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This is my ode to Dr. Martin L. King and I will be adding to it the rest of January '22. Hopefully, you will too! We've come a long, long, way - yes, YOU have!
Mr. President, it is a year ago this month that the late President Kennedy sent his civil rights bill and message to the Congress. For two years, we had been chiding him about failure to act in this field. At long last, and after many conferences, it became a reality.
<<Please see link below for entire speech.>>
It became increasingly evident that to secure passage of a bill in the Senate would require cloture and a limitation on debate. Senate aversion to cloture is traditional. Only once in thirty-five years has cloture been voted. But the procedure for cloture is a standing rule of the Senate. It grew out of a filibuster against the Armed Ship bill in 1917 and has been part of the standing rules of the Senate for forty- seven years. To argue that cloture is unwarranted or unjustified is to assert that in 1917, the Senate adopted a rule which it did not intend to use when circumstances required or that it was placed in the rulebook only as to be repudiated. It was adopted as an instrument for action when all other efforts failed.
Today the Senate is stalemated in its efforts to enact a civil rights bill, one version of which has already been approved by the House by a vote of more than 2 to 1. That the Senate wishes to act on a civil rights bill can be divined from the fact that the motion to take up was adopted by a vote of 67 to 17.
Reasons for cloture on civil rights There are many reasons why cloture should be invoked and a good civil rights measure enacted.
First. It is said that on the night he died, Victor Hugo wrote in his diary, substantially this sentiment:
Stronger than all the armies is an idea whose time has come.
The time has come for equality of opportunity in sharing in government, in education, and in employment. It will not be stayed or denied. It is here.
The problem began when the Constitution makers permitted the importation of persons to continue for another twenty years. That problem was to generate the fury of civil strife seventy-five years later. Out of it was to come the Thirteenth Amendment ending servitude, the Fourteenth Amendment to provide equal protection of the laws and dual citizenship, the Fifteenth Amendment to prohibit government from abridging the right to vote.
Other factors had an impact. Two and three-quarter million young Negroes served in World Wars I, II, and Korea. Some won the Congressional Medal of Honor and the Distinguished Service Cross. Today they are fathers and grandfathers. They brought back impressions from countries where no discrimination existed. These impressions have been transmitted to children and grandchildren. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of colored have become teachers and professors, doctors and dentists, engineers and architects, artists and actors, musicians and technicians. They have become status minded. They have sensed inequality. They are prepared to make the issue. They feel that the time has come for the idea of equal opportunity. To enact the pending measure by invoking cloture is imperative.
Years ago, a professor who thought he had developed an uncontrovertible scientific premise submitted it to his faculty associates. Quickly they picked it apart. In agony he cried out, "Is nothing eternal?" To this one of his associates replied, "Nothing is eternal except change."
Since the act of 1875 on public accommodations and the Supreme Court decision of 1883 which struck it down, America has changed. The population then was 45 million. Today it is 190 million. In the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag we intone, "One nation, under God." And so it is. It is an integrated nation. Air, rail, and highway transportation make it so. A common language makes it so. A tax pattern which applies equally to white and nonwhite makes it so. Literacy makes it so. The mobility provided by eighty million autos makes it so. The accommodations laws in thirty-four states and the District of Columbia makes it so. The fair employment practice laws in thirty states make it so. Yes, our land has changed since the Supreme Court decision of 1883.
As Lincoln once observed:
The occasion is piled high with difficulty and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must first disenthrall ourselves and then we shall save the Union.
To my friends from the South, I would refresh you on the words of a great Georgian named Henry W. Grady. On December 22, 1886, he was asked to respond to a toast to the new South at the New England society dinner. His words were dramatic and explosive. He began his toast by saying:
There was a South of slavery and secession -- that South is dead. There is a South of union and freedom -- that South thank God is living, breathing, growing every hour.
America grows. America changes. And on the civil rights issue we must rise with the occasion. That calls for cloture and for the enactment of a civil rights bill.
Third. There is another reason -- our covenant with the people. For many years, each political party has given major consideration to a civil rights plank in its platform. Go back and reexamine our pledges to the country as we sought the suffrage of the people and for a grant of authority to manage and direct their affairs. Were these pledges so much campaign stuff or did we mean it? Were these promises on civil rights but idle words for vote-getting purposes or were they a covenant meant to be kept? If all this was mere pretense, let us confess the sin of hypocrisy now and vow not to delude the people again.
To you, my Republican colleagues, let me refresh you on the words of a great American. His name is Herbert Hoover. In his day he was reviled and maligned. He was castigated and calumniated. But today his views and his judgment stand vindicated at the bar of history. In 1952 he received a volcanic welcome as he appeared before our national convention in Chicago. On that occasion he commented on the Whig party, predecessor of the Republican party, and said:
The Whig party temporized, compromised upon the issue of freedom for the Negro. That party disappeared. It deserved to disappear. Shall the Republican party receive or deserve any better fate if it compromises upon the issue of freedom for all men?
To those who have charged me with doing a disservice to my party because of my interest in the enactment of a good civil rights bill -- and there have been a good many who have made that charge -- I can only say that our party found its faith in the Declaration of Independence in which a great Democrat, Jefferson by name, wrote the flaming words:
We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.
That has been the living faith of our party. Do we forsake this article of faith, now that equality's time has come or do we stand up for it and insure the survival of our party and its ultimate victory. There is no substitute for a basic and righteous idea. We have a duty -- a firm duty -- to use the instruments at hand -- namely, the cloture rule -- to bring about the enactment of a good civil rights bill.
Fourth. There is another reason why we dare not temporize with the issue which is before us. It is essentially moral in character. It must be resolved. It will not go away. Its time has come. Nor is it the first time in our history that an issue with moral connotations and implications has swept away the resistance, the fulminations, the legalistic speeches, the ardent but dubious arguments, the lamentations and the thought patterns of an earlier generation and pushed forward to fruition.
More than sixty years ago came the first efforts to secure federal pure food and drug legislation. The speeches made on this floor against this intrusion of federal power sound fantastically incredible today. But it would not be stayed. Its time had come and since its enactment, it has been expanded and strengthened in nearly every Congress.
When the first efforts were made to ban the shipment of goods in interstate commerce made with child labor, it was regarded as quite absurd. But all the trenchant editorials, the bitter speeches, the noisy onslaughts were swept aside as this limitation on the shipment of goods made with sweated child labor moved on to fulfillment. Its time had come.
More than eighty years ago came the first efforts to establish a civil service and merit system to cover federal employees. The proposal was ridiculed and drenched with sarcasm. Some of the sharpest attacks on the proposal were made on this very Senate floor. But the bullet fired by a disappointed office seeker in 1880 which took President Garfield's life was the instrument of destiny which placed the Pendleton Act on the federal statute books in 1883. It was an idea whose time had come.
When the New York legislature placed a limit of ten hours per day and six days per week upon the bakery workers in that State, this act was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court. But in due time came the eight-hour day and the forty-hour week and how broadly accepted this concept is today. Its time had come.
More than sixty years ago, the elder La Follette thundered against the election of U.S. senators by the state legislatures. The cry was to get back to the people and to first principles. On this Senate floor, senators sneered at his efforts and even left the chamber to show their contempt. But fifty years ago, the Constitution was amended to provide for the direct election of senators. Its time had come.
Ninety-five years ago came the first endeavor to remove the limitation on sex in the exercise of the franchise. The comments made in those early days sound unbelievably ludicrous. But on and on went the effort and became the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Its time had come.
When the eminent Joseph Choate appeared before the Supreme Court to assert that a federal income tax statute was unconstitutional and communistic, the Court struck down the work of Congress. Just twenty years later in 1913 the power of Congress to lay and collect taxes on incomes became the Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution itself.
These are but some of the things touching closely the affairs of the people which were met with stout resistance, with shrill and strident cries of radicalism, with strained legalisms, with anguished entreaties that the foundations of the Republic were being rocked. But an inexorable moral force which operates in the domain of human affairs swept these efforts aside and today they are accepted as parts of the social, economic and political fabric of America.
Pending before us is another moral issue. Basically it deals with equality of opportunity in exercising the franchise, in securing an education, in making a livelihood, in enjoying the mantle of protection of the law. It has been a long, hard furrow and each generation must plow its share. Progress was made in 1957 and 1960. But the furrow does not end there. It requires the implementation provided by the substitute measure which is before us. And to secure that implementation requires cloture.
<<Please see link below for entire speech.>>
To those who have charged me with doing a disservice to my party -- and there have been many -- I can only say that our party found its faith in the Declaration of Independence, which was penned by a great Democrat, Thomas Jefferson by name. There he wrote the great words:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.
That has been the living faith of our party. Do we forsake this article of faith, now that the time for our decision has come?
There is no substitute for a basic ideal. We have a firm duty to use the instrument at hand; namely, the cloture rule, to bring about the enactment of a good civil rights bill.
I appeal to all senators. We are confronted with a moral issue. Today let us not be found wanting in whatever it takes by way of moral and spiritual substance to face up to the issue and to vote cloture.
We can sure use a powerful spokesman in the Republican Party like Everett M. Dirksen today! This speech by Senator Dirksen broke the log-jam in the Senate on civil rights! Senators were not impotent in those days. When such figures spoke—others took it to heart!
The Price for Their Pound of Flesh: The Value of the Enslaved from Womb to Grave in the Building of a Nation
by Daina Ramey Berry
In life and in death, enslaved Africans in America were commodities with their monetary value based on their age, gender, health and the demands of the market. The Price for Their Pound of Flesh is described by its publisher, Beacon Press, as the first book to explore the economic value of enslaved people through every phase of their lives from preconception, infancy, childhood and adolescence to adulthood, the senior years and death.
Historian Daina Ramey Berry shows the lengths to which enslavers would go to maximize profits and protect their investments. Shedding light on the cadaver trade and the illicit sales of dead bodies to medical schools, she explains the concept of “ghost values” or the prices placed on the dead bodies of the enslaved
You will not be sorry! Be sure to look, listen, and above all stroll down to see interactive features below the line - and click around to see the 'sights' of history!
Don't be scared to click around on the site as there are many hidden gems there meant for you whomsoever you are!
Sturdy (5 ft. 7 in., 164 lbs.), soft-voiced Martin Luther King describes himself as "an ambivert—half introvert and half extrovert." He can draw within himself for long, single-minded concentration on his people's problems, and then exert the force of personality and conviction that makes him a public leader. No radical, he avoids the excesses of radicalism, e.g., he recognized economic reprisal as a weapon that could get out of hand, kept the Montgomery boycott focused on the immediate goal of bus integration, restrained his followers from declaring sanctions against any white merchant or tradesman who offended them. King is an expert organizer, to the extent that during the bus boycott the hastily assembled Negro car pool under his direction achieved even judicial recognition as a full-fledged transit system. Personally humble, articulate, and of high educational attainment, Martin Luther King Jr. is, in fact, what many a Negro—and, were it not for his color, many a white—would like to be.
Even King's name is meaningful: he was baptized Michael Luther King, son of the Rev. Michael Luther King Sr., then and now pastor of Atlanta's big (4,000 members) Ebenezer Baptist Church. He was six when King Sr. decided to take on, for himself and his son, the full name of the Protestant reformer. Says young King: "Both father and I have fought all our lives for reform, and perhaps we've earned our right to the name."
Perched on a bluff overlooking Atlanta's business district, the two-story yellow brick King home was a happy one, where Christianity was a way of life. Each day began and ended with family prayer. Martin was required to learn Scriptural verse for recitation at evening meals. He went to Sunday school, morning and evening services. He was taught to hold Old Testament respect for the law, but it was the New Testament's gentleness that came to have everyday application in his life.
"Never a Spectator." From his earliest memory Martin King has had a strong aversion to violence in all its forms. The school bully walloped him; Martin did not fight back. His younger brother flailed away at him; Martin stood and took it. A white woman in a store slapped him, crying, "You're the nigger who stepped on my foot." Martin said nothing. Cowardice? If so, it would come as a surprise to Montgomery, where Martin Luther King has unflinchingly faced the possibility of violent death for months.
The shabby, overcrowded Negro schools in Atlanta were no match for the keen, probing ("I like to get in over my head, then bother people with questions") mind of Martin King; he leapfrogged through high school in two years, was ready at 15 for Atlanta's Morehouse College, one of the South's Negro colleges. At Morehouse, King worked with the city's Intercollegiate Council, an integrated group, and learned a valuable lesson. "I was ready to resent all the white race," he says. "As I got to see more of white people, my resentment was softened, and a spirit of cooperation took its place. But I never felt like a spectator in the racial problem. I wanted to be involved in the very heart of it."
Selma is a city of 29,500 people—14,400 whites, 15,100 Negroes. Its voting rolls are 99% white, 1% Negro. More than a city, Selma is a state of mind. "Selma," says a guidebook on Alabama, "is like an old-fashioned gentlewoman, proud and patrician, but never unfriendly." But the symbol of Selma is Sheriff James Clark, 43, a bullyboy segregationist who leads a club-swinging, mounted posse of deputy volunteers, many of them Ku Klux Klansmen. It was in Selma, four years ago, that the Federal Government filed its first voting-rights suit, but court processes are slow, and Selma Negroes remain unregistered.
Selma seemed a natural target to Martin Luther King. He rounded up hundreds of Negroes at a time, led them on marches to the county courthouse to register to vote. Always, Clark awaited them, either turning them away or arresting them for contempt of court, truancy, juvenile delinquency and parading without a permit. In seven weeks, Clark jailed no fewer than 2,000 men, women and children, including King, who dramatized the situation by refusing to make bond for four days. Still the Negroes came, singing "We shall overcome." In reply, Sheriff Clark pinned a button on his shirt reading "Never!" The city's mood grew ever uglier.
King called for a march from Selma to the state capitol at Montgomery, 50 miles away. King planned to lead the march himself, but at the last minute was persuaded by aides to stay at his Atlanta headquarters for his safety's sake.
Ignoring an order from Governor Wallace forbidding the march, 650 Negroes and a few whites filed through the back streets of Selma, and headed for the Edmund Pettus Bridge, which crosses the Alabama Rive r.
On U.S. Highway 80, 400 yards beyond the bridge, was a phalanx of 60 state cops. Suddenly the clubs started swinging. From the sidelines, white townspeople raised their voices in cheers and whoops. Joined by possemen and deputies, the patrolmen waded into the screaming mob. Now came the sound of canisters being fired. A Negro screamed: "Tear gas!" Within seconds the highway was swirling with white and yellow clouds of smoke, raging with the cries of men. Choking, bleeding, the Negroes fled in all directions while the whites pursued them. The mounted men uncoiled bull whips and lashed out viciously as the horses' hoofs trampled the fallen. "O.K., nigger!" snarled a posseman, flailing away at a running Negro woman. "You wanted to march—now march!"
"Please! No!" begged a Negro as a cop flailed away with his club. "My God, we're being killed!" cried another. The Negroes staggered across the bridge and made for the church, chased by the sheriffs deputies and the horsemen. All told, 78 Negroes required hospital treatment for injuries.
Rarely has public opinion reacted so spontaneously and with such fury. In Detroit, Mayor Jerome Cavanaugh and Michigan's Governor George Romney led a protest parade of 10,000 people. President Johnson publicly declared that he "deplored the brutality." And in Atlanta, Martin Luther King announced that as a "matter of conscience and in an attempt to arouse the deepest concern of the nation," he was "compelled" to lead another march from Selma to Montgomery.
"This Little Light of Mine" was a children's song and an old spiritual that was reintroduced during the civil rights era as a song of personal empowerment.
Its lyrics talk about the importance of unity in the face of adversity. Its refrain sings of the light in each person and how, whether standing up alone or joining together, each little bit of light can break the darkness.
The song has since been applied to many struggles but was an anthem of the civil rights movement of the 1960s.
"This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine. Let it shine over the whole wide world, I'm gonna let it shine."
Martin Luther King & Indigenous Peoples Civil Rights Few know that Dr. Martin Luther King was a great freedom fighter for Native Americans and the horrific mistreatment to them by the U.S. government. King wrote in his 1963 book "Why We Can't Wait” which outlined the historic injustices inflicted on Native people:
"Our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race. Even before there were large numbers of Negroes on our shores, the scar of racial hatred had already disfigured colonial society. From the sixteenth century forward, blood flowed in battles of racial supremacy. We are perhaps the only nation which tried as a matter of national policy to wipe out its Indigenous population. Moreover, we elevated that tragic experience into a noble crusade. Indeed, even today we have not permitted ourselves to reject or feel remorse for this shameful episode. Our literature, our films, our drama, our folklore all exalt it."
Unfortunately, these words still ring true today.
Many are unaware that Dr. King was a fighter for Native rights and the Civil rights movement had many Native Americans in it. The American Indian Movement (AIM) was founded in 1968 and in many way contintued Dr. Kings vision.
From that many Native Americans became involved in activism and in protest and civil rights songs.
What an interesting arrangement. I have not heard this song before now. It is medicine for our souls. I maintain that we all can speak our truth (including Whites-come straight with us and we will be straight with you too!) for why these catastrophes took place. Don't hide from it. Deal with in. Internalize it. Feel it. And then as your, mine, our god (of choice) give us strength: See to it that it never happens again, if it has to do with us!
We were ALL wounded. . . because this is one land and the land bears its "ingredients" - bitter, sweet, sour, and 'tasty.' We are ALL what America is!
Great tune. I am going to listen again. I am familiar with "Redbone" due to your often sharing of this marvelous band/group!
Speak truth everyday! It will make us whole, wholesome, and one nation one day!
Before he became Governor of Georgia, Lester Maddox was an interesting guy and businessman. A segregationist, and somebody who never tired of expressing his beliefs in public, and in his businesses, on Freedom of Association .
A tale of two realities:
FREEDOM OF ASSOCIATION
A belief that Americans have a right to live life free of any 'company' of anybody they do not choose to associate. Whether it be at home , school , church , or course of business.
by Lester Maddox Georgia Governor, 1967-1971
Freedom fighter, Nobel Prize Winner, Reverend, Servant of the people Dr. Martin Luther King's definition:
A tale of two realities:
FREEDOM OF ASSOCIATION
Inclusion. Diversity. Equality. Equity.
"Sooner or later all the people of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace …"
Dr. King, Acceptance Speech Nobel Peace Prize 1964
" I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits. I believe that what self-centered men have torn down men other-centered can build up. "
Martin Luther King’s Acceptance Speech, on the occasion of the award of the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, 10 December 1964
Your Majesty, Your Royal Highness, Mr. President, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen:
I accept the Nobel Prize for Peace at a moment when 22 million Negroes of the United States of America are engaged in a creative battle to end the long night of racial injustice. I accept this award on behalf of a civil rights movement which is moving with determination and a majestic scorn for risk and danger to establish a reign of freedom and a rule of justice. I am mindful that only yesterday in Birmingham, Alabama, our children, crying out for brotherhood, were answered with fire hoses, snarling dogs and even death. I am mindful that only yesterday in Philadelphia, Mississippi, young people seeking to secure the right to vote were brutalized and murdered. And only yesterday more than 40 houses of worship in the State of Mississippi alone were bombed or burned because they offered a sanctuary to those who would not accept segregation. I am mindful that debilitating and grinding poverty afflicts my people and chains them to the lowest rung of the economic ladder.
Therefore, I must ask why this prize is awarded to a movement which is beleaguered and committed to unrelenting struggle; to a movement which has not won the very peace and brotherhood which is the essence of the Nobel Prize.
After contemplation, I conclude that this award which I receive on behalf of that movement is a profound recognition that nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral question of our time – the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to violence and oppression. Civilization and violence are antithetical concepts. Negroes of the United States, following the people of India, have demonstrated that nonviolence is not sterile passivity, but a powerful moral force which makes for social transformation. Sooner or later all the people of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace, and thereby transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. If this is to be achieved, man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.
The tortuous road which has led from Montgomery, Alabama to Oslo bears witness to this truth. This is a road over which millions of Negroes are travelling to find a new sense of dignity. This same road has opened for all Americans a new era of progress and hope. It has led to a new Civil Rights Bill, and it will, I am convinced, be widened and lengthened into a super highway of justice as Negro and white men in increasing numbers create alliances to overcome their common problems.
I accept this award today with an abiding faith in America and an audacious faith in the future of mankind. I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history. I refuse to accept the idea that the “isness” of man’s present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal “oughtness” that forever confronts him. I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsam and jetsam in the river of life, unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him. I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.
I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear destruction. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. I believe that even amid today’s mortar bursts and whining bullets, there is still hope for a brighter tomorrow. I believe that wounded justice, lying prostrate on the blood-flowing streets of our nations, can be lifted from this dust of shame to reign supreme among the children of men. I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits. I believe that what self-centered men have torn down men other-centered can build up. I still believe that one day mankind will bow before the altars of God and be crowned triumphant over war and bloodshed, and nonviolent redemptive good will proclaim the rule of the land. “And the lion and the lamb shall lie down together and every man shall sit under his own vine and fig tree and none shall be afraid.” I still believe that We Shall overcome!
This faith can give us courage to face the uncertainties of the future. It will give our tired feet new strength as we continue our forward stride toward the city of freedom. When our days become dreary with low-hovering clouds and our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, we will know that we are living in the creative turmoil of a genuine civilization struggling to be born.
Today I come to Oslo as a trustee, inspired and with renewed dedication to humanity. I accept this prize on behalf of all men who love peace and brotherhood. I say I come as a trustee, for in the depths of my heart I am aware that this prize is much more than an honor to me personally.
Every time I take a flight, I am always mindful of the many people who make a successful journey possible – the known pilots and the unknown ground crew.
So you honor the dedicated pilots of our struggle who have sat at the controls as the freedom movement soared into orbit. You honor, once again, Chief Lutuli of South Africa, whose struggles with and for his people, are still met with the most brutal expression of man’s inhumanity to man. You honor the ground crew without whose labor and sacrifices the jet flights to freedom could never have left the earth. Most of these people will never make the headline and their names will not appear in Who’s Who . Yet when years have rolled past and when the blazing light of truth is focused on this marvellous age in which we live – men and women will know and children will be taught that we have a finer land, a better people, a more noble civilization – because these humble children of God were willing to suffer for righteousness’ sake.
I think Alfred Nobel would know what I mean when I say that I accept this award in the spirit of a curator of some precious heirloom which he holds in trust for its true owners – all those to whom beauty is truth and truth beauty – and in whose eyes the beauty of genuine brotherhood and peace is more precious than diamonds or silver or gold.
If you want to know how Black Americans "REFRESH" take a listen to Mississippi Mass Choir delivering the 'message' of how we 'get over' and REPAIR AND RENEW!
Mothers and Fathers -bring their children back every Sunday, everyday, in the 'uplifting' that keeps us SANE in the midst of every storm!
The Mississippi Mass Choir - I'm Not Tired Yet
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I play a long version of this song because "99 1/2 won't do"!
“Paul’s Letter to American Christians,” Sermon Delivered at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church 4 November 1956 Montgomery, Alabama
I n this Dexter sermon King reads a fictional letter from the apostle Paul to American Christians of the mid -twentieth century. Loosely based on Paul 5 letter to the Romans, King sermon notes the gap between the nation5 scientific progress and its ethical and spiritual development. Deploring exploitative capitalism, spiritual arrogance, racial segregation, and self-righteous egotism, he offers the remedy o f Christian love. “Only through achieving this love, ”King writes, “can you expect to matriculate into the university of eternal life. ”
Martin Luther King Jr. "Paul's Letter to American Christians" June 3, 1958
I would like to share with you an imaginary letter from the pen of the Apostle Paul. The postmark reveals that it comes from the city of Ephesus. After opening the letter I discovered that it was written in Greek rather than English.At the top of the first page was this request: “Please read to your congregation as soon as possible, and then pass on to the other churches.” For several weeks I have worked assiduously with the translation. At times it has been difficult,but now I think I have deciphered its true meaning. May I hasten to say that if in presenting this letter the contents sound strangely Kingian instead of Paulinian, attribute it to my lack of complete objectivity rather than Paul’s lack of clarity. It is miraculous, indeed, that the Apostle Paul should be writing a letter to you and to me nearly 1900 years after his last letter appeared in the New Testament. How this is possible is something of an enigma wrapped in mystery. The impor- tant thing, however, is that I can imagine the Apostle Paul writing a letter to American Christians in 1956 A.D. And here is the letter as it stands before me. I, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, to you who are in America, Grace be unto you, and peace from God our Father, through our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. For many years I have longed to be able to come to see you. I have heard so much of you and of what you are doing. I have heard of the fascinating and astounding advances that you have made in the scientific realm. I have heard of your dashing subways and flashing airplanes. Through your scientific genius you have been able to dwarf distance and place time in chains. You have been able to carve highways through the stratosphere. So in your world you have made it possible to eat breakfast in New York City and dinner in Paris, France. I have also heard of your skyscraping buildings with their prodigious towers steeping heavenward. I have heard of your great medical advances, which have resulted in the curing of many dread plagues and diseases, and thereby prolonged your lives and made for greater security and physical well-being. All of that is marvelous. You can do so many things in your day that I could not do in the Greco-Roman world of my day. In your age you can travel distances in one day that took me three months to travel. That is wonderful. You have made tremendous strides in the area of scientific and technological development. But America, as I look at you from afar, I wonder whether your moral and spiritual progress has been commensurate with your scientific progress. It seems to me that your moral progress lags behind your scientific progress. Your poet Thoreau used to talk about “improved means to an unimproved end.” How often this is true. You have allowed the material means by which you live to outdistance the spiritual ends for which you live. You have allowed your mentality to outrun your morality. You have allowed your civilization to outdistance your culture. Through your scientific genius you have made of the world a neighborhood, but through your moral and spiritual genius you have failed to make of it a brother- hood. So America, I would urge you to keep your moral advances abreast with your scientific advances. I am impelled to write you concerning the responsibilities laid upon you to live as Christians in the midst of an unchristian world. That is what I had to do. That is what every Christian has to do. But I understand that there are many Christians in America who give their ultimate allegiance to man-made systems and customs. They are afraid to be different. Their great concern is to be accepted socially.
*** Please click link HERE to read rest of this remarkable speech it mentions Capitalism and Social Gospel too long to be post here, nevertheless.***
"I understand that you have an economic system in America known as Capitalism. Through this economic system you have been able to do wonders. You have become the richest nation in the world, and you have built up the greatest system of production that history has ever known. All of this is marvelous. But Americans, there is the danger that you will misuse your Capitalism. I still contend that money can be the root of all evil. It can cause one to live a life of gross materialism. I am afraid that many among you are more concerned about making a living than making a life. You are prone to judge the success of your profession by the index of your salary and the size of the wheel base on your automobile, rather than the quality of your service to humanity.
The misuse of Capitalism can also lead to tragic exploitation. This has so often happened in your nation. They tell me that one tenth of one percent of the population controls more than forty percent of the wealth. Oh America, how often have you taken necessities from the masses to give luxuries to the classes. If you are to be a truly Christian nation you must solve this problem. You cannot solve the problem by turning to communism, for communism is based on an ethical relativism and a metaphysical materialism that no Christian can accept. You can work within the framework of democracy to bring about a better distribution of wealth. You can use your powerful economic resources to wipe poverty from the face of the earth. God never intended for one group of people to live in superfluous inordinate wealth, while others live in abject deadening poverty. God intends for all of his children to have the basic necessities of life, and he has left in this universe “enough and to spare” for that purpose. So I call upon you to bridge the gulf between abject poverty and superfluous wealth."
The Three Evils of Society by Martin Luther King Jr.
(An excerpt.)
Yes the hour is dark, evil comes forth in the guise of good. It is a time of double talk when men in high places have a high blood pressure of deceptive rhetoric and an anemia of concrete performance. We cry out against welfare hand-outs to the poor but generously approve an oil depletion allowance to make the rich, richer. Six Mississippi plantations receive more than a million dollars a year, not to plant cotton but no provision is made to feed the tenant farmer who is put out of work by the government subsidy.
The crowning achievement in hypocrisy must go to those staunch Republicans and Democrats of the Midwest and West who were given land by our government when they came here as immigrants from Europe. They were given education through the land grant colleges. They were provided with agricultural agents to keep them abreast of forming trends, they were granted low interest loans to aid in the mechanization of their farms and now that they have succeeded in becoming successful, they are paid not to farm and these are the same people that now say to black people, whose ancestors were brought to this country in chains and who were emancipated in 1863 without being given land to cultivate or bread to eat; that they must pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. What they truly advocate is Socialism for the rich and Capitalism for the poor.
. . . .
Ever since the birth of our nation, White America has had a Schizophrenic personality on the question of race, she has been torn between selves. A self in which she proudly professes the great principle of democracy and a self in which she madly practices the antithesis of democracy. This tragic duality has produced a strange indecisiveness and ambivalence toward the Negro, causing America to take a step backwards simultaneously with every step forward on the question of Racial Justice; to be at once attracted to the Negro and repelled by him, to love and to hate him. There has never been a solid, unified and determined thrust to make justice a reality for Afro-Americans.
The step backwards has a new name today, it is called the white backlash, but the white backlash is nothing new. It is the surfacing of old prejudices, hostilities and ambivalences that have always been there. It was caused neither by the cry of black power nor by the unfortunate recent wave of riots in our cities. The white backlash of today is rooted in the same problem that has characterized America ever since the black man landed in chains on the shores of this nation.
This does not imply that all White Americans are racist, far from it. Many white people have, through a deep moral compulsion fought long and hard for racial justice nor does it mean that America has made no progress in her attempt to cure the body politic of the disease of racism or that the dogma of racism has not been considerably modified in recent years. However for the good of America, it is necessary to refute the idea that the dominant ideology in our country, even today, is freedom and equality while racism is just an occasional departure from the norm on the part of a few bigoted extremists.
. . . .
An Asian writer has portrayed our dilemma in candid terms, he says, “you call your thousand material devices labor saving machinery, yet you are forever busy. With the multiplying of your machinery, you grow increasingly fatigued, anxious, nervous, dissatisfied. Whatever you have you want more and wherever you are you want to go somewhere else. Your devices are neither time saving nor soul saving machinery. They are so many sharp spurs which urge you on to invent more machinery and to do more business”.
This tells us something about our civilization that cannot be caste aside as a prejudiced charge by an eastern thinker who is jealous of Western prosperity. We cannot escape the indictment. This does not mean that we must turn back the clock of scientific progress. No one can overlook the wonders that science has wrought for our lives. The automobile will not abdicate in favor of the horse and buggy or the train in favor of the stagecoach or the tractor in favor of the handplow or the scientific method in favor of ignorance and superstition.
But our moral lag must be redeemed; when scientific power outruns moral power, we end up with guided missiles and misguided men. When we foolishly maximize the minimum and minimize the maximum we sign the warrant for our own day of doom. It is this moral lag in our thing-oriented society that blinds us to the human reality around us and encourages us in the greed and exploitation which creates the sector of poverty in the midst of wealth.
Again we have diluted ourselves into believing the myth that Capitalism grew and prospered out of the protestant ethic of hard work and sacrifice. The fact is that Capitalism was build on the exploitation and suffering of black slaves and continues to thrive on the exploitation of the poor – both black and white, both here and abroad. If Negroes and poor whites do not participate in the free flow of wealth within our economy, they will forever be poor, giving their energies, their talents and their limited funds to the consumer market but reaping few benefits and services in return.
The way to end poverty is to end the exploitation of the poor, ensure them a fair share of the government services and the nation’s resources. I proposed recently that a national agency be established to provide employment for everyone needing it. Nothing is more socially inexcusable than unemployment in this age. In the 30s, when the nation was bankrupt it instituted such an agency, the WPA, in the present conditions of a nation glutted with resources, it is barbarous to condemn people desiring work to soul sapping inactivity and poverty. I am convinced that even this one, massive act of concern will do more than all the state police and armies of the nation to quell riots and still hatreds.
The tragedy is our materialistic culture does not possess the statesmanship necessary to do it. Victor Hugo could have been thinking of 20 th Century America when he wrote, “there’s always more misery among the lower classes than there is humanity in the higher classes”.
The time has come for America to face the inevitable choice between materialism and humanism. We must devote at
least as much to our children’s education and the health of the poor as we do to the care of our automobiles and the building of beautiful, impressive hotels. We must also realize that the problems of racial injustice and economic injustice cannot be solved without a radical redistribution of political and economic power.
We must further recognize that the ghetto is a domestic colony . Black people must develop programs that will aid in the transfer of power and wealth into the hands of residents of the ghetto so that they may in reality control their own destinies. This is the meaning of New Politics. People of will in the larger community, must support the black man in this effort.
Bob Dylan - Only A Pawn In Their Game (March On Washington 1963) [BEST QUALITY]
"Only A Pawn In Their Game"
A bullet from the back of a bush took Medgar Evers' blood A finger fired the trigger to his name A handle hid out in the dark A hand set the spark Two eyes took the aim Behind a man's brain But he can't be blamed He's only a pawn in their game
A South politician preaches to the poor white man "You got more than blacks, don't complain You're better than them, you been born with white skin" they explain And the Negro's name Is used it is plain For the politician's gain As he rises to fame And the poor white remains On the caboose of the train But it ain't him to blame He's only a pawn in their game
The deputy sheriffs, the soldiers, the governors get paid And the marshals and cops get the same But the poor white man's used in the hands of them all like a tool He's taught in his school From the start by the rule That the laws are with him To protect his white skin To keep up his hate So he never thinks straight 'Bout the shape that he's in But it ain't him to blame He's only a pawn in their game
From the poverty shacks, he looks from the cracks to the tracks And the hoof beats pound in his brain And he's taught how to walk in a pack Shoot in the back With his fist in a clinch To hang and to lynch To hide 'neath the hood To kill with no pain Like a dog on a chain He ain't got no name But it ain't him to blame He's only a pawn in their game
Today, Medgar Evers was buried from the bullet he caught They lowered him down as a king But when the shadowy sun sets on the one That fired the gun He'll see by his grave On the stone that remains Carved next to his name His epitaph plain Only a pawn in their game
While I loved all of his work, What's Going On was my favorite. He is one of the few artists from those days, that I'm really sorry to have never seen live.
Yea, I thought it was very well done. Apparently. Chris and Mavis became close during the Covid pandemic. the talked frequently on the phone. Stapleton first called her when he was trying to figure out Pops Staples guitar work and which peddle he used when recording "Friendship". He wanted to it with Dave Cobb. His and Mavis' relationship started with that phone call.
Dr. King opened the 1964 Berlin Jazz Festival, his address included:
"Jazz speaks for life. The blues tell the story of life's difficulties and, if you think for a moment, you realize that they take the hardest realities of life and put them into music, only to come out with some new hope or sense of triumph. This is triumphant music."
Louisiana Red - Ride On Red, Ride On - 1963
How I Got Over
Glory hallelujah!
I've always been a big fan of Mahalia Jackson-- definitely one of the all time greatest Gospel singers!
I loved her gospel songs as well as these.
Here's one of my favs, Starts off slo but then..
She truly embodies the word "Spiritual"...
Mahalia Jackson "Just a Closer Walk with Thee" from "Louis Armstrong at Newport 1970"
Two of the all-time greats!
E verett M . D irksen
Speech to Senate on the Civil Rights Bill
delivered 10 June 1964, Washington, D.C.
Mr. President, it is a year ago this month that the late President Kennedy sent his civil rights bill and message to the Congress. For two years, we had been chiding him about failure to act in this field. At long last, and after many conferences, it became a reality.
<<Please see link below for entire speech.>>
It became increasingly evident that to secure passage of a bill in the Senate would require cloture and a limitation on debate. Senate aversion to cloture is traditional. Only once in thirty-five years has cloture been voted. But the procedure for cloture is a standing rule of the Senate. It grew out of a filibuster against the Armed Ship bill in 1917 and has been part of the standing rules of the Senate for forty- seven years. To argue that cloture is unwarranted or unjustified is to assert that in 1917, the Senate adopted a rule which it did not intend to use when circumstances required or that it was placed in the rulebook only as to be repudiated. It was adopted as an instrument for action when all other efforts failed.
Today the Senate is stalemated in its efforts to enact a civil rights bill, one version of which has already been approved by the House by a vote of more than 2 to 1. That the Senate wishes to act on a civil rights bill can be divined from the fact that the motion to take up was adopted by a vote of 67 to 17.
Reasons for cloture on civil rights There are many reasons why cloture should be invoked and a good civil rights measure enacted.
First. It is said that on the night he died, Victor Hugo wrote in his diary, substantially this sentiment:
The time has come for equality of opportunity in sharing in government, in education, and in employment. It will not be stayed or denied. It is here.
The problem began when the Constitution makers permitted the importation of persons to continue for another twenty years. That problem was to generate the fury of civil strife seventy-five years later. Out of it was to come the Thirteenth Amendment ending servitude, the Fourteenth Amendment to provide equal protection of the laws and dual citizenship, the Fifteenth Amendment to prohibit government from abridging the right to vote.
Other factors had an impact. Two and three-quarter million young Negroes served in World Wars I, II, and Korea. Some won the Congressional Medal of Honor and the Distinguished Service Cross. Today they are fathers and grandfathers. They brought back impressions from countries where no discrimination existed. These impressions have been transmitted to children and grandchildren. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of colored have become teachers and professors, doctors and dentists, engineers and architects, artists and actors, musicians and technicians. They have become status minded. They have sensed inequality. They are prepared to make the issue. They feel that the time has come for the idea of equal opportunity. To enact the pending measure by invoking cloture is imperative.
Years ago, a professor who thought he had developed an uncontrovertible scientific premise submitted it to his faculty associates. Quickly they picked it apart. In agony he cried out, "Is nothing eternal?" To this one of his associates replied, "Nothing is eternal except change."
Since the act of 1875 on public accommodations and the Supreme Court decision of 1883 which struck it down, America has changed. The population then was 45 million. Today it is 190 million. In the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag we intone, "One nation, under God." And so it is. It is an integrated nation. Air, rail, and highway transportation make it so. A common language makes it so. A tax pattern which applies equally to white and nonwhite makes it so. Literacy makes it so. The mobility provided by eighty million autos makes it so. The accommodations laws in thirty-four states and the District of Columbia makes it so. The fair employment practice laws in thirty states make it so. Yes, our land has changed since the Supreme Court decision of 1883.
As Lincoln once observed:
To my friends from the South, I would refresh you on the words of a great Georgian named Henry W. Grady. On December 22, 1886, he was asked to respond to a toast to the new South at the New England society dinner. His words were dramatic and explosive. He began his toast by saying:
America grows. America changes. And on the civil rights issue we must rise with the occasion. That calls for cloture and for the enactment of a civil rights bill.
Third. There is another reason -- our covenant with the people. For many years, each political party has given major consideration to a civil rights plank in its platform. Go back and reexamine our pledges to the country as we sought the suffrage of the people and for a grant of authority to manage and direct their affairs. Were these pledges so much campaign stuff or did we mean it? Were these promises on civil rights but idle words for vote-getting purposes or were they a covenant meant to be kept? If all this was mere pretense, let us confess the sin of hypocrisy now and vow not to delude the people again.
To you, my Republican colleagues, let me refresh you on the words of a great American. His name is Herbert Hoover. In his day he was reviled and maligned. He was castigated and calumniated. But today his views and his judgment stand vindicated at the bar of history. In 1952 he received a volcanic welcome as he appeared before our national convention in Chicago. On that occasion he commented on the Whig party, predecessor of the Republican party, and said:
To those who have charged me with doing a disservice to my party because of my interest in the enactment of a good civil rights bill -- and there have been a good many who have made that charge -- I can only say that our party found its faith in the Declaration of Independence in which a great Democrat, Jefferson by name, wrote the flaming words:
That has been the living faith of our party. Do we forsake this article of faith, now that equality's time has come or do we stand up for it and insure the survival of our party and its ultimate victory. There is no substitute for a basic and righteous idea. We have a duty -- a firm duty -- to use the instruments at hand -- namely, the cloture rule -- to bring about the enactment of a good civil rights bill.
Fourth. There is another reason why we dare not temporize with the issue which is before us. It is essentially moral in character. It must be resolved. It will not go away. Its time has come. Nor is it the first time in our history that an issue with moral connotations and implications has swept away the resistance, the fulminations, the legalistic speeches, the ardent but dubious arguments, the lamentations and the thought patterns of an earlier generation and pushed forward to fruition.
More than sixty years ago came the first efforts to secure federal pure food and drug legislation. The speeches made on this floor against this intrusion of federal power sound fantastically incredible today. But it would not be stayed. Its time had come and since its enactment, it has been expanded and strengthened in nearly every Congress.
When the first efforts were made to ban the shipment of goods in interstate commerce made with child labor, it was regarded as quite absurd. But all the trenchant editorials, the bitter speeches, the noisy onslaughts were swept aside as this limitation on the shipment of goods made with sweated child labor moved on to fulfillment. Its time had come.
More than eighty years ago came the first efforts to establish a civil service and merit system to cover federal employees. The proposal was ridiculed and drenched with sarcasm. Some of the sharpest attacks on the proposal were made on this very Senate floor. But the bullet fired by a disappointed office seeker in 1880 which took President Garfield's life was the instrument of destiny which placed the Pendleton Act on the federal statute books in 1883. It was an idea whose time had come.
When the New York legislature placed a limit of ten hours per day and six days per week upon the bakery workers in that State, this act was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court. But in due time came the eight-hour day and the forty-hour week and how broadly accepted this concept is today. Its time had come.
More than sixty years ago, the elder La Follette thundered against the election of U.S. senators by the state legislatures. The cry was to get back to the people and to first principles. On this Senate floor, senators sneered at his efforts and even left the chamber to show their contempt. But fifty years ago, the Constitution was amended to provide for the direct election of senators. Its time had come.
Ninety-five years ago came the first endeavor to remove the limitation on sex in the exercise of the franchise. The comments made in those early days sound unbelievably ludicrous. But on and on went the effort and became the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Its time had come.
When the eminent Joseph Choate appeared before the Supreme Court to assert that a federal income tax statute was unconstitutional and communistic, the Court struck down the work of Congress. Just twenty years later in 1913 the power of Congress to lay and collect taxes on incomes became the Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution itself.
These are but some of the things touching closely the affairs of the people which were met with stout resistance, with shrill and strident cries of radicalism, with strained legalisms, with anguished entreaties that the foundations of the Republic were being rocked. But an inexorable moral force which operates in the domain of human affairs swept these efforts aside and today they are accepted as parts of the social, economic and political fabric of America.
Pending before us is another moral issue. Basically it deals with equality of opportunity in exercising the franchise, in securing an education, in making a livelihood, in enjoying the mantle of protection of the law. It has been a long, hard furrow and each generation must plow its share. Progress was made in 1957 and 1960. But the furrow does not end there. It requires the implementation provided by the substitute measure which is before us. And to secure that implementation requires cloture.
<<Please see link below for entire speech.>>
To those who have charged me with doing a disservice to my party -- and there have been many -- I can only say that our party found its faith in the Declaration of Independence, which was penned by a great Democrat, Thomas Jefferson by name. There he wrote the great words:
That has been the living faith of our party. Do we forsake this article of faith, now that the time for our decision has come?
There is no substitute for a basic ideal. We have a firm duty to use the instrument at hand; namely, the cloture rule, to bring about the enactment of a good civil rights bill.
I appeal to all senators. We are confronted with a moral issue. Today let us not be found wanting in whatever it takes by way of moral and spiritual substance to face up to the issue and to vote cloture.
Everett M . Dirksen
Speech to Senate on the Civil Rights Bill
Thanks for posting that!
I don't believe I ever heard that speech-- its fantastic!
(Although I may have heard it-- it seems like the distant past-- many things have transpired since).
Nostalgia-- its hard to believe that at one time many in the Republican party did have high ideals....but its true.
The Republican Party behaved itself as the honorable 'Party of Lincoln.' Yes, memories. (Smile.)
We can sure use a powerful spokesman in the Republican Party like Everett M. Dirksen today! This speech by Senator Dirksen broke the log-jam in the Senate on civil rights! Senators were not impotent in those days. When such figures spoke—others took it to heart!
Pete Seeger - We shall overcome (HD)
"We Shall Overcome" - Martin Luther King, Jr.
Say it Loud- I'm Black and Proud James Brown
I'M BLACK AND I'M PROUD OF MY 'BAAD' SELF!! - CB.
The Price for Their Pound of Flesh: The Value of the Enslaved from Womb to Grave in the Building of a Nation
by Daina Ramey Berry
In life and in death, enslaved Africans in America were commodities with their monetary value based on their age, gender, health and the demands of the market. The Price for Their Pound of Flesh is described by its publisher, Beacon Press, as the first book to explore the economic value of enslaved people through every phase of their lives from preconception, infancy, childhood and adolescence to adulthood, the senior years and death.
Historian Daina Ramey Berry shows the lengths to which enslavers would go to maximize profits and protect their investments. Shedding light on the cadaver trade and the illicit sales of dead bodies to medical schools, she explains the concept of “ghost values” or the prices placed on the dead bodies of the enslaved
The Staple Singers When Will We Be Paid , 1971
ENTER THE EXPERIENCE Here please!
Subtle HINT: ENTER THE EXPERIENCE!
Please enter TIME: The MARCH - The EXPERIENCE on this memorial birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King!
You will not be sorry! Be sure to look, listen, and above all stroll down to see interactive features below the line - and click around to see the 'sights' of history!
Don't be scared to click around on the site as there are many hidden gems there meant for you whomsoever you are!
THE SOUTH: Attack on the Conscience
Sturdy (5 ft. 7 in., 164 lbs.), soft-voiced Martin Luther King describes himself as "an ambivert—half introvert and half extrovert." He can draw within himself for long, single-minded concentration on his people's problems, and then exert the force of personality and conviction that makes him a public leader. No radical, he avoids the excesses of radicalism, e.g., he recognized economic reprisal as a weapon that could get out of hand, kept the Montgomery boycott focused on the immediate goal of bus integration, restrained his followers from declaring sanctions against any white merchant or tradesman who offended them. King is an expert organizer, to the extent that during the bus boycott the hastily assembled Negro car pool under his direction achieved even judicial recognition as a full-fledged transit system. Personally humble, articulate, and of high educational attainment, Martin Luther King Jr. is, in fact, what many a Negro—and, were it not for his color, many a white—would like to be.
Even King's name is meaningful: he was baptized Michael Luther King, son of the Rev. Michael Luther King Sr., then and now pastor of Atlanta's big (4,000 members) Ebenezer Baptist Church. He was six when King Sr. decided to take on, for himself and his son, the full name of the Protestant reformer. Says young King: "Both father and I have fought all our lives for reform, and perhaps we've earned our right to the name."
Perched on a bluff overlooking Atlanta's business district, the two-story yellow brick King home was a happy one, where Christianity was a way of life. Each day began and ended with family prayer. Martin was required to learn Scriptural verse for recitation at evening meals. He went to Sunday school, morning and evening services. He was taught to hold Old Testament respect for the law, but it was the New Testament's gentleness that came to have everyday application in his life.
"Never a Spectator." From his earliest memory Martin King has had a strong aversion to violence in all its forms. The school bully walloped him; Martin did not fight back. His younger brother flailed away at him; Martin stood and took it. A white woman in a store slapped him, crying, "You're the nigger who stepped on my foot." Martin said nothing. Cowardice? If so, it would come as a surprise to Montgomery, where Martin Luther King has unflinchingly faced the possibility of violent death for months.
The shabby, overcrowded Negro schools in Atlanta were no match for the keen, probing ("I like to get in over my head, then bother people with questions") mind of Martin King; he leapfrogged through high school in two years, was ready at 15 for Atlanta's Morehouse College, one of the South's Negro colleges. At Morehouse, King worked with the city's Intercollegiate Council, an integrated group, and learned a valuable lesson. "I was ready to resent all the white race," he says. "As I got to see more of white people, my resentment was softened, and a spirit of cooperation took its place. But I never felt like a spectator in the racial problem. I wanted to be involved in the very heart of it."
Ballad of Birmingham
(On the bombing of a church in Birmingham, Alabama, 1963)
Going Down To Mississippi
THE NATION 19 65 : CIVIL RIGHTS The Central Point
CIVIL RIGHTS The Central Point
Selma is a city of 29,500 people—14,400 whites, 15,100 Negroes. Its voting rolls are 99% white, 1% Negro. More than a city, Selma is a state of mind. "Selma," says a guidebook on Alabama, "is like an old-fashioned gentlewoman, proud and patrician, but never unfriendly." But the symbol of Selma is Sheriff James Clark, 43, a bullyboy segregationist who leads a club-swinging, mounted posse of deputy volunteers, many of them Ku Klux Klansmen. It was in Selma, four years ago, that the Federal Government filed its first voting-rights suit, but court processes are slow, and Selma Negroes remain unregistered.
Selma seemed a natural target to Martin Luther King. He rounded up hundreds of Negroes at a time, led them on marches to the county courthouse to register to vote. Always, Clark awaited them, either turning them away or arresting them for contempt of court, truancy, juvenile delinquency and parading without a permit. In seven weeks, Clark jailed no fewer than 2,000 men, women and children, including King, who dramatized the situation by refusing to make bond for four days. Still the Negroes came, singing "We shall overcome." In reply, Sheriff Clark pinned a button on his shirt reading "Never!" The city's mood grew ever uglier.
King called for a march from Selma to the state capitol at Montgomery, 50 miles away. King planned to lead the march himself, but at the last minute was persuaded by aides to stay at his Atlanta headquarters for his safety's sake.
Ignoring an order from Governor Wallace forbidding the march, 650 Negroes and a few whites filed through the back streets of Selma, and headed for the Edmund Pettus Bridge, which crosses the Alabama Rive r.
On U.S. Highway 80, 400 yards beyond the bridge, was a phalanx of 60 state cops. Suddenly the clubs started swinging. From the sidelines, white townspeople raised their voices in cheers and whoops. Joined by possemen and deputies, the patrolmen waded into the screaming mob. Now came the sound of canisters being fired. A Negro screamed: "Tear gas!" Within seconds the highway was swirling with white and yellow clouds of smoke, raging with the cries of men. Choking, bleeding, the Negroes fled in all directions while the whites pursued them. The mounted men uncoiled bull whips and lashed out viciously as the horses' hoofs trampled the fallen. "O.K., nigger!" snarled a posseman, flailing away at a running Negro woman. "You wanted to march—now march!"
"Please! No!" begged a Negro as a cop flailed away with his club. "My God, we're being killed!" cried another. The Negroes staggered across the bridge and made for the church, chased by the sheriffs deputies and the horsemen. All told, 78 Negroes required hospital treatment for injuries.
Rarely has public opinion reacted so spontaneously and with such fury. In Detroit, Mayor Jerome Cavanaugh and Michigan's Governor George Romney led a protest parade of 10,000 people. President Johnson publicly declared that he "deplored the brutality." And in Atlanta, Martin Luther King announced that as a "matter of conscience and in an attempt to arouse the deepest concern of the nation," he was "compelled" to lead another march from Selma to Montgomery.
The Ghetto
The immortal Sam Cooke ...
OUTSTANDING RENDITION. Thank you for sharing it. What a refresher!
Move on Up (Extended Version)
Many are unaware that Dr. King was a fighter for Native rights and the Civil rights movement had many Native Americans in it. The American Indian Movement (AIM) was founded in 1968 and in many way contintued Dr. Kings vision.
From that many Native Americans became involved in activism and in protest and civil rights songs.
John Trudell, Buffy St. Marie, IXT and Red Bone.
What an interesting arrangement. I have not heard this song before now. It is medicine for our souls. I maintain that we all can speak our truth (including Whites-come straight with us and we will be straight with you too!) for why these catastrophes took place. Don't hide from it. Deal with in. Internalize it. Feel it. And then as your, mine, our god (of choice) give us strength: See to it that it never happens again, if it has to do with us!
We were ALL wounded. . . because this is one land and the land bears its "ingredients" - bitter, sweet, sour, and 'tasty.' We are ALL what America is!
Great tune. I am going to listen again. I am familiar with "Redbone" due to your often sharing of this marvelous band/group!
Speak truth everyday! It will make us whole, wholesome, and one nation one day!
CAUTION: If you choose to open this comment- you will look upon stillness and death.
Before he became Governor of Georgia, Lester Maddox was an interesting guy and businessman. A segregationist, and somebody who never tired of expressing his beliefs in public, and in his businesses, on Freedom of Association .
A tale of two realities:
FREEDOM OF ASSOCIATION
A belief that Americans have a right to live life free of any 'company' of anybody they do not choose to associate. Whether it be at home , school , church , or course of business.
by Lester Maddox Georgia Governor, 1967-1971
Freedom fighter, Nobel Prize Winner, Reverend, Servant of the people Dr. Martin Luther King's definition:
A tale of two realities:
FREEDOM OF ASSOCIATION
Inclusion. Diversity. Equality. Equity.
"Sooner or later all the people of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace …"
Dr. King, Acceptance Speech Nobel Peace Prize 1964
Inclusion. Diversity.
Manu Dibango - Soul Makossa (Official Lyric Video)
Martin Luther King’s Acceptance Speech, on the occasion of the award of the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, 10 December 1964
Your Majesty, Your Royal Highness, Mr. President, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen:
I accept the Nobel Prize for Peace at a moment when 22 million Negroes of the United States of America are engaged in a creative battle to end the long night of racial injustice. I accept this award on behalf of a civil rights movement which is moving with determination and a majestic scorn for risk and danger to establish a reign of freedom and a rule of justice. I am mindful that only yesterday in Birmingham, Alabama, our children, crying out for brotherhood, were answered with fire hoses, snarling dogs and even death. I am mindful that only yesterday in Philadelphia, Mississippi, young people seeking to secure the right to vote were brutalized and murdered. And only yesterday more than 40 houses of worship in the State of Mississippi alone were bombed or burned because they offered a sanctuary to those who would not accept segregation. I am mindful that debilitating and grinding poverty afflicts my people and chains them to the lowest rung of the economic ladder.
Therefore, I must ask why this prize is awarded to a movement which is beleaguered and committed to unrelenting struggle; to a movement which has not won the very peace and brotherhood which is the essence of the Nobel Prize.
After contemplation, I conclude that this award which I receive on behalf of that movement is a profound recognition that nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral question of our time – the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to violence and oppression. Civilization and violence are antithetical concepts. Negroes of the United States, following the people of India, have demonstrated that nonviolence is not sterile passivity, but a powerful moral force which makes for social transformation. Sooner or later all the people of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace, and thereby transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. If this is to be achieved, man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.
The tortuous road which has led from Montgomery, Alabama to Oslo bears witness to this truth. This is a road over which millions of Negroes are travelling to find a new sense of dignity. This same road has opened for all Americans a new era of progress and hope. It has led to a new Civil Rights Bill, and it will, I am convinced, be widened and lengthened into a super highway of justice as Negro and white men in increasing numbers create alliances to overcome their common problems.
I accept this award today with an abiding faith in America and an audacious faith in the future of mankind. I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history. I refuse to accept the idea that the “isness” of man’s present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal “oughtness” that forever confronts him. I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsam and jetsam in the river of life, unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him. I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.
I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear destruction. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. I believe that even amid today’s mortar bursts and whining bullets, there is still hope for a brighter tomorrow. I believe that wounded justice, lying prostrate on the blood-flowing streets of our nations, can be lifted from this dust of shame to reign supreme among the children of men. I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits. I believe that what self-centered men have torn down men other-centered can build up. I still believe that one day mankind will bow before the altars of God and be crowned triumphant over war and bloodshed, and nonviolent redemptive good will proclaim the rule of the land. “And the lion and the lamb shall lie down together and every man shall sit under his own vine and fig tree and none shall be afraid.” I still believe that We Shall overcome!
This faith can give us courage to face the uncertainties of the future. It will give our tired feet new strength as we continue our forward stride toward the city of freedom. When our days become dreary with low-hovering clouds and our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, we will know that we are living in the creative turmoil of a genuine civilization struggling to be born.
Today I come to Oslo as a trustee, inspired and with renewed dedication to humanity. I accept this prize on behalf of all men who love peace and brotherhood. I say I come as a trustee, for in the depths of my heart I am aware that this prize is much more than an honor to me personally.
Every time I take a flight, I am always mindful of the many people who make a successful journey possible – the known pilots and the unknown ground crew.
So you honor the dedicated pilots of our struggle who have sat at the controls as the freedom movement soared into orbit. You honor, once again, Chief Lutuli of South Africa, whose struggles with and for his people, are still met with the most brutal expression of man’s inhumanity to man. You honor the ground crew without whose labor and sacrifices the jet flights to freedom could never have left the earth. Most of these people will never make the headline and their names will not appear in Who’s Who . Yet when years have rolled past and when the blazing light of truth is focused on this marvellous age in which we live – men and women will know and children will be taught that we have a finer land, a better people, a more noble civilization – because these humble children of God were willing to suffer for righteousness’ sake.
I think Alfred Nobel would know what I mean when I say that I accept this award in the spirit of a curator of some precious heirloom which he holds in trust for its true owners – all those to whom beauty is truth and truth beauty – and in whose eyes the beauty of genuine brotherhood and peace is more precious than diamonds or silver or gold.
(See video.)
If you want to know how Black Americans "REFRESH" take a listen to Mississippi Mass Choir delivering the 'message' of how we 'get over' and REPAIR AND RENEW!
Mothers and Fathers -bring their children back every Sunday, everyday, in the 'uplifting' that keeps us SANE in the midst of every storm!
The Mississippi Mass Choir - I'm Not Tired Yet
I play a long version of this song because "99 1/2 won't do"!
“Paul’s Letter to American Christians,” Sermon Delivered at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church 4 November 1956 Montgomery, Alabama
I n this Dexter sermon King reads a fictional letter from the apostle Paul to American Christians of the mid -twentieth century. Loosely based on Paul 5 letter to the Romans, King sermon notes the gap between the nation5 scientific progress and its ethical and spiritual development. Deploring exploitative capitalism, spiritual arrogance, racial segregation, and self-righteous egotism, he offers the remedy o f Christian love. “Only through achieving this love, ”King writes, “can you expect to matriculate into the university of eternal life. ”
Martin Luther King Jr. "Paul's Letter to American Christians" June 3, 1958
For several weeks I have worked assiduously with the translation. At times it has been difficult,but now I think I have deciphered its true meaning. May I hasten to say that if in presenting this letter the contents sound strangely Kingian instead of Paulinian, attribute it to my lack of complete objectivity rather than Paul’s lack of clarity.
It is miraculous, indeed, that the Apostle Paul should be writing a letter to you and to me nearly 1900 years after his last letter appeared in the New Testament. How this is possible is something of an enigma wrapped in mystery. The impor- tant thing, however, is that I can imagine the Apostle Paul writing a letter to American Christians in 1956 A.D. And here is the letter as it stands before me. I, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, to you who are in America, Grace be unto you, and peace from God our Father, through our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
For many years I have longed to be able to come to see you. I have heard so much of you and of what you are doing. I have heard of the fascinating and astounding advances that you have made in the scientific realm. I have heard of your dashing subways and flashing airplanes. Through your scientific genius you have been able to dwarf distance and place time in chains. You have been able to carve highways through the stratosphere. So in your world you have made it possible
to eat breakfast in New York City and dinner in Paris, France. I have also heard of your skyscraping buildings with their prodigious towers steeping heavenward.
I have heard of your great medical advances, which have resulted in the curing of many dread plagues and diseases, and thereby prolonged your lives and made for greater security and physical well-being. All of that is marvelous. You can do so many things in your day that I could not do in the Greco-Roman world of my day. In your age you can travel distances in one day that took me three months to travel. That is wonderful. You have made tremendous strides in the area of scientific and technological development.
But America, as I look at you from afar, I wonder whether your moral and spiritual progress has been commensurate with your scientific progress. It seems to me that your moral progress lags behind your scientific progress. Your poet Thoreau used to talk about “improved means to an unimproved end.” How often this is true. You have allowed the material means by which you live to outdistance the spiritual ends for which you live. You have allowed your mentality to outrun your morality. You have allowed your civilization to outdistance your culture. Through your scientific genius you have made of the world a neighborhood, but through your moral and spiritual genius you have failed to make of it a brother- hood. So America, I would urge you to keep your moral advances abreast with your scientific advances.
I am impelled to write you concerning the responsibilities laid upon you to live as Christians in the midst of an unchristian world. That is what I had to do. That is what every Christian has to do. But I understand that there are many Christians in America who give their ultimate allegiance to man-made systems and customs. They are afraid to be different. Their great concern is to be accepted socially.
*** Please click link HERE to read rest of this remarkable speech it mentions Capitalism and Social Gospel too long to be post here, nevertheless.***
"I understand that you have an economic system in America known as Capitalism. Through this economic system you have been able to do wonders. You have become the richest nation in the world, and you have built up the greatest system of production that history has ever known. All of this is marvelous. But Americans, there is the danger that you will misuse your Capitalism. I still contend that money can be the root of all evil. It can cause one to live a life of gross materialism. I am afraid that many among you are more concerned about making a living than making a life. You are prone to judge the success of your profession by the index of your salary and the size of the wheel base on your automobile, rather than the quality of your service to humanity.
The misuse of Capitalism can also lead to tragic exploitation. This has so often happened in your nation. They tell me that one tenth of one percent of the population controls more than forty percent of the wealth. Oh America, how often have you taken necessities from the masses to give luxuries to the classes. If you are to be a truly Christian nation you must solve this problem. You cannot solve the problem by turning to communism, for communism is based on an ethical relativism and a metaphysical materialism that no Christian can accept. You can work within the framework of democracy to bring about a better distribution of wealth. You can use your powerful economic resources to wipe poverty from the face of the earth. God never intended for one group of people to live in superfluous inordinate wealth, while others live in abject deadening poverty. God intends for all of his children to have the basic necessities of life, and he has left in this universe “enough and to spare” for that purpose. So I call upon you to bridge the gulf between abject poverty and superfluous wealth."
Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Round
Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Round
The Three Evils of Society by Martin Luther King Jr.
(An excerpt.)
Yes the hour is dark, evil comes forth in the guise of good. It is a time of double talk when men in high places have a high blood pressure of deceptive rhetoric and an anemia of concrete performance. We cry out against welfare hand-outs to the poor but generously approve an oil depletion allowance to make the rich, richer. Six Mississippi plantations receive more than a million dollars a year, not to plant cotton but no provision is made to feed the tenant farmer who is put out of work by the government subsidy.
The crowning achievement in hypocrisy must go to those staunch Republicans and Democrats of the Midwest and West who were given land by our government when they came here as immigrants from Europe. They were given education through the land grant colleges. They were provided with agricultural agents to keep them abreast of forming trends, they were granted low interest loans to aid in the mechanization of their farms and now that they have succeeded in becoming successful, they are paid not to farm and these are the same people that now say to black people, whose ancestors were brought to this country in chains and who were emancipated in 1863 without being given land to cultivate or bread to eat; that they must pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. What they truly advocate is Socialism for the rich and Capitalism for the poor.
. . . .
Ever since the birth of our nation, White America has had a Schizophrenic personality on the question of race, she has been torn between selves. A self in which she proudly professes the great principle of democracy and a self in which she madly practices the antithesis of democracy. This tragic duality has produced a strange indecisiveness and ambivalence toward the Negro, causing America to take a step backwards simultaneously with every step forward on the question of Racial Justice; to be at once attracted to the Negro and repelled by him, to love and to hate him. There has never been a solid, unified and determined thrust to make justice a reality for Afro-Americans.
The step backwards has a new name today, it is called the white backlash, but the white backlash is nothing new. It is the surfacing of old prejudices, hostilities and ambivalences that have always been there. It was caused neither by the cry of black power nor by the unfortunate recent wave of riots in our cities. The white backlash of today is rooted in the same problem that has characterized America ever since the black man landed in chains on the shores of this nation.
This does not imply that all White Americans are racist, far from it. Many white people have, through a deep moral compulsion fought long and hard for racial justice nor does it mean that America has made no progress in her attempt to cure the body politic of the disease of racism or that the dogma of racism has not been considerably modified in recent years. However for the good of America, it is necessary to refute the idea that the dominant ideology in our country, even today, is freedom and equality while racism is just an occasional departure from the norm on the part of a few bigoted extremists.
. . . .
An Asian writer has portrayed our dilemma in candid terms, he says, “you call your thousand material devices labor saving machinery, yet you are forever busy. With the multiplying of your machinery, you grow increasingly fatigued, anxious, nervous, dissatisfied. Whatever you have you want more and wherever you are you want to go somewhere else. Your devices are neither time saving nor soul saving machinery. They are so many sharp spurs which urge you on to invent more machinery and to do more business”.
This tells us something about our civilization that cannot be caste aside as a prejudiced charge by an eastern thinker who is jealous of Western prosperity. We cannot escape the indictment. This does not mean that we must turn back the clock of scientific progress. No one can overlook the wonders that science has wrought for our lives. The automobile will not abdicate in favor of the horse and buggy or the train in favor of the stagecoach or the tractor in favor of the handplow or the scientific method in favor of ignorance and superstition.
But our moral lag must be redeemed; when scientific power outruns moral power, we end up with guided missiles and misguided men. When we foolishly maximize the minimum and minimize the maximum we sign the warrant for our own day of doom. It is this moral lag in our thing-oriented society that blinds us to the human reality around us and encourages us in the greed and exploitation which creates the sector of poverty in the midst of wealth.
Again we have diluted ourselves into believing the myth that Capitalism grew and prospered out of the protestant ethic of hard work and sacrifice. The fact is that Capitalism was build on the exploitation and suffering of black slaves and continues to thrive on the exploitation of the poor – both black and white, both here and abroad. If Negroes and poor whites do not participate in the free flow of wealth within our economy, they will forever be poor, giving their energies, their talents and their limited funds to the consumer market but reaping few benefits and services in return.
The way to end poverty is to end the exploitation of the poor, ensure them a fair share of the government services and the nation’s resources. I proposed recently that a national agency be established to provide employment for everyone needing it. Nothing is more socially inexcusable than unemployment in this age. In the 30s, when the nation was bankrupt it instituted such an agency, the WPA, in the present conditions of a nation glutted with resources, it is barbarous to condemn people desiring work to soul sapping inactivity and poverty. I am convinced that even this one, massive act of concern will do more than all the state police and armies of the nation to quell riots and still hatreds.
The tragedy is our materialistic culture does not possess the statesmanship necessary to do it. Victor Hugo could have been thinking of 20 th Century America when he wrote, “there’s always more misery among the lower classes than there is humanity in the higher classes”.
The time has come for America to face the inevitable choice between materialism and humanism. We must devote at
least as much to our children’s education and the health of the poor as we do to the care of our automobiles and the building of beautiful, impressive hotels. We must also realize that the problems of racial injustice and economic injustice cannot be solved without a radical redistribution of political and economic power.
We must further recognize that the ghetto is a domestic colony . Black people must develop programs that will aid in the transfer of power and wealth into the hands of residents of the ghetto so that they may in reality control their own destinies. This is the meaning of New Politics. People of will in the larger community, must support the black man in this effort.
The Three Evils of Society by Martin Luther King Jr .
Martin Luther King The Three Evils of Society
Bob Dylan - Only A Pawn In Their Game (March On Washington 1963) [BEST QUALITY]
A salute to 'US' - WE ARE THE BEAUTY WE CREATE TOGETHER!
My man Marvin:
Drinker, you took me way back with that one. I am. . . moved.
Loved Marvin Gaye. I saw his music in 3 phases:
While I loved all of his work, What's Going On was my favorite. He is one of the few artists from those days, that I'm really sorry to have never seen live.
Friendship / I’ll Take You There
Like maybe a bit different than you’ve heard before:
Great song. Great 'crowd' doing it. What a 'delicious' assemblage of singers and listeners. I had a 'ball!'
Yea, I thought it was very well done. Apparently. Chris and Mavis became close during the Covid pandemic. the talked frequently on the phone. Stapleton first called her when he was trying to figure out Pops Staples guitar work and which peddle he used when recording "Friendship". He wanted to it with Dave Cobb. His and Mavis' relationship started with that phone call.
people get ready - the chambers brothers
battle hymn of the republic - andy williams
Thank you, JR! Great additions.
The Coretta Scott King Rose Gallery
Anybody check out the virtual gallery of Ms. King?
Dr. King opened the 1964 Berlin Jazz Festival, his address included:
"Jazz speaks for life. The blues tell the story of life's difficulties and, if you think for a moment, you realize that they take the hardest realities of life and put them into music, only to come out with some new hope or sense of triumph. This is triumphant music."
Peter, Paul and Mary
"If I Had A Hammer"
If I had a hammer, all of my problems would look like nails.
Thank you for such a beautiful consciousness song. Fit for the era; fit for the times. Fit for now! It's all very fresh again!
It's timeless.
Certainly is a timeless classic.