Dr. King's Flaws Made Him Better Than Perfect
Tha Artstorian Reports...
"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy."
Dr. King was a man of peace, but he did know how to use a gun...He also was known for womanizing, drinking alcoholic beverages, and chain smoking...Although Dr. King was a great original orator he was accused of plagiarism or stealing other people's literary ideas and passing them off as his own (who hasn't done that before)...Some might have even heard him use a cuss word or two or three or four...And I say to this like Miles Davis said with his trumpet on that famous song from his famous Kind of Blue album, "So What!!!"
Hitler was a vegetarian so does that make him a better person than Dr. King who loved eating catfish??? The reason I said all the above is to say that Dr. King was a human being like everybody else meaning that he was naturally flawed...But that's why his message is even more beautiful...Someone once said that the greater the hero the greater the flaws and Dr. King was no exception...This saying also has its basis in some of the great heroes and sheroes of the bible...It seems like everyone of significance who did extraordinary things were flawed ordinary human beings...For example before he became Paul the Disciple he was Saul the Mass Murderer...King David who overtook the gigantic Goliath could not overcome his gigantic addiction to lust and adultery and ended up killing a man for his wife...Noah, who built an arc to save civilization from a devastating flood, it could be argued wasn't believed by many because he was known as being an alcoholic meaning that he was getting 'flooded' every night with booze at his local pub...In spite of this these men were able to overcome their extraordinary shortcomings to achieve things that benefited the whole of humanity and are often cited more for their courage and conviction than for their personality flaws which in itself is great but could also have its consequences...Dr. King the son of a famous and well respected minister and whose original namesake, Martin Luther, also led a movement which transformed his time as well as those who came after, could in many ways be considered among the greatest of the individuals I mentioned...
In the mid-sixties Dr. King had a meeting with his powerful nemesis J. Edgar Hoover the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation...King wanted to complain about the over the top surveillance and abuses he felt that he and some of the key members of the American Civil Rights Movement were suffering from the American government in particular the F.B.I....Supposedly J. Edgar Hoover played for Dr. King an audio tape of him having sex with a woman that wasn't his wife in a hotel room and told him he would leaked this to the press if Dr.King didn't resign from his leadership duties to the American Civil Rights Movement...The FBI went so far as to send Dr.King a letter stating that Dr. King should "resign" a.k.a. kill himself because he is a fraud and is misleading Black Americans in particular and Americans in general...On both occasions he was warned that the tape will be leaked out to the mainstream press...Although a little taken aback Dr. King did not give in to these terrorist threats...It only made him stronger in his resolve to see his mission and message through...
Dr. King also had enemies among powerful Black folk as well...He was not well liked by many in the Black Baptist Minister Brotherhood because they felt that he was rocking the boat too much with all that civil rights nonsense and was making it unnecessarily hard on Black folks for no good reason...It could also be feared that Dr. King, a man known for liking expensive suits, but wasn't too fond of building personal wealth for himself or his family (he gave his prize money from his Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 to the movement and was finally convinced by friends and family into moving his family to a better house at that time valued $10,000 which was expensive) could affect their bottom line by taking people away from their churches thus redirecting their finances or money to the charismatic young minister or elsewhere...They even had Dr. King's father,Rev. Martin Luther King Sr., a famous minister and civil rights leader in his own right try to convince his son to give up leadership of the Montgomery Bus Boycott and move back to Atlanta to take over pulpit duties at Ebenezer Baptist Church...Dr. King refused his father and instead went on to lead a successful boycott campaign which catapulted his name into the nation's conscience...As the Black Baptist ministers became even more envious and enraged at his growing importance they tried to short circuit his influence in the Black Baptist Ministerial fraternity...When he saw he was getting the cold shoulder treatment from his peers,Dr.King, along with his close friends and associates (the under appreciated Ella Baker,Rev. Ralph Abernathy,Andrew Young, Dr. Joseph Lowery, Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth among others) started the Southern Christian Leadership Conference or SCLC as we know it today on Valentine's Day 1957 in New Orleans...
Dr. King was also a victim of Black on Black violence...In Harlem he was stabbed in the chest by a mentally disturbed woman and was so close to death that had he sneezed or cough he would have died due to the blade piercing his aorta of his heart no crocodile hunter...Had this happened there would have been no "I Have A Dream" speech, no "Letter From A Birmingham Jail" and no Nobel Peace Prize among other things...
People are also always wondering where Dr. King would stand on gay rights and civil unions...Well I can tell you for a fact that Dr. King held the great organizer Bayard Rustin in high regard...He was the one that instilled the non-violence tactics of Gandhi in Dr. King during the Montgomery Bus Boycotts and was the one along with the great labor leader A. Phillip Randolph who actually created and organized the 1963 March on Washington where Dr. King probably gave the most famous speech of his career...He also advised Dr.King on the creation of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference...By the way Mr. Bayard Rustin,a Black man, was a well known homosexual, socialist and Quaker...To illustrate how strongly Dr. King felt about Mr. Rustin is the story where J. Edgar Hoover went to Dr. King and the other organizers of the March on Washington to "warn" them to distance themselves from Rustin because he was caught in a hotel room with another man and if this news got out it could ruin their march...Although many of the principal leaders did not agree with Mr. Rustin's lifestyle they respected his brilliant organizational abilities and they knew how important his contribution have been and will be to the success of their movement and so they stood by their man...
Although he supported Pres. Johnson's agenda on civil rights legislation, Dr. King was a staunch opponent against the Johnson Administration's escalation of the Vietnam War...Needless to say this pissed off Pres. Johnson who thought of himself as a friend of the American Negro or "Nigra"...Dr. King officially came out against the war on April 4, 1967 at the famous Riverside Church in New York and was assassinated on April 4, 1968 in Memphis,Tn exactly one year later...Even though Pres. Johnson started his "Great Society" program which was supposed to be a war against poverty, Dr. King reasoned that you can't fight a war on poverty at home while at the same time killing and destroying the basic human rights of poor people (North Vietnam) abroad...One thing that the mainstream media won't show you is the fact that Dr. King goals have changed from just securing civil rights to wanting to change the economic infrastructure of this country period where everyone would share the wealth thus ending poverty once and for all...He and his associates started to create the Poor People's Campaign which would unite the country's dispossessed as well as those who wanted liberty and justice and the pursuit of happiness for all...However, before he was to go to Washington D.C. to lead the kickoff rally and march, he received word that the Memphis Black sanitation workers were striking and requested his help...
Mainstream History would have you believed that Dr. King was an universally beloved figure during his time, but this wasn't the case...As a matter of fact he was loathed or treated indifferently by those he tried to help...For example, Dr. King wasn't welcomed by the whole of the Memphis Black community...As a matter of fact many saw him as an outsider who was just trying to get media coverage for himself who didn't care if the city's Black sanitation workers got their fair compensation and justice...There were even Black Churches in Memphis that did not support King or the cause for which he came to support (this is nothing new...For example Dr. King wasn't allowed to speak from the pulpit in numerous Black churches throughout Alabama during his time which seems crazy now, but at that time many thought that this was rational)...Ironically, it was people in the Memphis White Church and business communities that actually reached out to Dr. King...Many thought that Dr. King had a messiah complex...Members of SNCC (The Student Nonviolent Coordination Committee) sarcasticly called Dr. King "De Lawd"...When he came out against the Vietnam War according to the mainstream media Dr. King went from being one of the most admired Americans to being one of the most despised and hated...Longtime friends and associates also turned against Dr. King because of his stance fearing that it could lead to a nationwide backlash in the gains that were achieved on the civil rights front...Agents of the U.S. government including the F.B.I. and C.I.A. did their best to discredit Dr. King while he was in Memphis...They used provocateurs or double agents to cause riots and then blamed them on Memphis' Black gangs and youths..Dr. King was disappointed,but like many other times in his life he refused to give in to the pressure and went ahead with his agenda...In the last speech of his life Dr. king not only talked about "being at the mountain top" and "getting to the promised land", but he also talked about supporting Black businesses such as Memphis' Tri-State Bank and Black insurance companies as well as boycotting such big corporations as Coca Cola,Wonder Bread, Hart's Bread and Sealtest Milk who took Black dollars, but discriminated against Blacks in hiring practices...This speech showed that Dr. King was a Black Nationalist and had more in common with some of the principle stances and beliefs of Malcolm X than people still realize...Hear and read the "I've Been to The Mountain Top" speech for yourself:
http://www.drmartinlutherkingjr.com/ivebeentothemountaintop.htm
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