The Martin Luther King You Don’t See on TV
It’s become a TV ritual: Every year on April 4, as Americans commemorate Martin Luther King’s death, we get perfunctory network news reports about “the slain civil rights leader.”
The remarkable thing about these reviews 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.” (Full text/audio here. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2564.htm)
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, nearly 40 years after King’s efforts on behalf of the poor people’s mobilization were cut short by an assassin’s bullet.
In 2007, in this nation of immense wealth, the White House and most in Congress continue to accept the perpetuation of poverty. They fund foreign wars with “alacrity and generosity,” while being miserly in dispensing funds for education and healthcare and environmental cleanup.
And those priorities are largely unquestioned by mainstream media. No surprise that they tell us so little about the last years of Martin Luther King’s life.
Jeff Cohen http://jeffcohen.org/ is the author of “Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media.” Norman Solomon www.normansolomon.com is the author of “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death” now out in paperback.
Like any honest activist who applies a sincere analytical approach, MLK came upon the truth of our class based society and began to move to a larger vision of civil rights and social justice. Much of what he said and wrote concerning interconnections of militarism, racism and classism and imperialism are still not only vital but unspeakable in the public arena. That is why he was asassinated but they can’t shut us all up.
Bravo, Jeff Cohen. This is real inconvenient truth, well beyond of too many a so called Left.
“King developed a class perspective.” Well said. The next step is to admit a ‘class interest’. Then, of cause, comes class struggle and after it, class war. That is the war that, according to Warren Buffet, his class is winning. Class war is the key to analysis of our current situation. Welcome to Marxist club, Comrade Cohen!
The problem is that MLK is the “Talisman Black” for the white oligarchies. He is the black man that white folks can safely consume. CNN roll out the footage of his “I have a dream” speech once a year, because, hell, even white folks have a dream and so they can relate to him. He was a nice christian boy too, so that makes him more digestible.
Heaven forbid that we actually listen to what he was saying - that “you can’t talk about ending slums without first saying profit must be taken out of slums”. No no no - put the *nice* back on the TV, the one that had a nice dream and is now conveniently dead. And maybe we could a song or two from that Mr. Robeson - but please don’t let him speak!
The media may have been MLK’s ally in the early 60’s but the majority of Americans were not. I lived in a suburb of Cleveland which was strongly unionized and voted Democratic, and the day after MLK’s assassination had to listen in my high school to overtly racist and incredibly crude joking. There are a lot of myths that need debunking–one, that racism was a southern thing; two, that the country was grateful for the changes MLK helped to engineer. There’s a lot more distortion to the official hagiography of MLK’s life than those missing speeches.
The voice in the wilderness is always an uncomfortable fit in the social structure because it tears at the seams of construct. We will face this exact conundrum until we level the field to include all G-d’s children or perish in apathy and ignorance.
We could sure use moral and progressive leader like MLK. We desperately need someone of stature to put terrorism into context. Either we are going to work toward a world where all will have a decent chance for health, economic well-being, and some sense of dignity and of control over their own lives, or there will be terrorism, and it will only get worse. The elite few, those whom Mr. Bush serves, will not easily give up their dream of hoarding it all and allowing the rest of the human race to suffer, wither, and die.
The corporate interests continue to bury everything Martin Luter Kings stood for, they purposely turn Marting into Rodney King reducing his message “Can’t we all get along”?
But they can’t bury the class struggle.
Juliette Malveaux once famously said, “Dr. King didn’t die dreaming, Dr. King died doing”, which is another thing that made him so hateful to all of apathetic America. I will confess that it took me a long time to finally get around to listening to the “Beyond Vietnam” speech delivered on this day so long ago.
To read it and compare his analysis to what America has become is at the same time a chilling and liberating experience because it shows how much we lost with his assasination and also what we must do to get it back.
Dr. King said:
“I speak as one who loves America, to the leaders of our own nation: The great initiative in this war is ours; the initiative to stop it must be ours…These are the times for real choices and not false ones. We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.”
We must all protest in whatever way our conscience leads and know that because the great initiative of this war belongs to US, the initiative to stop it belongs with us.
Kucinich/Nader in 08–Register green–it’ll get the Democrats attention.
“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.”
Isn’t that why he was assassinated?
“The problem is that MLK is the “Talisman Black” for the white oligarchies. He is the black man that white folks can safely consume.”
Well, plenty of black people embrace the revisionist’s transmogrified King too.
I attended a MLK Commemoration breakfast at a former federal workplace a few years ago. After all the black-baptist speakers finished, I would have thought MLK was just a black Jerry Falwell if I hadn’t known better. They even said that if King were alive today he would have “made it very clear what the bible says about homosexuality” - causing a couple brave employees to get up and leave.
“Well, plenty of black people embrace the revisionist’s transmogrified King too.”
I think that is true, PJD. The problem being that it is white people who control the media. They wheel out the Martin Luther King footage to help everyone feel that everything is right with the world. This, of course, affects some African American viewers too. The same with the way that schools teach him, or rather not teach him - they tend to just put up a poster of him as their token.
It is nice to know that there are others who actually pay attention to what Dr. King was trying to get across. Multiculturalism is something that needs to be reinforced to show that there is no need to separate any groups of people. In fact, even the white people have a bit of other races and vice versa. It’s the lack of intelligence and know how to live in a world that can be free of racism, classism, and all other isms.
It would be great if there was such a thing as a leader who can speak prophetically like Dr. King, but we also need to realize that it does start with each and every one of us.
Keep posting comments and keep educating yourselves!
Thanks Jeff and Norman…
The April ‘67 speech at Riverside Church is the greatest single piece of oratory I have ever heard. Listening to it should be a mandatory class session for every American school civics class today.
As noted, at the time the Riverside address was delivered it was almost uniformly condemned as radical and irresponsible by the pundits and opinion shapers of the mainstream media. After all, there were literally riots in the streets. Here was Martin Luther King stirring up more militancy, no doubt trying to upstage that rabble rousing Malcolm X fellow. By all means, the sanitizing of Dr. King’s legacy as an antiwar figure, who spoke out when it would have been most expedient to remain silent, should not be tolerated by thinking citizens.
Dr. King’s April ‘68 assassination was followed by more riots, followed by the August assassination of Robert Kennedy and more rioting still at the Chicago Democratic convention. The only year rivaling 1968 for consistently awful political developments in my life experience was 2004.
It should not be forgotten that Robert Kennedy was overtly running for President as an anti-Vietnam War candidate, candidly admitting that his previous support for LBJ and McNamara’s policies had been proved wrong by events on the ground. That sort of unambiguous acknowledgment of error is harder to find today. With Bobby’s death (which in retrospect could be considered an act of international terrorism, if we believe Sirhan Sirhan), it’s as though the two-party system descended into a trough, in which virtually any candidate openly speaking out for peace is instantly marginalized as unelectable at the national level.
As a result, today the GOP has no peace wing and the beltway brain trust of the Democratic Party tries to pretend their antiwar grassroots can be taken for granted, folks to be humored, but who (at least until 2006) were considered best neither seen nor heard from, given all that the 60s’ supposedly symbolized.
Pretending that Dr. King and Rosa Parks and Muhammad Ali and Dick Gregory and other civil rights leaders like them of the 60’s and 70’s were racial pioneers but not a part of the peace movement is a sad, self serving revision of a tumultuous but proud period in this nation’s history.
C’mon, Dutch… what’s really involved is not the “Jews” but the interests the military-industrial complex has IN the media so they can use fear to foment policies that favor war and the submission of citizens to “strong” leaders.
KING was a visionary, and the true visionary transcends all past bases for looking at the world. If the average American understood the fullness of King’s vision, TRUTH that cannot be debated, it’s as inviolate as the laws that rotate the planets in their orbs, they could not look themselves in the mirror. But one thing to consider about consciousness in America generally, is the degree to which MOST zone out. Whether it’s sports (as new opiate of the peoples), or shopping, or gambling, or alcohol consumption (borderline and real alcoholism), or using sugar as drug (obesity epidemic), or anti-depressant legal drugs (purportedly about 30 million on those babies), and the street sort. What percentage of this society’s adults are NOT asleep at the wheel? Alas, and the religious zealots in their mass somnabulistic state… a society that has too much tends to stop growing, and meanwhile the 3rd world rushes in to embrace the US lifestyle… when the earth itself, cannot sustain much more. The time for a new revelation about the purpose for mankind’s existence has arrived.
Before you go headlong into registering as a Green, register as a Dem so you can vote in the primaries. Voting for Kucinich in the primaries will send a very strong and viseral message to the Dem machine…PEACE NOW!!! After that, you can register in whatever party you want to support.
I agree with Bill from Saginaw that “The April ‘67 speech at Riverside Church” should be a mandatory civics lesson. In fact at the Detroit Area Department of Peace it is; followed by Vandana Shiva’s address on Earth Democracy.
While Cohen/Soloman use the title “Beyond Vietnam”
DADOP uses what is believed to be a more poignant and powerful title of Declaration of Independence from The War in Vietnam, as used by the A.J. Muste Memorial Instite.
No Declaration, No Dream.
The sanitization of King’s life fits the pattern called “heroification” described in “Lies My Teacher Told Me” by James W. Loewen. The pattern applies to almost all historical figures. The most extreme example is Helen Keller whose entire adult life after she overcame her blindness and deafness is generally ignored in practically all American History textbooks. She spent her adult life writing, speaking and arguing for socialism, but you’d never know it to read any of the most used American High School history textbooks.
To see what you’ve been missing, read the book. Also, Howard Zinn’s books.
Excellent column!
Also, how about pointing out the fact of the civil trial which proved that Ray didn’t kill King.
That is another alarming aspect of this topic.
There was some early work on the case by Harold Weisberg which revealed the government cover up that Ray couldn’t have committed the crime and that live leads that may have lead to those who framed Ray were never pursued by the FBI in 68. Ray had four aliases using real men’s names, all who lived in Canada and looked similar to Ray. How could an escaped convict get this information?
Naturally, the mainstream media and the dissident press ignored Weisberg’s groundbreaking work.
Only later, when William Pepper doggedly pursued the mysteries in this case, did the King family sign on to the conspiracy truth of King’s murder.
As of today, 2007, we don’t even know who killed Martin Luther King, Jr.
A recent development that was in the news recently would probably have been of interest to King: Voters of the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma voted to “disenroll” the black “Freedmen” from official tribal membership.
This situation is instructive about American history and the common experiences of some groups of Americans.
When the Cherokee were robbed of their land in the Appalachian Mountain region in the 1830s and forced west on the infamous “Trail of Tears,” some of them owned black slaves and took them along. A treaty with the US Government required that these black “freedmen” be included in tribal membership.
Though many blacks (and whites) intermarried with Cherokee and created many generations of mixed-race Americans, some of the Freedmen did not have Cherokee “blood” (actual Cherokee genetic background).
Ideas about race, economics, social dynamics and related factors that King spoke about all seem to come into this recent Cherokee-Freedmen story.
For details, see:
“Who is a Cherokee? Many Americans have Indians in the family tree”
March 14, 2007
http://www.populistamerica.com/who_is_a_cherokee
Rebel Farmer April 4th, 2007 6:06 pm
“Before you go headlong into registering as a Green, register as a Dem so you can vote in the primaries. Voting for Kucinich in the primaries will send a very strong and viseral message to the Dem machine…PEACE NOW!!! After that, you can register in whatever party you want to support.”
This is exactly what I intend to do.
Excuse me, but how is it that Siouxrose is responding to something by someone named Dutch which isn’t on this thread? Was this just an opportunity to blindside with a “blame the Jews” inference? Whatever it is, it’s unacceptable.
bren - I noticed that too, but I’ve seen where comments from another thread get posted in the wrong place.
Gail - Thanks!! Get all your friends, relatives, strangers, to do the same!
Class is still a taboo subject in this country, even more so than race, which I think one reason why we only get “highlights” and soundbytes in regards to MLK’s life.
It’s really a shame because there are so many people, mainly whites who still see MLK as some sort of villianous historical figure. MLK was a hated man when he died, and unfortunately, he still is by many people, people who fail to realize that he was looking out for them also. MLK was on the side of all groups who were getting a raw deal.
You know, a few years ago, I overheard a working-class white guy say in regards to Martin Luther King Day that “It ‘aint MY holiday.” And then one year on MLK Day, a local radio host named Fred Honsberger had a man on who made the following ridiculoous claims about him…
http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/outrage/mlking.asp
Here’s a link about that show…
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0123-02.htm
Dr. William F. Pepper is un-famous as the lawyer who successfully acted for the family of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in a 1999 Memphis Circuit Court trial. The trial, Kings v. Jowers, etal, aka “the Martin Luther King, Jr. Assassination Conspiracy Trial” resulted in this jury verdict:
THE COURT: In answer to the question did Loyd Jowers participate in a conspiracy to do harm to Dr. Martin Luther King, your answer is yes. Do you also find that others, including governmental agencies, were parties to this conspiracy as alleged by the defendant? Your answer to that one is also yes…
[MLK was murdered by the US government.]
More on the MLK trial–
http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/WFPonMLK.html
http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/MLKactOstate.html
I say “un-famous” because this verdict was basically omitted from the mainstream, corporate press.
iwarrior hits the nail on the head: “Class is still a taboo subject in this country.” Specifically, I would say that the notion of class - or I should say the myth that US society is classless - is subject to the same media campaign that Martin Luther King, Helen Keller or Paul Robeson have been treated to. I want to use the word whitewash. We are continually force-fed the myth that America is a classless society and it is simply done with the same old tales of oh so many presidents born in log cabins, “Only in America blah blah blah”.
It is an easy myth to maintain. Look at Bush when responding to allegations of racism: “When I am accused of these things I turn to discuss it with my good friends Colin Powell and Condi Rice.” That was his sole response. Because TWO African Americans have managed it ANYONE can do it. The same with class: because Gonzales was born in a poor family of 8 anyone can make it to the top jobs in American politics. It is a myth that is perpetuated by our school rooms and it is infintiely dangerous. Condi Rice is an aberration - she is the exception not the rule (and if you see her attending civil rights memorials a pretty nauseating one considering her attitudes to civil rights of detainees.)
We only need to teach our kids one sentence to overcome this myth: Class is another word for money.
DemocracyNow with Amy Goodman played King footage from 40 years ago, 1 year before his murder. I’d never seen this reported before anywhere. Us foreign policy has got to change as well as economic policy, there will never be peace without it. Thank you writing on these issues.
Public schools treat the issue of money like the issue of sex, both are virtually nonexistent. By ignoring money and how to think about money, its allowed to wither, perhaps intentionally.
1% owns something like 90% of the net wealth, while money and class is treated as taboo. When a powerful leader like MLK is silenced just as soon as he starts to question it, a picture emerges behind the true cause of his death.
Schools should start teaching mandatory “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” lessons. Although it would probably not last.
A great job by Cohen and Solomon. Although, it should be noted that King was a proud socialist and the American press doesn’t want you to know that. There is quite a list of these famous and beloved people that are “sanitized”. People like, Albert Einstein, John Lennon, H.G. Wells, Mohandas Gandi, Charlie Chaplin, etc., all socialists. But it’s rarely ever even mentioned!
Class, race and money, nothing will change as long as those whom have none, get up and stop taking care of the ones who have it all; but will kick you in the mouth right after you take off their shoes, before telling you that your pay check is in the mail, will be late and they are docking you for being late last month. And by the way we are getting an undocumented worker who will work for less then min. wage because they could turn them into the government! But hey they have all the money,they use it to buy the laws they want,and then they tell you who to have sex with, who to love, what to smoke, what to eat, where to go, who to go with! It is the top 1% percent, has 85% of all the money! Join Unions, VOTE and stand up for the poor, you never know when you will be one.
“Ideas about race, economics, social dynamics and related factors that King spoke about all seem to come into this recent Cherokee-Freedmen story.”
Mr. Hammons, here is something from the Cherokee Nation:
“The Cherokee Nation has long been a multi-ethnic nation, and remains one of the most inclusive tribes in the country. This will continue to be the case even after the recent Constitutional amendment is implemented. Everyone with a Cherokee, Delaware or Shawnee ancestor listed on the Dawes Rolls of the Cherokee Nation is eligible for citizenship, regardless of any other heritage the individual may have in their lineage. The amendment excludes non-Indian citizens of all races. Citizens of all races who are of Indian descent based on the Dawes Rolls will remain citizens of the Nation. In this respect, the Cherokee people have voted to be similar to most other Indian tribes in the country by requiring that its citizens must be Indian.
The citizens excluded by the Constitutional amendment have been citizens of the Cherokee Nation since March of 2006, when the Cherokee Nation Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution had been wrongfully interpreted to exclude non-Indians listed on the Dawes Rolls since 1975. The Cherokee Nation Supreme Court wrote at that time that if the Cherokee people wanted to exclude non-Indians, they could do so by amending the Constitution. A group of citizens followed the Constitutional process and circulated a valid petition calling for this special election. Though some of the Freedmen descendants claim they have been citizens for more than 100 years that statement is not true. Cherokee courts decided to allow non-Indian citizens only a year ago.
In 1832, the Supreme Court of the United States determined that the Cherokee Nation retained its rights of self-government (live under our own laws within our boundaries). It is sad that 174 years later, the Cherokee Nation still defends its rights of self-determination. It is also interesting to note that these challenges to our government come not during hard times but during times of prosperity (land, gold, oil and now gaming).”
Who knows what Dr. King would have thought, perhaps he knew about the continuing plight of the Indians as well and just wanted to be sure everyone was inclusive.
One may be able to claim that the United States government continues to find a way to separate groups to keep from building a common ground, which Dr. King was trying to do. And that is especially continued with the help of the media.
Regarding the comment by siiouxrose, it was clearly a rebuttal to a post by “dutch” that the moderator removed because of obvious anti-semitic content. This happens all the time in forums.
So, calm down bren. Hope you won’t call me an anti-Semite when I get started about Palesitine, or how Ahmadinejad never threatened to “wipe Israel off the map” but rather was just expressing a wish for a change in government.
Go to:
http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/publications/speeches/contents.htm
… to get links to his speeches, including the one April 5th, 2007, Beyond Vietnam.
A rebel is a threat to the system. A saint has many uses–not the least of which is being used to sell a war after enough time has passed. The example of Jesus comes to mind.
Getting rid of a rebel and then making her a saint is the second oldest trick of governments, the first being waging war to bring peace.
The problem is that the redistribution of wealth seldom works. And, the democrats who push for it are the biggest hypocrites in this country. Statistics regularly show that Republicans donate more to the poor than any of the other political parties. The Democrats philosophy seems to be “redistribution of wealth is fine as long as it is not my wealth.” It’s like the democrats having Al Gore (who fly’s around in private jets and has a home that ridiculously uses energy) as the environmental spokesperson. No where is this more evident than the democrats voting in lotteries. The poor usually win the jackpots. The largest growth group who file bankruptcies are poor who win the lottery. The poor do not know how to keep their wealth. When provided additional money they buy 1/2 a car, 1/8 a house, televisions, drugs, DVD’s…etc. They then fail to make their payments…loose everything…including their lending score.
The solution is to re-institute morals in the youth (the number one indicator for poverty in this country is a single mother). Pour large sums of money into schools for accounting, economic, investing and ethics classes. Provide $2000 to each student their junior year of High School to invest while taking the above classes. Do not allow them to receive their money until the have graduated with at least an AA degree. Education and ethics are the only keys to sustain wealth. Then a natural redistribution will occur.
Get a Democrat to extol these virtues along with fighting a real war on terrorism (not against Iraq) ; a Democrat who is an environmentalist at heart (and home) who does not preach extremism (the world is ending) but teaches prudence, economy, stewardship and love of God’s creations…then you will have a Democrat who will turn even Republicans heads.
I can only comment that I have memories of being with my dad at the rooming house on that day,..and I believe my dad was also involved somehow in the assasination of MLK,…with good reason…James Earl Ray who was also there that day did not pull the trigger but was aware of what was happening…there were also men present in the area whom were pointed out to me and identified as agents of the FBI,..I was only four years old and did not remember the incident until I was well into my thirties…but I cannot prove my memories I can only contiue to believe in them…..