January 21, 2019
If I can help somebody, as I travel along
If I can help somebody, with a word or song
If I can help somebody, from doing wrong
No, my living shall not be in vain
No, my living shall not be in vain
No, my living shall not be in vain
If I can help somebody, as I’m singing the song
You know, my living shall not be in vain
-Mahalia Jackson Sings the Best-Loved hymns of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
“God always sends us a comforter, and every time the Nego gets despaired he can think about a great Negro in his time that was unafraid–that was a great leader. God always sends us a comforter–we can follow in his footsteps, like we follow in Jesus’ footsteps. You understand? We can just look back and say our hearts are not afraid. Look what Dr. King did for us. Look at the Southern Christian leadership and many people who have helped the Souther Christian leadership. Look how the Lord touched their hearts. You know, God can pull the spear of hate out of people’s hearts if He wants to. But God had let Martin do just what he wanted him to do.”
-Mahalia Jackson, 1968
[Mahalia Jackson performing on the march in Washington, August 28, 1963.]
“I been baked and I been scorned/ I’m gonna tell my Lord/ When I get home/ Just how long you’ve been treating me wrong,” she sang as a preface to Dr. King’s “I’ve got a dream” speech before 200,000 people in Washington DC at the Lincoln Memorial.
AXIOS
As the elite descend on Davos, Switzerland, for this week’s World Economic Forum, two stark stats:
- Wealth held by the world’s billionaires has grown from $3.4 trillion in 2009, right after the meltdown, to $8.9 trillion in 2017. (UBS and PwC Billionaires Insights via Bloomberg)
- The 3.8 billion people who make up the world’s poorest half saw their wealth decline by 11% last year. (Oxfam, which works to alleviate poverty, via AP)
A new display of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s papers in Atlanta “provides insight into the slain civil rights leader’s thought processes as he drafted some of his most well-known speeches and notable sermons,” AP’s Kate Brumbach writes:
- “The Meaning of Hope: The Best of the Morehouse College Martin Luther King, Jr. Collection,” opened this weekend at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta, in the Voice to the Voiceless gallery.
- “There are drafts of his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance and ‘Beyond Vietnam’ speeches and of his eulogy for four girls who died when Ku Klux Klan members bombed a church in Birmingham, Alabama.”
“In drafts and outlines of speeches and sermons, both typed and written out longhand, words and entire lines are crossed out and rewritten.”
- “Even an already published copy of ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail’ is marked with further handwritten edits.”
- “Also included in the exhibition are King’s school transcripts — including one from Crozer Theological Seminary where he got a C in public speaking.”
Remembered as a great orator and a champion for human rights, Martin Luther King, Jr. also was a deep thinker on economics.
Between the lines: King’s philosophy has often been painted as a socialist because he advocated for the redistribution of wealth, referenced Karl Marx and even called for a “guaranteed annual income.” But King repudiated socialism and communism, noting in his 1967 speech “Where Do We Go From Here” that when it came to communism, “I have to reject that.”
“What I’m saying to you this morning is communism forgets that life is individual. Capitalism forgets that life is social. And the kingdom of brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of communism nor the antithesis of capitalism, but in a higher synthesis.”
King’s economic philosophy would find him with few ideological allies in today’s political climate. He argued forcefully there was “something wrong with capitalism” — a sentiment gaining popularity among today’s Democrats.
“It is a well known fact that no social [institution] can survive when it has outlived its [usefulness],” King wrote in notes at Crozer Theological Seminary. “This, capitalism has done. It has failed to meet the needs of the masses.”
But he also warned against traditional government welfare programs, saying that there was an inherent value to work and that a job could not be replaced with government handouts or jobs for jobs sake — a popular talking point among today’s Republicans.
- “It is the work of men who somehow find a form of work that brings a security for its own sake and a state of society where want is abolished,” he said in “Where Do We Go From Here?”
- “Work of this sort could be enormously increased, and we are likely to find that the problem of housing, education, instead of preceding the elimination of poverty, will themselves be affected if poverty is first abolished.”
[King’s last protest March for workers’ rights in Memphis, Tennessee before he was assassinated on April 4, 1968.]
In the months before his assassination, Martin Luther King became increasingly concerned with the problem of economic inequality in America. He organized a Poor People’s Campaign to focus on the issue, including an interracial poor people’s march on Washington, and in March 1968 traveled to Memphis in support of poorly treated African-American sanitation workers. On March 28, a workers’ protest march led by King ended in violence and the death of an African-American teenager. King left the city but vowed to return in early April to lead another demonstration.
The big picture: King was for sweeping government reforms. But he also lauded the successes of the market economy, while warning of its “dislocations,” and against the belief that a rising tide would lift all ships.
- “There are 40 million poor people here, and one day we must ask the question, ‘Why are there 40 million poor people in America?’ And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising a question about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth.”
https://atlantadailyworld.com/2013/08/28/it-was-like-a-civil-rights-woodstock-an-oral-history-of-the-march-on-washington/
The March on Washington in 1963 was part of a total strategy in the movement to bring about social change. It was not simply another march or demonstration. It grew out of the Birmingham movement. It came about because of things that were already in motion.
One key component in the strategy for nonviolence is that in order to win or succeed in making major change, or in order for a revolution to succeed, there are certain components that are necessary. One is that no revolution has ever been successful without winning the sympathy, if not the active support, of the majority. The March on Washington was the part of the strategy to demonstrate that the majority of people in America were ready for change.
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