MLK CONFESSED TO WIFE (book: told hospitalized Coretta about extramarital affair)

NY POST ^ | January 2, 2006 | LEONARD GREENE

[Liz]

Depressed over the civil-rights movement's direction and burdened by premonitions of his own murder, King told his wife of a mistress in 1968 as Coretta Scott King recovered from surgery for a tumor.

"He disclosed to her the one mistress who meant most to him since 1963," writes author Taylor Branch, "a married alumna of Fisk [University], of dignified bearing like Coretta, but different." In his new book, "At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-1968,"

Branch said the affair had the intensity of a second marriage. Confidante Ralph David Abernathy's wife, Juanita, was furious that "King had picked Coretta's most vulnerable moment" to "ambush her sanctuary of willful, silent discretion."

The supposed confession is one of several details from King's life excerpted in this week's Time magazine.

In one exchange with subordinates, King browbeats staffers of his Southern Christian Leadership Conference who disagreed with his decision to back a Memphis sanitation strike — a campaign that would ultimately get him killed.

He saved his most scathing remarks for Jesse Jackson, the man who most prominently took up his mantle. "If you want to carve out your own niche in society, go ahead," King screamed at the young upstart. "But for God's sake, don't bother me."

leonard.greene@nypost.com

[Mark was here]

From the link you posted:
There is a now-discarded phrase: "If a man will cheat on his wife, he will cheat on anyone." That is my view. That is the way I vote, when I vote.
King was right about Rosa Parks. He was right about non-violence. But what he did to other men's wives, and to his own wife, was unconscionable. Also unconscionable was his career-long theft of the words that he stole for public use. But the liberals who dismiss all of this are worse, for they seek to make intellectual theft and adultery seem irrelevant. They prefer to undermine the ethics of civilization for the sake of politics and race.

If this bit about adultery was aimed at Bill Clinton...

[freeangel]

No wonder the king center in Atlanta was run into the ground by his family-unconscience "get-eveness."

[JackDanielsOldNo7]

But all men are flawed.

Same for women. But we don't nag.

[wardaddy]

Black folks have put MLK up on a pedestal

in all fairness, whites helped too...bigtime...mainly because MLK was a token of white contrition and he was much less threatening than X or Huey...et al

I prefer black leaders like Booker and Sowell...but that's just one man's opinion

[kstewskis]

LOL! Brilliant!

[veronica]

We all have feet of clay. But some people change the world in a significant way for the better, and Martin Luther King certainly did, and by protesting peacefully. That is to be admired. He was certainly a cut above the shuck-and-jive poverty pimps like Screwy Louis Farrakhan, the Reverend Jackson, and the Congressional Black caucus gang.

[rabidralph]

Future FReep sign at a Jackson protest: MLK always knew you were a jerk!

[GraniteStateConservative]

Could you please inform me what your "bump" has to do with this story? I'd appreciate it.

I was wondering, too, but I guess it's better than a collard greens bump or something...

:-)

[NYpeanut]

A great man once told me that a man who would cheat on his wife would do anything. I agree completely; a cheater's motive is always selfish or cowardly (the same goes for a woman who cheats). I don't even care what MLK's motive was.

A man cheats on his wife would do anything.

[Liz]

Yup---my thoughts precisely.

[Mark was here]

George Washington (slaves), Thomas Jefferson (slaves),

I'm sure a slave couldn't of asked for better Masters.

[billhilly]

"I'm sure a slave couldn't of asked for better Masters."

How about no masters, and how are you sure?

[Mark was here]

How about no masters, and how are you sure?

No Masters is fine to, and I am sure because I thought about it.

[El Gato]

Kinda like JFK?

And WJC too. None of 'em could keep it their pants. Didn't even try apparently.

[El Gato]

Thus, he built his reputation out of a compound of lies and myths until it grew into a perception of the man who tried to live up to the image he had created for himself.

Another "Great Leader" who couldn't/can't keep it zipped.

[dpa5923]

It doesn't matter who was the master, slavery is evil and wrong. I know of no man who would want to be a slave for the "right" owner.

[savedbygrace]

The New York Times will be calling for excoriation and jail time for whoever leaked this.