King: assassinating the Man & His Legacy Fri, 4 Feb 2000 01:36:50 -0500 Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit source - brc-news@lists.tao.ca Dr. Martin Luther King: Assassinating the Man & His Legacy? By C. Stone Brown The question of who killed Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. continues to haunt Americans. The questions remain: Was there a government conspiracy, was James Earl Ray the assassin, was the United States government involved? Recently the King family won a lawsuit against Lloyd Jowers, a retired Memphis businessman who claimed in 1993 on ABC-TV that he hired the person who killed King. The King family filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against Jowers for a token $100. The jury took only three hours to deliberate and find Jowers was part of a vast murder conspiracy. This verdict alone is meaningless. However, it becomes a powerful tool in the overall strategy of fueling the King family's call for a new investigation into Dr. King's assassination. According to the King family lawyer William Pepper, there was a vast conspiracy to kill Dr. King that involved organized crime, the CIA, FBI and Army intelligence. In his closing argument, Pepper told jurors that Jowers was part of a conspiracy that involved the head of organized crime in New Orleans and a Memphis produce dealer who used Jowers to handle the payoff and the murder weapon. The army's role was planting a sniper back-up in case the assassin missed his target. The FBI, CIA, media, and local and state officials all conspired to cover up the assassination, claims Pepper. One must ask, why would the most powerful institutions in the world all conspire to kill one black man? Sounds absurd, right? Well, my guess is it wasn't because he was a dreamer, as the media has subsequently molded Dr. King's image, instead it may be because his dreams often became a reality. Many of us who have followed the life of Dr. Martin Luther King cannot appreciate the threat he posed to the guardians of America's social and economic order. Although he was assassinated, his legacy still poses a threat, and this is why academic, media and political institutions misrepresent his legacy. King & a Shake Today we have a repackaged Dr. King -- a fast-food version, one that has been prepared for mass intellectual consumption. Just ask someone of this generation: Who was Dr. Martin Luther King? And they will invariably respond with two words -- the dreamer. Unfortunately when Dr. King was assassinated the civil rights movement and what it was to become died with him. It is one thing however, to assassinate a man, it is something else to assassinate his legacy by twisting and misrepresenting his words. Examples of this can be observed in the political arena today where conservative leaders such as Newt Gingrich, Pete Wilson and others embrace the repackaged Dr. King. These conservatives have notoriously taken Dr. King's words out of context to support anti-affirmative action measures. In To Renew America for example, Newt Gingrich praised Dr. King as an individualist who opposed group rights. And in promoting the misnomer-California Civil Rights Initiative, a ballot measure that would ban all state affirmative action plans throughout California, Pete Wilson evoked Dr. King's name often, insisting that Dr. King would be against all discrimination -- including reverse discrimination. To set the record straight, Dr. King supported affirmative action-type remedies that would engender a level playing field for blacks. "A society that has done something special against the Negro for hundreds of years must now do something special for the Negro to compete on an equal basis" (quoted in Let the Trumpet Sound, by Stephen Oates). In a 1965 Playboy interview, Dr. King compared the GI Bill to remedy-based programs that would even the playing field for Blacks: "Within common law we have ample precedents for special compensatory programs ...and you will remember that America adopted a policy of special treatment for her millions of veterans after the war." Despite what the repackaged producers of the King legacy try to sell us, these quotes of Dr. King clearly indicate where he stood on affirmative action-type remedies. However, the most potentially damaging and lasting effect of repackaging Dr. King is presenting him to this generation as a one-dimensional black civil rights leader. In fact, Dr. King had large numbers of whites who supported him -- numbers that were gaining up to his death. Vietnam for example, wasn't a civil rights or race issue, neither were unions and campaigns for the homeless, all issues that Dr. King fervently addressed. In 1967, Dr. King was one of the most outspoken critics of the Vietnam War. In a speech titled "Beyond Vietnam" he called the United States "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today," and maintained that the U.S. was "... on the wrong side of a world revolution." In the same speech, he criticized the U.S. for their looting of the mineral resources of Asia, Africa and South America. Ironically, U.S. policies and activities haven't changed much since Dr. King made these dissenting remarks. We don't hear conservatives publicly discussing the last year of Dr. King's life. I guess it wouldn't be in their interest to note that Dr. King was working to organize a multi-racial Poor Peoples campaign, or that he would often tell followers that most poor people are white. This was King's way of demystifying poverty as popularly regarded as a black problem. In his last days, Dr. King was a radical, and his vision was to fundamentally change U.S. economic priorities. Ironically, if Dr. King had been a one-dimensional leader, I believe he would still be alive today. Clearly, it was his multi-dimensional leadership that made him a target of the centers of U.S. power. Dr. King's leadership in the civil rights movement ruffled the rigid social mores of America's white working class. However, a movement for civil rights and public accommodations for blacks and people of color didn't threaten the interests of the elite, who benefit most from the capitalist economic system. In fact, the civil rights movement would eventually bring more wealth and prosperity to the economic elite by opening up new markets and expanding the workforce. During the pre-civil rights movement, blacks and other non-whites were rarely ever considered a market segment. They were economically "Invisible" to corporate America, both as workers and consumers. Unlike today, there were very few companies that had a department solely devoted to targeting minority consumers. The dynamics however, of the civil rights movement, not only changed our title from Negro to black, but also converted us from producers to consumers. Generally speaking, segregated "Negroes" produced their own goods and services, desegregated post civil rights "black" people consume the goods and services of others. Indeed, if blacks could eat in restaurants and stay in hotels where pre-civil rights Negroes were previously denied, their trends, and interests would eventually birth a new market segment. This dynamic over time would bring us to where we are today -- a $30 billion black consumer market, equivalent to the ninth-largest country in the world. The consequences of converting from producers to consumers have been what Malcolm X warned, materialism, illusions of wealth in the accumulation of material possessions (a.k.a. frontin ), and breeding crime in the black community. Additionally, integration has directly resulted in the absence of (or reduction) in black-owned businesses such as hotels, restaurants, country clubs, the Negro baseball league, etc. I don't believe that Dr. King looked at the long-term consequences that the movement would have on the dynamics of black economic activity. His mission was simple: End the system of segregation on the grounds that it was equivalent to second class citizenship, and a cancer on the soul of this nation. King & the War In one episode of the "X-Files" there was a meeting among Army brass during the height of the Vietnam war. The meeting was about the "problem" Dr. King posed for them in speaking out against the Vietnam war. What was said in this smoked filled room in a fictionalized TV series, history documents wasn't far from the truth: If Dr. King continues to speak out against the war, there won't be anymore Negroes to fight the war for us." Dr. King not only understood the Vietnam war wasn't only immoral, but it disproportionately sent more Negroes to die. When Dr. King began to speak out against the Vietnam War, build a multi-racial coalition and bring attention to poor people, he was entering forbidden political territory. Civil rights is one thing, but attempting to close the margin between wealthy and poor Americans frightened those in power. In a moment of candor, Congressman Louis Stokes, chairperson of the U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations said Dr. King was murdered because he had begun to wake up poor people in this country, not only poor black people, but also poor white people. In expanding his movement to economic justice, King had to be killed. Indeed, American racism serves a variety of economic interest. Imagine a coalition of poor blacks and whites demanding their share of the American economic pie, only racism prevents this union. Now we understand why the FBI's code name for Dr. King was Zorro, a political Robin Hood. The FBI under J. Edgar Hoover had a pathological fixation with Dr. Martin Luther King. The murder of Dr. King if nothing else indicates a conspiracy took place. One of the best books on the subject I have come across is Murder in Memphis: The FBI and the Assassination of Martin Luther King, written by Mark Lane (former attorney of James Earl Ray) and Dick Gregory. Some of the territory covered by Lane includes: 1) The FBI's many efforts to discredit King; 2) The pressures placed on James Earl Ray by his attorney, Percy Foreman, to plead guilty. 3) The lack of physical evidence connecting Ray to the assassination (the rifle has not been positively matched to the bullet, for example); 4) The story of eyewitness Grace Stephens, who said Ray wasn't the person she saw and was immediately taken by police to a mental institution; 5) The suspicious events which caused King to transfer to the Lorraine Motel; 6) The removal of police protection on the day of the assassination, including the transfer of two black firemen from the station across from the Lorraine; and 7) The curious experience of detective Ed Redditt, who was pulled off the protection detail two hours before the assassination under circumstances which suggested the involvement of several federal intelligence agencies. As important as it is to understand why Dr. King was assassinated, one should never allow the memory of his assassination to usurp the memory of his life. The greatest tribute we can pay to Dr. King is to read his writings and share them with young people. And those of us who work in the interest of justice should also work to protect his legacy. Dr. King was perhaps the most dynamic figure this nation has ever produced. After winning many civil right battles, he moved on to economic, foreign policy, and human rights issues. The lasting memory I have of Dr. King is not as a repackaged dreamer. I will remember him for the reason he was in Memphis the day he died-even as powerful forces planned his death. He was in Memphis to march with sanitation workers (trash men) to improve their pay and working conditions. This act embodies the life of Dr. King, a man who had already negotiated with American presidents, won a Nobel prize, and became a respected leader around the world, yet remained humble and compassionate to his death. C. Stone Brown is a regular contributor to NetNoir. If you would like to share your memory of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. with Mr. Brown please send to mrb92@aol.com Copyright (c) 2000 C. Stone Brown. All Rights Reserved. BRC-NEWS: Black Radical Congress - General News Articles/Reports Subscribe: Email "subscribe brc-news" to ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytrc-02.04.00-01:36:43-30563