“I asked myself, What would King be doing if he were around today?” the San Francisco-based artist Mark Ulriksen says, about the civil-rights leader, the inspiration for this week’s cover. (The cover’s title draws from Martin Luther King, Jr.,’s 1964 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, in which he spoke of a “creative battle to end the long night of racial injustice.”) “This is 49er country, and my mom and I have been going back and forth—she’s upset that players have brought politics into sports, but I say, How would you feel if you had to show up at work every day and salute a country that treats black people like second-class citizens? I’m glad that Colin Kaepernick and Michael Bennett are making it political. I’m sure that if King were around today, he’d be disappointed at the slow pace of progress: two steps forward, twenty steps back. Or ten yards back, as the metaphor may be.”
Mark Ulriksen’s “In Creative Battle”
