Dr. King’s prophetic last speech
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Not much to add, except when Dr King stood alone against the US government following his “Beyond Vietnam” speech where he condemned US imperialism it wasn’t just the media and the politicians who turned against him. According to polls cited by Tavis Smiley 55% of Black people turned against him too. Yet he never backed down. He was only 39 years old when taken from us, autopsy reports indicated he had the heart of a man of 60. It wasn’t easy, doing what was right. But Dr King did it.
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This morning I watched “The Blind Side” …
there is a book I love, take down and read every few years… The Stand by S. King. The tv film of it is actually on Syfy right now…
what does it mean?
A day to think things over on the ethical side?
Ok, yeah,
everyday is that… especially with this crew….:-)
LOL Gwen…
Thank you Oso, for this … it’s given its’ gift today to me. And ty for the commentary it has inspired. A needful habit; learning. TY for the provisions.
Thanks as always Gwen for reading and appreciating, as i read and appreciate your posts.I think a mix of wistful and spiritual and maybe crazy thrown in as well.
May I recommend reading “The Autobiography of Martin Luther King” and “Martin Luther King, Jr.: A Life” (Marshall Frady). Reading passages from his speeches is, in my opinion, just as powerful as listening to them – if not more so.
Much as it is today, the country was in turmoil and I watched as one by one all of my heroes were killed by some goon-nut. The parallels are almost more than I can tolerate.
Had Johnson even tried to end the VN war when he first fell into office, no doubt his attention would have stayed focused on The Great Society. Instead he kept it going by listening to poor advice from the military and cabinet officials and, frankly, he lied as did they.
When LBJ decided not to run and Nixon became president (’69), it took six more years to put an end to this war that should never have been. By then Ford was president and Nixon was excommunicated due to the Watergate capers.
I still think LBJ was a hell of a president even though I didn’t always agree with him, especially on the matter of the war.
Oso, I like this photo of you. We can see your handsome mug.
Thanks Leslie!
Growing up I felt the same way about LBJ, I respect him now. He could armtwist and play the necessary backroom games with the best of them.
I’ll look for that book. I’m continually surprised by how much Dr King knew. Much of his understanding of Vietnam are things which (thru benefit of the internet and 30 years of historical narrative)I know now-but he knew those things in real time!
Oso, before your editing and my cocktails interceded, I had attempted a comment on this:
“According to polls cited by Tavis Smiley 55% of Black people turned against him too.”
At the time, I wasn’t aware of this. All of us in the anti-war movement were incredibly grateful for Dr. King to have spoken out on this cause. Some white liberals were saying that Reverend King was just paying the peace movement back for participants’ efforts on behalf of civil rights. But that was not the case: civil rights and war resistance were (as they are now) two legs of the same cause. Then, LBJ’s Great Society did a face plant because of his Vietnam delusions; the war on Vietnam killed the war on Poverty.
Vigil funny you mention the Great Society, my daughter watched the Smiley program on PBS and told me the same thing yesterday;had there been no Vietnam War LBJ’s programs would have done even more, he might have run again and we wouldn’t have had the out of control spending leading to the Nixon Shocks. Yeah you got it man.
It was news to me too of just how much he had to endure from his own people,understandably feeling his expanded vision of mankind detracted from the work done on their behalf.
Excellent comment!
I agree with Vigil. This is an excellent comment. Those tumultuous years are rich in a history that was basically ignored.
You’re right Mike. How would you imagine your life turning out, had we not been in Vietnam ? I missed it by about a year, I was 1A but didn’t get the “Greetings”.Who knows, you might have become Pope, or been an Elvis impersonator in Vegas instead of going into law enforcement.
I hung out with an older group, mostly cause of sports.So they all went to Nam but didn’t talk about it much unless we were all drinking. Then the stories came out.The funny, and the horrible.But only when they were drinking heavily.
I don’t think I could have passed the background for Pope my friend, but I do love Elvis. I don’t know any vets who talk about the war in Vietnam without the benefit of booze. It is just not something you talk about. I have had many discussions without Jack Daniels or Johnny Walker about the politics of it however, but never the grim reality of life on the ground. The stories of the boonie-rats are the most gritty. I was a REMF. My stories are not so gritty….
I learned just a couple of years ago how young he was. He was in his twenties when he wrote a Letter from the Birmingham Jail.
I would hardly consider being beaten by cops, sprayed with fire hoses or attacked by dogs a luxury.
IMO Dr King’s consistency took great courage.Our President’s lack of courage shows in his willingness to compromise with even the most venal of our citizenry.
MLK had a plan, a very courageous plan, but if he hadn’t been attacked by dogs and sprayed by hoses, the plan would have failed. Network News was brand new, still wearing diapers at that time and he wanted to be on the evening news. The predictable southern segregationists played right into his hands by behaving the way they did.
Obama don’t have courage? Give me a break, you really hate the guy don’t ya. It shows.
Harry,
I’ll be completely honest. My frustration has probably turned to hatred. He was handed incredibly difficult problems and IMO lacked the courage to take any of them on but has instead chosen to kick the can down the road in all cases.
LBJ, in contrast chose to push the Civil Rights Act knowing it would destroy the Democratic party in the south for generations as well as being the one to push Medicare over the hump. He took his challenges on.
Hatred gets you nowhere, hate begets hate, gnaws at your innards.
Harry,
yes you are right. Some of it is anger over the last 8 or 9 years worth of bad decisions.Some of it relates to health care I suppose.I never expected single payer or even a PO, but I thought there might be some sort of adequate basic package for my daughters,so I wouldn’t worry so much about their future.Both of them are adults, but us parents are like that, we worry. Seeing the travesty we ended up with sort of pushed me off a figurative cliff, having a hard time dealing with the anger.Mostly cause due to the amount of $ involved to get what tiny bit we got, I fear the window closed for change.Happy Easter man, anyway.
Peace to you man.
Dr. King, not being a politician, or even a regular guy, had the luxury of being able to be consistent. Being consistent in all you do, is a luxury not many people can afford. Life is just one compromise after another.
Well said Holte. Well said indeed…
Yeah, Buddy. I was so profound…. I’m not sure I can muster the same passion after another mai tai… But we’ll see what happens.
Had a long comment, here, Oso. But Typepad or whatever, swallowed it up!
Hi Vigil!
Probably me trying to edit, dang thing won’t let me embed this video code so just had to go with a link. Not like the old days when we could just write stuff on a sign and go picket someone!
Blogger is soooooo much more user friendly. Google should never be underestimated!
In some respects Blogger is more user friendly, but it doesn’t have the power or versatility of WP.org. There are always trade-offs I guess…
Nested comments is the best feature of this site.
It must have a little bit more going for it than that Vigil. For example yesterday alone we had 1,986 hits. Several days earlier we hit 1,200 and bested that quite handily…That is the rule and not the exception and things keep getting better and better. Not bad for being in operation less than two weeks.