During Sunday night’s Super Bowl, you may have seen an ad for Dodge Ram trucks encouraging people to do community service — along with the video were audio clips from a Martin Luther King, Jr. speech from fifty years ago; but there’s been a push-back against using the words of a man who spoke out against consumerism in an ad for a truck company.
On Twitter, the King Center wrote, “Neither @TheKingCenter nor @BerniceKing is the entity that approves the use of #MLK’s words or imagery for use in merchandise, entertainment (movies, music, artwork, etc) or advertisement, including tonight’s @Dodge #SuperBowl commercial.”
Bernice King also posted the full speech from which the clips were taken (see below). It’s known as the Drum Major Instinct speech from fifty years ago, February 4, 1968.
In it, King say buying an expensive care is just feeding a repressed ego. We took calls from listeners who had something to say about using King’s words in an ad to sell automobiles.
Listen to the show here:
Listen to the full King speech in this Tweet by Bernice King:
Here is #DrumMajorInstinct in its entirety. Learn about #MLK from him. Please listen to/read his speeches, sermons and writings. Understand his comprehensive teachings and his global perspective. Study his nonviolent philosophy. It’s more than a tactic. https://t.co/56fiF8r6iP
— Be A King (@BerniceKing) February 5, 2018
The rest of the show was about Leonard Peltier.
