Martin Luther King Jr. FBI Tapes (sixties, Vietnam, document, monument)

[mtl1]

My problem with MLK and the CR movement is that it's built on false premises and presented with a pseudo-religious dogma with false goals and motives to mask its real goals and motives that were not being revealed. And no concern or respect was ever given to the effect on everyone else who is not black.

[eliza61nyc]

Originally Posted by mtl1

My problem with MLK and the CR movement is that it's built on false premises and presented with a pseudo-religious dogma with false goals and motives to mask its real goals and motives that were not being revealed. And no concern or respect was ever given to the effect on everyone else who is not black.

I find that really hysterical. They were supposed to be concerned with how it effected the people that were effectively keeping then second class citizens and killing them? Lol by that logic I guess slaves should have discussed how their emancipation was going to effect their masters

May I ask what were the false "goals"?? What real goals??

I guess that's your issue. I'm not losing an ounce of sleep because some racist storeowner goes under because they want to discriminate

[mtl1]

Originally Posted by eliza61nyc

I find that really hysterical. They were supposed to be concerned with how it effected the people that were effectively keeping then second class citizens and killing them? Lol by that logic I guess slaves should have discussed how their emancipation was going to effect their masters

May I ask what were the false "goals"?? What real goals??

I guess that's your issue. I'm not losing an ounce of sleep because some racist storeowner goes under

That's a strawman, scapegoating and demagoguery, just what you would expect from civil rights activists. People living in their cohesive and harmonious communities weren't doing anything to any blacks.

[eliza61nyc]

Originally Posted by mtl1

That's a strawman, scapegoating and demagoguery, just what you would expect from civil rights activists. People living in their cohesive and harmonious communities weren't doing anything to any blacks.

??? And we were not protesting against any community. And yes they most certainly were, when you knowingly support a system of laws that denigrate and enslaved others for the sole purpose of continuing your "cohesiveness" you are most definitely "doing" some thing AND blacks did not prevent them from being "harmonious ". What demagoguery?? Are you claiming that Jim crow laws were good?? Are you saying that the treatment of African Americans was such that it should not have inflamed people??

lol, scapegoating?? ok, hummm please, please please tell me who it was instituted, enforced (through any means necessary) and propagated the southern system of Jim crow? I believe you were asked that a number of times before, do you need help with that. you claim I'm making someone a scape goat??

yep, I'm from a long line of AA who lived, fought, died, served in this counties armed forces and have every intention of forcing it to live up to the promises the founding fathers did not have the gonads to keep.

and I haven't upset anyone's "cohesiveness", can't be all that cohesive if it falls apart when someone who looks different moves in. sounds like a personal problem not a civil rights problem.

[eliza61nyc]

In a nut shell you are saying you don't want certain people in your neighborhood SOLELY on the basis of their skin color, something that is illegal and immoral AND your mad because we won't allow you to do it.
That's not a strawman argument.
Lol I accept being painted as a civil rights activist. You're a bigot. Accept it

[markg91359]

A thread about MLK ought to be an opportunity to talk in far more positive terms. Maybe if we ignore the bigots they will go away.

So, I thought I might throw out a couple of questions for discussion:

1. Who, besides MLK, was a great civil rights leader in this country? My choice would be Justice Thurgood Marshall who served for twenty + years on the Supreme Court. However, much of Marshall's claim to fame actually occurred before he was ever put on the Supreme Court. Marshall worked for years as the NAACP's legal counsel in which he brought numerous cases that put civil rights issues before the courts. Marshall had faith that if he brought the right cases and argued them effectively in court that the court system wouldn't let him down. In 1954, Marshall argued Brown v. the Board of Education before the U.S. Supreme Court and got nine white supreme court justices to hold unanimously that segregated schools were unconstitutional

2. If MLK were alive today what would he be talking about? What would upset him the most? My thoughts are that he wouldn't have nearly as much to say about race today. However, what he would be attacking is the disparity between the wealthy and the poor. He would be demanding that America work for human rights in all countries.

3. Do some other people deserve some credit for the progress made in civil rights such as former President Lyndon Johnson, Chief Justice Earl Warren of the Supreme Court, and MLK's lieutenants such as John Lewis, Ralph Abernathy, and Jessie Jackson?

[maf763]

Originally Posted by markg91359

A thread about MLK ought to be an opportunity to talk in far more positive terms. Maybe if we ignore the bigots they will go away.

So, I thought I might throw out a couple of questions for discussion:

1. Who, besides MLK, was a great civil rights leader in this country? My choice would be Justice Thurgood Marshall who served for twenty + years on the Supreme Court. However, much of Marshall's claim to fame actually occurred before he was ever put on the Supreme Court. Marshall worked for years as the NAACP's legal counsel in which he brought numerous cases that put civil rights issues before the courts. Marshall had faith that if he brought the right cases and argued them effectively in court that the court system wouldn't let him down. In 1954, Marshall argued Brown v. the Board of Education before the U.S. Supreme Court and got nine white supreme court justices to hold unanimously that segregated schools were unconstitutional

2. If MLK were alive today what would he be talking about? What would upset him the most? My thoughts are that he wouldn't have nearly as much to say about race today. However, what he would be attacking is the disparity between the wealthy and the poor. He would be demanding that America work for human rights in all countries.

3. Do some other people deserve some credit for the progress made in civil rights such as former President Lyndon Johnson, Chief Justice Earl Warren of the Supreme Court, and MLK's lieutenants such as John Lewis, Ralph Abernathy, and Jessie Jackson?

For # 1, I'll submit Ida B. Wells-Barnett. Born a slave, she was college-educated, won a successful lawsuit against a railroad company over segregation a full 70 years before the Montgomery bus boycott, and made a career in journalism that exposed the extent and savagery of lynching in America. She was a women's rights and suffragette activist despite being shunned by white women in the movement, and started the National Association of Colored Women's Club. And she and her husband raised four kids.

I agree with your take on # 2.

For # 3, I don't think King is given sole credit for the successes of the civil rights movement, and everyone you mention and more are recognized by name. But it's my belief that the lion's share of the credit should go to the many anonymous (to us) African-Americans who demanded their rights, whether by migrating from the Jim Crow south, or organizing voter registration drives, or showing up to marches, or any of a million other ways.

[eliza61nyc]

Originally Posted by markg91359

A thread about MLK ought to be an opportunity to talk in far more positive terms. Maybe if we ignore the bigots they will go away.

So, I thought I might throw out a couple of questions for discussion:

1. Who, besides MLK, was a great civil rights leader in this country? My choice would be Justice Thurgood Marshall who served for twenty + years on the Supreme Court. However, much of Marshall's claim to fame actually occurred before he was ever put on the Supreme Court. Marshall worked for years as the NAACP's legal counsel in which he brought numerous cases that put civil rights issues before the courts. Marshall had faith that if he brought the right cases and argued them effectively in court that the court system wouldn't let him down. In 1954, Marshall argued Brown v. the Board of Education before the U.S. Supreme Court and got nine white supreme court justices to hold unanimously that segregated schools were unconstitutional

2. If MLK were alive today what would he be talking about? What would upset him the most? My thoughts are that he wouldn't have nearly as much to say about race today. However, what he would be attacking is the disparity between the wealthy and the poor. He would be demanding that America work for human rights in all countries.

3. Do some other people deserve some credit for the progress made in civil rights such as former President Lyndon Johnson, Chief Justice Earl Warren of the Supreme Court, and MLK's lieutenants such as John Lewis, Ralph Abernathy, and Jessie Jackson?

Great questions.

humm I'll start with number 2.

I think black on black crime would have him really really upset. I think it's one of the things my community has to get a grip on.

I think the income disparity would bother him but I also think the cost of college education and opportunities would lay on his heart also.

#3

Most definitely, there were hundreds of unsung heroes. I'd like to see more women represented in the history. I think we are painfully underrepresented throughout history.
Susan B. Anthony and Harriet Tubman are two of my favorites from early American history
Daisy Bates and Fannie Lou Hamer got the tar beat out of them, where threatened daily, fannie lou was illegally sterilized under Mississippi's attempt to reduce the number of blacks and still they continue to seek equal treatment. amazing.

lol, my mom Mae Helen James, below worked to get African Americans in Tennessee the ability to vote, then after getting arrested and having to pay a huge fine that almost bankrupt my grandparents went back to school to become a lawyer and represent hundreds of poor. and managed not to strangle her 4 unruly kids while raising them to adults.

#1
I do admire the founding fathers for what they did in establishing America, at the time they really could have been hanged for treason. I don't celebrate their birthdays simply because most owned slaves and pretty much conveniently forgot my ancestors. but I gotta give it to them, our system is still the best system on the planet even after 250 years.

[green_mariner]

We must never forget those like Thurgood Marshall, Medgar Evers, James Meredith, they also played a role in the civil rights movement. Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, martyrs in the struggle for equality.

[green_mariner]

What Dr. King did was for the best. There is a reason he was willing to die. He understood that the way the USA was functioning was wrong. He is a big part of why EVERYONE can vote and why no one can be turned away based on race. Where you want to live, who you want to marry, where you want to eat, travel,etc, it is up to you. There are no laws saying "because of your race, you aren't allowed here". Such laws are ruled unconstitutional.

As markg91395 said, there are other people who deserve credit for their contributions to the civil rights movement. It took Thurgood Marshall, John Lewis, Ralph Abernathy. You have Justice Earl Warren.

It took many people who risked their lives, and some cases, were killed, trying to create a better USA. The 3 civil rights workers who were in Mississippi died trying to achieve good things. Going around, helping to get people registered to vote. Mississippi was a society that was so closed and borderline dictatorial, it needed to change.

Over all, America needed to change. It was not living up to its promise as a land of freedom and equality. In the South, Jim Crow was the law of the land. In northern and western areas, there were restrictive covenants forbidding persons of certain races to live in several neighborhoods. This existed in the South too. Sundown towns throughout the USA. Discrimination from housiing to jobs to accomodations. The USA needed to chabge through and through. What Dr. King was about was more than just a civil rights movement. He was about changing this country for the better. Things needed to change, not just from a legal perspective, but a moral perspective.