America’s first out elected officials were two civil rights warriors you’ve probably never heard of
Three weeks before his assassination, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. arrived in the Detroit suburb of Grosse Pointe, Michigan to deliver what was to be one of the final public speeches of his life. Hundreds of people packed the gymnasium at the local high school to hear the civil rights icon speak. In the audience that night was an 18-year-old boy named Jerry DeGrieck. DeGrieck, already a longtime supporter of the Civil Rights Movement from an early age, was defying an edict from his avowedly racist parents prohibiting him from attending. DeGrieck’s presence that night, however, was not the only […]