Martin Luther King's "I have a Dream" speech: What's up with the white hats?

[Cartooniverse]

Try telling that to the teeming millions *sic[/] if Orthodox Jews in NYC…

I’m with the Gandhi faction here, with the short-order cooks unionizing as my backup.

It’s not like it was a wood carving of a rally in Munich in 1409, people. Those steps were crammed with people. Can’t we find more than one cite?

I’m gonna write the NAACP right now to ask.

[dropzone]

@Cartooniverse

Try telling that to the teeming millions sic of Orthodox Jews in NYC…

Well, Orthodox Jews were never known for their fashion sense.

Okay, what this thread has produced is not a single reason for the white hats, but several reasons and several different hats. I’m going out on a limb to say that ALL of these hypotheses are true.

[Acsenray]

King’s nonviolent movement was strongly associated with Gandhi-ism and the use of the Gandhi cap. There’s no reason to believe it’s anything else.

Washington Post, February 2009:

A few Indian college students gathered around a photograph of King Jr. giving the “I Have a Dream” speech. The photo showed two African American men wearing white, pointed caps in the style of Gandhi.

A Turn in the South by V.S. Naipaul:

The walls of the inner office were hung with many big black-and-white photographs of the civil-rights marches: . . . But the most moving photographs were those that stressed simpler things: . . . like the Gandhi cap and the homespun of India.

Let the Trumpet Sound: The Life of Martin Luther King Jr. by Stephen B. Oates:

In the days that followed, King toured New Delhi in a Gandhi cap …

“I have a dream …,” The Hindu, August 2013:

It was a time for change to ‘rise from the quick sand of racial injustices’, proclaimed in front of the statue of Abraham Lincoln, who fought the first war against slavery. The sea of thousands of men and women, many wearing Gandhi caps, influenced by the Mahatma’s struggle for human rights; independence through non-violence as a world truth.

[John_Mace]

Because they go so well with a Nehru jacket?

[omni-not]

Odd that this should come up because every time I see the clip, first thing that comes to mind is to think of the guy standing right behind MLK as that ‘Pizza Delivery Guy’