The Martin Luther King Thread

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.

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.