1/15 IS MARTIN LUTHER KING'S BIRTHDAY

I'm with you edgar, but no one mentions washington's bday either.

I think the man was a brilliant leader. I wish his message was accepted more deeply and widely.

His presence in that constellation is a concept many have yet to grapple with. Washington's place is secure.

http://www.thekingcenter.org

unfortunately many americans associate MLK with the discord of the 60's, for many of us that lived through those difficult days of civil rights i dont think we can ever forget MLK-Medgar Evers-Malcom X. but it was a time that changed the face as well as the spirit of a nation. MLK was a leader of men that will not be forgotten.

A man of conviction and character.

The anti war demonstrations timed for his birthday weekend are a fitting way to honor the man.

I never tire of listening to his voice on the recorded speeches and sermons.

This eight-year-old article from Fair.org is sadly still relevant:

It's become a TV ritual: Every year in mid-January, around the time of Martin Luther King's birthday, we get perfunctory network news reports about "the slain civil rights leader."

The remarkable thing about this annual review of King's life is that several years -- his last years -- are totally missing, as if flushed down a memory hole.

What TV viewers see is a closed loop of familiar file footage: King battling desegregation in Birmingham (1963); reciting his dream of racial harmony at the rally in Washington (1963); marching for voting rights in Selma, Alabama (1965); and finally, lying dead on the motel balcony in Memphis (1968).

An alert viewer might notice that the chronology jumps from 1965 to 1968. Yet King didn't take a sabbatical near the end of his life. In fact, he was speaking and organizing as diligently as ever.

Almost all of those speeches were filmed or taped. But they're not shown today on TV.

Why?

It's because national news media have never come to terms with what Martin Luther King Jr. stood for during his final years.

In the early 1960s, when King focused his challenge on legalized racial discrimination in the South, most major media were his allies. Network TV and national publications graphically showed the police dogs and bullwhips and cattle prods used against Southern blacks who sought the right to vote or to eat at a public lunch counter.

But after passage of civil rights acts in 1964 and 1965, King began challenging the nation's fundamental priorities. He maintained that civil rights laws were empty without "human rights" -- including economic rights. For people too poor to eat at a restaurant or afford a decent home, King said, anti-discrimination laws were hollow.

Noting that a majority of Americans below the poverty line were white, King developed a class perspective. He decried the huge income gaps between rich and poor, and called for "radical changes in the structure of our society" to redistribute wealth and power.

"True compassion," King declared, "is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring."

By 1967, King had also become the country's most prominent opponent of the Vietnam War, and a staunch critic of overall U.S. foreign policy, which he deemed militaristic. In his "Beyond Vietnam" speech delivered at New York's Riverside Church on April 4, 1967 -- a year to the day before he was murdered -- King called the United States "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today."

More here.

<sigh>

and the affirmative action thread still causes uproar - we should be so far beyond that

Thank you, PDiddie. Even back then I wondered that the coverage of him seemed pretty negative for all the high praise they gave.

I agree that he is a man who had a profound and lasting effect on our nation. I wish more people of all ethnic backgrounds embraced his call for equality of treatment for all people.

PDiddie, that was a fantastic article. I hadn't realized that in his later years he was so focused on class/ economic issues as opposed to solely racial issues. Truly walked the walk.