The Rev. Martin Luther King: His Legacy
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2013-01-17/rev-martin-luther-king-his-legacy
The legacy of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and race in America today.
Guests
Taylor Branch
Pulitzer Prize-winning author of several books on Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights era.
Isabel Wilkerson
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of "The Warmth of Other Suns."
Comments
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For the most part MLK is slandered by a hijacked legacy that labels him a whiner and a "drum major." By the time of his assassination he had moved on beyond voting rights and interracial relations and was working on the causes of poverty, war and structural injustice. Too often "I have a dream..." is the end of the commemorative discussion. If Martin could speak to us now he'd share his outrage at the National Security Apparatus, the domination of governance by corporate and Oligarch lobbying, the fading sovereignty of the nation itself so that human rights take a back seat to private profiteering, and of course at the fact 80% of Americans lack any meaningful net worth and half of us are in or near poverty. I doubt he'd make gun violence his pet project because it is symptomatic of an overarching violence and sadism resulting from these structural issues. After all the concentration of wealth in less than 1% is a result and is not solvable in itself. He would teach citizens how to regain control of their minds and their consciences, to engage their senses to reject all the polluting streams we're being fed in food and water, medicine and media. Because every one of us, even the half-informed activists need to get clean and sober immediately and admit we're headed for an abyss as the ecology from which we originated is dying. Yes, he was only a human with the usual weaknesses, but we loaded him up with our hopes, aspirations and ambitions and watched him shot down and buried as if by ending the critique we could overcome. We should be way beyond having dreams by now. Dreaming seems an aspect of the greater dilemma.
On Martin Luther King day don't tell yourself lies. Ask for truth, and accept no substitutes.
Can you please talk about Rev. King and his recruitment by the leaders of the Pullman railroad men?
I am not clear on this but I had learned that he was recruited by them as they organized nationally .
Thank you Andra Bostian Ferguson
Ann Arbor
I wonder what he would have said about the government becoming the "baby daddy".
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"If Martin could speak to us now ..."
Saddly, he cannot, which is why we need people like you to channel him and tell us what he woulda said.
" He would teach citizens how to regain control of their minds and their consciences, to engage their senses to reject all the polluting streams we're being fed in food and water, medicine and media. Because every one of us, even the half-informed activists need to get clean and sober immediately and admit we're headed for an abyss"
On that you and I can agree ... I won't speak for Dr. King. Mostly, we have become Rome. Now ask yourself, why?
Dr. King was assassinated in Memphis Tennessee. He was there in support for decent public service workers wages and treatment. If he were alive today he`d be doing the same exact thing. American workers have been taking it on the chin since Reagan. Undoing most everything Dr.King did and stood for. Equal rights for all. Plentiful jobs that pay well,are the absolute best prevention and cure from a 'Nanny State'.
I read an article about a young single white mom who rejected a labor union at her Walmart. She said,it fells like being in a union takes away my choices.She went on to say,I`m OKAY with my current wages and FOOD STAMPS. OKAY? Decent wages makes you responsible for your choices. Bad lousey non union wages makes you a ward of the State. The average Walmart worker costs taxpayers an average of $1000. That IS the"Nanny State"
Clifford wrote: "I read an article about a young single white mom who rejected a labor union at her Walmart. She said,it fells like being in a union takes away my choices.She went on to say,I`m OKAY with my current wages and FOOD STAMPS'
Where is the father of her child or children?
Both of my "white" parents were involved in the civil rights movement in the Detroit area in the 1960s. Their struggle against white hatred of MLK was never-ending. It is important to never diminish the intensity, insidiousness of prejudice and bigotry at that time (or any time). We even had relatives who would not talk to us after we started attending an activist black church. See, for example, the excerpt from an editorial by my father, Robert McCormick, just days after MLK's assassination:
As city editor of a 50,000 circulation daily newspaper in the Detroit suburbs in the mid-1960s – early 1970s, he not only took on grubby politicians, Mafioso, and big polluters, he also called out racist and fundamentally undemocratic neighbors and “respectable people,” even his own grandmother’s beloved DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution).
Two days after MLK was assassinated in 1968, for instance, my father printed reprehensible words publicly spoken in his favorite watering-hole including, “This is great! Now all we need is somebody to kill Rap Brown and Stokely Carmichael.” My dad responded that “At first I got a sick feeling inside, but this quickly turned to anger and I had to fight the instinct to hit a few people right square in their foul mouths. However, I’m glad I didn’t because then I would be resorting to the same kind of blind violence and stupidity that led to the death of Dr. King . . . .”
(This quote is from an extended obituary I wrote about my father for the Tucson Citizen after he passed in 2011).
Melissa McCormick
Tucson, Arizona
50 years ago, Alabama Governor Wallace promised segregation now, segregation for ever. It was not easy to bring this country into the modern era given the unbreakable application of the concept of "state rights" and "the rule of law" which made it nearly impossible to oppose such things as allowing blacks simply to enter a library, never mind access the better schools of the country.
I continue to be highly offended still by those who refuse to ignore the color of anyone's skin and prefer to utter mere clichés and nonsense when it comes to defending their racist ideas.
It is particularly hurtful and mean-spirited when even people we like and respect, for whatever reason, refuse to acknowledge their subtle racism or simply continue to resort to the old clichés and lies to make points that need not be made... not after this country has paid such a high price for our illegal, unconstitutional and unconscionable actions.
Think how much better off we would be as a country today if only we had made those changes just 50 years earlier, before we finally did start making some changes... we would have a lot less road to cover now and perhaps we would no longer be able to use those same racist and intolerant arguments in our current fight for civil rights of other minorities.
Another great show with more great guests. To celebrate our history, If you have not yet read Isabel Wilkerson's WARMTH OF THE SUN, run, don't walk, to find it. Wilkerson follows the journeys of four blacks after Reconstruction. Her brilliant writing creates narratives that will open your eyes from the "blacks only" water fountains in Wichita Falls, Texas, of the 50s, to President Obama's White House. [Air America/CIA widow, Republican, 43 year retired teacher]. Happy Martin Luther Kinge, Jr. Day.
This was the absolute best news hour/interview, whatever, that I have heard in a long time. My hat is off to both Taylor Branch and Isabel Wilkerson for taking us through the arc of American history beginning with the Emancipation Proclamation through the Civil Rights movement up to the present. I have never heard such a clear-sighted description of the events nor their importance in the history of our nation. Their understanding that we are too quick to forget, intentionally forget, our own history, even to deny it in order not to have to deal with it was beautifully, forcefully articulated by these two.
I grew up in the Deep South as a white female and have told others for years that racism persists throughout this nation, that it has destroyed our educational system, and that it is at the root of our obsession with guns and gun violence. These two thoughtful historians illuminated the subject gracefully and persuasively and gave me hope that in the long span of history not only will this racism end but also our obsession with guns. Thank you for that hope. Even at 71 hope is essential.