UPDATE: Bumped for justice. Sorry I watched this again just. It's always incredible. He almost fades away at the end. The word is that he was so exhausted that he almost fainted when he walked back. If you look, you can see someone (maybe Abernathy?) catch him as he falls. Is it wrong that I thought of Jordan falling into the arms of Pippen in the "flu-game?" Obviously not the same. Anyway, this clip is about courage, and this was the clip that convinced--as a very young Malcolmite--of the courage of nonviolence, and the power of the moral high ground. MLK should be on this country's currency. He is, as far as I am concerned, the most important non-president in American history. He is the founding father of modern American.
Seems appropriate. I've always loved this, makes me choke up whenever I see it. What? You were expecting Malcolm's "Ballot or the Bullet?" It's not that sort of night...
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
Copyright © 2009 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
A favorite of mine as well.
When I watch it now, I always find it eerie that he spoke those words the night before he was assassinated.
I liked that. Thanks.
I forced myself to watch that clip again. It is probably the hardest piece of film to watch when you know what happened the next day and what happened after that.
I want a change made to the King holiday - kids HAVE to go to school on the holiday. I don't want to see it reduced to King day mattress sales. Have a special curriculum made for that day not only about MLK but about the evil we accepted when this country was founded and the price King and others paid to eliminate it. And a reminder of the work that is left to do.
That clip makes me so glad that we live in an era where speeches like that are videotaped, so people like MLK can live on forever.
The center of that speech, its proof of truth, and its courage hinges on this phrase, "longevity has its place, but..." At the end of the speech he is overcome with emotion and pivots away from the microphone and audience as he continues the last spoken public sentence of his life as if speaking to the ages.
It always reminds me of what Churchill said: "Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees all others."
Churchill also spoke of McCain: "A prisoner of war is a man who tries to kill you and fails, and then asks you not to kill him." Some hero...
Adin
Chills. Incidentally, this past April 4th NPR's Fresh Air interviewed an historian named Michael Honey who wrote a book on the Memphis sanitation workers' strike.
You can link to both text and audio here. It's about 20 minutes. It includes some audio tape footage of a sermon MLK gave in Memphis a few weeks before the "mountaintop" speech -- the one in which he suggests a Negro General Strike in Memphis. His words and the group's reaction to them are amazing.
First-person politics -- not the 3rd-person politics of, "let's be nice to poor people," but "we are the poor people and we're going to organize to get what we deserve."
I wonder if tonight we're catching a glimpse, just a hint, of the other side of the mountain.
AJ,
My guess is no. My guess is that we'll see the outlines of the field of battle, and tremendous battle it will be. Gird your loins and your lions for what is before us.
It is never over until we cross the Great River.
Adin
Adin:
Duly noted -- loins thus girded.
This clip has always made me think that MLK was expecting his demise, and had fully prepared himself. He seems to nearly choke up after he looks towards the camera and says "...but it really doesn't matter to me now." That, and the talk about longevity, etc. It breaks me up even more than "I Have A Dream".
Stefan, I agree with you in that we thought Rev. King was expecting to die soon.
I distinctly remeber watching the news with a group of friends (all of us 12 years old) and we all were blown away - we thought he died when walked away from the mic. It was such a creepy feeling when just an hour or so later, we heard that he had been shot. I talked to one of those friends earlier in this year and he says he still can't believe those few hours and what we saw and heard on tv that night.
When I hear the "I Have A Dream" speech, it still inspires. This speech in Memphis still gives me cold chills up my spine.
For me, it's the Vietnam speech, where he tied together that war and racism. Probably the bravest political speech I've ever heard.
When I watch it now, I always find it eerie that he spoke those words the night before he was assassinated.
He spoke such words quite a few times. Which is not to say he didn't believe he'd die an early death.
'Churchill also spoke of McCain: "A prisoner of war is a man who tries to kill you and fails, and then asks you not to kill him." Some hero...'
This is stupid. Churchill was a POW.
agreed.
i think he fully expected to be killed, soon, and this was his statement to the world - and his killers - that, yes, i'm getting ready to be murdered. and i'm ready.
it's pretty obvious and it is what gives the moment such power.
by that point, hoover and the fbi had been involved in a long campaign to undermine him and force him to commit suicide. he was getting threatening phone calls, and i'm sure all sorts of very obvious hints were being shoved at him.
yes, he knew he was going to die soon and when i look at the tape i always imagined that he was scanning the audience as he was, almost looking for the gunman who was about to take his life.
great, great pick.
you've been killing it today, t-nc!
what fired you up today?
obama's speech last night?
Not to mention Churchill died before McCain was taken prisoner or anything.
And really, are you really trying to imply that POW's are cowards because they didn't fight to the death? That's very... liberal of you.
Can we not get derailed into a debate about POWs and cowardice?
And Frankie, there's just a lot of news today, I think.
Sorry. Best to ignore it I know.
The founding father of modern America, you say. I don't know. As important as he was, you could (a) make an argument that most of the substantive changes he supposedly effected would've happened without him, and that LBJ's the real founding father of modern America, or (b) argue that civil rights for an eighth or so of the population, as big of a deal as it was, wasn't as big as, say, The Pill. Making Gregory Pincus the founding father of modern America.
okay, t-nc, that's true...
but you have definitely brought out the scalpel today.
Dr. King was a giant, with astounding oratorical power. We’re privileged to still be able to hear him. Imagine if we could listen to Frederick Douglass.
Compare Dr. King to Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, today’s reigning talking heads. Their thing is verisimilitude. Clinton and Blair are distinctive because their consummate style delays for a few moments one’s realization that it’s just another politician talking. They may be advocating something good, but they’re never really challenging the establishment.
Dr. King was a poetic genius with a mellifluous voice, he was mining the rich vein of the African-American experience, but above all, he was speaking truth to power.
I agree with your assessment of his place in American history. I've often told people he was the most important American in the 20th century. His personal couage is so inspirational. I love his Letter From A Birmingham Jail as a moral challenge to those sitting on the sidelines.
He is the founding father of modern American.
I kind of think MLK himself might deny his paternity: "Sorry, no, that isn't my kid."
(not to say that he wouldn't be happy and proud about Barack)
Not to nitpick or anything (okay, just a little), but MJ was helped off the court by Scottie Pippen (you know, one of the 50 greatest, six-time champ, two time gold medalist and all that?) and not by one of the Hobbits that was named one of the elite Guards of the Citadel by Denethor, Steward of Gondor.
I think you Asher you are missing the point when you say "argue that civil rights for an eighth or so of the population, as big of a deal as it was, wasn't as big as, say, The Pill."
I like to think that MLK's efforts on behalf of that portion of the population showed the rest of us what the country was supposed to be.
It just so happened that his efforts were needed to address issues in the African-American community but that was just the beginning.
Fighting to right those wrongs empowered us all by seeing an inequity and working to fix it.
He illustrates what being an American meant in every possible way: in actuality, in word, in deed, in thought, as symbol, etc.
I would argue that he is indeed the most important American to ever live symbolically.
I love this blog and everything, but as a resident white person (who's read "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" a dozen times):
I nominate FDR and Reagan as the two greatest Americans of the 20th Century. One ended the Depression, Nazism, and Japanese Imperialism. The other ended the worst evil of them all, Soviet Communism.
MLK makes it into the top 10.
Hip hip hooray!
Simon, Toxic and Coates,
McCain has ridden his POW story to the nomination of the presidency, so the truth is important. Churchill was a captured by the Boers during the Second Boer War and escaped after about seven days of captivity [1899]. After he escaped from the prison camp and he travelled almost 300 miles through enemy territory to a Portuguese enclave. Only someone ignorant of history would use McCain and Churchill in the same breath.
"Some liberal."? Who told you that? Don't pigeonhole me into some simple-minded niche. My use of the quote is to give some perspective of the mythic status of McCain as POW. I have 3 bronze stars and 2 purple hearts from service in Vietnam. It doesn't make me heroic or honorable in the years since they were awarded to me. It's not an excuse for anything I've done since. McCain uses being a POW as his 'twinkie defense.'
POW McCain. Getting shot down in a fighter jet is not an example of courage; it's either bad luck, an error of the pilot, or running into a more skilled fighter pilot. It has never been clear whether he was shot down by a ground to air missile or air to air [a North Vietnamese jet fighter]. Or as McCain once said, "It doesn't take a lot of talent to get shot down." What are we left with? Being a prisoner of the North Vietnamese, being beaten, starved and tortured on and off for 5 years. That’s not courage, that's a bad consequence of being taken prisoner. If that's courage then all the prisoners at Guantanamo are courageous. Except they've been there 6 years.
Now what's left? The offer of the North Vietnamese to let McCain go before any other prisoner of war because his father was an admiral. McCain has been the only person to state this. His father, the US Navy, the Red Cross, his fellow POWs -- no one heard about or can confirm this except McCain. John Hubbell, who wrote a book about American POWs in Vietnam, first published the account of McCain’s POW experience after an interview with John McCain. It comes down to this: McCain’s uncorroborated word. If true, that was an act of courage. But I tell you this: it is entirely out of character of McCain either before or after Vietnam. He has always been very self-centered and ethically shaky his entire life, whether at the Naval Academy, in the Navy, his marriages, his Senate career. All the available documentation regarding his POW years indicates nothing about an early release that was offered by the North Vietnamese or refused by McCain.
Col. George Day, McCain’s cellmate for the time McCain was not in solitary confinement [2 years] never mentioned McCain’s refusal to be released early. He said he didn't know about it until after he and all the other POWs were released. Col. Day, John Stockdale, and several other Americans imprisoned at Hanoi were awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, yet McCain was not. Why? I don't know, but he was not even recommended for the award.
McCain is a pathological liar and dissimulator.
You ought to know your history before you run off behind your anonymous little monikers and computer screens, Toxic and Simon.
And Coates, the truth is never a "sidetrack." "Toxic" brought up "coward", not me. Not my style.
Adin
Why did Obama avoid mentioning King's name last night?
Clearly he understood the moment and I believe he had all of the skills and opportunity for delivery to an audience aching for ... redemption and history. I'm struck by what he didn't say more than what he did say, and I think the letdown some of us are feeling is important.
Most of the commentary I've seen on his speech is either about the MLK legacy or the political checklist. Black folks seem disappointed that there was less of the former and white folks seem mostly focused on the later. So who was the most important audience?
I'd say: the white swing voters, the middle-class folks who may be held back by discomfort at the thought of a black leader. If Obama had delivered a full-throated tribute to King it would have been deeply moving, but it would have cemented his identity to some as a black leader, where IMO he really needs to prove that he is a leader who happens to be black.
Obama also benefited, perhaps, from deflating a bit the mantle of symbolism that's on his shoulders. And, of course, there were other goals for the speech.
So we had a situation where Obama was perhaps compelled to underdeliver a message to promote racial harmony and achieve political ends. I hope we'll read about the pre-speech deliberations some day.
I also look forward to his MLK tribute at his inauguration, when one journey is complete.
Point taken Marc. I'd just rather keep the thread on topic.
You said "Churchill also spoke of McCain: "A prisoner of war is a man who tries to kill you and fails, and then asks you not to kill him." Some hero...'"
Churchill was dead by the time McCain was a POW.
So he didn't say anything of McCain. I don't even like McCain, but at least the way you said it, you were acting like WINSTON Fing CHURCHILL thought McCain was a pansy. It isn't even about McCain or what officer said what; its about you making shit up.
Sorry to side track the thread again, but damn, this is pissing me off even more than when the French bombed Pearl Harbor!
It just so happened that his efforts were needed to address issues in the African-American community but that was just the beginning.
Fighting to right those wrongs empowered us all by seeing an inequity and working to fix it.
But, ah, which non-racial inequities did he actually successfully inspire people to redress? I guess you could say he was a big inspiration to the feminist movement, gay rights movement - not sure how true that even is, but beyond that, I don't know that his larger aims were ever really realized. Take the Poor People's Campaign. Today you'd struggle to get a single member of Congress to vote for the stuff he was proposing.
Ta-Nehisi,
I apologize to you and my fellow posters for being incendiary and waaaaay off topic by interjecting McCain into the discussion of MLK.
It won't happen again.
Marc Adin
Adin,
One other note about McCain as POW--he had disabling injuries (broken limbs) from the crash and was beaten by a mob while being captured. It ain't like he was in any condition to try to escape eight days later. There is nothing to be won by impugning his wartime service.
This man gave you the Keating Five scandal. He cheated on the woman who faithfully waited FIVE YEARS for him to return while he was a POW. Now he’s married to a much younger gazillionairess but released tax returns on a mere $400K of income. He worked his ass off to get W re-elected despite knowing to the depths of his soul that W wasn’t up to the job. He doesn’t know or care one whit about economic policy, and his foreign policy is primitive even by medieval standards. The style of his oratory makes him sound like the voice of reason, circa 1830, but my friends, the Era of Good Feelings is over. His tax policy is Paris Hilton’s dream and my nightmare. He flip-flopped on torture, the one area I where thought he might be going to make a real difference five years ago. The guy has a temper that makes me think he shouldn’t go anywhere near the nuclear football.
Hit him there. Or accuse him of forgetting all the guys who maintained his planes after he left the service and got so comfortable and cozy in the Hart building. Caricature him as the guy who believes the point of being an American is that you will have the chance to further national greatness through an unending series of conflicts abroad. I’m not into the myth of St. John by any means.
MLK - truly the greatest American of the 20th century.