Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. – Remembered
on January 17th, 2012 at 1:01 amI refuse to call myself an African American. He gave his life, so that I could vote….in America, eat at lunch counters…in America, walk into the front door of Malls…in America, sit anywhere there is an open seat in the public transit system…in America. I am a Christian, black man born …in America and most of all, I call myself, what I am, an American! Thank you Dr. King!
Martin Luther King, Jr., was born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia. He was the son of Reverend Martin Luther King, Sr. and Alberta Williams King. Although Dr. King’s name was mistakenly recorded as “Michael King” on his birth certificate, this was not discovered until 1934, when his father applied for a passport. He had an older sister, Willie Christine (September 11, 1927) and a younger brother, Alfred Daniel (July 30, 1930 – July 1, 1969). King sang with his church choir at the 1939 Atlanta premiere of the movie Gone with the Wind. He entered Morehouse College at age fifteen, skipping his ninth and twelfth high school grades without formally graduating. In 1948, he graduated from Morehouse with a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) degree in sociology, and enrolled in Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania, and graduated with a Bachelor of Divinity (B.D.) degree in 1951. In September 1951, King began doctoral studies in systematic theology at Boston University and received his Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) on June 5, 1955 (but see the Plagiarism section for controversy regarding this degree).
In 1953, at age 24, King became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. On December 1,
1955, Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to comply with the Jim Crow laws that required her to give up her seat to a white man. The Montgomery Bus Boycott, urged and planned by E. D. Nixon (head of the Montgomery NAACP chapter and a member of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters) and led by King, soon followed. (In March 1955, a 15 year old school girl, Claudette Colvin, suffered the same fate, but King did not become involved.) The boycott lasted for 381 days, the situation becoming so tense that King’s house was bombed. King was arrested during this campaign, which ended with a United States Supreme Court decision outlawing racial segregation on all public transport.
King was instrumental in the founding of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957, a group created to harness the moral authority and organizing power of black churches to conduct non-violent protests in the service of civil rights reform. King continued to dominate the organization. King was an adherent of the philosophies of nonviolent civil disobedience as described in Henry David Thoreau’s essay of the same name, and used successfully in India by Mohandas “Mahatma” Gandhi. King applied this philosophy to the protests organized by the SCLC. In 1959, he wrote The Measure of A Man, from which the piece What is Man?, an attempt to sketch the optimal political, social, and economic structure of society, is derived.
Inspired by Mahatma Gandhi’s success with non-violent activism, he visited the Gandhi family in India in 1959, with assistance from the Quaker group the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The trip to India affected King in a profound way, deepening his understanding of nonviolent resistance and his commitment to America’s struggle for civil rights. In a radio address made during his final evening in India, King reflected, “Since being in India, I am more convinced than ever before that the method of nonviolent resistance is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for justice and human dignity. In a real sense, Mahatma Gandhi embodied in his life certain universal principles that are inherent in the moral structure of the universe, and these principles are as inescapable as the law of gravitation.â€
The FBI began wiretapping King in 1961, fearing that Communists were trying to infiltrate the Civil Rights Movement, but when no such evidence emerged, the bureau used the incidental details caught on tape over six years in attempts to force King out of the preeminent leadership position.
King correctly recognized that organized, nonviolent protest against the system of southern segregation known as Jim Crow laws would lead to extensive media coverage of the struggle for black equality and voting rights. Journalistic accounts and televised footage of the daily deprivation and indignities suffered by southern blacks, and of segregationist violence and harassment of civil rights workers and marchers, produced a wave of sympathetic public opinion that made the Civil Rights Movement the single most important issue in American politics in the early 1960s.
King organized and led marches for blacks’ right to vote, desegregation, labor rights and other basic civil rights. Most of these rights were successfully enacted into United States law with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
King and the SCLC applied the principles of nonviolent protest with great success by strategically choosing the method of protest and the places in which protests were carried out in often dramatic stand-offs with segregationist authorities. Sometimes these confrontations turned violent. King and the SCLC were instrumental in the unsuccessful Albany Movement in Albany, Georgia, in 1961 and 1962, where divisions within the black community and the canny, low-key response by local government defeated efforts; in the Birmingham protests in the summer of 1963; and in the protest in St. Augustine, Florida, in 1964. King and the SCLC joined forces with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in Selma, Alabama, in December 1964, where SNCC had been working on voter registration for several months.
King, representing SCLC, was among the leaders of the so-called “Big Six” civil rights organizations who were instrumental
in the organization of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963. The other leaders and organizations comprising the Big Six were: Roy Wilkins, NAACP; Whitney Young, Jr., Urban League; A. Philip Randolph, Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters; John Lewis, SNCC; and James Farmer of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). The primary logistical and strategic organizer was King’s colleague Bayard Rustin. For King, this role was another which courted controversy, since he was one of the key figures who acceded to the wishes of President John F. Kennedy in changing the focus of the march. Kennedy initially opposed the march outright, because he was concerned it would negatively impact the drive for passage of civil rights legislation, but the organizers were firm that the march would proceed.
In late March 1968, King went to Memphis, Tennessee in support of the black sanitary public works employees, represented by AFSCME Local 1733, who had been on strike since March 12 for higher wages and better treatment. (For example, African American workers, unlike white workers, were not paid when sent home because of inclement weather.)
On April 3, King returned to Memphis and addressed a rally, delivering his “I’ve been to the Mountaintop” address at Mason Temple (Church of God in Christ, Inc. – World Headquarters). King’s flight to Memphis had been delayed by a bomb threat against his plane. In the close of the last speech of his career, in reference to the bomb threat, King said the following:
“ And then I got to Memphis. And some began to say the threats, or talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers?
Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. â€
King was booked in room 306 at the Lorraine Motel, owned by Walter Bailey, in Memphis. Reverend Ralph Abernathy, King’s close friend and colleague who was present at the assassination, swore under oath to the HSCA that King and his entourage stayed at room 306 at the Lorraine Motel so often it was known as the ‘King-Abernathy suite.’ While standing on the motel’s 2nd floor balcony, King was shot at 6:01 p.m. April 4, 1968. The bullet entered through his right cheek smashing his jaw and then traveling down his spinal cord before lodging in his shoulder. According to biographer Taylor Branch, King’s last words on the balcony were to musician Ben Branch (no relation to Taylor Branch) who was scheduled to perform that night at an event King was attending: “Ben, make sure you play Take My Hand, Precious Lord in the meeting tonight. Play it real pretty.” Friends inside the motel room heard the shots and ran to the balcony to find King on the ground. Local Rev. Samuel “Billy” Kyles, whose house King was on his way to, remembers that upon seeing King go down he ran into a hotel room to call an ambulance. Nobody was on the switchboard, so Kyles ran back out and yelled to the police to get one on their radios. It was later revealed that the hotel switchboard operator, upon seeing King shot, had had a fatal heart attack and could not operate the phones. King was pronounced dead at St. Joseph’s Hospital at 7:05 p.m. The assassination led to a nationwide wave of riots in more than 60 cities.
Five days later, President Lyndon B. Johnson declared a national day of mourning for the lost civil rights leader. A crowd of
300,000 attended his funeral that same day. Vice-President Hubert Humphrey attended on behalf of Lyndon B. Johnson, who was holding a meeting on the Vietnam War at Camp David. (There were fears that Johnson might be hit with protests and abuses over the war if he attended.) At his widow’s request, King eulogized himself: his last sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church, a recording of his famous ‘Drum Major’ sermon, given on February 4, 1968, was played at the funeral. In that sermon he makes a request that at his funeral no mention of his awards and honors be made, but that it be said that he tried to “feed the hungry”, “clothe the naked”, “be right on the [Vietnam] war question”, and “love and serve humanity”. Per King’s request, his good friend Mahalia Jackson sang his favorite hymn, “Take My hand, Precious Lord” at his funeral.
“I do not know what the future holds, but I do know who holds the future. (Yes) And if He’ll guide us and hold our hand, we’ll go on in.”
–Martin Luther King, Jr.
I had a chat with my 83-year-old mama today. My daddy, who has dementia, was sitting there going on about when he was going to ‘expire’. Mom, being the Diva that she is, just has a way of breaking things down. “Just stop that nonsense”, she said. “Stop that morbid talk. What did Dr. King say? He said ‘We don’t know what the future holds, but we know who holds the future’. So stop all of this talk about ‘expiring’. We will trust in the Lord and that’s that.”
I meditate on the morbid times that we live in. They are indeed morbid. The economy is terrible. People’s homes are being foreclosed on and children have no health care. Gang members are joining the military so that they can die with dignity instead of in the gutters. They actually see no other options. We kill, hate, carry out wars, and subjugate women in the name of Christianity and without guilt.
I listened to Jill Scott’s song “Daydreamin’”. The lyrics say “I fell asleep beneath the flowers for a couple of hours.. ” It’s a song about escaping the reality of what goes on in the world today and I could empathize and identify. Hip-hop culture has turned gifted, talented young men into shameless thugs, gang-bangers, and hoodlums and young women into objectified sex objects who fawn over them. The public school system, the lawmakers, their fathers, and their mothers have failed them. We are all to blame.
We have forgotten the fundamental principles of Christianity that Dr. King personified. Some of the so called Christians are so consumed with being evangelical and self-righteous that we have completely forgotten the BASIC things that Dr. King went to his grave BEGGING us to remember: “feed the hungryâ€, “clothe the nakedâ€, “be right on the [Vietnam] war questionâ€, and “love and serve humanityâ€. In other words, let’s get off our high horses and smell the coffee. Christ would not kill anyone, He would not be consumed with retaliation, condemnation, getting rich, and watching poor people die because they didn’t have health care. He would forgive, feed the hungry, and heal the sick. For God’s sake, let’s remember this on Dr. King’s special day. Let’s quit cherry picking scriptures to justify the misery and hatred in our own hearts.
My prayer on MLK day is that we take my mama’s advice and trust in the Lord for a better future. We can not depend on man.. we have to know who REALLY holds our fate and pray for the strength to do what it takes to make it happen and hold on until it comes.
What does ‘pingback’ mean? I see that thing in posts and never know what it means.
My thing is this: How can one call themselves Christian and condone a senseless war in which innocent civilians including women and children are killed? How can one call themselves Christian and watch children go without schoolbooks and have no money to go to the doctor? I have students with ear infections and who need eyeglasses but their parents can’t afford them.
How can one call themselves a Christian and sit back and watch what happened during Hurricane Katrina and do nothing about it?
Sorry, but I have to say this: Evangelical Christianity in this country has reached an all time low. Back in Dr. King’s days, Christians were running around burning crosses in people’s yards, lynching black people from trees, and finding scriptures to justify separating blacks from whites. Dr. King went to consult with Ghandi because he (Ghandi) behaved in a more Christlike manner than most of the Christians around here. The truth is that it’s not much different today.. the hypocrisy is just not as blatant.
Many people today running around claiming to be Christians don’t have a clue about what true Christianity is about. Dr. King broke it down in elementary terms so that we could all understand it.
PING ME GERI! PING ME!
Most blogs have a method to allow visitors to leave comments, like this one. There are also ways for authors of other blogs to leave comments without even visiting the blog! Called “pingbacks” or “trackbacks”, they can inform other bloggers whenever they cite an article from another site in their own articles that they find worthy to share. All this ensures that online conversations can be maintained painlessly among various site users and websites.
PING ME YOU SCOUNDREL! Great question, now get your little tail back to the caboose!
Why y’all tryin’ to make me get up on my soapbox again! I’ve gained weight and I haven’t reinforced it yet. It’s rickety up here!
“……..Journalistic accounts and televised footage of the daily deprivation and indignities suffered by southern blacks, and of segregationist violence and harassment of civil rights workers and marchers, produced a wave of sympathetic public opinion that made the Civil Rights Movement the single most important issue in American politics in the early 1960s.”
“King organized and led marches for blacks’ right to vote, desegregation, labor rights and other basic civil rights. Most of these rights were successfully enacted into United States law with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.”
Gerri wrote:
“Hip-hop culture has turned gifted, talented young men into shameless thugs, gang-bangers, and hoodlums and young women into objectified sex objects who fawn over them. The public school system, the lawmakers, their fathers, and their mothers have failed them. We are all to blame.”
“We have forgotten the fundamental principles of Christianity that Dr. King personified.”
I was too young to remember my family’s reaction when John F. Kennedy was killed. But, I can clearly recollect the tears, disappointment, and anger, that I saw in their eyes when Dr. King was murdered.
I can also recall watching the televised footage of the inhumane treatment suffered by the civil rights marchers. That footage was shown on my local television stations each year as I was growing up. But, that historical television footage is no longer routinely shown. It just doesn’t happen anymore. I can also recall the anger that I felt after having watched “Roots” for the very first time, and that anger was revisited each year when that historical program was also re-run. Again, that movie is no longer routinely re-run.
Many middle aged and older blacks have first hand knowledge and visual images to remind them of how far we’ve progressed on the issue of civil rights. Our children do not have those reminders. But when I think about the fact that Roots is a compilation of one family’s oral history as well as Alex Haley’s detailed research, I believe that it is still possible to get the message across to our children.
Gerri I agree that we are all to blame for the skewed values that are espoused by hip hop culture. Our lack of action has allowed our young men and young women to become desensitized to the struggle.
In some ways we’ve been hindered by our own progress. But, it’s not too late for us to recognize that we can no longer afford to dismiss as ‘old fashioned’ the mores and values of our culture. We can still teach our sons and daughters that they need to work together to accomplish positive change. It’s not too late to teach our daughters to respect themselves. Chris Rock is correct. His job is to indeed keep his daughter off the ‘pole.’ We can again require that our sons heed our words and respect our values, or understand that as parents, our expectation will be that they become a husband to their pregnant girlfriends and not just a “baby daddy.”
As Christians we already have a guide for how to live our lives. As black folks in America we already know that we have the strength of a people who have endured and survived the transatlantic slave trade.
Tammy
Hey Soror Tammy
Move over! I need some room on the soapbox and I’m fatter than you are. As always, you are so insightful and on point.
There is a dirty little secret that we have in this country. We are almost just as polarized and segregated as we were 40 years ago. Walk into any public school in the country and you’ll see what I’m talking about. The boundaries are redrawn every year or so around certain neighborhoods so that minorities and whites won’t have to go to school together. I’m not talking as some paranoid conspiracy theorist.. this is actually going on. The schools in the inner city schools are getting far less money than those in the more wealthy neighborhoods, and the gap in polarization is getting wider and wider. This was NOT Dr. King’s dream, nor Thurgood Marshall’s.
I agree that we have all failed some of our children, and I think that the government should certainly get off scott free either. Funding for the education and options for our children should not be sent overseas to avenge some personal beef with George Sr. and Sadaam Hussein. The cost of getting a college education is outrageous. Bill Gates shouldn’t have to give his personal money for that. This country’s government invests FAR too much money in the war and virtually nothing in our youth here at home. Dr. King lit fire under the government to do the right thing with our tax money and invest in education now so that we won’t have to pay the price for ignorance later.
Chuckie told me to go back to the caboose but somebody left the lock undone.
kwl
i love your site and isn’t sad how are leader dr.martin luther king jr. died at the lorrainne motel in room 306, when i saw a video i thounght it was just sad to kill someone like that.
dis is a big h0u53
I wish he was still alive
I am American, my people were born in Alabama, and Georgia; my great grand parents were born in Alabama and Florida; they were American and Native Americans of the Seminole Tribe. I have noticed that they now put Black/African American (non-Hispanic) on forms now. I guess that is a way of expressing difference but still lumping us in the same group. Peace
Princess, we may be related! My folks were all just very pale…but Gramma wouldn’t talk about it…said not to trace the family tree because I’d find monkeys back there. hmmmm.
Anyway – Dr Martin Luther King…I look forward to meeting him in heaven!
I have a dream….judged by their character and not by the color of their skin.
As Chuckie pointed out, so wonderfully, Dr. King’s dream was that we’d all be Americans…no classes based on skin color. So many want to have an excuse because of their skin color. And when I needed help, I couldn’t get any because of my skin color. It’s all messed up.
Kids today have no idea about what the Wars were fought for in WWI and WWII – and what REAL wars were like…when the soldiers weren’t pawns on a political chessboard.
Kids today have no idea about what segregation did – I remember the older kids coming home from South High, having had knife fights in the 60′s.
Kids today have no idea about needing to get a minimum paying job to have fun money – because mom and dad just give it to them.
Kids today have no idea what it is to have character, like Dr King dreamt about…because they have no idea what the moral compass was in this country, when the REAL Christians, like Dr. King, were preaching character!
When you went to school close to the gang stuff, and the slum stuff – you really don’t think that’s all that entertaining! When abuse was real in your life, hearing it in music isn’t entertaining. But kids that have a life so much better than we did, they just don’t get it.
I cringe at the new rise of bigotry in our country – the new special demographics that are hand carried by Uncle Sam…when there is no reason for anyone to fail in the USA today. Start over, yes. Get a hand up, yes. Get some support to move forward, yes. But, if we could take all the money we send to help those ‘less fortunate souls’ in other parts of the world, and use it HERE…we could raise the next MKL Jrs, the next leaders, movers and shakers that will get this nation back on the tracks to greatness.
But, we have got to get this special demographics thing – the remnants of bigotry by color, race, nationality, sexual preference – we have to get this thing abolished…and THEN, help those that really want to move forward.
Help the children that can’t help themselves…and teach them how to be a success story. I believe that is what Dr. King’s dream really was. That in this country, each man, woman, and child would be judged by their character, and rewarded for their hard work towards bettering themselves and their communities.
Ok ladies, I’ve stepped off the soap box….but, I think it needs some repair!