Martin Luther King day - Jan 20th 2014

And an interesting article from the Washington Post.

Martin Luther King Jr. and the catalyst of change

MARTIN LUTHER King Jr. preached nonviolence, practiced it and led a great movement guided by its principles. Yet surely he knew, as did most of his followers, that what they were doing would lead to violence. One need only look at the old black-and-white photos of civil rights protests, at the hatred, scorn and, perhaps most important, fear on the faces of some of the white people there to confront the demonstrators to understand how such simple acts as sitting down in a bus or entering a restaurant, seeking the right to vote or go to a better school, could lead to the worst sorts of violence — a bitter truth that followed King to the day of his death.

Yet out of that violence came new understanding of a sort: People who had been all but invisible to much of the United States came to be seen through the newspapers and television as individual human beings : women and children being firehosed; war veterans returning home to be subjected to all the humiliations and restrictions of the time (or to be murdered, like Medgar Evers); polite young men trying to get a sandwich at a lunch counter; a dignified woman who refused to give up her seat on a bus; the children killed by a bomb in a Birmingham church. For many Americans, this marked the first time they had come face to face, or had allowed themselves to come face to face, with the cruelty of racial separation and oppression, a century after the official end of slavery.

You can read the whole article here:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/martin-luther-king-jr-and-the-catalyst-of-change/2014/01/19/dde0bf2e-8093-11e3-93c1-0e888170b723_story.html?hpid=z3

The final paragraph sums it up:

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was seen by some as a radical and a troublemaker. The truth is that he had considerable faith in America. He believed that when people saw the unfairness of the caste system that had grown up in their country — in a nation founded on the principles of equality before the law, the opportunity to advance in life according to one’s merits, the right to choose the people who govern us — they would understand how truly un-American it was and it would all come to an end, and much of it has.

I was in Texas for the first MLK Day in 1986 think it was. In the lead up to it, some of the things I heard said about were unprintable. I then went to his memorial in Atlanta and saw the joy about it. Thankfully, over the years it has been normalised, but that first one stirred up a lot of ill feeling.

It certainly was a struggle. It's both a mark of progress and incredibly frustrating to hear modern-day conservatives who try to claim MLK as one of their own intellectual allies!

MLK was one of the greatest people the U.S. has ever produced, outshining the majority of our presidents, but one thing he was not was a conservative.

Ben_Reilly wrote:
It certainly was a struggle. It's both a mark of progress and incredibly frustrating to hear modern-day conservatives who try to claim MLK as one of their own intellectual allies!

  

The American ultra-Conservatives seem to be doing a lot of that recently, especially since their support base has shrunk to an all-time low, in line with their stalling tactics, filibustering, blocking budgets, and kowtowing to the "Tea Party"/big business/NRA/etc...

Their attempts at reinvention of the GOP and revisionary history not only includes attempts at trying to claim various radicals,humanists and freedom-fighters as "fellow conservatives", but they also like to point out how the early republicans were the radicals and revisionaries 200-300 years ago, whereas back then the Democrats tended to be the party of slave-oning conservatives !    

And all the while the modern day GOP conservatives choose to remain blind to the irony in the fact that they have done a complete 180° about face !     

Ben_Reilly wrote:
MLK was one of the greatest people the U.S. has ever produced, outshining the majority of our presidents, but one thing he was not was a conservative.

 

Many Australian Aboriginal activists will also be sure to be watching with some interest ~ after the American "Freedom March" on August 27th/28th 1963, a few activists here were motivated enough by MLK's speeches and actions to organise their own "Freedom Ride" in !964...

Beginning as an exploratory and investigative trip around NSW by a group of white and aboriginal Sydney Uni' students, it evolved into a rights and rallying drive around several NSW communities over a few weeks, led by Aboriginal la student Charles Perkins..

http://indigenousrights.net.au/section.asp?sID=33

Charles Perkins reported on the results of the "Freedom Ride" to a Aboriginal and Torres Strait islanders conference in Canberra in 1965 ~ from where their activities eventually led on to the greater recognition, removal of segregation in several country towns, repeal of the "White Australia Policy", and on into the Land rights and Land grants policies in the 1970s.

AS WELL, also saw widespread influences and respect of MLK's policy speeches taking effect across many parts of Africa as well..  

That's awesome about the aboriginals, I never knew that!

A HERO FOR ALL MEN

Martin Luther King’s legacy has been reduced in popular culture to an advocate for basic racial equality under the law. But King’s advocacy for racial equality was inextricably linked to a call for substantive economic justice for all races. He explained this in his July 4, 1965 sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church:

About two years ago now, I stood with many of you who stood there in person and all of you who were there in spirit before the Lincoln Monument in Washington. As I came to the end of my speech there, I tried to tell the nation about a dream I had. I must confess to you this morning that since that sweltering August afternoon in 1963, my dream has often turned into a nightmare… And oh, I continue to see it shattered as I walk through the Harlems of our nation and see sometimes ten and fifteen Negroes trying to live in one or two rooms. I’ve been down to the Delta of Mississippi since then, and I’ve seen my dream shattered as I met hundreds of people who didn’t earn more than six or seven hundred dollars a week. I’ve seen my dream shattered as I’ve walked the streets of Chicago and seen Negroes, young men and women, with a sense of utter hopelessness because they can’t find any jobs. And they see life as a long and desolate corridor with no exit signs. And not only Negroes at this point. I’ve seen my dream shattered because I’ve been through Appalachia, and I’ve seen my white brothers along with Negroes living in poverty. And I’m concerned about white poverty as much as I’m concerned about Negro poverty.

Beekeeper wrote:

Ben_Reilly wrote:
It certainly was a struggle. It's both a mark of progress and incredibly frustrating to hear modern-day conservatives who try to claim MLK as one of their own intellectual allies!

  

The American ultra-Conservatives seem to be doing a lot of that recently, especially since their support base has shrunk to an all-time low, in line with their stalling tactics, filibustering, blocking budgets, and kowtowing to the "Tea Party"/big business/NRA/etc...

Their attempts at reinvention of the GOP and revisionary history not only includes attempts at trying to claim various radicals,humanists and freedom-fighters as "fellow conservatives", but they also like to point out how the early republicans were the radicals and revisionaries 200-300 years ago, whereas back then the Democrats tended to be the party of slave-oning conservatives !    

And all the while the modern day GOP conservatives choose to remain blind to the irony in the fact that they have done a complete 180° about face !     

Ben_Reilly wrote:
MLK was one of the greatest people the U.S. has ever produced, outshining the majority of our presidents, but one thing he was not was a conservative.

 

Many Australian Aboriginal activists will also be sure to be watching with some interest ~ after the American "Freedom March" on August 27th/28th 1963, a few activists here were motivated enough by MLK's speeches and actions to organise their own "Freedom Ride" in !964...

Beginning as an exploratory and investigative trip around NSW by a group of white and aboriginal Sydney Uni' students, it evolved into a rights and rallying drive around several NSW communities over a few weeks, led by Aboriginal la student Charles Perkins..

http://indigenousrights.net.au/section.asp?sID=33

Charles Perkins reported on the results of the "Freedom Ride" to a Aboriginal and Torres Strait islanders conference in Canberra in 1965 ~ from where their activities eventually led on to the greater recognition, removal of segregation in several country towns, repeal of the "White Australia Policy", and on into the Land rights and Land grants policies in the 1970s.

AS WELL, also saw widespread influences and respect of MLK's policy speeches taking effect across many parts of Africa as well..  

Good for them. Y'all should be so proud.

@quill
Yep he is definitely up there as one of the, if not the most positively influencing people of the 20th century.  His Impact on the attitudes of many western nations is immeasurable.

9 Surprising facts about Martin Luther King Jnr

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/8-surprising-facts-about-mlk/2013/01/16/c37ec6ee-6005-11e2-9940-6fc488f3fecd_gallery.html#photo=1

They may not be a surprise to our friends from the US but some of them are to me.