Over the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday weekend some attention turned to US Senator John Kerry’s (D-MA) renewed effort to open the FBI records of Dr. King. Civil Rights Cold Case reporter Jerry Mitchell reported:
U.S. Sen. John Kerry plans to introduce legislation next week that would pave the way for the release of thousands of FBI documents on the life and death of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Kerry, D-Mass., said the bill, which failed in 2006, can pass this year in honor of King. “I want the world to know what he stood for,” Kerry said. “And I want his personal history preserved and examined by releasing all of his records.”
The bill calls for creating a Martin Luther King Records Collection at the National Archives that would include all government records related to King. The bill also would create a five-member independent review board that would identify and make public all documents from agencies including the FBI — just as a review board in 1992 made public documents related to the 1963 John F. Kennedy assassination.
Mitchell spoke with Kerry and other prominent supporters of the legislation, including US Representative Bennie Thompson (D-MS) and pulitzer prize winning King biographer Taylor Branch. MItchell also spoke with others from the Civil Rights Cold Case Project, who believe Kerry should expand the focus of his important initiative.
Hank Klibanoff, managing editor of the Cold Case Truth and Justice Project, believe[s] Kerry’s idea should be expanded to include the release of documents involving not only King’s assassination, but also other racial slayings from the civil rights era….
Klibanoff met last summer with Attorney General Eric Holder and suggested creating an independent review board to make public “all files, documents and other historic materials related to the racial terror and hate crimes that occurred in the South during the modern civil rights era.”
In an Oct. 27 letter, Holder responded that the Justice Department was discussing the best ways to make “the most responsible public disclosure possible.”…
Ben Greenberg of Boston, whose father served as a special assistant to King in 1962 and 1963, praised Kerry’s legislation. “The murder of Martin Luther King Jr. was a trauma that our country will not recover from unless we can clear the air about what really happened,” he said.
Greenberg, who has spent recent years investigating a number of unsolved killings from the era, including the 1964 killing of Clifton Walker near Woodville, said documents on many other racial slayings from the 1950s and 1960s should be made public, too.
“The effects of these murders linger throughout the South,” he said.
Some FBI documents continue to conceal the name of suspects in these killings, he said. “The people named in the documents, the family members and the perpetrators are dying every day. It is time for the truth to be told and for justice to be done. We need the information while there is still time to use it.”…
Recently the FBI asked for the public’s help in solving 33 killings from the civil rights era — a third of them in Mississippi.
Journalist John Fleming, whose work for The Anniston Star led to an arrest in the 1965 killing of Jimmie Lee Jackson in Selma, Ala., questioned how the FBI can ask for the public’s help in solving killings but fail to make public the names of crucial witnesses who could shed light on these cases.
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§ Posted by Benjamin T. Greenberg on January 22, 2010 at 8:20 am
DAYTON — David Schock shed tears and felt prickles on the back of his neck as he heard the voice of Martin Luther King Jr. speaking on a long-forgotten recording from 1964 at the University of Dayton.
“I thought, ‘I’m standing on holy ground here,’” Schock said from his home in Grand Haven, Mich.
Schock discovered the unlabeled reel-to-reel tape of King’s speech at the UD Fieldhouse on Nov. 29, 1964, in a box of memorabilia owned by Herbert Woodward Martin of Washington Twp. Martin, a UD poet and professor emeritus, is the subject of a documentary film by Schock.
Martin, who never listened to the tape, assumed it was one that he had planned to record over. “Thank goodness I never did that,” he said.
The 50-minute recording captures the late civil rights leader discussing the state of race relations before an audience of more than 6,200 people. King told the crowd: “We’ve come a long, long way, but we have a long, long way to go.”
(Link)
§ Posted by Benjamin T. Greenberg on February 27, 2009 at 6:35 am
By Marsha Joyner
Did Martin die in vain on that fateful day of April 4, 1968? What has transpired in these 40 years with respect to King’s dream? There are several events in the Bible where the number 40 is of paramount importance—can any of them be related to our struggles these past 40 years? Rain 40 days and 40 nights (original flood); Israelites in wilderness 40 years; Jesus in the wilderness 40 days; Ascension occurred 40 days after the resurrection; Pentecost occurred the 50th day; (do we have to wait for another 10 years for The Dream (Pentecost)?). No I have not become a religious fanatic, but these things came to mind in my thinking about the plight of the US today, forty years after the assassination.
The Southern Poverty Law Center recently issued a report about the 888 organized hate groups operating in our country—a staggering 48% increase since 2000 in white supremacist, neo-Nazi, anti-immigrant extremist, anti-gay and other groups. Is this the content of our character? Are we not living up to the dream? Or is it a nightmare?
When the government of the United States lied about the connection between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein and a connection between 9.11.01 and Operation Iraqi Freedom.
When the government of the United States lied about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq being a threat to the United States peace.
When the government of the United States allows the economy to get out of hand and its citizens suffer while it spends 3 trillion dollars on an unwinnable war. Is this the content of our character?
Martin Luther King, Jr said:
A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
Can we afford to stand by and silently allow this to happen?
40 years after his death what would Martin Luther King, Jr. say about this election season? We have a Black man and a White woman running for the highest office in the land. But as a nation have we shown our commitment to ending injustice, racism and sexism? When the media bashes immigrants, and overweight people are the targets of jokes… Do we pay homage to Dr. King and his dream one day a year and then go back to being a purveyor of violence and hate? Is this the content of our character?
As the ranks of hate and violence swell, people of concern must stand up and be counted.
Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man’s sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.
(Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength To Love, 1963)
Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time: the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence. Man must evolve for all human conflict a method, which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.
(Martin Luther King, Jr., Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Stockholm, Sweden, December 11, 1964)
Moses led the Israelites out of bondage and into the wilderness. For forty years they labored and toiled in the desert. He did not reach the promised land with them. However, they grew in strength, throwing off the shackles of bondage. The Bible tells us they made the final journey to the promised land.
Will it take another 10 years or 40 years for us to rise from the ashes of bondage, hate and violence? And awaken from this nightmare to live out the true meaning of the content of our character?
—
Photo: The family of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. walk in the funeral procession of the slain civil rights leader in Atlanta on April 9, 1968. (AP)
§ Posted by Benjamin T. Greenberg on April 4, 2008 at 8:23 am
I’ve posted a couple of items in the past about the movement to stop the white corporate takeover of the Lorraine Motel Civil Rights Museum in Memphis. The tireless work of local activists, civil rights veterans, and area civil rights groups has led to the formation of the Lorraine Motel Civil Rights Museum Community Oversight Committee, which may now be able to influence the board selection process for the museum. One of the groups active in this effort, the Arkansas Delta Truth and Justice Center, is building support for nominees to the board who are historians of the Civil Rights Movement and/or participants in it, past and present.
For more information, also see:
The following is information from the ADTJC about the new nominees to the Lorraine Motel Civil Rights Museum board and how you can show your support for them.
From: Arkansas Delta Truth and Justice Center
The Arkansas Delta Truth and Justice Center commends the nominations of civil rights movement living legend Reverend C.T. Vivian and other acclaimed civil rights movement veterans, historians, and public servants to serve on the board of the National Civil Rights Museum.
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§ Posted by Benjamin T. Greenberg on February 16, 2008 at 7:46 pm
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