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

@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.