Remembering Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

[301216baller]

I'm not gonna say violence is the way to solve problems, but applying a lil pressure here n there doesn't hurt

 

[fontaine]

My white buddy and I talking about black history.







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[omariwestafari]

nothing wrong with him seeing the evidence.

i need to learn more about malcolm n huey ifeel so uneducated

 

[truth-serum]

MLK was on some yes massa steez. All that beggin and nonviolence is a sign of weakness to whites in power

I liked Malcolm better. We wasn't with that. "By any means necessary"

 

[letsgetit22]

MLK was on some yes massa steez. All that beggin and nonviolence is a sign of weakness to whites in power

I liked Malcolm better. We wasn't with that. "By any means necessary"

Ok... but who got the most done?

 

[charlie parker]

Are we really sinking to a Malcolm X vs Martin Luther King Jr argument? Really? Really?

 

[georgescorewell]

 

[letsgetit22]

Haha! Not really. I just hate when Malcolm X supporters feel the need to demean Dr King. Can't we be grateful for what both have done for the black community? Why does it have to be one or the other?

 

[georgescorewell]

 

[truth-serum]

How is that sinking? MLK was selected by whites in power to be the voice of black people. That should tell you something

Malcolm had the right ideas but the white power elite wasn't tryna hear none of that.

That yes massa type steez is why we're in the position we're in today.

Whites didn't get to be at the top of the totem pole through non violence. Hypocritical do as I say not as I do BS.I can't rock with that

 

[Based Jesus]

Sooooo civil disobedience = appeasement?

You learn something new everyday.

 

[Methodical Management]

the truth about MLK is he was a puppet. he was used by the white rulers to keep black folks from revolting and resisting and to keep them subdued with their false religion (which only exists to keep us perpetually divided). this is the truth (i know at least A FEW of u here know this). his ideas weren't his own. his mentor was a man named baynard ruston. mr ruston was not able to carry forth the plan himself because he was a homosexual and therefore would not have been able to captivate and control the black community because as a homosexual black man he would never have been accepted by the black community as their leader. of course the white power structure knew this

Apparently J. Edgar Hoover didn't get that memo.  One example:  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/16/magazine/what-an-uncensored-letter-to-mlk-reveals.html?_r=0

Attribution for any major social movement is challenging, as there is a tendency to oversimplify matters.  Bayard Rustin was, himself, asked by A. Philip Randolph and A.J. Muste to play an advisory role in Montgomery in 1956.  It's true that Dr. King was protected by armed guards prior to Rustin's arrival, but Rustin's commitment to Gandhian nonviolence was likely influenced by his participation in both Randolph's Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and Muste's Fellowship of Reconciliation, the latter of which was an explicitly pacifist organization.  (Muste has been referred to as an "American Gandhi.")

No one emerges from the womb (or college, for that matter), fully formed.  There exists a great deal of mutual influence, and Dr. King benefited from this just as Rustin did, and Muste, and so on. 

While Rustin's sexuality reportedly prompted his departure from the Fellowship of Reconciliation, it was allegedly his past as an organizer in the Young Communist League at the City College of New York that motivated many within the movement, like Emery O. Jackson, to try and force him out of sight.  There was considerable fear that the presence of Rustin and Jack O'Dell, among others, would grant red-baiters the ammunition needed to discredit the movement. 

Both Dr. King and Malcolm X understood the two-pronged, or "vanguard" effect they produced in tandem.  

Malcolm once told Coretta Scott King, "I want Dr. King to know that I didn't come to Selma to make his job difficult. I really did come thinking I could make it easier. If the white people realize what the alternative is, perhaps they will be more willing to hear Dr. King."

Both men wanted fundamentally the same thing: freedom.  They simply had different ideas about what that looked like, and how it should be attained.  

No serious student of history would call Dr. King an accomodationist.  He did not believe in gradualism and would accept nothing less than full equality.  He was hardly an apologist for the United States government, which was inherently complicit in the institutionalization of racism, and he staunchly opposed both the war in Vietnam and the economic system he faulted for producing widespread poverty.  

Two months before he delivered the speech now widely reduced and renamed the "I Have a Dream" speech, Dr. King spoke at a march on Detroit.  As part of that address, King said, "Now there is a magnificent new militancy within the Negro community all across this nation. And I welcome this as a marvelous development. The Negro of America is saying he’s determined to be free and he is militant enough to stand up."  He did attempt to advocate some limits to this militancy, as you can see in the full text, but his caveats are not dissimilar to Malcolm's views following his Hajj.   

http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index...try/doc_speech_at_the_great_march_on_detroit/

Obviously some were growing increasingly frustrated with the rate of progress, especially after Chicago, and felt there was a limit to what could be accomplished through nonviolence.  Then, too, there were differences in opinion with respect to separatism/nationalism vs. integration.  (As James Baldwin once put it, "Do I really want to be integrated into a burning house?")

To suggest that Dr. King was a tool of pacification, however, is not well founded and rests primarily on assumptions about his legacy as it has been distorted and co-opted by obstructionists and conservatives, generally, in the years following his assassination.  (For example, the King family had to sue Ward Connerly et al. for attempting to excerpt Dr. King as part of a political ad opposing affirmative action in California.)  His actual positions are, in many respects, more progressive than he's typically given credit for. 

 

[computersputin]

Rewatched Selma last night. Was the movie implying that Caretta Scott had something going on with Malcom while King was in jail?

 

[mjt26]

Rewatched Selma last night. Was the movie implying that Caretta Scott had something going on with Malcom while King was in jail?

No, Martin was just being a jealous man. A real life man, full of complexities.

 

[computersputin]

No, Martin was just being a jealous man. A real life man, full of complexities.

Thanks for clearing that up. It's always the ones that cheat that are the most paranoid.

 

[shoeking2101]

To suggest that Dr. King was a tool of pacification, however, is not well founded and rests primarily on assumptions about his legacy as it has been distorted and co-opted by obstructionists and conservatives, generally, in the years following his assassination.  (For example, the King family had to sue Ward Connerly et al. for attempting to excerpt Dr. King as part of a political ad opposing affirmative action in California.)  His actual positions are, in many respects, more progressive than he's typically given credit for. 

All of this

 

[shoeking2101]

Man as i've gotten older, I've really grown to not only appreciate what King and co. did for me, but really am flat out amazed and stunned by it. Like it's hard for me to wrap my head around it.

They found something to live for. They found something that they believed so strongly in, that they put their lives on the line for it everyday for years. They put their families, friends, and the entire black community's lives at risk for something they believed in so strongly. That is literally terrifying. The thought is terrifying and for them doing that alone, I have nothing but admiration and respect for what they did for me. If i'm being honest with myself, there's no way I would have been out on the front lines sacrficing my life, and putting my family's life at risk, no matter how strongly I believed in the cause. That's why I'm so thankful for the King's, the Malcolm's, The Fredrick Douglas's of the world, because I don't have that in me. Or maybe I do, and just haven't found something that I feel so strongly about that I'm willing to die for it? Maybe that's a trait that we all have if we're pushed to the brink? Maybe my actions (or lack thereof) towards this would be different if the conditions surrounding me were different? I don't know but regardless, I find that whole dynamic fascinating to study and as I said, I'm truly in awe of it. Lord knows if you stuck a 22 year old me in the south in 1963 I'm probably on some:

"At least we get to ride the buses, and eat in the restaurant, let's not cause any ruckus and disruption by messing things up for us by trying to get to the front of the bus, and same water fountains. We got water fountains to drink out of, at least we not slaves. Let's be happy with that"

 

[FThe45th]

To Dr. King, and his supporters of all races and genders past and present...thank you.

this.

 

[ryda421]

was watching this the other night. it is newly discovered audio of king giving a speech in london, two days prior to accepting his nobel peace prize. he talks about the injustices that black south africans are dealing with. maybe because im not from the south but, damn every time i hear mlk's voice, something about it. RIP MLK

 

[Sir San Diego]

Y'all are all my dudes.

 

[omariwestafari]

was watching this the other night. it is newly discovered audio of king giving a speech in london, two days prior to accepting his nobel peace prize. he talks about the injustices that black south africans are dealing with. maybe because im not from the south but, damn every time i hear mlk's voice, something about it. RIP MLK

p4l

 

[truth-serum]

Ok... but who got the most done?

 

[Methodical Management]

With primary season nearly upon us, many of the demagogues currently seeking to leverage popular prejudice to vault themselves into a position of power will cynically attempt to trade on the righteousness and integrity that Dr. King has come to represent, even as they labor to undermine all that he stood for.  

Given the increasingly vitriolic state of political speech in recent months, I hope some of the following make the rounds alongside the usual quotes today:

"[D]isappointment produces despair and despair produces bitterness, and the one thing certain about bitterness is its blindness. Bitterness has not the capacity to make the distinction between some and all." 

“We can choose either to walk the high road of human brotherhood or to tread the low road of man’s inhumanity to man.  History has thrust upon our generation an indescribably important destiny – to complete a process of democratization which our nation has too long developed too slowly.  The future of America is bound up in the present crisis.  If America is to remain a first-class nation, it cannot have a second-class citizenship.”  

“The softminded man always fears change.  He feels security in the status quo, and he has an almost morbid fear of the new.  For him, the greatest pain is the pain of a new idea.”   

“The guardians of the status quo lash out with denunciation against the person or organization that they consider most responsible for the emergence of the new order.”  

It's worth noting, too, that Dr. King wasn't just a speaker.  Dr. King was a listener.  He led because he listened:  he listened to his colleagues and allies, who requested his support and presence.  He listened to the stories of suffering experienced at home and abroad.  He listened to his conscience.  He even listened to his critics.  

“Help us", he urged in Trumpet of Conscience, "to see the enemy’s point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves.  From his view we may indeed see the basic weakness of our condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition.”  

In this season of soundbites, spin, and snark, it's important to remember that the loudest person in the room is not necessarily the strongest.  

Dr. King recounted the following story for Liberation Magazine, and it's one I feel everyone ought to be familiar with:

“One anonymous phone caller, whose voice I have come to recognize, has been calling me for months to insult and threaten me and then slam down the receiver.  Recently he stayed on the phone for half an hour, giving me the opportunity to discuss the whole underlying problem with him.  At the end of the call he said:  ‘Reverend King, I have enjoyed talking with you, and I am beginning to think that you may be right.’  This willingness to change deeply ingrained attitudes buoys us up and challenges us to be open to growth, also.” 

Though, in his retelling of this story, Dr. King praises his erstwhile harasser for his openness and willingness to consider the perspective of his perceived opponent, how many of us can honestly say that we'd replicate the extraordinary patience and civility Dr. King exhibited by taking the time to have an earnest conversation with someone who'd shown him such cruelty and spite?  

I can only hope that all the would-be representatives of the American people who will quote Dr. King today will absorb - rather than merely echo - his words.  

What are your thoughts today, on the thirtieth anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day? 

 

[AEA18]

 

[Sir San Diego]

Quoted for emphasis.