Before the Media Lionized Martin Luther King Jr., They Denounced Him
Reflecting on revisionist history
The condemnation of what became known as King’s “Beyond Vietnam” speech was universal. One hundred and sixty-eight newspapers denounced him in the days that followed. These editorials had a peculiarly vicious flavor. It was clear that King’s main transgression was not knowing his place.
The Washington Post wrote that King had “diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, and his people.”
The New York Times, in “Dr. King’s Error,” reminded King that his proper battlegrounds were “in Chicago and Harlem and Watts.”
They said King, as an individual, was of course free to think about Vietnam, but, as a leader of black people, he had an obligation to stay in his lane, i.e. to “direct [his] movement’s efforts in the most constructive and relevant way.”
But history has sanitized him, turning him into a mainstream leader who accomplished what he could within an acceptable role. That sanitizing continues on each of these anniversaries, and is a sad commentary on our inability to listen to even the best of us.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politic...ed-him-629494/
“If we have to have a choice between being dead and pitied, and being alive with a bad image, we’d rather be alive and have the bad image.”
— Golda Meir
Zionism is the movement for the self-determination and statehood for the Jewish people in their ancestral homeland, the land of Israel.
ברוך השם
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