And that sums up MLK, a man of the people in the truest sense of the word, and you know maybe it's just wishful optimism but I see strands of that "man of the people in Obama" that's what really really scares them, not the pretty speeches, but that he might actually mean what the says, conversely that's what inspires us (and makes us fearful) that a man in the mould of MLK might actually become president of the United States of America.
Great post LM.
MLK the man has always been so much more admirable and meaningful to me than MLK the mythic hero. MLK the mythic hero is an archetype with very little meaning other than that he existed and he was great. MLK the man was far more complicated and far more true to the struggle that led him to support the striking garbagemen in Memphis that day.
As a young white man I admire most his actions after the March on Washington in '63 and the passage of the Civil Rights Act in '64. His path from that point on is when his life took on greater meaning for me. It is a far easier task to convince a conservative white America that Jim Crow was wrong and needed to be changed- this formal set of legal segregation only existed in one region of the country(though as we know unwritten rules of segregation still exist with us even to this day). But it is a far greater thing to comment on the general ills of society and foreign policy, and to forge a vision that encompasses the nation as a whole. And MLK's evolution of thought and action between '63 and '68 is exactly why that part isn't taught in the schools today.
The elected officials who sponsored the Civil Rights bills of the mid-'60s were horrified by this MLK. They would've much rather have him go back and preach somewhere at a community church for the rest of his life. But MLK didn't stop there. Instead he created theories that encompassed universal ideas applicable throughout the world. Racism and all its evil effects find root in power relationships, and he saw how the US government was using that very same mechanism to support rightwing dictators especially in Latin America, and blow the shit out of a small impoverished country half a world away.
And this is why if there is any of this legacy of MLK left to inspire this generation, then John McCain must lose this election. It is not the destiny of a free and democratic people to engineer coups, support dictatorships, and bomb the shit out of people half a world away. If this country continues on this path the red, white and blue that symbolizes what so many people hold dear will only represent blood, bones, and an ocean of tears- if it doesn't already.
I for one hope that the Revolutionary spirit that existed within MLK is still alive today. That for every Dick Cheney and GW Bush there is a Henry David Thoreau, a MLK, an Emma Goldman, a Eugene Debs. The ones that said no to war, but whose devotion to their cause took more than a warrior's courage. They were jailed and killed for their trouble. It's up to us to show even a fraction of that bravery if we hope to make what is around us into something better.
You just love wallowing in old shit, don't you? Flaying yourselves daily with a thousand cuts then rolling in salt.
What the Left has done to black people in the last fifty years is a kind of emotional abuse -- a constant, obsessional reliving of the traumatic past. Fifty years after the Civil Rights Acts, Democrat politicians, professors and preachers are still intent on rubbing salt into those old, painful wounds. It has now become institutionalized. Reliving the past is a major reason for Black Studies Departments all over the country, just as Women's Studies are designed to perpetuate an everlasting cry of pain and rage about the fate of women throughout history. Those constant rehearsals of reasons for rage and resentment do not to help people; they just exploit their pain for political gain. As a result, the Left still gets the black vote more than 90% of the time, in exchange for fuzzy promises like "hope" and "change;" or worse, for welfare programs that undermine rather than strengthen black families and individuals.
Unless you can get a grip, take some personal initiative and finally face your past, you will never get a future; you will never get a life.
Physician, heal thyself.
hey guys the new troll is offeniscve, and obnocious...but he dose raise a wuestion, do we shitcan him, or put up a collection to get him the thearopy he oviously needs...some serious anger issues there..
I say let him post without comment or response. There are few things funnier in the blogosphere than watching the clumsy efforts of a rage-filled white supremacist trying to masquerade as a concerned and witty intellectual. 
LM, yours is the commentary on 4/4 I was waiting for and the only one that, for me, has any merit. It was worth the wait.
bravo LM. again, on this complex and emotionally charged subject you have found the way to bring it forward in all its mess and confusion.
we love our mythology don't we? it's easier to view our figures as black and white or cutouts to stand up in the lobby. dr. king was a man. a human man. in '66, as his viewpoints were beginning to expand to include other disadvantaged and oppressed minorities he sent his young assistant, jesse jackson, to the rez to see for himself the conditions there. jesse cried. a man who had seen the bombings, lynchings, and other things going on in our country at that time saw what we had been living with on the rez, and he cried.
it's taken me a long time, but i have finally come to a place of allowing my important, and even heroic men and women the space to be humans with failings. in many ways it's even more impressive. to know their flaws and defects and understand that with will and resolve these were overcome to achieve things of significance makes it all the more heroic to my thinking.
i don't care about his failings or faults. i remember a young man who saw our life and our obstacles and, if he did nothing else, he cried with us.
again, sir, i am in awe.
bigo siilsigii ijiid ye nahdah izih
(as we learn about things we are healed by this)
LM,
You rock.
Great post, as usual, LM.
Nothing much to add except that in 2006 my family and I finally visited the Civil Rights Museum in Memphis and it was quite powerful, as you describe. What stuck with me as much as anything was the ordinariness of the 1960s-style motel room (I'm old enough to remember that look) as contrasted with the extraordinary and tragic event that happened there.
And seeing that balcony from that angle...my mind couldn't keep it from turning black and white with Jessie Jackson and the others pointing toward the shooter across the way.
Thank you.
I've always been a really big fan of MLK myself, to be honest, despite being a young white man from Nebraska... the gist of his message about judging men by their character, rather than their skin, always struck me as being more about race, and more about how mankind should deal with each other period. As such, I've always wanted to visit the Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, but my previous trips down there to visit family have not given me the chance to do so. I may have to make it a special point to visit there for that reason...
Regardless, I had heard almost secondhand about MLK's record regarding the Vietnam War as well, but his crusade against the evils of class-exploitation do not surprise me in the slightest, and now I feel I should take some time to investigate these speeches in more detail... if anything, they go to show just how truly brilliant the man was, and how tragic his loss was. As the esteemed Bill Hicks said, we always seem to kill those good guys who want to tell us that 'it's just a ride'...
Oh, yeah, and Serr8d? Assuming you're still here reading this, and didn't do a quick drive-by to make yourself feel better by 'showin' up them uppity leftist-types', try looking into George Santayana's writings sometime. Friendly advice and all.
I was 24 when Dr. King died. A white kid from the suburbs working in a NYC welfare dept. office in Brooklyn. The feeling the next day at work among many of us, white & black was of devastation and hopelessness. A few months later when Bobby was killed this was reinforced.
LM's article brought tears to me as I look at all that has happened in the last 40 years and understand how much of MLK's greatness was reduced by the powers that be into just a beneficent dreamer. MLK was one of the most intelligent political leaders in American history. He knew how to ener-
gise a movement that made amazing progress considering the forces he was fighting against.
When he refined his message from one of black leadership, to a movement of social justice that was all inclusive, that was when he became really dangerous to those in power. After all he and they knew that even by supposedly ending Jim Crow and allowing black people to vote, didn't necessarily free them of their chains.
Real freedom could only come in the context of an America that followed economic/social justice for all and renounced militarism as a foreign policy. That was when they needed to kill him because that was when in their minds he became a real danger.
In some ways I wish that we never came up with MLK day and with black history month. As necessary as it was to educate the people as to the crimes committed against Afro-Americans, it has tended to allow the establishment to sanitize the historical narrative and to make trivial the lives of leaders like Dr. King.
Thank you LM, for as usual seeing through the crap that's thrown in our eyes.
Brilliant post. Thank you.
I always look forward to your writing, LM. When my nine year old daughter asks about MLK, I'm going to reference your post. I would add that the school curriculum about MLK seems to gloss over King's deep criticism about the American system in the same way that the media does. Even four years into a majority "minority" public elementary school, the focus on MLK stops at dream time. Like many "typical" white folk, I get tongue tied when trying to explain the Klan robe- but yet there it lies, festering.
makes me very proud of my kids...they get it, they can not comprehend why someone is so dumb as t ojudge someone by the color of their skin...my eldeist (6) when I was tryign to explain the issue to him stated "wow daddy, its sad that some people say skin color is important, they msut not have anything actuly good about them" he see racists as people taht have no "good" qaulities (being smart, strong, funny, ect) to be proud of so they make a new catagory up. I think that is probably ratehr acurate.
it is interesting that they let MLK live when he was fighting for poor blacks...when he started figtheign for poor whites they put a bullete in him. cant have generations of fears and predujeces washed down the drain now can we.
I was in law school in D.C. when Dr. King was shot.
It was a bloody, conflicted time. The establishment was resisting civil rights and escalating the war in Vietnam.
John Kennedy ‘63, Chaney, Goodman, Schwerner ‘64, Liuzzo ‘65, Malcolm ‘65, Orangeburg ‘68, then Dr. King in April, 68, and two months later, Robert Kennedy.
I went downtown to help arraign people who were arrested in the aftermath. I was stunned, numb, and I really don’t remember much. Just the maddening, heartbreaking image of faces on the other side of bars. The wrong people were being locked up.
Dr. King was a giant, with astounding oratorical power. We’re privileged to still be able to hear him. Imagine if we could listen to Frederick Douglass. Dr. King was a poetic genius with a mellifluous voice, he was mining the rich vein of the African-American experience, but above all, he was speaking truth to power.
Bill Clinton and Tony Blair are today’s reigning talking heads, but their thing is verisimilitude. Obama is very good, but he’s not in King’s league. I never heard anyone who is. LM has noted that Obama is in campaign mode, and must temper his words to avoid appearing threatening. Maybe Obama hasn’t yet shown us his fastball. There’ll be plenty of time to criticize him if he turns out to be another careerist-opportunist like Clinton and Blair.
I spent some time working for AFSCME. Although it has its warts, it is the union that was helping to organize the Memphis sanitation workers in 1968. AFSCME is currently backing Hillary, but they’ve been supporting her since before Obama was on the horizon. I expect that if Obama gets the nomination, AFSCME will quickly endorse him, bringing a substantial GOTV apparatus and numerous foot-soldiers.
LM, you rock.
Watson,
I loved what you wrote, but have a few different takes. I thought Malcolm X was Dr. King's equal as a speaker. As for Bill Clinton, he's good but I think Barack Obama is significantly better. Clinton can play the right good old boy notes and has a folksy charm. BHO manages to talk on an intellectually higher level, that nonetheless communicates to the average person and evokes sincerity rather than the usual sophistry of political speak.
Ow.
He was my childhood hero. My dad was lawyer and I think he knew Letter From a Birmingham Jail by heart; in any case, I can't remember ever not knowing how hideous Jim Crow was, or not knowing what Dr. King was doing. And I remember actually being mad at him for coming out against the war because I thought he'd dilute his message and there was at that time a great movement among we young people to see him as too moderate and out-of-touch. When I heard that Riverside speech, I was in tears, of course, but I still believed, with all the callowness of youth, that he'd spread himself too thin. And I remember sitting at the kitchen table that night and facing a kind of airless empty that I've never felt before or since, a deeply-personal loss but also a death-blow to a cause I believed in so much and a voice our country needed so horribly. And still does.
This was one hell of a piece. I can only imagine how you feel, having written it.
Mike S: Not to quibble, because I agree that Malcolm X / Malik El-Shabazz was a master communicator, and a giant in his own right. I hope I don’t sound like I’m trivializing this, but I think that Dr. King wins on style points.
Malcolm’s speaking style reminds me of Noam Chomsky. Malcolm could certainly change gears, but he mostly used a remarkably flat affect. With all three men, the progressive ear is immediately struck by the richness of the content – factual, oppositional, radical. MLK added soaring King James prose and cathedral organ sound.
Clinton and Blair are distinctive because their consummate style delays for a few moments one’s realization that it’s just another politician talking. They may be advocating something good, but they’re never really challenging the establishment.
And I agree that Obama is special. He had an hour pretty much to himself recently on a Chris Matthews ‘College Bowl’ segment. Obama’s gravitas was such that Tweety had no choice but to act almost human. I’m afraid that the more face time Obama gets, the more his life too will be in danger.
Watson, I thought Obama might be killed a few months ago, but now they won't need to do that.
They can just hang Reverend "Jerekhan" Wright around his neck.
Unless HRC pulls The Mother Of All Rabbits out of her hat, Obama will be the Democratic nominee.
Remember 1988?
Remember Dukakis? Cool, calm, collected, relatively young?
Remember Bush Senior? Volatile fumblemouthed ex-Navy pilot?
Remember Willie Horton? [Rev. Wright could be twisted to fill that role this time]
Remember who won? 
Thanks for the post LM. I never watch the ol'TeeVee, but I can imagine that perhaps one day when the USA is a more truthful place, some commentator {hey, it might even be you , LM} will appear on the HDTV screen, fix everyone out there in HDTV Land with a piercing stare and say "Now, on the fiftieth anniversary of the murder of Dr. King, Ladies and Gentlemen, Old Timers and Children, we have decided to keep it short and sweet and just cut to the chase: The man had BALLS. Thank you and good night."
Ivory Bill,
The difference this time and 1988 is that Dukakis, or for that matter democrats in general, did not know how to handle the smear attacks. Now we do so I am a bit more confident. As time goes on, I am becoming more convinced that either Hari Seldon is on Obama's staff, or Obama himself has Seldon's abilities.
Watson,
I agree Dr. King was superior to Malcolm in that his speaking not only went beyond prose to become poetic in his using emotion to evoke emotion, and his vocal command was superb in his ability to change tones and inflections.
Malcolm though became less flat in his delivery the more he moved out of the aegis of Elijah Mohammed and became confident of his own sense of the world. What shown through always though was the man's brilliance and his ability to cut straight to his points.
To me Clinton and Blair are agile and effective, but overrated. This is due as you allude to their lack of ability to rise above pedestrian politician speak.
As for BHO I supported and voted for Edwards because at first I didn't know much more about him than his brilliant convention speech. When Edwards quit I began to watch him more and began to understand where he was coming from and the intelligence of his campaign.
The US has suffered mediocrity in our leadership and has had to put up with many mediocre presidency's, to me Bill Clinton ranks sixth or seventh among Presidents of the 20th century and that is even with my deploring Wilson's virulent racism. In that vein I often muse that maybe we don't deserve someone of BHO's insight and intellect and I worry for his safety as well.
Beautiful, LM.
And damn fine comments (okay, with one revolting exception) from all concerned.
Minstrel Hussein Boy said:
... i have finally come to a place of allowing my important, and even heroic men and women the space to be humans with failings. in many ways it's even more impressive. to know their flaws and defects and understand that with will and resolve these were overcome to achieve things of significance makes it all the more heroic to my thinking.
I've never heard it better phrased, MHB.
Periwinkle you are problably right...but i could do with fewer Seldon crisises.
Thank you for this post. Last week, I was stunned by the incredulous looks on the faces of our talking heads. It was as if the assassination had just happened and they'd noticed something for the first time, as in: Did you know there are people, and they're black, and you can talk to them? You can! And they're black!
I wanted to punch myself in the face for turning on the television.
Word... Tragedy always follows our glimmers behind the curtain.
We have been in free fall since the 60s and if the "straight-talker" is elected as prez I fear for our collective souls. I refuse to be a "good German."
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