April 4, 2008
Martin Luther King, Jr. Dead at 39; 40 Years Ago Today
Many Wonder At His Impact on Today's Presidential Race
Analysis By Tony Seaton
Huntingtonnews.net City Editor
40 years ago last night, Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his final speech. It was the soon-to-become famous "Mountaintop Speech" in support of striking Memphis sanitation workers. In it many have detected a knowing, a foretelling, a sense of foreboding that makes the thunderous oratory of Dr. King that night seem eerily prescient.
In the speech he tells the rapt listeners "I'm not worried about anything, I'm not fearing any man," and he all but predicts what will happen the very next day when he says, "Longevity has its place. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life...but I'm not concerned about that now."
He was shot and killed the next day, April 4, 1968. He would have turned 40 the next January.
The number 40 holds particular significance in the Bible. There are at least ten instances in the Old Testament and New Testament where 40 occurs.It rained for 40 days and 40 nights, Moses was on the mountain 40 days and 40 nights; the Israelites wandered in the wilderness 40 years; Jesus fasted in the wilderness for 40 days and was seen on the earth for 40 days after His crucifixion.
So, 40 years later, some say MLK's dream has been all but recognized. There are black governors, black mayors, black congressmen and women and black senators. And never in the nation's history have we been so close to having a black president.
Yet the race of Barack Obama, both in terms of his ethnicity and when speaking of the actual presidential run, bears some of the scars of the struggle King and others fought and died for 40 years ago.
When King was shot and killed blacks had only had their "rights" to vote federally mandated and enforced for 3 years. Just 4 years earlier the 1965 Civil Rights Voting Act had yet to come to pass and blacks were denied the vote by any number of insidious ways.
How far we have come, right? Well, even a cursory glance at the politics of race that have recently marred this campaign quickly put the lie to that assertion. Specifically the constant drumbeat on the right about Obama's former pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright.
Whereas whites today for the most part, if grudgingly in some quarters, give Dr. King his due, in many cases that's because they know him only through the most famous, filmed sermons seen on national TV in those days.
If camera phones, mini cams and YouTube had existed in King's day, memories might not be so benevolent. That's partly because white people, for the most part, don't go to black churches. The Reverends King and Wright are black preachers. Many black churches are completely different animals than those attended by their white brethren. The black church was formed because of racism and segregation by whites of black believers and thus became much more important to the black community than the church is to most whites. It's a community gathering place, a political outpost and a news outlet.
When King spoke to his followers they heard the non-mainstream news. Both he and Jeremiah Wright were preaching the Word in a time of wars, both unpopular. They were speaking ''truth to power'' in the most time- honored way when they gave their parishioners the what for on Sunday mornings.
Whites today have forgotten or else never knew the side of Martin Luther King that the audience of his sermons was familiar with. "If YouTube existed when Reverend Martin Luther King spoke to black churches he would have been every bit as controversial as the Rev. Jeremiah Wright," says Michael Eric Dyson, renowned scholar, ordained Baptist minister and author of ''Is Bill Cosby Right? Or has the Black Middle Class Lost its Mind?
"America is the greatest war criminal in the world," Martin Luther King, Jr. told an audience just months before he was himself killed, says Dyson. "America has committed more war crimes than any other nation. I will refuse to tell young black men to put down their guns and their weaponry without speaking to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today: America," King said.
America spends more money on its own "weapons of mass destruction" via the Defense Department budget, [formerly known more honestly as the War Department budget] than all other nations combined. And we use them. Freely. And in the case of the War Against Iraq, on children. 50% of Iraq's population is under age 15.
So knowing that, perhaps the fiery oratory of Reverend Jeremiah Wright, who has been seen in those YouTube clips speaking out about America's complicity in 9/11, because of 'blowback'' - retaliation for actions the government took against other nations that the American people knew nothing about at the time- could be more easily understood if we heard those lost speeches by Martin Luther King condemning the government's invasion of Vietnam.
In this, his final speech though, you can see the more reflective, intimate and spiritual Martin Luther King. Many have heard this speech, but few have seen it.
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Many Wonder At His Impact on Today's Presidential Race
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Analysis By Tony Seaton
Huntingtonnews.net City Editor
40 years ago last night, Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his final speech. It was the soon-to-become famous "Mountaintop Speech" in support of striking Memphis sanitation workers. In it many have detected a knowing, a foretelling, a sense of foreboding that makes the thunderous oratory of Dr. King that night seem eerily prescient.
In the speech he tells the rapt listeners "I'm not worried about anything, I'm not fearing any man," and he all but predicts what will happen the very next day when he says, "Longevity has its place. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life...but I'm not concerned about that now."
He was shot and killed the next day, April 4, 1968. He would have turned 40 the next January.
The number 40 holds particular significance in the Bible. There are at least ten instances in the Old Testament and New Testament where 40 occurs.It rained for 40 days and 40 nights, Moses was on the mountain 40 days and 40 nights; the Israelites wandered in the wilderness 40 years; Jesus fasted in the wilderness for 40 days and was seen on the earth for 40 days after His crucifixion.
So, 40 years later, some say MLK's dream has been all but recognized. There are black governors, black mayors, black congressmen and women and black senators. And never in the nation's history have we been so close to having a black president.
Yet the race of Barack Obama, both in terms of his ethnicity and when speaking of the actual presidential run, bears some of the scars of the struggle King and others fought and died for 40 years ago.
When King was shot and killed blacks had only had their "rights" to vote federally mandated and enforced for 3 years. Just 4 years earlier the 1965 Civil Rights Voting Act had yet to come to pass and blacks were denied the vote by any number of insidious ways.
How far we have come, right? Well, even a cursory glance at the politics of race that have recently marred this campaign quickly put the lie to that assertion. Specifically the constant drumbeat on the right about Obama's former pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright.
Whereas whites today for the most part, if grudgingly in some quarters, give Dr. King his due, in many cases that's because they know him only through the most famous, filmed sermons seen on national TV in those days.
If camera phones, mini cams and YouTube had existed in King's day, memories might not be so benevolent. That's partly because white people, for the most part, don't go to black churches. The Reverends King and Wright are black preachers. Many black churches are completely different animals than those attended by their white brethren. The black church was formed because of racism and segregation by whites of black believers and thus became much more important to the black community than the church is to most whites. It's a community gathering place, a political outpost and a news outlet.
When King spoke to his followers they heard the non-mainstream news. Both he and Jeremiah Wright were preaching the Word in a time of wars, both unpopular. They were speaking ''truth to power'' in the most time- honored way when they gave their parishioners the what for on Sunday mornings.
Whites today have forgotten or else never knew the side of Martin Luther King that the audience of his sermons was familiar with. "If YouTube existed when Reverend Martin Luther King spoke to black churches he would have been every bit as controversial as the Rev. Jeremiah Wright," says Michael Eric Dyson, renowned scholar, ordained Baptist minister and author of ''Is Bill Cosby Right? Or has the Black Middle Class Lost its Mind?
"America is the greatest war criminal in the world," Martin Luther King, Jr. told an audience just months before he was himself killed, says Dyson. "America has committed more war crimes than any other nation. I will refuse to tell young black men to put down their guns and their weaponry without speaking to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today: America," King said.
America spends more money on its own "weapons of mass destruction" via the Defense Department budget, [formerly known more honestly as the War Department budget] than all other nations combined. And we use them. Freely. And in the case of the War Against Iraq, on children. 50% of Iraq's population is under age 15.
So knowing that, perhaps the fiery oratory of Reverend Jeremiah Wright, who has been seen in those YouTube clips speaking out about America's complicity in 9/11, because of 'blowback'' - retaliation for actions the government took against other nations that the American people knew nothing about at the time- could be more easily understood if we heard those lost speeches by Martin Luther King condemning the government's invasion of Vietnam.
In this, his final speech though, you can see the more reflective, intimate and spiritual Martin Luther King. Many have heard this speech, but few have seen it.
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Make HNN Your Homepage (IE Users Only)
