http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2269

It's become a TV ritual: Every year in mid-January, around the time of Martin Luther King's birthday, we get perfunctory network news reports about "the slain civil rights leader."

The remarkable thing about this annual review of King's life is that several years — his last years — are totally missing, as if flushed down a memory hole.

What TV viewers see is a closed loop of familiar file footage: King battling desegregation in Birmingham (1963); reciting his dream of racial harmony at the rally in Washington (1963); marching for voting rights in Selma, Alabama (1965); and finally, lying dead on the motel balcony in Memphis (1968).

An alert viewer might notice that the chronology jumps from 1965 to 1968. Yet King didn't take a sabbatical near the end of his life. In fact, he was speaking and organizing as diligently as ever.

Almost all of those speeches were filmed or taped. But they're not shown today on TV.

Why?

It's because national news media have never come to terms with what Martin Luther King Jr. stood for during his final years.

In the early 1960s, when King focused his challenge on legalized racial discrimination in the South, most major media were his allies. Network TV and national publications graphically showed the police dogs and bullwhips and cattle prods used against Southern blacks who sought the right to vote or to eat at a public lunch counter.

But after passage of civil rights acts in 1964 and 1965, King began challenging the nation's fundamental priorities. He maintained that civil rights laws were empty without "human rights" — including economic rights. For people too poor to eat at a restaurant or afford a decent home, King said, anti-discrimination laws were hollow.

Noting that a majority of Americans below the poverty line were white, King developed a class perspective. He decried the huge income gaps between rich and poor, and called for "radical changes in the structure of our society" to redistribute wealth and power.

"True compassion," King declared, "is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring."

By 1967, King had also become the country's most prominent opponent of the Vietnam War, and a staunch critic of overall U.S. foreign policy, which he deemed militaristic. In his "Beyond Vietnam" speech delivered at New York's Riverside Church on April 4, 1967 — a year to the day before he was murdered — King called the United States "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today."

From Vietnam to South Africa to Latin America, King said, the U.S. was "on the wrong side of a world revolution." King questioned "our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America," and asked why the U.S. was suppressing revolutions "of the shirtless and barefoot people" in the Third World, instead of supporting them.

In foreign policy, King also offered an economic critique, complaining about "capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries."

You haven't heard the "Beyond Vietnam" speech on network news retrospectives, but national media heard it loud and clear back in 1967 — and loudly denounced it. Time magazine called it "demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi." The Washington Post patronized that "King has diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people."

In his last months, King was organizing the most militant project of his life: the Poor People's Campaign. He crisscrossed the country to assemble "a multiracial army of the poor" that would descend on Washington — engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience at the Capitol, if need be — until Congress enacted a poor people's bill of rights. Reader's Digest warned of an "insurrection."

King's economic bill of rights called for massive government jobs programs to rebuild America's cities. He saw a crying need to confront a Congress that had demonstrated its "hostility to the poor" — appropriating "military funds with alacrity and generosity," but providing "poverty funds with miserliness."

How familiar that sounds today, more than a quarter-century after King's efforts on behalf of the poor people's mobilization were cut short by an assassin's bullet.

As 1995 gets underway, in this nation of immense wealth, the White House and Congress continue to accept the perpetuation of poverty. And so do most mass media. Perhaps it's no surprise that they tell us little about the last years of Martin Luther King's life.

Interesting stuff.

Yeah. The White House and Congress should just reach down and with its huge amounts of money lift all the poor people up out of poverty. Obviously it is that simple, and poor people being poor has absolutely nothing to do with the choices they make or the situations they grew up in and were unable to break free of.

Excellent thoughts for the second post in a thread honor the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr.

This thread was supposed to honor MLK? I must have missed something, and misread the News & Debate forum title.

I didn't say you couldn't say it. I simply applauded your humanity and respect for Dr. King's cause.

He only took issue with the tiny quoted portion of the article. Perhaps he simply feels that such issues are best addressed at a local and individual level. Had the author changed the 'perpetrators' of this injustice from the government to us as a society, I don't think there'd be a point of contention here.

Wait. So now, because I choose not to take seriously someone placing the blame of poverty square on the shoulders of the US Government, I am disrespecting Martin Luther King?

Sometimes that slippery slope just comes and bites me in the ass, doesn't it!

That's it. From now on... no more MLK Blvd for you. Want to head N/S? Take Lamar.

Bitch.

EDIT:

Oh wait, MLK goes E/W.

Ah well... it sounded cool for a sec.

Us Northwesterners don't need your stupid MLK blvd. Shove it up your ass, I take lamar anyway!

He's one of my favorite people ever and I'm not even Christian.

Ever read the collections of his speeches or letters? Simply one of the best people ever. I dont really know what to say. God love ya Martin.

What the fuck does him being Christian have to do with anything? Any praise he receives for his accomplishments should be based on a personal and not religious level. So if someone who tries to do the right thing isn't the same theological faith as you, do they have to go out of their way to make you respect them?

I will say that "Letter From a Birmingham Jail" is one of the finest essays I've ever read. But I am a Christian, so I must be biased.

martin luther king..a man that stood for peace

ever go to martin luther king bvd..theres some voilence goin down!!

great chris rock shit!!

I think what he was saying is that it may be more out of character for someone to respect him purely from a non theological point of view. It doesn't really look like AS was trying to make any of the assumptions you are suggesting.

Then again, I'm tired.

Relax dude.
For an atheist to praise the actions of a priest is a pretty fucking big compliment.


Well that's your opinion pal. I'll decide why and who I want to praise.

No, but you're all fired up and assuming all kinds of shit.
Go ahead, keep assuming you retard.

Calling me a retard is a great persuasive tactic for winning an argument. I bet you were the all-star of your debate team in college, weren't you?

No, but that fact that he is right sure helps.

Why do so many people start out as champions of the just cause of equality and end up as champions of the immoral cause of egalitarianism?

What's the difference? Are egalitarians commies or something?