MLK Day

The stock market is closed today on honor of Dr. Martin Luther King. He would have turned 77 yesterday.
Here’s his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” To quote Keith Burgess-Jackson, “If this letter doesn’t move you to tears, you aren’t wired properly.”
I found a copy of the letter via Wikipedia. If you’re not familiar with Wikpedia, it’s an open source Web encyclopedia. Anyone can jump in and edit it. Recently, The New York Times reported that the entry for John Seigenthaler Sr., a former aide to Robert Kennedy, contained “defamatory content.” The entry was fixed, but on Wikipedia, you never know what you’re going to see.
Here’s part of the Wiki entry for Martin Luther King:

The March on Washington
King and SCLC, in partial collaboration with SNCC, then attempted to organize a march from Selma to the state capital of Montgomery, for March 25, 1963. The first attempt to march on March 7, was aborted due to mob and police violence against the demonstrators. This day since has become known as Bloody Sunday. Bloody Sunday was a major turning point in the effort to gain public support for the Civil Rights Movement, the clearest demonstration up to that time of the dramatic potential of King’s nonviolence strategy. King, however, was not present. After meeting with President Lyndon B. Johnson, he had attempted to delay the march until March 8, but the march was carried out against his wishes and without his presence by local civil rights workers. The footage of the police brutality against the protestors was broadcast extensively across the nation and aroused a national sense of public outrage.
The second attempt at the march on March 9 was ended when King stopped the procession at the Edmund Pettus Bridge on the outskirts of Selma, an action which he seemed to have negotiated with city leaders beforehand. This unexpected action aroused the surprise and anger of many within the local movement. The march finally went ahead fully on March 25, with the agreement and support of President Johnson, and it was during this march that Willie Ricks coined the phrase “Black Power” (widely credited to Stokely Carmichael).
King, representing SCLC, was among the leaders of the so-called “Big Six” civil rights organizations who were instrumental in the organization of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963. The other leaders and organizations comprising the Big Six were: Roy Wilkins, NAACP; Whitney Young, Jr., Urban League; A. Philip Randolph, Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters; John Lewis, SNCC; and James Farmer of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). For King, this role was another which courted controversy, as he was one of the key figures who acceded to the wishes of President John F. Kennedy in changing the focus of the march. Kennedy initially opposed the march outright, because he was concerned it would negatively impact the drive for passage of civil rights legislation, but the organizers were firm that the march would proceed.
The march originally was conceived as an event to dramatize the desperate condition of blacks in the South and a very public opportunity to place organizers’ concerns and grievances squarely before the seat of power in the nation’s capital. Organizers intended to excoriate and then challenge the federal government for its failure to safeguard the civil rights and physical safety of civil rights workers and blacks, generally, in the South. However, the group acquiesced to presidential pressure and influence, and the event ultimately took on a far less strident tone.

That’s not correct. The march from Selma to Montgomery happened in 1965, not 1963. The text refers to Lyndon Johnson as being president, but that didn’t happen until that November.
I like Wikipedia, but it’s always good to remember that you can trust everything you see on the Web.

Posted by on January 16th, 2006 at 12:22 pm


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