-By Warner Todd Huston
Comparing the wholly American and sensible demands issued by the real civil rights movement during the event that saw Martin Luther King deliver his “Dream” speech in August of 1963 to the mishmash of self aggrandizing nonsense belched forth by today’s “BlackLivesMatter “movement” reveals a startling difference and exposes today’s protesters to be disjointed, illogical, filled and with race-hate not to mention insensate and childish.
When King mounted the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in that great American moment to begin to change forever how Americans treated its black citizens he didn’t do so alone. He stepped out to give his soaring “I Have a Dream” speech backed by hundreds of key members of the burgeoning civil rights movement, organizers who themselves were backed by hundreds of thousands of Americans, black and white, spread all across the country.
Before that great rally in Washington in 1963, the civil rights movement had already coalesced into a concerted effort replete with demands that they hoped would bring relief to millions of Americans yearning to be as free as the rest of the country.
At the August 28 march, dubbed the “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom,” demands were issued that were almost to a point entirely in keeping with the American ethos, highly logical, Constitution-based, and reasonable. Not only that, but at one point in the list, organizers went out of their way to include whites.
The Demands: Page four of the original committee program for the 1963 civil rights march on Washington.
In only a few instances the demands were skewed toward an un-American socialism, but the bulk of them were wholly in keeping with our national character and our rule of law.
The list of demands included the demand that Congress pass meaningful civil rights legislation; the elimination of racial segregation in public schools; the passage of a law prohibiting racial discrimination in public and private hiring; and an Executive Order banning discrimination in all housing supported by federal funding.
These demands were from people who only wanted to be treated as equals in society, people who just wanted a chance to make their own way in life unhindered by government sponsored oppression.
In only two instances the demands were not in keeping with American ideals. In the one case the protesters wanted a $2 an hour minimum wage–a minimum wage being a socialist, not a proper capitalist policy. And in the other they wanted a public-works program to provide jobs for unemployed workers. This is also not an endeavor in which government should ever engage. Government does not make jobs. It only burdens taxpayers with undue spending.
To be sure, both these points were ideas that many left-wing Americans and Democrats would have then taken as proper roles for government then, but they weren’t proper American actions in WWI, they weren’t in the Great Depression, not during WWII, nor the era of The Great Society just as they aren’t today. Still, this is mild criticism of the goals of the civil rights protest movement in 1963.
Further, it should be noted that the demand for the jobs program–despite that it isn’t a proper role for an American government–were formulated to include both “the Negro” and Whites.
Ultimately, the protest in 1963 was righteous and entirely peaceful quite despite the fact that protesters were trying to stop the lynchings, false imprisonments, and oppression of a single segment of the American polity that had been ongoing for some 200 years.
Now comes the BlackLivesMatter/Furgeson/ICan’tBreathe/Eric Garner (et al) protests. In contrast to those of 1963, these protests are built on lies.
In the case of Ferguson, Mike Brown wasn’t “murdered” by a white Missouri police officer, nor was he an “innocent” or a “gentle giant.” He was a criminal who had just committed a strong arm robbery and seconds before he was shot he had physically attacked the officer and tried to take away the man’s gun.
In the case of Eric Garner, he wasn’t “murdered” by New York cops with an illicit “choke hold.” He died because he was an unhealthy, obese man who couldn’t take the physical action of resisting arrest he had initiated.
Yet, these two incidents launched several violence-filled months that have resulted in disparate groups issuing all sorts of infantile manifestos and demands, none of which are either logical or in keeping with the American ethos.
In fact, the only known national leader of these groups is Al Sharpton, a shakedown con man who has a history of inciting violence, lying, abetting murders, tax evasion, theft and hucksterism.
Worse, though, are the “demands” issued by Sharpton and these other groups. These “demands” being made by the disparate protest groups are based on the fantasy that protesters can force their version of “justice” by misusing the legal system to arrive at their own preconceived notion of what that means. Their only goal is to punish evil white people. Period.
To a group, these “demands” are filled with claims that white officers should simply be arrested regardless of guilt–the guilt is predetermined in their form of “justice.” Further, the protesters insist that the federal government step in and serve more of this illicit “justice” based on selfish desires of punishing evil white people instead of based on true justice as were those demands in 1963.
Sadly, they don’t really want justice as their “No Justice, No Peace” chant proves. They want retribution or revenge based on hate and emotionalism, not justice.
The civil rights movement of 1963 was legitimate in every way. What we have today is hate-based and illegitimate.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, Wizbang.com, among many, many others. Huston has also appeared on Fox News, Fox Business Network, CNN, and many local TV shows as well as numerous talk radio shows throughout the country.
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