Killing In The Name Of.. The MLK Assassination (Part 1)

In March 1967, Martin Luther King, Jr. made a decision that may have cost him his life. He and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) denounced the war in Vietnam as "morally and politically unjust" and promised to do "everything in our power" to stop it. In King stepped up his attack. At a speech at the Riverside church in New York City, he called the US "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today" and compared American practices in Vietnam to Nazi practices in WWII. He challenged all young men eligible for the draft to declare themselves conscientious objectors.

Before this, King had kept his civil rights work separate from the peace movement, partly on the advice of other black leaders who felt racial justice should be his first goal. But he increasingly saw that "the giant triplets of racism, materialism and militarism" couldn't be separated. The war was siphoning off money desperately needed for the poor and racially oppressed at home.
So King planned "civil disobedience on a massive scale" in order "to cripple the operations of an oppressive society." There would be sit-ins of the unemployed at factory entrances across the country, "a hungry people's sit-in' at the Department of Labor" and a Poor People's March on Washington, where thousands of demonstrators of all races would pitch their tents in the nation's capitol and stay until they'd been heard. There were even rumors (though King denied them) that he might run in the 1968 presidential election on an antiwar, third-party ticket with Dr. Benjamin Spock.

King's actions brought sharp criticism from all sides, black and white alike. Life magazine called the Riverside speech "demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi." It charged King with "introducing] matters that have nothing to do with the legitimate battle for equal rights here in America."
Even the more moderate National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) agreed: "To attempt to merge the civil rights movement with the peace movement," they said, "will serve the cause neither of civil rights nor of peace." From the government there wasn't just hostility-there was fear. King had already demonstrated the ability to instigate massive unrest, and his rumored presidential candidacy would appeal to those appalled by the war.
For years the FBI had wiretapped King's home and office, intercepted phone conversations and planted paid informants within the SCLC; now it stepped up its surveillance. President Lyndon Johnson is said to have admitted privately, "That goddamn nigger preacher may drive me out of the White House."

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[blue2slugger2]

tdam mo fo's

[TheMaryjanepottman]

I hate it when i get crappy internet service on Dr.Kings Birthday. I believe Dr. Martin Luther King's stand on the war may have saved more lives than the ones marching for civil rights. He saved many lives that would have been taken if he had not been around. I love Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.