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GUEST: Michael Eric Dyson, Professor of Sociology at Georgetown University and author of several books including “April 4, 1968: Martin Luther King Jr.’s Death and How it Changed America”

Barack Obama’s former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, confronted the recent controversy over his past sermons at the National Press Club in Washington DC yesterday. Clips from Wright’s sermons have been used in Republican commercials that try to paint Obama as unpatriotic. But now Wright is fighting back. In his spirited rebuttal of the Republican Party and mainstream media’s depiction of him, he contended that the attacks on him were really attacks on Black religious tradition and the Black church. Wright, who himself served six years in the military, shot back at accusations of being anti-patriotic by asking how many years Vice President Dick Cheney served in the military. Meanwhile, as if to prove Wright’s point about injustice against Black America, last week a New York judge acquitted three detectives in the shooting death of Sean Bell, a Black man who was killed in a hail of 50 bullets in 2006. Outraged Black New Yorkers marched in protest while Reverend Al Sharpton has vowed to fight the judge’s decision. Presidential candidate Barack Obama, in response to a question about the verdict, called Bell’s death a “tragedy” but that the judge’s verdict must be respected.

For more information, visit www.michaelericdyson.com.