MLK speech used in truck ad railed against consumerism and ads

Share

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:

The rest of the show was about Leonard Peltier.

 

Leave a Reply

  • (will not be published)

XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

You may also like

student meal
Next school year Hillsborough public schools are offering free meals

Hillsborough Public Schools are offering students free meals for the...

Correspondence Through Poetry. A Mind-Numbing Week.

Father Verses Sons: A Correspondence in Poems by Herbert Gold...

The sound of change: Music’s influence on anti-war and human rights movements

Throughout history, music has served as a powerful catalyst for...

a man in a tye dye shirt talking on a radio microphone
Recreational pot for Florida is on the ballot this fall—let’s talk about it

In four months, Florida voters have the opportunity to vote...

Ways to listen

WMNF is listener-supported. That means we don't advertise like a commercial station, and we're not part of a university.

Ways to support

WMNF volunteers have fun providing a variety of needed services to keep your community radio station alive and kickin'.

Follow us on Instagram

Sloughbirn
Player position: