Posted on 01/01/2015 8:30:33 AM PST by Servant of the Cross
Today’s America is vastly different.
It is not 1965.
That is the implicit message of the new movie Selma, a stirring depiction of the Selma-to-Montgomery voting-rights march told from the perspective of Martin Luther King Jr.
The story is a familiar one, but never loses its power. King and his forces descend on a rural Alabama where it takes an act of courage for a black person even to attempt to register to vote. Through peaceful marches, they show for all the nation to see the desperate cruelty of the Alabama authorities, most infamously at Edmund Pettus Bridge when marchers are set upon by state troopers in what becomes known as Bloody Sunday.
These events changed America forever, which is part of their beauty. But the people involved in the making of the film insist that these events didn’t change America fundamentally, and indeed, they could be ripped from today’s headlines.
The movie’s stars showed up for the New York City premiere with “I Can’t Breathe” T-shirts, and held their hands up for photos. One of its producers, Oprah Winfrey, says of the film, “It is here for a reason in this moment.” The actor who plays Martin Luther King Jr., David Oyelowo, calls the parallels with Ferguson “indisputable,” and the rapper Common, who plays activist James Bevel, pronounces, “Obviously, the story took place in 1965, which is almost 50 years ago, but we know that it’s happening now.”
Picking up on this theme, a critic in The New Yorker writes, “These times are different from 1965 but not different enough — and, in some ways, they are even worse.” Worse? He needs to sit through another screening.
Whatever you think of the merits of voter-ID laws — often brought up to make the case that the struggle for voting rights is not over — they are not the least bit redolent of the Deep South of the mid-20th century. No one asks anyone to recite the preamble to the Constitution to get a driver’s license or some other valid ID.
Voting as a black person in the rural South 50 years ago didn’t involve the minor inconvenience of reliably establishing your identity. It was dangerous, and all but impossible.
In Lowndes County, Ala., it was thought that perhaps the last attempt to register to vote by a black person had been in 1945, and no one could recall a black person’s voting, even though the county was 80 percent black. In Wilcox County, the last time a black person had voted was 1901, when a compliant barber had been granted the privilege. The courthouses in such areas were hostile territory that blacks had to fear even to enter.
As for policing, the worry in 1965 wasn’t ambiguous encounters or tragic accidents. It was beatings, or worse. It was whips and forced march by cattle prod. It was the violence of police who were the oppressive instruments of a lawless authority.
The protesters who faced off against the police in Selma didn’t shout abuse, although they would have been amply justified; they didn’t burn down local businesses; they didn’t randomly fire guns, or throw rocks or stones. The difference between demonstrators in Selma and Ferguson is the difference between dignity under enormous pressure in a righteous cause and heedless self-indulgence in the service of a smear (that Officer Darren Wilson shot Michael Brown as he surrendered).
The temptation for the Left to live perpetually in 1965 is irresistible. It wants to borrow the haze of glory around the civil-rights movement of that era and apply it to contemporary causes. It wants to believe that America is nearly as unjust as it was then, and wants to attribute to itself as much of the bravery and righteousness of the civil-rights pioneers as possible.
All of this is understandable. It just has no bearing on reality. The movie Selma, by portraying a real struggle against a racist power structure, should remove all doubt of that.
You seem to have some solid proof of that, what is it?
So you don’t really have any proof.
We know that his dad was a republican, until he switched parties, but I’m not aware of proof of MLK being republican, nor that he was pro-GOP in the 1964 election, or in the 1968 primaries.
“Late in 1967, building upon anti-war sentiment, Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota entered the race, making his challenge to the president no mystery, with heavy criticism of his Vietnam War policies. Even before McCarthy’s entrance, Johnson grew concerned about a challenge. He confided to Democratic Congressional leaders that an opponent could pull Martin Luther King, Jr. and Dr. Benjamin Spock into their corner, defeating him in New Hampshire”
That article was debunked repeatedly here since it was written. Look it up.
You didn’t go to the web site did you?
What web site, internet search?
Just post your proof.
Go to Ask.com and where it says ‘’What is your question type in ‘’Was Martin Luther King a Republican?’ Can you do that?
That is just an internet search.
Do you think this is the first that we have heard of this unsubstantiated claim, that has no evidence or proof?
Your not reading the links dude. Try this, go to American Thinker Martin Luther King was a Republican. By Karin McQuillan.
So you still can’t find the proof to substantiate the claim, don’t feel bad, no one else ever has either.
“We also know from his autobiography that he wrote to a supporter in 1956 that “in the past, I always voted the Democratic ticket.”
We know that his father, the Rev. Martin Luther King Sr., a longtime Republican when most Southern Democrats were segregationists, endorsed John F. Kennedy publicly in the 1960 presidential race over Republican Richard M. Nixon.”
For many of us we already know the truth, this is an old debunked claim, and you fell for it, and it is easy to see why.
So all the bios on the man, the life he led siding with republican ideals and the many writers and authors who wrote of his affiliation with the GOP ‘’fell for it ‘’ too? Easy to see why? Right back at you pal and don’t ever bother posting to me again. Talking to you is like talking to a parrot.
Since that isn’t true, then of course it didn’t happen.
Show some proof of him registering republican, or voting republican, or why he would have described himself as always having voted democrat?
Explain his own words?
Dear Miss Sloan:
Thanks for your very kind letter of September 17, making inquiry concerning
the way the Negro will vote in the coming election. I am of the impression that
the Negro voter will go largely for the Democratic Party. I haven’t fully decided
which candidate I will vote for. In the past I have always voted the Democratic
ticket. At this point I am still in a state of indecision. Stevenson seems to be more
forthright on the race question than Eisenhower, but the Democratic Party is so
inexplicably bound to the South that it does leave doubt in the minds of those
interested in civil rights. Let us all hope that the candidate most concerned with
the welfare for all people of America will win the election.
Sincerely yours,
M. L. King, Jr.,
Question for you, is that letter from 1952 or 1956 ? It was claimed somewhere that MLK, Jr. did vote once for Eisenhower in 1956 (as did NYC Democrat Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.). But that was the only noted time. He clearly voted for JFK in 1960, LBJ in 1964 and most assuredly had he lived until November 1968, for Humphrey.
If that letter is from 1956, that contradicts the claim I cited above.
It was from 1956, he would be talking about the upcoming 1956 election, but MLK tried to appear no-partisan generally, so if we look at the letter, he plays neutral on the surface, but with a strong “vote democrat” message.
“I am of the impression that
the Negro voter will go largely for the Democratic Party. I haven’t fully decided which candidate I will vote for. In the past I have always voted the Democratic
ticket.”
Either way, as you point out, he clearly states that he has always voted democrat, and he only has 3 elections to vote following this letter, and JFK and Lyndon Johnson clearly won his vote, so the 1956 election by itself doesn’t mean a whole lot, regardless of how he voted,
I don’t see how anyone can claim that MLK was a Republican.
It was that source article that made the erroneous claim and was replete with other egregious errors (such as mentioning an individual who had been a Socialist candidate for Congress from NY as a “Republican”, A. Phillip Randolph).
Besides these errors made by the author, it should’ve been posed as a question, “How could Blacks be Democrats ?”, yet these individuals were and favored heavy federal government intervention for the simple fact that most Blacks (especially in the South) had to have their rights enabled and defended by the federal government (why States’ Rights has often left a sour taste in their mouths).
Unfortunately, their reliance and faith upon government, which helped in a few instances (abolition of slavery, passage of civil rights laws) has been their undoing under the weight of more than a half-century of dependence upon the welfare state, precipitating the crack-up of the Black family unit and the moral and spiritual turpitude that is the end result. MLK, Jr. must bear the responsibility for leading his people down that primrose path, and he contrasts greatly with Booker T. Washington, whom actually was a Republican, and urged a far different course of action that would’ve left the Black community in a far different and better state today.
I’m going to be looking at this MLK thing some more.
Let me know what you find. It’s possible the reference to his voting for Eisenhower in 1956 was mentioned in a book. Someone here on FR cited it, but I can’t recall the thread.
It would’ve made more sense as a left-winger (which he was) that he would be a committed Democrat (although he wasn’t old enough to vote in 1948, I can imagine his supporting pro-Soviet Communist Progressive Henry Wallace). He spent time at the far-left Highlander Folk School in Tennessee. One of the Communist goals to undermine the country was to manipulate the Black community and use them as a vehicle for their agenda vis a vis the Civil Rights movement (although they couldn’t care less for Black welfare, just as a useful tool).
Earlier in the 20th century, leftists/progressives wished to use the Eugenics movement (a la Margaret Sanger) to eradicate “undesirables” (which essentially consisted of all non-WASPs) and utilizing high-profile Black ministers into doing the work of “culling the herd” (via abortion/birth control).
When that didn’t turn out to be a serviceable notion, they took a different tack, and its results are impossible to ignore given the current state of our nation.
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This is all that I need to know about this movie.
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