Today is the National Holiday honoring the birth of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
I have longed believed that they despised him for his ability to use the English language to skewer them and show them the hollowness of their reality.
My favorite section of A Letter from a Birmingham Jail.
We have waited for more than three hundred and forty years for our God-given and constitutional rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward the goal of political independence, and we still creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward the gaining of a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. I guess it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say “wait.” But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick, brutalize, and even kill your black brothers and sisters with impunity; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she cannot go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her little eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see the depressing clouds of inferiority begin to form in her little mental sky, and see her begin to distort her little personality by unconsciously developing a bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son asking in agonizing pathos, “Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?”; when you take a cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading “white” and “colored”; when your first name becomes “nigger” and your middle name becomes “boy” (however old you are) and your last name becomes “John,” and when your wife and mother are never given the respected title “Mrs.”; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobodyness”–then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over and men are no longer willing to be plunged into an abyss of injustice where they experience the bleakness of corroding despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience …
Can’t wait to read Liza & ellihaas’ comments! SMGHD
I’ll just say that hairpiece… IT’S A HOT MESS.
This interview is about how Lil’ Debbie is just amazed by her own brilliance. Why, she’s done everything right regarding the Democratic debates and the viewership statistics prove it. How could anyone question her impeccable judgement?
It is kind of amusing that Lil’ Debbie said that the partnership with YouTube would allow the number of viewers to grow exponentially. Well, CNN has the number of viewers who watched the debate at 10.2 million, and the official NBC YouTube video now has 2,216,914 viewers. That is not exponential growth. In fact, all of the methods available to view this debate after the fact are not going to provide exponential growth, as Debbie seems to think. She’s just defending her position without supporting facts, as usual.
Tell the TRUTH , Liza.
I got absolutely nothing from this interview Ametia…
Debbie said nothing…and the interviewer is playing along with Debbie pretending this entire primary set-up isn’t a farce…
TRIP DOWN MEMORY LANE Don’t fuck with our PRESIDENT!
Ha ha. Intelligence and a long memory trumps ever changing talking points.
Shocking that for someone who’s been in politics for so long, Hillary Clinton still hasn’t mastered the art of subtlety…and more importantly for a supposed seasoned politician, that all-important politically *savvy* subtlety that lessens the sense that a constituency or a target audience is being patronized, manipulated, exploited …worked…and entirely for the purposes of the politician and only for the politician’s benefit…
How does one explain the fact that she follows every announcement from the President about his accomplishment – SOTU for instance – not with sincere praise and congratulations, but with a blatantly transparent and entirely and nauseatingly self-serving and arrogant and intelligence-insulting segue that’s all about voting for her supposedly because oooohhh…It’s all about her..
And tonight she’s on with Rachel Maddow with her off-putting, entitled, petty self, telling how she immediately rallied for then Senator Obama once she lost to him, how she worked her fingers to the bone on his behalf and did everything to help him win – including getting her supporters to get behind him…and on, and on, and on…
I not only can’t believe just how glaringly desperate, pedestrian and shallow she and her political ‘instincts’ and inclination come across, but I remember 2008 and 2012 quite differently…
I remember her everything including kitchen sink attacks on Senator Obama…I remember how long it took her to ‘concede’ – and even then, she didn’t really…it was still all about her and her supposed millions of cracks in the ceiling…and ‘what does Hillary want’…I remember her half-hearted effort that still withheld as much as she could (something she carried with her when she joined his administration)..
…I remember how they used their very vocal and high-profile friends to continue attacking and sabotaging the candidate (even after he won – and even after he became President) – I remember how there never seemed to be any effort or desire on her part to put a stop to the blatant shenanigans of her dear friends including Lynn de Rothschild who not only joined the McCain campaign, but actively recruited and fundraised for Jon Huntsman to run against President Obama – that is, after their internal polling showed that Hillary couldn’t pull off a win even after she preemptively and unceremoniously quit her Sec. of State job hoping the opportunity would present itself for her to mount a run against her boss (who she hoped had been seriously weakened by the combined attacks and undermining of his presidency – including by her and Bill’s high-profile attack dogs – and Bill himself…)
I couldn’t stop laughing last night as she accused Bernie Sanders of soliciting a candidate to primary President Obama in 2012…
That may be true, but Hillary actually did so much worse than Bernie’s transgression (borne more of a frustrated far-left progressive/emoprog desire at the time for a more far-left agenda than any resentment, spite or dislike of the President himself…)
She and Bill and their sycophantic friends (spurred entirely by their own greed agenda, and dependent on the spoils begotten of their questionable relationships with and access to the Clinton machine), not only actively undermined and sabotaged President Obama at every turn throughout both terms, but continued to explore ways for Hillary to run against her boss…When that failed, they started the campaign to unseat V.P Biden pushing for Hillary to replace him on the 2012 ticket – and only to position her for her 2016 presidential run…But President Obama didn’t bite..
Hillary as the top Diplomat, and in the midst of serious instability in the world and during ongoing delicate negotiations by the President, unceremoniously and prematurely announced that she would be leaving at the end of what she believed – and frankly hoped, would be the President’s only term…She very irresponsibly and unnecessarily telegraphed this information on the world stage as his top Diplomat to embarrass and sabotage him – and that could easily have torpedoed the President’s ongoing foreign policy efforts at the time by questioning strength, sustainability and even the stability of his presidency and his team, and casting doubts on his long-term foreign policy plans and efforts…
At that time she also announced in response to a question that she believed that there would be a female president in her lifetime …that America would eventually elect the first female president – but she also said that it would not be her…
On that we can agree..
Perfect analysis, Eliihaas. I DVR’d the debate and watched it yesterday, and all I really got out of it was more affirmation that Hillary is a terrible candidate. I could not believe, and yet I could believe, her recollection of her own role in the Clinton administrations’s attempt to pass universal healthcare legislation, really the cornerstone of his 1992 campaign. So, Hillary now says that she took on the insurance industry and the pharmaceuticals and didn’t stop until the Children’s Health Insurance Program was passed, now insuring eight million children. That is almost a direct quote. Her failure is now a success. Those of us who were adults in 1992 should not dwell on the word “universal” and we should focus on the eight million children who are insured because Hillary (or was it really Ted Kennedy who can no longer speak up) got the bill passed. Her revisionism seems to have no limits. Everything that worked out well that she had a hand in or a supporting role is now her own success. And she shamelessly panders to black voters, speaking now as though she and PBO have been tight as twin fiddles since 2008.
It’s NOT politics, this is who Bill & Hill are/ It’s EGO, POWER, AND ENTITLEMENT.
The tow of them border on Psychopathy, IMO.
I just can’t believe they’re letting her get away with all her lies Liza…
I keep remembering what the billionaire David Geffen who financed most of their campaigns said of the Clintons..
“Everybody in politics lies, but they [the Clintons] do it with such ease, it’s troubling,”
Nothing’s changed..
Psychopathic LIARS
Whew LAWD! Scorching commentary. TRUTH
She is one calculating BITCH.
I WILL NEVER, EVER FORGET HER REFUSING TO INITIALLY CONCEDING
And meanwhile PBO & VP can clearly see what this witch is up to.
Folks can say this is just politics all they want. But what Hillary tried to do to PBO in 2008, the way she tried to win, was pure malice in my opinion.
https://youtu.be/BH2MjIiJc9w&rel=0
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_rvaAL1L_55s/SXOxaJ7tS_I/AAAAAAAAIew/z8TnCnDsvnU/s400/kingatcathedral.jpg
His sermons were powerful.
http://www.trbimg.com/img-1390391955/turbine/chi-mlk26preaching-19650725/973
He was blest to be a blessing.
https://twitter.com/UPTOWNmagazine/status/689175946893651969
In 2016 and beyond I will walk arm in arm with all of you for social justice until true freedom and equality in all areas comes.
We do walk in the light of TRUTH and LOVE…that’s real power!
https://youtu.be/Aor6-DkzBJ0&rel=0
[facebook url="https://www.facebook.com/thehermanharris/videos/10100555898671745/" /]
https://twitter.com/NBCPolitics/status/689231904550338560?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Happy King Day 3Chics,
The primary huh? Yeah, that’s it.
https://twitter.com/ksatnews/status/689244932746297344
https://twitter.com/BreeNewsome/status/689246030131531776
Martin Luther King, Jr. addresses a rally in Detroit, 1963.
MLK address a crowd of 75,000 on June 21, 1964 at a civil rights rally held at Chicago’s Soldier Field:
Martin Luther King Jr. (center) speaks with Rev. Ralph Abernathy (2nd from right) and others, 1961.
Civil rights leaders Floyd B. McKissick, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Stokely Carmichael participate in a voter registration march after its organizer, James H. Meredith, was shot and wounded, 1966.
Martin Luther King, Jr. sits with demonstrators who walked through Mississippi to encourage voter registration, 1966.
Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. stands in front of a bus at the end of the Montgomery bus boycott, Montgomery, Alabama, Dec. 26, 1956.
Ripley’s Believe It or Not — and the White Sanitization of Racial History
January 18, 2016 • Rogelio Saenz • Dr. Martin Luther King, Jim Crow Segregation
Today, on Martin Luther King Day, Ripley’s Believe It or Not comic strip published the sketch of a smiling Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King as newlyweds The caption of the sketch reads “Martin Luther King Junior and Coretta Scott King spent their wedding night in a funeral parlor instead of a hotel.” The sentence is consistent with the strip’s teaser approach. Nonetheless, the reader is left to wonder why the just-married couple opted for a funeral parlor rather than a hotel room. Were they too cheap to get a room? Did they have a fetish for the macabre? Did someone in their immediate families die that day?
Of course, the reason that the newlyweds spent the night at the funeral parlor on the night of their wedding day on June 18, 1953, was that the local hotels in Marion, Alabama, denied them a room. It was through the help of friends including his father, Martin King Sr. who presided over the wedding ceremony in the Scott family’s backyard in nearby Heiberger, that they were allowed to stay in the funeral parlor.
The Ripley entry represents yet another example of the way history is sanitized when it comes to race. For example, we routinely hear about plantation tours that never mention the words “slavery” and “slave” because it is “not part of the official tour.” On the day honoring Dr. King, the Ripley comic strip writer missed an excellent teachable-moment opportunity by failing to tell, as the legendary conservative commentator Paul Harvey would say, “the rest of the story.”
Rogelio Sáenz is Dean of the College of Public Policy and Peter Flawn Professor of Demography at the University of Texas at San Antonio. He is co-author of Latinos in the United States: Diversity and Change and co-editor of The International Handbook of the Demography of Race and Ethnicity.
http://www.racismreview.com/blog/2016/01/18/ripleys-believe-it-or-not-and-the-white-sanitization-of-racial-history/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+racismreview%2FnYnz+%28racismreview.com%29
https://twitter.com/NerdyWonka/status/689199672645160960/photo/1
ICYMI. I sure did
https://twitter.com/starfirst/status/689198988323614721?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/JamilSmith/status/689190526290137088?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
RIP, Glenn Frey, and thanks for the music.
Oh my. Thank you Mr. Frey, for the classic ROCK of the EAGLES!
Blessing to the family
I Can’t Tell You Why is my…
RIP Glenn Frey.
UH HUH
UH HUH
Clinton’s Clever Debate Strategy: Cling to Obama in a Party That’s Already Missing Him
By Ed Kilgor
If only Democratic primary voters were as furious at their own party’s powers-that-be as are Republican voters, the posture taken by Bernie Sanders in the NBC/YouTube debate Sunday night would’ve been a clear winner: Both parties have been bought by wealthy interests, and only an anti-corporate crusader like Bernie can avoid the terrible policy mistakes committed by and under the Clinton and Obama administrations. Indeed, if a sizable majority of Democrats thought the last two administrations of their own party were the corporate betrayals that many of Sanders’s most avid supporters consider them to be, HRC would be the perfect symbol of the continuing DINO establishment that had to be overthrown to install progressive governance.
Alas for the Sanders campaign, that’s not how Democrats feel. According to the latest Gallup weekly presidential-job-approval tracking poll, the 44th president’s rating among Democrats is 84 percent. Among self-identified Liberal Democrats it’s at 89 percent; among African-Americans it’s at 85 percent. Yet it is extremely difficult for Sanders to make his case that HRC is too close to Wall Street or too militaristic or too timid on domestic policy without co-indicting the incumbent president. Hillary Clinton understands that, which is why she took so much care in the NBC debate to identify her approach to the regulation of Wall Street with Obama’s; to defend Obamacare in contrast to Sanders’s advocacy of a single-payer health-care system; to remind Democrats she was a major architect of Obama’s foreign policy; and to refuse opportunities to separate herself from Obama even though some consultants probably think she’ll need to do that to win a general election.
Meanwhile, Sanders is on the horns of an excruciating dilemma: Even if he manages to win in both Iowa and New Hampshire early next month, the long-term success of his campaign will depend on a breakthrough with minority voters in the South and large industrial states who don’t particularly know or have reason to trust him, and don’t particularly want to hear the first nonwhite president — who has been, and is continuing to be, assailed by Republicans on a daily basis as a hopeless incompetent and near-traitor — being instead described by a Democrat as a corporate whore. Yet an implicit indictment of the Obama administration (and less directly, Bill Clinton’s administration) as compromised by corporate ties and hobbled by unprincipled centrist compromises is at the heart of the entire Sanders campaign, and intrinsic to the kind of activist energy he’s showing in the first two states and other hotbeds like the Pacific Northwest.
An Open Letter to My Friends who Support Donald Trump
By TheJeremyNix
Tue Dec 15, 2015 12:34 PM
I’m cool with you removing me from your friends list if you don’t like this post. You can even disown me if you like. But Donald Trump isn’t a good person, nor would he be a good president. I can understand a difference in politics. I can understand if you don’t like a government run by Democrats. I can understand if you don’t like certain ideologies, like Socialism. But I can’t understand why you would support someone as hateful, sexist, racist and ignorant as Donald Trump.
How do you support him so blindly? Ask yourself, are you a racist, sexist, hateful and ignorant person as well? I hear his supporters saying they like him because he tells the truth, because he’s so rich he can say whatever he feels like with no apologies. Just because Trump is saying these things doesn’t suddenly make them right. It’s not okay to discriminate against an entire religion based on a small percentage of its followers who have become terrorists by twisting the words of their religion to fit their crazy ideals. It’s not okay to marginalize an entire race of people, saying things like all the Mexicans are lazy, and they are all stealing our jobs and bringing drugs into our country.
White people also have bad apples. So does every race of people. We’re all human. Some humans are really bad people. Some are really good. And it doesn’t matter what color they are, it makes no difference whatsoever. Trump says he is just telling the truth. But whose truth? There are lazy people in every race and there are dangerous violent people in every race and every religion. Kicking all Muslims out of the country is not the answer, nor is it the acceptable behavior of a person in an extremely powerful position, like the President of the United States.
The Japanese Internment camps were wrong, Segregation was wrong, Slavery was wrong. We fought wars amongst ourselves to rise above racism and hatred. In WWII more than 60 million people died worldwide. Why? Because of twisted people who were whipping up the population into a frenzy and making ridiculous statements, killing innocent people simply because of their race or religion. The United States lost more than 400,000 lives fighting in that war, against the same ideas that Trump is pushing. The idea that certain religions are more dangerous than others and the idea that people should be judged based on the color of their skin rather than the content of their character.
http://thejeremynix.newsvine.com/_news/2015/12/15/34823207-an-open-letter-to-my-friends-who-support-donald-trump
https://twitter.com/NYAmNews/status/689160868001640448/photo/1
https://twitter.com/markknoller/status/689157589406371840?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/dsupervilleap/status/689161326086729729?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/markknoller/status/689164045006446592?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/EricBoehlert/status/688942184708616193?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/JohnJHarwood/status/689071902472671232?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Does anyone here watch The Royals?
If you do…can you explain to me why the King died?
I’ve watched it all, and I don’t understand.
I simply don’t understand.
https://twitter.com/speechboy71/status/689101228769423360?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/TheKingCenter/status/689073573093359616?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
I ache for all the residents. Their health has been permanently damaged.
https://twitter.com/CraigCons/status/689074000123711488?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
And Gov, Snyder’s AZZ belongs behind BARS!
Joe Walsh
@WalshFreedom
Martin Luther King, Jr would not approve of #BlackLivesMatter. Dr King was about bringing people together. He would say, “All lives matter.”
Oliver Willis
@owillis
2h2 hours ago
Oliver Willis Retweeted Joe Walsh
MLK was killed for saying black lives matter. Shut up.
https://pbs.twimg.com/tweet_video/CZAnT2CWUAgbRvU.mp4
A Visit to the King Home on the Night Martin Luther King Jr. Died
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/a-visit-to-the-king-home-on-the-night-martin-luther-king-jr-died/ar-BBof9Gs?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=U348DHP#image=BBofrzC|4
It was raining hard in Atlanta on the night King was assassinated. I was on a date with a friend, heading to a movie, when the bulletin broke in on the car radio.
At first, neither of us spoke. Then my date asked, “Want me to drive you to the King home?” I nodded. He turned the car around and drove straight there, both of us silent, stunned and locked in our own thoughts.
At the King home, now on Sunset Street, I made a dash in the spring rain for the small porch of the modest, split-level redbrick home with its barred windows. The dark, tree-lined street was ablaze with lights. On the porch, I recognized a New York Times reporter talking to a policeman, who told us no reporters were allowed in the house.
As we stood there, the door opened to let someone out. Down the long hall, I could see Coretta, clad in a rose-pink nightgown and robe. Spotting me, she told the officer, “Let Kathryn in.”
More at the link above..
http://www.blackstarnews.com/sites/default/files/styles/news-detail-page/public/field/image/Rwot2.jpg
You can see his vision and steadfast determination, rooted in TRUTH and LOVE.
https://twitter.com/1027KIISFM/status/689145405276295172
WARNING!!!! LOL
http://a.disquscdn.com/uploads/mediaembed/images/3079/8628/original.jpg
LOL, Ametia, you did not give enough of a warning :)
BWA HA HA HA Quite scary isn’t she/he?
I am too scared to peek at it again.
OMG, TY for this. Folks are so clever and creative, are they not?
LOL Indeed, folks are very CREATIVE, Liza!
Ametia, you look wonderful. Bow chica bow wow!
Thank you, SG2. We’re not getting older, we’re getting SMARTER, WISER, HEALTHIER, & INFORMED. It pays to pass it on to the next generation.
https://youtu.be/ASAuiWoAoi8&rel=0
She is quite good, a well written speech too.
“I Have a Dream” is truly a masterpiece, there is nothing like it in all of American oratory. MLK’s delivery, of course, will probably never be surpassed. But the speech itself is breathtaking, it reads like poetry while the subject matter drives a sword straight into your heart. I like to read it now and then.
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkihaveadream.htm
https://youtu.be/SoiVY1OpTMM&rel=0
https://twitter.com/justinjmd/status/689124782495936512
https://twitter.com/dmunday/status/689121268440936448
https://twitter.com/clydetheslyde/status/689114557470650368
An excellent post honoring Dr. MLK Jr. It takes me back, and I get lost in thought. The south never leaves you, no matter where you go, that’s been my experience.
Grandma & Grandson!
BEAUTIFUL!!!
Passing the spirit along, generation after generation!
Posting one more. I’m doing this because, he’s not recognizable, and nor am I.
There’s my friend! Hi!
What a fortunate little guy to have you as his grandma!
You may not be recognizable but you certainly look slim and healthy. Must be following FLOTUS’ advice on diet and exercise. :)
so much love, Ametia.
So much love.
Awwww, there’s the little man. I bet you have fun with him, Ametia.
I haven’t been to the MLK monument in DC but I certainly hope to see it someday. Your picture is impressive.
Thanks Liza. Not bad for an iPhone camera!
CHICA!
Thank you, Liza. I’ve always been slim and maintained healthy eating habits. A decade ago, I taught 4 fitness classes/week. Cardio-funk! Surprise!!!
FLOTUS just held out that vision and reinforced the call to be healthy for Americans, and she did it in a very deliberate, informative, simple, creative and fun way!
@Rikyrah: That’s my BOY-EE!
Thanks for sharing. I hope to take that picture with my daughter before she’s too big for me to lift up lol.
Tyren, being there with my grandson, it was life-changing. I can’t describe it; you’ll know what that feels like when you take your daughter to the memorial.
Me@ MLK Jr. Memorial last summer
Super!
Thank you for sharing your photo of momentous visit.
Love that you have quotation in photo!
You’re welcome, yahtzee. MLK Jr. Memorial is a MUST.SEE, if you’re visiting D.C.
For me, It was a spiritual event, especially being there with my grandson and daughter.
3 generations….connecting with MLK and all that monument to the movement means in that spiritual moment! It must have been powerful for all of you.
Here’s what the quote reads
Thanks. I was squinting trying to read the quotation in the photo.
It’s one of my favorite of MLK’s quotations. Great words of wisdom!
Sexy girrrrrrrrl!
2016 Community MLK celebrations:
“Olympia High School MLK Assembly 2016 Highlights”
https://youtu.be/yAWgWx1mH4s&rel=0
“BTS MLK Shabbat 01 15 2016 03 Happy Bday & Keep Your Eyes On The Prize”
https://youtu.be/vuTxCL8yNGg&rel=0
Good Morning, Everyone :)
Good Morning :)
Rikyrah, thank you for your outstanding post here on Martin Luther King with the great photos and his wisdom.
May every generation keep pushing for MLK’s dream of social justice and equality. May the day come when Martin Luther King’s words will be held close in every heart.
https://youtu.be/HEFRPLM0nEA&rel=0
Good Morning, Yahtzee and Everyone.
Happy Birthday, Dr. King!
I love this so much.