote Lecture for the Annual Dr. William G. Anderson Lecture Series, Slavery to Freedom: An American Odyssey at Michigan State University, whose previous speakers included civil rights heroes John Lewis and Harry Belafonte.
In 2012, Thompson accepted the invitation of the American Jewish Committee (Detroit Region), the first global Jewish organization to engage Germany after the Holocaust, to serve as the keynote speaker for its Annual Distinguished Leadership Dinner. That same year, Nancy Schlichting, the then President and CEO of Henry Ford Health System, invited Thompson to give the keynote address for the health system’s MLK Day Celebration.
He was a speaker at the 2011 Federal Bench and Bar Conference for the Eastern District of Michigan as well as the 2010 Congressional Black Caucus Annual Legislative Conference among others.
But Thompson’s work on civil rights and economic justice issues has not gone unnoticed at the highest levels of the nation’s civil rights leadership.
In 2023, Rev. Dr. Bernard LaFayette Jr., a veteran civil rights leader and one of the last remaining and trusted top lieutenants of Dr. King, who served as the National Coordinator of the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign and was a co-founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), appointed Thompson to serve on the National Board of Directors of the historic Atlanta-based Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), where LaFayette currently serves as the Board Chairman.
SCLC is the signature civil rights organization that Dr. King founded and served as its first president and which played a major role in the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
LaFayette, whom Dr. King chose to initiate the historic voting rights campaign in Selma, the cradle of the Civil Rights Movement, has long admired and lauded Thompson’s work on the political and cultural landscape over the years and has been a mentor and a very close friend to the journalist. In naming Thompson to the SCLC National Board, to help guide the flagship organization that embodies Dr. King’s enduring legacy, he became the first journalist in American history to serve on the decision-making body of the group that Dr. King infused his personal legacy into.
Thompson’s work has been praised for its boldness and courage.
“Around the country we look at issues affecting Black people in Michigan through Bankole Thompson’s journalism. The decision of the SCLC to invite someone with a proven track record of speaking truth to power as well as possessing a deeper commitment to civil rights to sit on its board, is a win for all those who want to see an end to racial injustice. Such a decision upholds the legacy of Dr. King,” said Jim Vincent, the former president of the Providence Branch of the NAACP in Rhode Island, who invited Thompson in 2011 to serve as the keynote speaker for the Providence NAACP 98th Freedom Fund Dinner.
Former White House spokesman Robert S. Weiner has followed Thompson’s work.
“Bankole Thompson has written so well on the subject of race, poverty, and inequality and will help the enormously significant SCLC platform to continue his own work. The Nation thanks him for what he does, and SCLC is extremely well served to have him. What a terrific choice made by the eminent Dr. Bernard LaFayette Jr,” Weiner said.
Thompson’s work continues to serve as a national model in the arena of media and social transformation. From using his multimedia platforms to champion issues of economic justice to serving as speaker and moderator at prominent forums, his work reflects the speaking truth to power legacy of the 19th century abolitionist Frederick Douglass.
To contact Bankole Thompson, email bankole@bankolethompson.com. For his work at The PuLSE Institute, email info@thepulseinstitute.org
