Martin Luther King Jr. Archives - Ramblin' with Roger

It’s a distraction?

MLK, Hillary, Barack HUSSEIN Obama

I’ve been musing over how much people rush to suggest that it’s a distraction when FOTUS does something in light of his current crisis regarding Jeffrey Epstein or his previous crises. A is a distraction for B, B is a distraction for C. Maybe some of it is distraction, but so much is also on brand.

ITEM: Over his family’s objections, the regime released records about the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The files had been sealed since 1977, when the FBI turned them over to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). They were scheduled to be released in 2027. But know that the records were specifically from COINTELPRO, the FBI program (1956-1971) designed “to discredit and neutralize organizations considered subversive to U.S. political stability. It was covert and often used extralegal means to criminalize various forms of political struggle.”

Distraction? Maybe. On brand: Absolutely; trying to tear down a black American icon because he is too DEI. Incidentally, on Juneteenth, he took the opportunity to say that America has “too many non-working holidays.”

ITEM: Attorney General Bondi announced that the DOJ has released additional documents from the FBI’s investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s email server.

Distraction?: Almost certainly; isn’t that a rerun? On brand? Definitely! In 2016, then-Republican candidate insisted that her use of a private server had been criminal and made “Lock her up!” a chant at his rallies.

BHO

ITEM: FOTUS also attacked former president Barack Obama, claiming that he and Hillary “tried to rig the [2016] election, and they got caught. And there should be very severe consequences for that.” Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is getting back on FOTUS’ good side, after her Iran intel ‘betrayal,’ by calling for their prosecution for participating in a ‘treasonous conspiracy’ against FOTUS for indicating that Russian operatives had worked on his behalf during the 2016 presidential election.

Distraction? Obama believes so, but I think not. FOTUS’s continued insistence that he ‘won’ the 2020 election and suggesting that they ‘rigged’ 2016 proves the ‘truth.’ This would ‘justify’ the Jan 6 insurrection as merely righting a wrong, and pardoning the insurrectionists as fair. On brand: From his 2011 ‘birther’ claims against Obama on, he’s obsessed with outdoing the black guy. He can count on his media sycophants to buy in. Red State: Tulsi Gabbard Posts Russiagate Evidence Obama Had Been Fearing. Gabbard to Newsmax: New Docs Will Refute Obama’s ‘Coup’ Denial. It’s all part of the retribution campaign, “this time with aides more inclined to carry out his wishes.” Not to mention an obsequious Congress.

Quid pro quo

ITEM: Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said that under AG Pam Bondi’s direction, he had talked to the lawyers for Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted of grooming victims for convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Blanche wrote that he anticipated meeting with Maxwell in the coming days.

Distraction? I don’t think so. There’s more than a slight chance that Maxwell will somehow immunize FOTUS in exchange for reducing her prison sentence or even a pardon, despite FOTUS’s obvious relationship with Epstein. On brand: 100%.This week, the White House account posted on X an image of FOTUS in front of American flags, eagles, and fireworks with the caption: “I was the hunted—NOW I’M THE HUNTER.”

Oh, you might want to read this background on the Epstein files: She Exposed Epstein and Shares MAGA’s Anger -the reporter (Julie K. Brown) who took down Jeffrey Epstein on what’s still hidden (NYT). Also, watch The Epstein File Fiasco (Legal Eagle).

ITEM: In railing against Joe Biden, FOTUS complains about 46’s competence. Yet 47 does his own word salads. For instance, recently speaking in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, FOTUS claimed that his late uncle John Trump taught Unabomber Ted Kaczynski at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He then claimed that he quizzed his uncle about his supposed student. This did not happen.

Distraction? I don’t know what to make of these ramblings – he does it a LOT – where he tells a demonstrably false story, with no obvious takeaway. And he was doing this in 2024, before the election Distraction? Maybe. Or dementia?

The first MLK assassination attempt

“He was just a sneeze away from death”

The first MLK assassination attempt I knew of came up in a discussion at the Albany Public Library in January 2025 about Salman Rushbie’s book Knife. As you may know, Rushdie was stabbed in 2022 at Chautauqua Institution in western New York State. It’s a place my wife and I visited two years later, with greater security measures. Rushdie dreamed of something untoward happening to him the night before.

Someone in the book talk audience recalled that Martin Luther King, Jr. had been stabbed. The person thought it took place between the time of March on Washington on August 28, 1963, and when MLK was shot, presumably by James Earl Ray, on April 4, 1968. But I was sure that was not accurate. I suggested it had to have been earlier because, after 1963, he was an internationally known entity. Sure enough, it was in 1958.

I was recounting this to someone else, adding, “It was noted at the time that if he had sneezed, he would have died.” He thought I was BSing him. Nope.

“On 20 September 1958, Izola Ware Curry, a 42-year-old mentally disturbed woman, stabbed Martin Luther King, Jr., while he signed copies of his book, Stride Toward Freedom, at Blumstein’s Department Store in Harlem, New York. Curry approached King with a seven-inch steel letter opener and drove the blade into the upper left side of his chest. King was rushed to Harlem Hospital, where he underwent more than two hours of surgery to repair the wound. Doctors operating on the 29-year-old civil rights leader said: “Had Dr. King sneezed or coughed, the weapon would have penetrated the aorta.… He was just a sneeze away from death” (Papers 4:499n).”

Moreover

Not only did I recall this, but I wrote about it in 2013. The day before he died in 1968, MLK gave the Mountaintop speech. I had forgotten that he mentioned the 1958 assassination attempt as a part of that talk.

“It came out in the New York Times the next morning that if I had merely sneezed, I would have died. Well, about four days later, they allowed me, after the operation, they allowed me to read some of the mail that came in, and I’ll never forget it. It said simply, Dear Dr. King, I am a ninth-grade student at the White Plains High School. She said, while it should not matter, I would like to mention that I am a white girl. I read in the paper of your misfortune and of your suffering. And I read that if you had sneezed, you would have died. And I’m simply writing you to say that I’m so happy that you didn’t sneeze.”

In 1970, I was with a school group that drove past the Lorraine Hotel, where MLK was killed two years earlier. “In 1991, the Lorraine Motel was converted into the National Civil Rights Museum.”

One of the extremely few things I agree about 47’s actions: He signed an executive order to release more JFK, RFK, and MLK assassination files.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar said

In his Substack for this week, Kareem quotes MLK: “Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable… Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle- the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.”

He notes: “Man, Dr. King could be a real downer. I mean, he’s not wrong, but that quote challenges people to rise above obsessing over their daily lives of pursuing personal goals in careers and relationships to take on the additional burden of seeking justice. Who’s got the time for sacrifice? I’m okay with people who choose not to sacrifice; it’s people who brag about sacrifices that aren’t really sacrifices who bug me. It diminishes those who really do sacrifice for the greater good.”

He complains that athletes and reality show contestants misuse the word sacrifice, even his former self: He had said, “’I think that the good and the great are only separated by the willingness to sacrifice.’ I would modify that today to say, ‘The good and the great are only separated by the intensity of their dedication…’

“True sacrifice is when one chooses to give up something precious in order to do something that doesn’t directly benefit them but does directly benefit others. Sacrifice for the greater good has many levels: from sacrificing one’s life—like Dr. King, Gandhi, Malcolm X, and Jesus—to sacrificing free time to help those in need within their community. Parents sacrifice constantly for their children because they love them. If we can learn to extend that feeling of love to a larger ‘family’ of neighbors, towns, country, and the world, then we are sacrificing in service of a just humanity. …”

Cognitive dissonance

MLK/djt

I’m experiencing a tremendous degree of cognitive dissonance. Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and it’s also the inauguration of someone who doesn’t seem to understand what MLK was about.

During the 2024 campaign, he supported a truly dreadful candidate for governor of North Carolina, Mark Robinson, a black man. 45/47 said that Robinson was Martin Luther King “on steroids.” The Tar Heel is a guy who left messages on a “porn site’s message boards more than a decade ago in which he referred to himself as a ‘black NAZI,” among other failings. Fortunately, he lost badly in a state that Orange won.

There were many online posts claiming that djt was never accused of being racist until he decided to run for president. Well, no. This AP story notes otherwise. Most of it is not new to anyone paying attention.

“In 1973, for example, the Justice Department sued the real estate tycoon and his father for their alleged refusal to rent apartments in predominantly white buildings to Black tenants. Testimony showed that applications filed by Black apartment seekers were marked with a ‘C’ for ‘colored.’

“The lawsuit ended in a settlement in which the Trumps acknowledged they “failed and neglected” to comply with the Fair Housing Act, though they were never required to explicitly acknowledge discrimination had occurred.

“In 1989, Trump infamously took out full page newspaper ads calling for New York state to reinstate the death penalty as five Black and Latino teenagers were set to stand trial for beating and raping a white woman in Central Park.” And he doubled down on this long after they were exonerated, so they sued him in 2024 for defamation.

HUD

djt includes many of his former rivals in his cabinet and his inner circle, including people of color. He named Doctor Ben Carson the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; even though Carson had no experience in this area, it was convenient for him.

“Carson has allowed his family members to be involved in the operations of the department in ways that could benefit them. In particular, Carson’s son, Ben Carson Jr., and his daughter-in-law, Merlynn Carson, appear to have exercised an unusual amount of influence over certain government businesses. Emails uncovered by American Oversight and analyzed by news outlets reveal that both Carson Jr. and Merlynn Carson may have attempted to use their influence at HUD to advance their own private interests.” This shows that when he hires grifters, he doesn’t discriminate.

Black voters

Yet more black people voted for djt than ever before. Kamala “Harris appears to have won 80 percent of the Black vote, according to an exit poll by The Associated Press. But that’s a drop of 10 percentage points compared with 2020, when the current president, Joe Biden, won nine of 10 Black votes.

“The beneficiary? Trump, who won 20 percent of the Black vote this time, according to the exit poll. He had won 13 percent of the community’s vote in 2020 and 8 percent in 2016 — which in itself was the highest level of support by Black voters for any Republican since George W Bush in 2000…”

“Why? Today’s Black voters operate a bit more independently from previous generations, especially young Black voters, analysts say.

“Historically, the Democratic Party’s legacy with the civil rights movement is what kept it popular with Black voters. However, younger Black voters do not have those same civil rights legacy attachments…

“‘…this rising percentage of Black voters [is] taking a different look at the Republican Party in general and are exploring some curiosities with Trump despite his racial baggage.’”

I have no great insight here. The 47th president has the magic elixir that allows him to do things that I, as an old poli sci major, have never seen anyone else pull off. I hope that the country survives.

I will lean into the fact that, in the tradition of the MLK holiday, we act locally to make our country a better place despite what might happen at the national level. This isn’t easy, I know, but it is probably necessary. Here’s a Letter from a Birmingham Jail by MLK in 1963.

A new MLK biography, King: A Life

a committed radical

I am doing a new thing. Having credits on Audible, I’m listening to the new book, King: A Life, about the late Martin Luther King, Jr. I haven’t gotten very far in it as it runs nearly 24 hours, or over 550 pages, excluding copious notes.

Still, I’ve learned that his grandfather, James Albert King, married Delia, and both were Georgia sharecroppers. James became an alcoholic, in no small part due to the stresses of Jim Crow.

James’ son Michael managed to get a high school education and attended Morehouse College to study for the ministry. He also began to woo the daughter of a minister at an Atlanta church. And not just any church. Adam Daniel Williams had been the pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church since 1894.

Adam and Jennie’s daughter Alberta began dating Michael in 1920 and married on November 25, 1926. The author suggested that Michael’s courting of Alberta was as much a function of ambition as love.

Shortly after marrying Alberta, Michael became assistant pastor of the Ebenezer church. Senior pastor Williams died in the spring of 1931 and that fall, Michael took the role.

By this time, Michael and Alberta had three children: Christine (m. Farris, 1927-2023), Michael Jr. (1929-1968), and Alfred Daniel “A. D.” (1930-1969).

Name change

This description from the Smithsonian dovetails with the book: “In 1934, [MLK Jr.’] father embarked on a religious journey around the world. The senior King traveled to Rome, Tunisia, Egypt, Jerusalem, and Bethlehem before arriving in Berlin to attend the Baptist World Alliance meeting. The trip to Germany, which occurred only one year after Adolf Hitler became chancellor, would profoundly affect him. As he toured, the senior King gained a great respect for German monk and theologian Martin Luther, whose 95 Theses challenged the Catholic Church and ultimately split Western Christianity.”

Michael Sr. changed his name to Martin Luther King in August 1934, and his elder son was soon renamed.

Publisher’s description

This description of the book was on the MacMillan Publishers website:

“Vividly written and exhaustively researched, Jonathan Eig’s King: A Life is the first major biography in decades of the civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr.―and the first to include recently declassified FBI files. In this revelatory new portrait of the preacher and activist who shook the world, the bestselling biographer gives us an intimate view of the courageous and often emotionally troubled human being who demanded peaceful protest for his movement but was rarely at peace with himself.

“He casts fresh light on the King family’s origins as well as MLK’s complex relationships with his wife, father, and fellow activists. King reveals a minister wrestling with his own human frailties and dark moods, a citizen hunted by his own government, and a man determined to fight for justice even if it proved to be a fight to the death. As he follows MLK from the classroom to the pulpit to the streets of Birmingham, Selma, and Memphis, Eig dramatically re-creates the journey of a man who recast American race relations and became our only modern-day founding father―as well as the nation’s most mourned martyr.

“In this landmark biography, Eig gives us an MLK for our times: a deep thinker, a brilliant strategist, and a committed radical who led one of history’s greatest movements and whose demands for racial and economic justice remain as urgent today as they were in his lifetime.”

And still, we rise.

Eig spent about a quarter of the book about MLK before the Montgomery Bus Boycott years. I suspect that grounding will give the reader a complete understanding of the man as more than an icon.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar recently wrote in the preview of his Substack page:

“Life is an endless series of making decisions, some easy and some difficult. But each of them causes some level of anxiety… That is why people turn to heroes and saviors to make their decisions for them. If we choose to follow someone else’s teachings, we abdicate responsibility for the outcome of following those teachings…

“I have had many heroes in my life, [including] Dr. King. However, the difference between heroes and the cult of personality is that I accept the flaws in my heroes. What made them heroes is that they were just ordinary people who were willing to risk personal comfort to make the world a better place. They didn’t have to be saints. They didn’t always have to be right.”

I thought this was a cogent analysis as I worked my way through the book. I’m looking forward to reading King: A Life in memory of the 66th anniversary of his assassination. Meanwhile, I’ll read a little Maya.

MLK is not your wingman

Martin Luther King Jr. Day typically brings about some great discounts!

My wife sent me an article from Leah Donnella at NPR called “MLK is not your wingman.” It’s the introduction to the Code Switch podcast episode for January 10, 2024, Everyone Wants a Piece of Martin Luther King’s Legacy. You should listen to it.

But the Donnella intro hit me right between the eyes because it’s SO true.

“For decades, everyone and their mother has tried to get a piece of that sweet, sweet MLK Pie, from car companies… to politicians (no matter what their actual politics are). And don’t forget about the deals! A recent article in Forbes probably put it best: ‘MLK Day is unequivocally about celebrating the life and legacy of civil rights leader, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,’ they wrote (emphasis mine). But also, the article went on, ‘Presidents’ Day, Memorial Day, Labor Day and even Martin Luther King Jr. Day typically bring about some great discounts.’ (Cue the swelling applause.)”

Yes, and this makes me… exasperated and weary and sad. One of the things I’ve hated about the MLK Jr. legacy after his assassination is that his image became embedded in amber, as I railed against last year.

The Struggle for the People’s King

“Hajar Yazdiha, the author of a new book about the struggle over King’s memory, argues that it’s worse than that — that Dr. King’s legacy has been used quite intentionally as a ‘Trojan horse for anti-civil rights causes.’ For instance, at a news conference in 2021, numerous Republican lawmakers invoked King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech while arguing for bans on teaching Critical Race Theory in schools.”

You’d think he gave just one speech, heck, one part of one speech. When I excerpted that address last year, I intentionally omitted the most familiar section because it has been weaponized as a declaration that WE HAVE Overcome, which I’ve primarily heard since Obama was elected President in 2008.

“Those moves are from a very old playbook, Yazdiha told us… Take Ronald Reagan. As president, he publicly helped instate Martin Luther King Day as a federal holiday. But Yazdiha says that in private letters, Reagan assured his friends that he was ‘really going to drive home throughout his presidency the story that Dr. King’s dream of this colorblind nation has been realized, and so now racism is…over and we can move on.’ That play – of invoking a radical figure only to manipulate or defang their teachings – has proved incredibly enduring and incredibly effective.”

These conversations ignore continuing inequality in wealth, health, and many other aspects of life in America.

Disliked

“It’s worth remembering that despite his contemporaneous supporters, Dr. King was considered a huge threat during his lifetime and was incredibly unpopular among the mainstream. And that’s no coincidence. Part of the civil rights movement’s success was due to its disruptive nature: massive boycotts, marches, sit-ins, and other acts of civil disobedience that put powerful peoples’ time, money, and good names in jeopardy.”

I noted this back in 2015. “According to the Gallup poll: ‘In 1963, King had a 41% positive and a 37% negative rating; in 1964, it was 43% positive and 39% negative; in 1965, his rating was 45% positive and 45% negative; and in 1966 — the last Gallup measure of King using this scalometer procedure — it was 32% positive and 63% negative.'”

Donnella continues: “So while it’s all well and good to celebrate a hero from a bygone era now that he’s no longer able to disagree with any particular interpretation of his legacy, maybe it’s more important to be looking at the present. Because the real inheritors of King’s legacy today — and of the civil rights movement more broadly — are likely acting in ways that make a lot of people pretty uncomfortable.”