The Martin Luther King Thread

Because we don't have one.

And because I want to relate that when my wife taught her kindergarten class about King, and about the fact that he had been killed, the reactions included,

"I saw that plane"

"Obama died?"

and

"He's a mummy!"

"I saw that plane" ??????

mysterious

The plane that crashed in the Hudson.

way to go, kindergartners.

Taylor Branch last year, still on point:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/06/opinion/06branch.html

You all know that Martin Luther King was a womanizer, right?

ahoy! to the challops thread!

http://www.shinyshiny.tv/penis%20car.JPG

King was a womanizer

We have J. Edgar Hoover to thank for this piece of sleaze getting into the public eye, and we all know how lovely J-Eddie looked in a girdle, lipstick and pillbox hat, don't we?

You all know that Martin Luther King was a womanizer, right?

― Lord Byron Lived Here, Sunday, January 18, 2009 6:09 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

should we try and guess what controversial regular this must be

having sex with lots of bitches just ups his esteem in my eyes

My 12 grade Participation in Government class liked to bring the womanizing bit up a lot.

I'm also trying to remember if he said King was a Communist, too.

Inappropriate. Does this person even read?

And do you guys know that Dr. King would have been against affirmative action? That's right! He wanted to be judged on the content of his character, not the color of his skin. QED!

That stuff comes from people who get their information from news soundbites.

Hey, King said it, not me!

I think (hope) you are being sarcastic. Otherwise this sort of stuff hurts people and is disrespectful toward people for whom Dr. King is very important.

I am being sarcastic but sadly the likes of Charles Krauthammer et al are not.

CNN Polls be grim:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/01/19/king.poll/index.html

" The poll found 69 percent of blacks said King's vision has been fulfilled in the more than 45 years since his 1963 "I have a dream" speech -- roughly double the 34 percent who agreed with that assessment in a similar poll taken last March."

LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL

(I had something snarky lined up along the lines of '...just goes to show who does and doesn't know what MLK's dream is' or '...tell that to the mexican dudes in Long Island who were murdered in December because they were mexican' but it seemed too obvious...)

It does seem like we got James Brown's Funky President, however.

The average black person's "69%" might not mean the same thing as a white person's "69%". The way white people defensively use this stuff makes my skin crawl. Get over your discomfort with black people already.

Sorry, I didn't mean it to sound like I'm directing my sentiments at anyone on THIS board. I mean, like, people in the media or people who go on and on about race without much of a personal investment in it.

In any case, I'd rather read something positive or inspiring on this day than a bunch of negativity. It just seems that when race relations are brought up on the internet, we get a bunch of negativity or "debates". What about positive things that black people do? Or inspiring stories of change? Change doesn't happen unless we acknowledge that it happens. Positivity doesn't grow unless we are willing to see it. I hate to see cynicism associated with something as globally relevant as the Civil Rights Movement.

Not directed to anyone personally here, of course.

A day for nonviolence

http://blogs.citypages.com/pscholtes/2009/01/a_day_for_nonvi.php

I accuse Pete of being the Taylor Branch street team

links are awesome btw

I'll join a Taylor Branch street team, the three volume bio is amazing.

I can't make up my mind which factor has improved race relations in the US more: school desegregation or African-Americans getting full access to the ballot. I suspect the latter is uppermost, since so many other power issues flow outward from there.

MLKjr was the spearhead, but today is a good day to remember the mass of people, mainly black but also white, who were the spear. Same with Obama. He had (and has) many millions behind him, making a tailwind.

just saw the 1970 "King" docfilm by Ely Landau, which is tremendously moving AND instructive with its footage of white ethnic Chicagoans being just as vile as Old Confederacy racists.

How do you know they were "white ethnics"? This is a horrible stereotype that has done a lot of damage to innocent Catholics who supported Dr. King.

(I remember those people, and they weren't all that "ethnic", so....)

Like I said, discussions like this always drift into negativity.

Guys, let's put aside our differences for a moment and reflect on the idea of a mummy Martin Luther King terrorizing us all for disturbing his tomb...

u s steel, see the film and tell me I'm wrong. Blue-collar home-owning Chicagoans in '67 weren't mostly WASPs. There's a nun interviewed during the March on Washington, so I hope that balances the Catholic thing out for you.

Io9 has a neat little piece about MLK in science fiction

Did you live in Chicago during that period? Your generalizations are extremely hurtful toward MY RELATIVES from the south side who grieved for Dr. King. Are you implying that WASPs or affluent assimilated types are superior? That is what racists do. I would get off this aggressive line of yours. I find it vaguely threatening.

I guess humanity and compassion isn't part of your self-righteous agenda.

http://www.charliedigital.com/content/binary/comment-friday-damn.jpg

? Nobody is making any universal condemnations. And I hope you're taking the piss.

You are, too. When I attended Northwestern, smug affluent north siders - who never sacrificed a thing for desegregation or equal rights - had the same attitude toward ME, because I was a blue-collar "white ethnic".

You haven't explained to me where your experience comes from, other than a movie.

I find it disturbing and exclusionary that you are unwilling to listen to anyone but yourself.

OK, joke's over

Trying to make this less adversarial - I'm not trying to deny that those people were around in large numbers, I had to deal with quite a few myself growing up. But a lot of frustration we had when I was a kid in the seventies was with people who didn't want to "get involved" or who avoided the subject of race, who didn't want to take any risks, or who just did what they were "told".

My only point is that bigotry, in my experience, isn't confined to a particular region, class or "ethnicity".

way to go thread!!

interesting thread...

happy MLK day! i want to read some MLK today, what are your favorite essays/speeches/letters of his? he really was a superb writer, something that (understandably) isn't often mentioned

there's an 'autobiography' that some scholars assembled from his private and public papers; don't know how it's considered.

I was just thinking about his Letter from Birmingham Jail earlier today.

never forget

http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/perlsteins-greatest-hits-6-conservatives-and-martin-luther-king

wish every self-styled 'real conservative' who goes on about the wisdom and forbearance of william f buckley would be forced to read that article.

I was just thinking about his Letter from Birmingham Jail earlier today.

― nah (crüt), Monday, January 16, 2012 1:42 PM (2 hours ago)

yeah this is just a breathtaking piece of work, the thing that made me really go "wow this dude can WRITE"

just got back from our local mlk march, v civil, almost solemn tne

TONE

Good piece on King's fight for sanitation workers in Memphis and the Poor Peoples' Campaign.

Need to ready Taylor Branch's bio.

have you read any bios?

who -- me?

yes you

yeah this is just a breathtaking piece of work, the thing that made me really go "wow this dude can WRITE"

― tebow gotti (k3vin k.), Monday, 16 January 2012 21:09 (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

feel like i'm jumping in to see your praise & raise you hyperbole but yeah i think this is one of the greatest things ever written; seem to recall one of the two lawyers who were fighting the recent Californian gay marriage case calling it one of the best documents humankind has produced. it's also very romantic to be able to suffix this guy can write w/'-in the margins of spare newspaper pages while in prison'. his supreme patience, perfervid desire to actually connect, & willingness to engage with people whose acts ought by any logic ought not to have been dignified with a response, is inspirational.

in case anyone never read it

http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html

i'm reading the "autobiography" right now and it's good! straight from the man himself

Nope, kev! I've been lazy about reading the Branch one.

schlump otm

tangentially related, today the rainbow center at my school screened a doc about this guy (http://rustin.org/); couldn't catch it, but i'm gonna check for a book on him from the library. seems like a bro

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/rfk-announcing-death-of-martin-luther.html

The Taylor Branch books are my favorite books about anything ever.

mlk3 spoke in SA, we had over 100k march again this year
proud of my city

holy shit at the us steel vs. morbs upthread

I'm on the fence about every use of Dr. King's image these days. I think that there are a lot of issues he would weigh in on, but probably not clearly aligned with a lot of groups that exist in 2012. I also think that people think "if he were alive today, he would.." while thinking of him the way he was when he was assassinated, but.. he'd be over 40 years older!

yeah -- "If he were alive" questions are deadwood.

http://i.imgur.com/ms3AB.png

Papa John's is one to talk about longevity and quality.

lol

Dennis Perrin ‏@DennisThePerrin
Isn't it cute when liberals try to drag radical visionaries down to their level?

cute as a button

Would we be calling MLK a sellout by now, had he not been killed?

not if he was marching against Bam today, no

what are the chances that you think that would happen morbs

good

he marched "against" LBJ

ghost MLK actually likes drones, hate you tell you, morbs

but the beauty is WE'LL NEVER KNOW

bye

(Bam will live to be 90 on the Supreme Court, bcz the good die young)

Isn't it cute when Morbs tries to drag radical visionaries down to his level?

if hilter were alive today he would support obama

I am basing this off a hitler personality model that I have constructed w/ a huge set of hitler data

he would love obama

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbABaBFfo9k

I believe all people are nice, even thought they get mad sometimes. My personal hero is someone who never got mad, who always turned the other cheek: the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

just seems sort of crass to imply what a dead person would do or think, instead of saying that you found them inspirational and this is what /you/ think, partially due to their influence

last I checked MLK Jr. had a daughter who's using her name to advocate against rights for gay people

kids are the worst.

itt white people speculate on the potential futures of america's civil rights greats

As they do.

https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/601251_10151623235194056_1126994918_n.jpg

via Pee-Wee Herman, of course

i remember my HS history teacher telling us he thought MLK would've eventually run for president had he lived. i think the odds of that were pretty low but tbh i wish i lived in the parallel universe where it happened.

US Air Force:

"Dr. King would be proud to see our Global Strike team - comprised of Airmen, civilians and contractors from every race, creed, background and religion - standing side-by-side ensuring the most powerful weapons in the US arsenal remain the credible bedrock of our national defense. . . Our team must overlook our differences to ensure perfection as we maintain and operate our weapon systems. . . Maintaining our commitment to our Global Strike team, our families and our nation is a fitting tribute to Dr. King as we celebrate his legacy."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/22/martin-luther-king-military-weapons

went to a screening of 'king: a filmed record' tonight. easily one of the best documentaries i've ever seen -- a fucking incredible experience.

really, like, if you're a human being, you gotta see this.

I have seen it. Coulda done w/out the actor readings, though.

Would we be calling MLK a sellout by now, had he not been killed?

― mh, Monday, January 21, 2013 11:11 AM (7 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

not if he was marching against Bam today, no

― saltwater incursion (Dr Morbius), Monday, January 21, 2013 11:12 AM (7 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

what are the chances that you think that would happen morbs

― iatee, Monday, January 21, 2013 11:12 AM

maybe not good; he'd be in Guantanamo

Poor hypothetical 84-year-old political prisoner.

Anyone seen the documentary Eyes on the Prize? Made by PBS in 1987 when most of the participants were alive.

Yeah, I remember that being pretty great. Wasn't someone supposed to do Parting the Waters, or did that happen already?

of course i saw eyes on the prize! i'd like to see it again though, that was a long time ago. it's REALLY weird to think that more time has passed since that documentary was aired than had passed between it and the events it was talking about.

It works in part because it's a 6-hour series (and only covers up to '65).

I've checked out the first two parts. An excellent companion to the Taylor Branch books.

There's an Eyes On The Prize II that goes to the 1970s (I think). Long unavailable, though. First aired in 1988.

agreed about the actor readings -- pretty dated and kinda embarrassing.

I'd like to see all the footage of King speaking and marching that is extant. Filmed Record has that angry white Chicago mob in it, right?

Speaking of actors, Variety piece on the showbiz contingent at the March.

The 50 or so actors and performers who attended — Sammy Davis Jr., Marlon Brando, Lena Horne, James Garner, Charlton Heston, Gregory Peck, Paul Newman, Sidney Poitier, Diahann Carroll to name a few — were “partly responsible for bringing a relaxed and peaceful ‘county fair’ mood to the huge demonstration,” as Variety’s Mike Mosettig, then just 21 years old, wrote. But Mosettig, now a producer for PBS, also noted that Harry Belafonte, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, read a statement from the show biz that warned of “artistic sterility” if all Americans aren’t given freedom and discrimination didn’t come to an end. Without that, Belafonte read, “growth of the artist is seriously menaced.”

...Garner, in his autobiography, said that the FBI called each celebrity one by one the night before, warning them to stay away, “saying they couldn’t guarantee our safety.”

There also was disagreement among the show biz contingent on exactly what they should do and say once they got there. Before they left Los Angeles on a chartered plane, Garner wrote, then Screen Actors Guild president Heston presided over a planning meeting where Brando held up a cattle prod that had been used against demonstrators in Gadsden, Alabama.

“Marlon wanted us to chain ourselves to the Lincoln Memorial,” Garner wrote. “Chuck didn’t like that. He said we should play by the rules and threatened to bail out of the march if we did any ‘militant’ stuff. Marlon shut up and we did it Chuck’s way.”...

Josephine Baker “disavowed for one day her pledge never to return to the U.S. and flew in from Paris,” Variety reported. Wearing a blue uniform of the free French, she praised the racially mixed crowd for being “together as salt and pepper just as you should be. You are a unified people at last.” Dick Gregory quipped to the estimated 200,000 gathered, “The last time I saw this many of us, Bull Connor was doing all the talking.”

http://variety.com/2013/voices/columns/when-marlon-brando-marched-with-charlton-heston-how-variety-covered-the-march-on-washington-1200589376/

http://www.smh.com.au/ffximage/2008/04/06/heston_brando_gallery__589x400.jpg

Garner, in his autobiography, said that the FBI called each celebrity one by one the night before, warning them to stay away, “saying they couldn’t guarantee our safety.”

lolololololol

Filmed Record has that angry white Chicago mob in it, right?

yes -- one of the most chilling things i've ever seen. there's a clip from MLK saying it's worse than anything he encountered in the south.

nippers like me should watch this meet the press clip to have it brought home just how condescendingly concern-trolling the enlightened yankees were re: MLK; every single question (that isn't about noted COMMIE! bayard rustin) is about how Well Don't You Think There's Likely To Be A Lot Of Violence? Don't You Think You're Pushing Too Hard? Shouldn't You Allow The Country Time To Get Used To The Advances We've Already Made?

I wonder if they called James Baldwin... xxp

Haven't watched it yet but there's a CBS roundtable at the end of the Variety page.

Liberals this week have been particularly good at noting the bad faith and cowardice of their white predecessors.

Chris Hayes a few days ago too

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/30/a-colored-mans-constitution/?_r=1&utm_source=buffer&utm_campaign=Buffer&utm_content=buffera00f4&utm_medium=twitter&

wasn't sure what thread to put this in, but since there have been posts itt recently due to the march's 50th anniversary, this'll do. a (former?) slave in 1863 writes an 8-page re-interpretation of the constitution

in his memoir Heston, who called his appearance at the March the highlight of his life, hesitated before appearing with a "far left" Negro writer like James Baldwin, a man who once titled a book The Fire Next Time.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/opinion/constitution.pdf

this is the full pdf btw

I'm sure if Dr. King were around today he'd have plenty of work to do : I still see institutional racism even in self-styled "integrated" environments. In health care and educational institutions, whites are over-represented at the top and while they may pay lip service to the Civil Rights Movement, they simply don't have to devote as much of their time to it. There is no excuse for the sub-standard services black communities get.

Also it would have been quite something to see Dr. King talk about The African-American Civil Rights Movement across the globe!

Not gonna be hearing any US pols quoting this.

There must be better distribution of wealth and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism. Call it what you may, call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism, but there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country for all of God's children.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/obery-m-hendricks-jr-phd/the-uncompromising-anti-capitalism-of-martin-luther-king-jr_b_4629609.html

Or this stuff (which is excellent reading and gives you a strong sense of what the late sixties were like):

http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/documentsentry/doc_beyond_vietnam/

At the same time, those sentiments were becoming mainstream during Vietnam (in some parts of the country). Now this kind of stuff is taboo again.

http://vimeo.com/11154217

"There are forty million poor people here, and one day we must ask the question, 'Why are there forty million poor people in America?' And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising a question about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. And I'm simply saying that more and more, we've got to begin to ask questions about the whole society. We are called upon to help the discouraged beggars in life's marketplace. But one day we must come to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. It means that questions must be raised. And you see, my friends, when you deal with this you begin to ask the question, 'Who owns the oil?' You begin to ask the question, 'Who owns the iron ore?' You begin to ask the question, 'Why is it that people have to pay water bills in a world that's two-thirds water?' These are words that must be said."

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B7pLYOZCUAIFzyw.jpg

ugh fuck the south

Awesome Taylor Branch interview covering MLK's enthusiastic nonviolence:

And as a result there are a number of things people misunderstand about King and nonviolence. For one thing it’s not the same as Mahatma Gandhi’s “passive resistance.”

“King had a little trouble with the Gandhians” and their incessant fasting, says Branch, who decided to edit out several hundred pages of his manuscript dealing with the Gandhians. “He was over there in India and he said for them the test of your commitment was whether you could fast. He used to joke, ‘Gandhi obviously never tasted barbecue.’”

Passive resistance, Branch points out, was easier in a country where 95 percent of the people were your natural supporters, as in India, versus America, where you’re only 10 percent—and a good portion of the rest were actively hostile. Instead King’s nonviolence depended on being active, using demonstrations, direct actions, to “amplify the message” of the protest they were making, even if it meant sacrificing their own lives and limbs to do it.

link?

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-weve-forgotten-about-martin-luther-king-devotion-nonviolence-180953639/?all&no-ist

oops. Thanks.

OMG Robert E. Lee. Let's celebrate treason!

I did not know Stevie Wonder had a hand in this:

https://medium.com/cuepoint/how-stevie-wonder-helped-create-martin-luther-king-day-807451a78664

King otm. A great man. The world needs more like him.

weird and uncanny that a holiday celebrating maybe the best american ever coincides with a holiday celebrating one of the worst

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-sirota/what-santa-clausifying-dr_b_809951.html

OMG Robert E. Lee. Let's celebrate treason!

― SCOTTISH PEOPLE ONLY (I M Losted), Monday, January 19, 2015 11:35 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, they do that down there. always have...

An online game I was playing announced, "I have a dream!", offering a holiday discount on playing chips.

In the end, if the holiday gets people interested, I can't complain. It just makes you wonder about corporate America when they exploit it without apology.

Also, if they're going to observe treason, they look foolish berating lefties for their lack of loyalty.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wv3UdAtx028

Today's google doodle is a little awkwardly realized. Not that I think there's anything o_O about it, just kind of forced to spelle Google at the expense of actually being a good image of MLK.

https://www.google.com/logos/doodles/2016/martin-luther-king-jr-day-2016-4899278629634048-hp.jpg

in that speech he repeatedly calls out "Democratic Party patronage" and "the Daley machine." Didn't the man know about LESSER EVILS???

also opens with a Klan joke

happy MLK day.

i visited the King Center last month when a friend visited from out of town. finally got to sit down in Ebeneezer Baptist Church, so beautiful. if anyone makes a trip down there today be sure you stop by the Sweet Auburn Curb Market right down the street.

We went to the King memorial in Washington this morning - nice to see people there in spite of a cold windy day. One of my companions still can't get past the fact that the job went to a Chinese sculptor (couldn't get a black person, or an American?). Noted that they've buffed off all evidence of the controversial "drum major" quote from the statue.

"What is that goddamned ****** preacher doing to me?" - LBJ

https://theintercept.com/2017/01/16/what-the-santa-clausification-of-martin-luther-king-jr-leaves-out/

Kennedy aides finally scheduled King's private audience with the President early on a weekend morning. Then, having secured King's acceptance, they sandwiched him between an even earlier presidential meeting with Roy Wilkins and a later one with all the major civil rights leaders ... Only then did Kenneth O'Donnell notify King that he was expected to stay on for the larger meeting, which White House press officials presented publicly as the major story ... Taking the best he could get, King kept his White House appointment on Saturday, June 22.

While Roy Wilkins met first with President Kennedy, [Asst. Atty. Gen] Burke Marshall gathered privately with King and several SCLC aides ... Marshall took King aside for one of those urgently confidential government discussions ... King could no longer defer the threat of Communist infiltration in the SCLC, Marshall warned. Specifically, he must sever relations with Stanley Levison, who was a Communist functionary, and with Jack O'Dell, whom Levison had "planted" ... King's first reaction was to shrug in amused disbelief ... When he tried to tell Marshall that there must be some mistake, some confusion perhaps between an outright Communist and a person who had sympathized with Marxist tenets, Marshall contradicted him. This was not paranoid mush, he said, but hard intelligence from the very pinnacle of the U.S. government. Levison ... was "a paid agent of the Soviet Communist apparatus" ... When King asked to see proof, the point Marshall stressed was that neither he nor King was in a position to second-guess the highest U.S. national security experts, and even if they were ... the controlling fact was that President Kennedy was about to "put his whole political life on the line" with the civil rights bill, and the President simply could not make himself vulnerable to charges of Communist association.

Seeing from King's face that he was not convinced, Marshall was obliged to deliver him straightaway to Robert Kennedy for another round on the same subject. The initiative for these confrontations had come from the Attorney General, who had called J. Edgar Hoover the previous Monday to arrange a special FBI briefing on just how dramatic and explicit he could make the new warning to King ... Hoover was only too happy to comply ... For once, Kennedy was pushing Hoover about the threat of domestic subversion instead of vice versa. Now the Attorney General found it worth paying tribute to Hoover in order to gain a measure of control over King. Here was a man who was boring in on the White House, threatening to deform or destroy its domestic political base, and yet he held no public office, displayed no personal ambitions that could be traded on, succeeded by methods such as going to jail, and thrived on the very upheavals that most unsettled the Administration... With King talking of a demonstration that might turn the capital into a giant Birmingham, Robert Kennedy ... would gain a bargaining hold if King admitted his movement was poisoned.

But King shrugged off Robert Kennedy too. He kept asking for proof, saying that these terrible spy terms did not ring true of the men he had known so well ... Everybody he knew in the movement had been called a Communist for years, himself included. People across the South were calling even Robert Kennedy a Communist ... Kennedy insisted that this was different ... Levison's true nature was even more fiendish than he was being allowed to tell King, and ... evidence came from the highest and most sophisticated machinery of American espionage ... To King, however, these state secrets only fed the spiral of disbelief. The higher Kennedy reached for authority, the less his descriptions sounded like the Levinson whom King knew. The more Kennedy evoked the omniscience of the government's central brain, the more that brain sounded like an ordinary segregationist....

When King walked into the Oval Office, President Kennedy asked him to take a private stroll outdoors in the Rose Garden. When they were alone he said, "I assume you know you're under very close surveillance." King said little in reply.... The President's manner employed the most potent combination of power and intimacy to warn that King could have no secrets....

The President put a hand on his shoulder and almost whispered that he had to "get rid of" Levison and O'Dell. "They're Communists," Kennedy said. When King replied that he was not sure what that meant, as Hoover considered a great many people Communists, President Kennedy came back instantly with specifics ... Stanley Levison's position was too highly classified for him to give details, but the President could say that Levison was O'Dell's "handler" ... These were the hard facts, said Kennedy. O'Dell was fully engaged in conspiracy as the "number five Communist in the United States."

"I don't know how he's got time to do all that," [King] managed to reply. "He's got two jobs with me...." Kennedy stressed the international implications of the threat by declaring that both Levison and O'Dell were "agents of a foreign power...." [King] said he would need to see proof before he could believe such things of these men.

President Kennedy took another tack. "You've read about Profumo in the papers?" he asked... the British Secretary of State for War had given his name to a sensational scandal by first denying, then admitting, that he had carried on an extramarital affair with a gorgeous lady of the night ... who was simultaneously romancing a Soviet diplomat ... The ongoing revelations obsessed President Kennedy to the point that he had ordered all State Department cables on the Profumo case sent to him at full length, without summary.... Kennedy warned King that sudden explosions from the underworld of sex and spying could ruin public men.... Truth was only part of the equation.... King must not let his personal esteem for Levison blind him to the enormous stakes he was playing for.... "If they shoot you down, they'll shoot us down, too," Kennedy told King. "So we're asking you to be careful...."

King said he still would like to see some proof ... Rather than extend further appeals to King's trust, [Kennedy] broke off the discussion and led the way back inside from the Rose Garden.

O'Dell is still with us - 93yo, living in Vancouver.

:)

Hoover's dead, cardiac event. RFK and JFK both died by assassination. Only one of them has a day. History: occasionally just.

I love the juxtaposition going on in that. All four big time American dudes from the history DLH excerpts above are dead. One died alone and unloved by anyone, from a heart attack, the rest of the US sigh of relief, etc. the building named after him is falling apart.

Three were assassinated. Two were Kennedys. One was president, the other would have been.

The last one was black, from Alabama.

i think abt this story a lot cuz it is so weirdly like a fairy tale -- the three encounters, each at a deeper level of the maze, the talisman of "show me it's true" met each time with "we can't show you, that's how true it is" until it's met in the garden at the center with "don't you understand -- it doesn't matter if it's true." the hero leaves a hero, having stood up under all the power there is, but he is still troubled by what he heard in the garden: truth is only part of the equation. if they shoot you down, they'll shoot us down too.

anyway the above is from vol 1 of taylor branch's MLK trilogy, which is as major as caro's johnson (lol) if a lot denser; every1 should read it. happy american pride day.

Thanking u dlh (and the others here who've apparently mentioned it over the years) for introducing me to The King Years. Started reading volume one this weekend and that is pretty much all I did this weekend. It's clearly an important historical text but it also seems like a pretty crucial guidebook for navigating the landscape of today.

glad! yeah among other things it is an excellent ~movement history~, v focused on tactics and responses and day-by-day events and a cast of hundreds whose synthesized interviews (check the endnotes, these are practically an oral history) are where the narrative voice is coming from. completely immersive but yes u feel the tether the whole time.

vol2 doubles as a malcolm x bio (+ history of NOI) and is my favorite, also of course feat.s the always-welcome character LBJ in strong supporting role. vol3 is fucking wrenching, if not the best book i've read about the late 60s then the richest.

also find it kinda uh, historiographically revelatory, that it is always at the same time a great-man history (my post above: big men talking in rooms) and a social history, one that's rly focused on collective action and the contexts that create movement (and on individuals whose names you don't already know). would admire this combination in any book but it's particularly apropos in this one, reinforces its themes, etc.. honestly the trilogy it reminds me of is trotsky's history of the revolution.

Need to ready Taylor Branch's bio.

― lumber up, limbaugh down (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, January 16, 2012 6:38 PM

I've fixed this.

couldn't remember if it confirmed Gore Vidal's anecdote concerning JFK and RFK calling Bayard Rustin "Martin Luther Queen" w/a snigger

nor can i but it contains the one where MLK is watching JFK's funeral after months of being dicked around for an unmaterialized civil rights bill he does not now expect from LBJ, and sends hoover, thru the bugs, into orgasmic rage w a single remark as jackie kneels by the coffin

it's 50 years since the Beyond Vietnam speech

It was an acute and devastating threnody, which King read in a methodical cadence. He never broke from his script to preach that night—he scaled back his usual range of articulation to sound, Jones said, like “he was speaking a dissertation.” By the time he had gotten through the above section, he had exhausted any hope of finding a credible reason for the U.S. to maintain its involvement in the conflict. And this was nine months before the Tet offensive, a year before the massacre at My Lai. King was not backing into a widely sponsored position.

But ultimately he had his sights beyond the current war. “We as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values,” he said. “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” King warned of a time of endless war, when the U.S. would be trapped in one overseas entanglement after another while the gap at home between the rich and poor grew ever larger.

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/martin-luther-king-jr-s-searing-antiwar-speech-fifty-years-later

@FBI
Today, on the anniversary of his assassination, the FBI honors the life, work, & commitment of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to justice.

lol

Honoring him in death as they did in life. God bless them.

any good new articles on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.? usually there is all kinds of stuff even the pop culture sites run things like the comic book they did or some episode of a tv shows that talks about him, or other cultural retrospective, etc.

i just went to the NY Times and there's no story King or the march, there are two things on Trump and there is a "If We Had Cellphone Alerts in 1968: War. Assassinations. Protests. What would 1968 have looked like in news alerts?"

anybody see anything good today? i dont want to read about neo nazis again for godsake

or Aziz Ansari, who cares about this dude

good stuff here

http://www.thekingcenter.org/about-mrs-king

In Trump Remarks, Black Churches See a Nation Backsliding
By SABRINA TAVERNISE

On the day before Martin Luther King’s Birthday, churchgoers said Mr. Trump’s denigration of immigrants was one more turn toward an uglier past in America.

this is the one story on the NY Times front page right now that mentions Dr. King and it's about Donald Trump

Great piece by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor:
https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/01/15/remembering-martin-luther-kings-radical-class-politics/

And another great piece she wrote back in Jan 2016:

https://socialistworker.org/2016/08/15/when-king-came-up-against-chicago-racism

That painting by the Haitian artist is great (probably already on your FB wall, so I won't post it).

Not new, but I posted this passage from one of the volumes of Taylor Branch's biography of MLK (very much worth reading) on my FB last year:

King, in the lolling drone of closing announcements, was reminding his audience of major SCLC events ahead ... when one of the white men in the audience walked to the stage and lashed out with his right fist. The blow made a loud popping sound as it landed on King's left cheek. He staggered backward and spun half around.

The entire crowd observed in silent, addled awe. Some people thought King had been introducing the man as one of the white dignitaries so conspicuously welcome at Birmingham's first fully integrated convention. Others thought the attack might be a staged demonstration from the nonviolence workshops. But now the man was hitting King again, this time on the side of his face from behind, and twice more in the back. Shrieks and gasps went up from the crowd, which, as one delegate wrote, "surged for a moment as one person" toward the stage. People recalled feeling physically jolted by the force of the violence - from both the attack on King and the flash of hatred through the auditorium.

The assailant slowed rather than quickened the pace of his blows, expecting, as he said later, to be torn to pieces by the crowd. But he struck powerfully. After being knocked backward by one of the last blows, King turned to face him while dropping his hands. It was the look on his face that many would not forget. Septima Clark, who nursed many private complaints about the strutting ways of the SCLC preachers and would not have been shocked to see the unloosed rage of an exalted leader, marveled instead at King's transcendent calm. King dropped his hands "like a newborn baby," she said, and from then on she never doubted that his nonviolence was more than the heat of his oratory or the result of his slow calculation. It was the response of his quickest instincts.

It was the response of his quickest instincts.

All I can say is that it takes enormous mental discipline over a long time to develop an "instinct" like that.

Psychiatric nursing 101 is all it takes.

i wrote about US empire’s most reliable ideological ally, The Washington Post editorial board, publishing the most saccharin and ahistorical Martin Luther King tributes in recent memory—which is saying a lot, given the crowded field. https://t.co/hEq6Obpash

— Adam H. Johnson (@adamjohnsonNYC) January 17, 2018

thanks for those articles, tarfumes and kingfish

Halberstam on MLK Jr. in August 1967 (Harper’s): “Possible nationalization of certain industries, a guaranteed annual income…" pic.twitter.com/u6LccDojHq

— noah kulwin (@nkulw) January 25, 2018

Given Branch's broad scope beyond the life of King specifically, I was jarred by America in the King Years ending very abruptly with King's assassination. Thankfully, I managed almost by accident to track down A Nation on Fire by Clay Risen, which is focused entirely upon national reaction in the week following the assassination and details many of the ways in which white America's reaction to the riots led us to where we are today. Highly recommended.

hadn't seen any discussion of this yet:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/04/arts/king-fbi-tapes-david-garrow.html

i haven't read any of garrow's books and he seems to be fairly well-regarded, but i read his piece and thought the evidence for the accusation that's making headlines seemed pretty weak

tape archive release in 2027

Remember that right-wing dickshits are forever running this shit under people's noses for, like, being generally peace-loving and nonviolent and supporting equality and shit. As if it's going to convince you to start beating people up and hating people who are different from you.

http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2019/06/historical-hackery-and-the-legacy-of-martin-luther-king

this isn't really about martin luther king jr. himself but the holiday. every time the holiday comes around, in my conservative (racist) western state, at my largely conservative (racist) workplaces, staffed largely by white people, there is always this awkward (racist) tendency to tip-toe around it or, like, not acknowledge the reason for the holiday / pretend it doesn't exist. today in a staff meeting my supervisor said, pretty much verbatim, "i absolutely love martin luther king jr., he is one of my biggest heroes and i could talk about him for a long time." it was SO CRINGE. these people have tons of sanctimonious boilerplate around the fascist holidays, why is it so hard to celebrate someone who stood for equality? obviously i know the answer but, god, if i were a supervisor i would rehearse something ffs.

I don’t know, but if it’s insincere I wouldn’t want to hear any mealy mouth boilerplate about how he stood for peace and love and colorblindness.

yeah, I'm looking forward to the annual bullshit CEO email about how "most importantly, he stood for peace" at which point I destroy my work laptop

course, this is the same CEO that said during the riot "while I know you will continue to delivery high quality work to your clients, make sure to take a few minutes off if you need it" while the shit aws still ongoing

ughhhh

yes, i agree re: the less preachy bs from management about a holiday the better.

I can't recommend Taylor Branch's biography of King highly enough. It restores to view all the deep and daily complexities of the problems faced by the civil rights movement, so it is possible to understand King's place in it. The bland bromides that get repeated every January have reduced that vast tumultuous history to the size of a pea.

Seconded. All three volumes are amazing and eye-opening. My one and only criticism is that, for a biography which is in a way about the entire civil rights movement as it is about King himself, it's very frustrating that the third volume ends abruptly with his assassination without going into any of the immediate fallout (about which I would highly recommend Clay Risen's A Nation on Fire, which is entirely focused on the reactions to the assassination in the days and weeks and months following).

And of course I posted pretty much exactly that two years ago upthread. Bears repeating, though.

Thirded, though I admit my attention wandered during the lengthy sections regarding the internal schisms within the Nation of Islam, though I understand it was necessary background to the Malcom X chapters in the second volume.

And of course I posted pretty much exactly that two years ago upthread. Bears repeating, though.

Kinda blows my mind that he would only be in his 90s now, I don’t know why.

Great revive

I heard today that he hid his cigarette smoking from his children

it was just nice to hear something simple and human about a figure that's almost become godlike here in the U.S.

relatable too

A few years ago we went and did kind of the MLK self-guided tour in Atlanta — the neighborhood where he grew up, his church, and of course his and Coretta’s tomb. It was edifying, helped make him more real, provided context.

that sounds v cool

The whole area is a declared national historical park, and the National Park Service has done a good job with informational kiosks etc.

https://www.nps.gov/malu/index.htm

If you’re in/near Memphis, the National Civil Rights Museum (with tour) is highly recommended.

I went last spring when I was in the city for a wedding.

Yes, that’s also excellent. I haven’t been in years, I’m sure they’ve changed some things, need to go back.

My wife and I went to the MLK Shabbat Sabbath Visions of Freedom and Justice program at 6th & I synagogue in DC last night . It was inspiring. They had a Baptist church choir, Jewish 6th & I musicians and speakers from Baptist and Jewish congregations and elsewhere talking about lessons of Martin Luther King in light of the coming inauguration. Lots of references to historic and recent examples of suppression and of pain caused by that. Plus a discussion of how evil folks get the rest of us to fight against one another. “Skinfolk ain’t always kinfolk.” The rabbi also read a poem by a Los Angeles rabbi regarding the pain of those in Gaza and those who were hostages. One speaker referenced James Baldwin , history of Selma , Alabama , feminist scholar Audrey Lord. Plus a nice joke from a Shiloh Church Baptist minister who has been working in the Biden White House about how those attending the moved inauguration location indoors at the Capitol will already know where it is from their J6 visit to the capitol 4 years ago . It ended with all of us joining hands and singing "We Shall Overcome

Dr. Imani Romney-Rosa Chapman and Imani Sims were impressive speakers at that event.

Yesterday on MLK Monday my wife and I went to see at 12 noon at the AFI Silver a 1970 doc “King a filmed record….Montgomery to Memphis.” Eli Landau compiled footage from the late 1950s Birmingham bus boycott on through to King’s assassination in Memphis in 1968 and his funeral. Film also included singing from the Freedom Singers, Mahalia Jackson, Nina Simone , Tony Bennett and others. Various others including Harry Belafonte , James Earl Jones , and Paul Newman recited poetry.
Lots of footage of King in protests, giving speeches, etc plus ugly acting hateful disgusting violent white folks including neighborhood residents and American Nazi party members in Chicago and the Ku Klux Klan and random white people throughout the south . The church bombing in Birmingham, the 3 Selma bridge walks and more like Bull Connor calling folks the n word as his cops turn fire hoses and dogs on the peaceful protestors . Plus King’s inspiring Letter from a Birmingham Jail, interviews with reporters, the March on Washington, and his I Have Been to the Mountain top speech the night before he was killed. Oh and at King's funeral they played a tape of him saying how he wanted to be remembered:

I’d like somebody to mention that day that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to give his life serving others.
I’d like for somebody to say that day that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to love somebody.
I want you to say that day that I tried to be right on the war question.
I want you to be able to say that day that I did try to feed the hungry.
And I want you to be able to say that day that I did try in my life to clothe those who were naked.
I want you to say on that day that I did try in my life to visit those who were in prison.
I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity.
Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter.

all of the other shallow things will not matter

speaking of which, here's something I learned from Taylor Branch's history of the movement that is perhaps trivial, but for me it is also humanizing: within his family when he was growing up and long after and among friends he was called Mike. He wasn't always saddled with the full formal burden of being Martin Luther King, Jr.

Oh wow. Didn’t know that.

Struggle is a never ending process. Freedom is never really won, you earn it and win it in every generation.
Coretta Scott King

fwiw I put together a bunch of King excerpts for my podcast episode this week. I always find it useful to go back and listen to him. One thing that really struck me was the consistency of his ideas and principles (these excerpts are from the age of 25 to his death at 39) but also how they evolved — got both broader in a global sense and sharper in understanding the forces he was up against. And the seriousness of purpose! There's nobody in the present day who can marshal that kind of gravity and land it with so much force in front of hundreds or thousands of people (or hundreds of thousands, at the march on D.C.).

https://4527e585-8e2a-4592-93de-ed1102239bc5.libsyn.com/ep-37-listening-to-mlk

Thanks! Also:

While Dr. King is primarily remembered as a civil rights leader, he also championed the cause of the poor and organized the Poor People’s Campaign to address issues of economic justice. Dr. King was also a fierce critic of U.S. foreign policy and the Vietnam War. We play his “Beyond Vietnam” speech, which he delivered at New York City’s Riverside Church on April 4, 1967, as well as his last speech, “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop,” that he gave on April 3, 1968, the night before he was assassinated.

Now, there is something seductively tempting about stopping there and sending us all off on what in some circles has become a popular crusade against the war in Vietnam. I say we must enter that struggle, but I wish to go on now to say something even more disturbing. The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality, we will find ourselves organizing clergy and laymen concerned committees for the next generation. They will be concerned about Guatemala and Peru. They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end, unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy. So such thoughts take us beyond Vietnam, but not beyond our calling as sons of the living God.

In 1957, a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. During the past 10 years, we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression, which has now justified the presence of U.S. military “advisers” in Venezuela. This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counterrevolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Cambodia and why American napalm and Green Beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru. It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago, he said, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”

Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments.

Yeah the Venezuela reference hit me too. A good reminder of how long all this shit has been going on.