-By Don Boys, Ph.D.
In 1959, King resigned from the pastorate of Dexter Avenue Baptist and moved to Atlanta to direct the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. In the following year, King became co-pastor with his father of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta.
On June 23, 1963, King led 125,000 people on a Freedom Walk in Detroit, and the March on Washington held August 28 was the largest civil rights demonstration in history with almost 250,000 people in attendance. It was during that march that King made his famous I Have a Dream speech at the Lincoln Memorial. None of the media are willing to reveal that he “borrowed” that theme and words from another black preacher who delivered it at the 1952 Republican Convention. Wonder why?
On a Los Angeles television show, July 21, 1963, four Blacks, including a King representative made their positions clear as to what they wanted from “whitey.” The show was The American Experience and aired on KTTV in Los Angeles and in many other cities. The black participants were Wyatt Walker (representing King), Allen Morrison who was editor of Ebony magazine; Malcolm X, minister of the Nation of Islam; and James Farmer, top honcho of the Congress of Racial Equality.
Malcolm X almost blew all the television tubes at the station when he demanded the white power-structure give Blacks a separate nation far from all whites. In that new nation would be the homes, businesses, utilities, etc., that any nation would require. The other Blacks only demanded complete integration and “compensatory preference” by force if necessary. The startled television audience was told that “mere equality” was not enough but “massive preferential treatment” was required. Black workers were to be paid more than white workers for doing the same job, and Whites were to be fired and Blacks, even less qualified Blacks, would replace them even if employers had to pay for their transportation to the jobs. There were not-so-subtle suggestions that revolution in America would result if these demands were not met.
The year 1964 started great for King because he was chosen Time’s “Man of the Year” and his photo was on the magazine’s cover on January 3. Then in July, he attended the White House signing by President Lyndon Johnson of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. In December, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the youngest person to ever receive that award. When he received notice of the award, he announced that he would give the prize money of $54,123 to the furtherance of the civil rights movement. However, that meant nothing since he was the titular head of the “civil rights movement.” It is further enlightening of his character (or lack thereof) to note that when he went to Norway to accept the Nobel Prize, he was caught drunk, running naked down a hotel hallway trying to catch a woman.
Blacks were getting restless as Malcolm X criticized King’s nonviolent movement and Malcolm picked up many followers with his self-defense and Black Nationalist message. At the same time, Stokely Carmichael was gaining black adherents daily with his “black power” message as Blacks often derisively referred to King as “Da Lawd.”
George S. Schuyler writing in the Savannah Morning News caught the mood of many thinking people in relation to King and his posse of political parsons: “Ever since the long and futile Montgomery bus boycott (settled not by marching but by federal court order), the peripatetic Dr. Martin Luther King and his pose of political parsons in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) have roamed the country collecting coin and infecting the mentally retarded with the germs of civil disobedience, camouflaged as non-violence and love of white people.
“Phony prayers for the salvation of white ‘oppressors’ and chanting slave songs fooled nobody except possibly the Utopians and wishful thinkers. Only the unwary and True Believers thought this program was anything but pixilated [slightly crazy!]” The late Schuyler was one of my favorite writers, and I forgot to mention that he was black!
Many ordinary Americans, black and white, were getting weary of the protest marches, confrontations, finger pointing, and whining from black leaders who always had excuses for black failures and those excuses were the fault of whites. King’s motives were being questioned by many Blacks and Whites including Democrat Chicago Mayor Daley. Daley said of the Chicago riot of July 1966 that King’s associates were there “for no other reason than to bring disorder to the streets of Chicago.”
King really revealed his motives in an interview with the Baltimore Sun: “In an interview…Dr. King acknowledged that his ‘end-slums campaign in Chicago is an implementation for the concept of black power,’ but under a more palatable name. Dr. King acknowledged that his presence in Chicago, the street rallies, sit-ins, marches…have more far reaching aims than the immediate dramatization of problems of impoverished Negroes….Dr. King…spoke at the headquarters of the West Side Organization, where a sign on the wall said: ‘Burn, baby, burn, boycott, baby, boycott.’ Roving bands of youths and some adults …broke windows, looted stores, and stoned police cars and small police vans.”
Many observant Americans thought that violence was an integral byproduct of the much vaunted civil rights marches, and some black leaders requested, while others demanded, that King and his aides stay out of their cities. Rev. Henry Mitchell who represented 50,000 Blacks and a group of West Side black ministers in Chicago told King to “get the hell out of here.” He and the other black preachers said that King “brought hate” to their city and suggested that if King wanted to march he should march with rakes, brooms, and grass seed! In other words do some non-glamorous and non-headline producing WORK on the West Side.
One more example of King alienating black leaders: J. H. Jackson was president of the National Baptist Convention and said that King was causing problems all over America. Jackson said that King was responsible for “designing the tactics that led to a fatal riot” and the death of Rev. A. O. Wright in Detroit.
King was gaining power with white Washington liberals with every year and after President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law in 1965, King changed his focus to a Poor People’s Campaign. In 1967, he announced that his new campaign was to guarantee poor people jobs and freedom. The following year King announced that his poor campaign would culminate in a March on Washington, D.C., and he demanded a $12 billion Economic Bill of Rights. That would guarantee an end to housing discrimination, jobs to all able-bodied people and a guaranteed income to those unable to work! Only when pigs grow wings and learn to fly!
Yes, the black preacher had come a long way. He could now dictate to the President of the United States and the U.S. Congress!
On March 28, 1968, King led a march for sanitation workers that turned violent, and he delivered his “I’ve been to the mountaintop” speech but on April 4, King was shot and killed while standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. His death resulted in riots in over 130 American cities with 39 deaths and 20,000 arrests. Within a week of the assassination, an intimidated Congress passed the Open Housing Act.
Jesse Jackson appeared on the April 5, 1968 edition of the Today Show and told the world that he had been with King when he was shot and cradled his head in his arms and “was the last person on earth” to whom King had spoken. For the show, he wore a bloodstained olive-brown turtleneck sweater, which Jackson said contained King’s blood.
However, that was not the truth since eyewitnesses report that Jackson was nowhere near King when shots rang out, but was down in the courtyard while King was on the balcony. It is also not true that King died in his arms. It was Ralph Abernathy who cradled King and stayed with him until he died. No, Jackson was not the first person to cradle King’s body, but he was the first person to talk to the television cameras as he presented himself as the anointed heir to the King.
King was an apostle of non-violence yet seemed to generate violence most of his adult life which ended in his tragic death at the hands of a twisted degenerate by the name of James Earl Ray.
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Dr. Don Boys is a former member of the Indiana House of Representatives, author of 13 books, frequent guest on television and radio talk shows, and wrote columns for USA Today for 8 years His most recent book is ISLAM: America’s Trojan Horse! His websites are www.cstnews.com and www.Muslimfact.com.)
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