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Books by
and about Martin Luther King, Jr.
The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.
/
Strength to Love /
The Measure of a Man /
Why We Can't Wait
A Testament of Hope /
A Knock at Midnight /
The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., 1948-1963
Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community /
Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story
Behind the Dream: The Making of the Speech that Transformed a
Nation
* * * * *
Remarks at Martin
Luther King Observance Day
By
Jeh C. Johnson
The Pentagon
Thank you for
inviting me today to be your speaker. Before I begin I
would like to acknowledge two special friends who are
here today:
The first is
Congressman Buck McKeon, the new chairman of the
House Armed Services Committee. Mr. Chairman, thank you
for taking the time to cross the river and visit the
Pentagon. We know that in your new role we will be
seeing a lot more of you here. One of the interesting
things I have learned about this man getting to know him
is that he did missionary work in San Antonio, Texas in
1958.
The second is my
good friend
Denis McDonough, the Deputy National Security
Advisor and one of the President’s closest advisors.
Denis, thank you for leaving the White House to be here
today.
It is
appropriate—five days after the tragedy in Tucson—that
we reflect on Martin Luther King’s life and legacy. The
opportunity for me to speak to you about Martin Luther
King is an honor and a privilege.
Martin Luther King Jr.
is a 1948 graduate of
Morehouse College, the renowned all-male black
college in Atlanta, Georgia. Three of the biggest
influences in Dr. King’s life were his father, who also
graduated Morehouse, the theologian
Howard Thurman, who
graduated from Morehouse the same year as Dr. King’s
father, and
Benjamin Mays, the revered president of Morehouse
who was Dr. King’s mentor and delivered his eulogy.
I am a 1979
graduate of Morehouse College. I have been inspired and
influenced by many of the same people and things that
inspired and influenced Dr. King. When I arrived at
Morehouse in August 1975, Dr. King had been dead 7
years, but I could still feel his presence on campus and
in the city of Atlanta. I lived in Thurman Hall for
three years. Dr. Mays was then our president emeritus,
but he was still a large force on campus.
Martin Luther King Sr. came by campus once in a
while to preach a sermon about how he didn’t hate
anybody, despite the murder of his son and his wife. I
am a classmate of
Martin Luther King III, my study partner and friend
of almost 35 years.
Now, before I go
any further, a footnote to this speech and a tribute to
our boss:
One of my best and
proudest moments in this job has been, and I’m sure
always will be, returning to
Morehouse College last May, to see one
Robert M. Gates receive an honorary degree and
deliver the commencement address. The night before his
address, the Secretary and I visited Dr. King’s
gravesite on Auburn Avenue. I warned the Secretary the
bar was high for oratory at Morehouse College, a
Southern Baptist school that had educated Dr. King and
many other Southern Baptist preachers, and students
there were accustomed to barn-burning rhetoric. I told
the Secretary my own commencement speaker in 1979 was
Louis Farrakhan, and, to be honest, I had a little
difficulty envisioning the two on the same stage,
delivering an address for the same event.
In delivering his
commencement address, the Secretary gave an utterly
flawless performance, by being utterly himself before an
audience of approximately 10,000 African Americans in
Atlanta, Georgia.
Afterward, I heard
many compliments about the Secretary’s performance that
day. Here’s my favorite, from my best college friend who
was there (even the boss may agree this one is a little
over the top):
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Jeh:
There
are a lot of people wanting copies
of the Secretary’s commencement address.
I think his speech is going to go down as
one of the best in Morehouse’s history. He
was a big hit! You should have heard the
comments that were made in the audience
after his speech. I see a future President.
He appeals to Black audiences. He has Bill
Clinton appeal. . . . Secretary Gates comes
across as a genuine good person. You can
tell that he doesn’t have a hang up with
race. I believe he treats everyone with
fairness and respect. Hell, let’s make him
an honorary brother!” |
The very first
effort to make Dr. King’s birthday a holiday was
actually just four days after Dr. King was assassinated
in 1968, when Congressman John Conyers offered a bill to
make it so. For years, the bill went nowhere.
The movement to
make Dr. King’s birthday a holiday gained momentum in
Atlanta in the 1970s. I believe I was an eyewitness to
this history.
In 1977
Martin III, invited me to attend a strategy meeting
hosted by his mother at their home. It was my first
visit to 234 Sunset Avenue in southwest Atlanta. I sat
in Mrs. King’s living room, in the place where Martin
Luther King had lived, and felt as if I was in the
presence of royalty, in a shrine. Mrs.
King was a commanding and regal presence, but the
unforgettable image I still have is of Mrs.
Martin Luther King going in to her own kitchen,
bringing out a tray, and serving cookies to her
assembled guests of college students and local leaders.
The other vivid
recollection I have of the evening was a less pleasant
one.
I and others had
the bright idea to bring to the meeting our political
science professor, an African who was in exile in the
United States from
Sierra Leone. At the meeting
Mrs. King explained with great passion and
conviction her dream to see her husband’s birthday an
official government holiday. I admit thinking then that
the prospect of a national holiday for Martin Luther
King, alongside George Washington and Abraham Lincoln,
seemed like a long-shot, but no one in the room dared
disagree with
Mrs. King—except my political science professor:
“Mrs. King, I do not think that your husband’s birthday
should be a national holiday. What are black people
going to do that day? They will simply barbeque.”
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The
mood in the room suddenly turned awkward,
and
Mrs. King’s commanding presence went on
full display: “First of all, I do not need
a professor from Sierra Leone to come in to
my home and lecture me. Second, who invited
you?”
At that
moment several of us wanted to crawl under
the living room couch. Marty then walked
over to his mother, whispered something in
her ear—probably “Mom, that’s my political
science professor.” The confrontation ended,
and the meeting continued.
That
year we organized a march to the Georgia
state capitol in downtown Atlanta for a
Georgia state holiday for Dr. King’s
birthday. And, on November 2, 1983,
President Reagan, with
Mrs. King at his side, signed a bill
that made Martin Luther King’s birthday a
national holiday, effective for the first
time on the third Monday in January 1986. Thanks to the
holiday we have next Monday, the name Martin Luther King
is one of the most recognizable in America. Almost
every major city in America has a street named for him.
Almost every public school in America has his picture
in a classroom. The good news is that many celebrate
the day, not with a barbeque, but with a day committed
to performing a public or community service.
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However, we are in
danger of forgetting what Martin Luther King actually
challenged our nation to do, particularly in the last
two years of his life.
In this year 2011,
Dr. King has now been dead longer than he was ever
alive, and most Americans alive today were born after
April 4, 1968. For some of us, Dr. King is still a
contemporary figure. For most of us, he is a figure
consigned to history, like George Washington and Abraham
Lincoln. And, in the 43 years since Dr. King has been
dead, his legacy has morphed into one with which almost
no one would disagree.
The reality is that
Dr. King was divisive; to many, he was a troublemaker,
to force the social change we now all celebrate. He
challenged the social order of things and pushed people
out of their comfort zones. When Dr. King arrived in
many of the same cities for which a major street is now
named for him, the Mayor and the Police Commissioner
viewed his visit with dread and couldn’t wait for him to
leave.
For his efforts,
the man we honor today alongside George Washington and
Abraham Lincoln was the target of government
surveillance and harassment. He was also the target of
racist insults, bricks, bottles, numerous death threats,
a knife in the chest in Harlem in 1958, and finally, he
was murdered in Memphis in 1968.
One of the most
remarkable things about this man who had such a huge
impact on our country is that he lived just 39 years,
and his career as a civil rights leader and an activist
lasted just a little over 12 years.
I believe those 12
years can be divided into two chapters. The first phase
began with the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955-56 and
basically ended with the Selma to Montgomery march in
March 1965.
Now, some trivia
about Martin Luther King Jr. from the early part of this
first phase that almost no one knows; that my friend
Martin III did not know about, until I shared it with
him about two and a half years ago:
My grandfather,
Charles S. Johnson, was a sociologist. He studied
the race riots in Chicago in 1919, was active in the
Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, joined the faculty of
Fisk University in Nashville in the 1930s, and in 1947,
became president of Fisk. By the 1950s, Dr. Johnson was
considered one of the intellectual engines to the civil
rights movement that was about to take off. In
September 1956 Dr. Johnson wrote an article for the
magazine section of the New York Times entitled "A
Southern Negro's View of the South," which was a
call for a national effort to rescue a race of people
living as second-class citizens under a system of
legalized segregation in the south.
For this statement
in September 1956, my grandfather received many letters
of congratulations from around the country, including
one from the 27-year old pastor of the Dexter Avenue
Baptist church in Montgomery, Alabama, which my father
recently discovered in his basement:
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Dear Dr. Johnson:
This is
just a note to say that I have just read
your article which recently appeared in the
New York Times. It is the best
statement that I have read in this whole
area. You evince a profound grasp of the
whole subject. I am sure that the more this
article is read it will bring about a
greater understanding of the Negro's point
of view as he struggles for first class
citizenship. You combine in this article
the fact finding mind of the social
scientist with the moral insights of a
religious prophet.
Sincerely yours,
M.L. King, Jr.
Minister |
This letter is dated October 11,
1956, in the eleventh month of the Montgomery bus
boycott that Minister King was leading.
During this first
phase of his career, from 1955 to about 1965, Dr. King
focused the Nation’s attention on racial discrimination
that could be ended by changes in law. The
Montgomery bus boycott ended after a Supreme Court
decision. The demonstrations in Birmingham and the
March on Washington in 1963 led to the
Civil Rights Act of 1964. The
Selma to Montgomery march led to the
Voting Rights Act of 1965—equal access buses, pools,
lunch counters, movie theaters, jobs and the ballot box.
But, after Selma,
Dr. King did not stop. He began the second phase of his
career, to take on challenges that could not be remedied
by a change in law.
From about 1966 to
the day he died on April 4, 1968, Dr. King devoted
himself principally to two very ambitious agendas:
fighting poverty, and world peace. In
1966 Dr.
King and his family literally moved to
Chicago and rented an apartment there. He took off his
preacher’s suit and shoveled garbage, all to demonstrate
the need for better living conditions in Chicago.
In the final few
months of his life, Dr. King devoted himself to a grand
plan for a
Poor Peoples’ March on Washington. On January 15,
1968, his last birthday alive, he presided over a
meeting in the basement of his church in Atlanta and
talked about a grand assembly of blacks, American
Indians, organized labor, and Appalachian whites that
would converge on Washington later that year, to demand
that the richest nation on earth address the poverty in
its midst.
On the final
weekend of his life, Dr. King delivered a sermon in
which he reminded us that “every American is endowed by
his Creator with certain inalienable rights, among those
the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
But if a man does not have a job or an income, he has
neither life, liberty, nor the possibility for the
pursuit of happiness. He merely exists.” In the final
days of his life, Dr. King went to Memphis, Tennessee,
not for a civil rights march, but to support a
garbage workers’ strike for better wages and
conditions.
On the final night
of his life, in Memphis, Dr. King’s delivered one of his
best known speeches in which he predicted his own death—his
famous “I’ve
Been to the Mountaintop” speech. What is less known
about the speech is that it is largely an address about
economic power, and the effectiveness of an economic
boycott.
But, the most
controversial and difficult stand Dr. King took the
final year of his life was against the war in Vietnam.
Other civil rights leaders urged him to remain silent
on the issue, not to alienate President Lyndon Johnson,
who had been their best friend on civil rights.
Martin Luther King hated violence.
He believed that violence “is a descending spiral,
begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy,” and that
“returning violence for violence multiples violence,
adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of
stars . . . He also believed “an eye for eye leaves
everybody blind.”
So, beginning in
April 1967, one year before he died, Dr. King, the Nobel
Peace Prize winner, turned this message into an
impassioned
plea against the war in Vietnam. Indeed, from that
point on he questioned the whole rationale for war in
general. From the gospel song “Down by the Riverside,”
Dr. King repeated the line: “I Ain’t Gonna Study War No
More.”
Today, at the
Defense Department, how do we honor and respect Dr.
King’s message and legacy and reconcile it with our
mission? We are a nation at war, and it is the
responsibility of this Department to prosecute that war.
People like to speculate about what
Dr. King would believe and say if he were alive today.
I believe that if Dr. King were
alive today, he would recognize that we live in a
complicated world, and that our Nation’s military should
not and cannot lay down its arms and leave the American
people vulnerable to terrorist attack.
To our individual
servicemen and women who wonder whether their mission is
consistent with Martin Luther King’s own message and
beliefs, I refer you again to his very
last
speech in Memphis, the night before he died.
In it Dr. King
talked about Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan on the
dangerous road to Jericho. With great effect Dr. King
drew a parallel between the priest and the Levite who
passed by the man on the road to Jericho, beaten and
robbed and in need of aid, and failed to help him, and
those in Memphis in April 1968 who hesitated to help the
striking sanitation workers because they feared for
their own jobs, for their own comfortable positions in
the Memphis community. He criticized those who are
“compassionate by proxy,” and said to those in the
audience in Memphis that night “The question is not, if
I stop to help this man in need, what will happen to me?
The question is, if I do not stop the sanitation
workers, what will happen to them.”
In 2011, I draw the
parallel to our own servicemen and women, deployed in
Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere, away from the
comfort of conventional jobs, their families and their
homes. Those in today’s volunteer Army, Navy, Air
Force, and Marine Corps have made the conscious decision
to travel a dangerous road, and personally stop and
administer aid to those who want peace, freedom and a
better place in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and in defense of
the American people. Every day our servicemen and women
practice that “dangerous unselfishness” Dr. King
preached on April 3, 1968.
In accepting his
own
Nobel Peace Prize in 2009,
our President recognized that, in response to an
unprovoked terrorist attack, war is inevitable to secure
peace, and that the role of the military is to keep
peace.
The irony of next
Monday is that Mrs. King’s dream of a national holiday
for her husband has become a reality; Dr. King’s dream
of a world at peace with itself has not.
I salute you all in your efforts to
make our world a better place.
13 January 2011
(as delivered)
Source:
Scribd
 |
Have They
No Shame?
By Junious Ricardo Stanton |
As we pause to
acknowledge the mission and legacy of Martin Luther King
Jr. on a national day set aside to honor his memory, we
have to be ever vigilant and watchful because our
enemies and their lap dogs will try to redefine history
and remake our heroes into something altogether
different than what they were to suit their agenda and
program. For example in 1999 the US Postal Service put
Malcolm X on their
Black History series stamp. While Malcolm is a hero
to us we must remember he was not held in high esteem by
this country’s ruling oligarchy. The US government
feared and loathed him and was instrumental in creating
an atmosphere of hostility via their
COINTELPRO counter insurgency campaign between
Malcolm's followers and the Nation of Islam that
facilitated Malcolm’s assassination. But years later
they turn around in a show of unbridled hypocrisy and
put him on a US postage stamp.
The US government after pressure and lobbying from the
African-American community reluctantly made Martin
Luther King Jr’s birthday a national holiday. But in so
doing they and their mind control and propaganda
appendages made sure the images and remembrances of
Martin Luther King Jr they pump into the public
consciousness are harmless, noncontroversial and do not
disrupt or derail their program. Imperialists, war
profiteers and fascist war mongers are not going to
present King as an advocate for peace, justice,
international cooperation and brotherhood. When he was
alive, Hoover and the FBI portrayed Kings as a
“communist rabble rouser, and an immoral deviant”.
While the oligopoly doesn’t go that far now, the
corporatist media only plays snippets and sound bytes of
his 1963 March on Washington I Have A Dream speech,
never his blisteringly eloquent 1968 anti-war and anti
economic apartheid speeches.
But now the warmongers have stooped to a new low. The
Pentagon invited a handkerchief head House Negro named
Jeh Charles Johnson, a 1979 graduate of
Morehouse College in Atlanta where Martin Luther
King Jr also graduated, to speak at their Martin Luther
King Jr Day ceremony. Johnson is the General Counsel for
the US Department of Defense. The fact that has also
served as General Counsel to the US Air Force and is a
member of the Council on Foreign Relations is all you
need to know about him. Just to get on that level to
“pass” the vetting process and serve in those positions
tells us he is not one of us.
Playing on his college friendship with King’s son
Martin Luther King III and his background as a
Morehouse Man, Johnson despite acknowledging King
opposed the war in Vietnam and all war, had the
unmitigated gall to say, “
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In 2011, I draw the parallel to our own
servicemen and women, deployed in Iraq and
Afghanistan and elsewhere, away from the
comfort of conventional jobs, their families
and their homes. Those in today’s volunteer
Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps have
made the conscious decision to travel a
dangerous road, and personally stop and
administer aid to those who want peace,
freedom and a better place in Iraq, in
Afghanistan, and in defense of the American
people. Every day our servicemen and women
practice that ‘dangerous unselfishness’ Dr.
King preached on April 3, 1968. In accepting
his own
Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, our President
recognized that, in response to an
unprovoked terrorist attack, war is
inevitable to secure peace, and that the
role of the military is to keep peace.” |
Talk about a
disconnect, that cat is out der. Johnson’s speech was a
deliberate and intentional ploy to misrepresent King’s
legacy and propagate the lies and rationale for the
bogus and self-serving “Global
War on Terrorism.” To mix King’s name in connection
with the imperialist wars/occupations in
Afghanistan and
Iraq
not to mention the proxy wars the US is waging in
Yemen,
Somalia,
and
Columbia or the one thousand military bases the US
empire maintains around the world is a gross deception.
But what would you expect of a House Negro like Johnson
who serves Ol’ Massa the way he does.
Normally I don’t get into questioning anyone’s motives
in public but this is a clear example of how the ruling
elites will say and do anything and use anyone to
obfuscate the truth to further their vile agenda and how
some black people will do anything to feather their own
nest. They say truth is the first casualty of war.
Jeh C. Johnson’s remarks at the Pentagon
proved the veracity of that axiom.
posted 18 January 2011
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Behind the Dream
The Making of the Speech that Transformed a
Nation
By
Clarence B. Jones and Stuart Connelly
“I
Have a Dream.”
When those words were spoken on the steps of
the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963, the
crowd stood, electrified, as Martin Luther
King, Jr. brought the plight of African
Americans to the public consciousness and
firmly established himself as one of the
greatest orators of all time.
Behind the Dream is a thrilling,
behind-the-scenes account of the weeks
leading up to the great event, as told by
Clarence Jones, co-writer of the speech and
close confidant to King. Jones was there, on
the road, collaborating with the great minds
of the time, and hammering out the ideas and
the speech that would shape the civil rights
movement and inspire Americans for years to
come.—Palgrave Macmillan |
 |
Behind the Dream: The Making of the Speech that
Transformed a Nation is a smart, insightful,
enjoyable read about a momentous event in history. It is
the "story behind the story" straight from Clarence
Jones, the attorney, speechwriter, and close friend of
Martin Luther King, Jr. As I read the words on the page,
I felt as if I were having an intimate conversation with
the author. The book helped me to understand the
humanity of Dr. King and the other organizers of the
March on Washington. They were people who saw injustice
and called for change. Despite FBI wiretaps and other
adversity, together they undertook an enormous
logistical effort in hopes that the March would be a
success. Jones himself handwrote the first draft of the
renowned “I Have a Dream”
speech on a yellow legal pad, but it wasn't until King
was inspired to veer from the text that he struck a
chord with the audience, delivering the right words at
the right time. The “I Have a Dream” speech helped to
elevate King from a man to a hero; this book is a
reminder to all to make sure that his Dream lives on.—amazon
customer
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Blacks in Hispanic Literature: Critical Essays
Edited by
Miriam DeCosta-Willis
Blacks in Hispanic Literature is a
collection of fourteen essays by scholars and
creative writers from Africa and the Americas.
Called one of two significant critical works on
Afro-Hispanic literature to appear in the late
1970s, it includes the pioneering studies of
Carter G. Woodson and
Valaurez B. Spratlin, published in the 1930s, as
well as the essays of scholars whose interpretations
were shaped by the Black aesthetic. The early
essays, primarily of the Black-as-subject in Spanish
medieval and Golden Age literature, provide an
historical context for understanding 20th-century
creative works by African-descended, Hispanophone
writers, such as Cuban
Nicolás Guillén and Ecuadorean poet, novelist,
and scholar
Adalberto Ortiz, whose essay analyzes the
significance of Negritude in Latin America. This
collaborative text set the tone for later
conferences in which writers and scholars worked
together to promote, disseminate, and critique the
literature of Spanish-speaking people of African
descent. . . .
Cited by a
literary critic in 2004 as "the seminal study in the
field of Afro-Hispanic Literature . . . on which
most scholars in the field 'cut their teeth'."
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The Word of the Lord Is Upon Me
The Righteous Performance of Martin Luther King, Jr.
By Jonathan Rieder
“You don’t know me,” Martin Luther King, Jr., once declared to those who criticized his denunciation of the Vietnam War, who wanted to confine him to the ghetto of “black” issues. Now, forty years after being felled by an assassin’s bullet, it is still difficult to take the measure of the man: apostle of peace or angry prophet; sublime exponent of a beloved community or fiery Moses leading his people up from bondage; black preacher or translator of blackness to the white world? This book explores the extraordinary performances through which King played with all of these possibilities, and others too, blending and gliding in and out of idioms and identities. Taking us deep into King’s backstage discussions with colleagues, his preaching to black congregations, his exhortations in mass meetings, and his crossover addresses to whites, Jonathan Rieder tells a powerful story about the tangle of race, talk, and identity in the life of one of America’s greatest moral and political leaders. A brilliant interpretive endeavor grounded in the sociology of culture, The Word of the Lord Is Upon Me delves into the intricacies of King’s sermons, speeches, storytelling, exhortations, jokes, jeremiads, taunts, repartee, eulogies, confessions, lamentation, and gallows humor, as well as the author’s interviews with members of King’s inner circle. The King who emerges is a distinctively modern figure who, in straddling the boundaries of diverse traditions, ultimately transcended them all.
Du Bois-Malcolm-King
Chronology
Letter from
Birmingham Jail |
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* * * * *
The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
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Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
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George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
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Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
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January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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