The problem is, Mitt Romney’s father, George Romney, the former governor of Michigan, never marched with Martin Luther King. Mitt Romney would concede that fact to the Boston Globe in 2007. The Boston Phoenix could find no record of Mitt’s father, George marching with Martin Luther King at all.

Still Politfact reports that while George Romney never marched with Martin Luther King, he was supportive of King’s goals and of the Civil Rights movement,

But it’s also clear that George Romney, who served as governor from 1963 to 1969 and died in 1995, supported King’s goals at a time when few politicians did. When King visited Detroit and led a rally of 125,000 people in 1963, Romney issued a proclamation and sent personal representatives. (The Times report noted that Romney was Mormon and did not make public appearances on Sundays.) Two years later, Romney led a march of 10,000 people in Detroit to protest events in Selma, Ala. (King wasn’t there.) When King died in 1968, George Romney attended the funeral.

George Romney’s support of the civil rights movement put him at odds with the Mormon Church, whose Apostle, Delpert Stabley wrote him a letter criticizing him for helping “the negro cause” which went against the Prophet, Joseph Smith and God, who had cursed the Negro. So while Mitt Romney’s father was not a racist, Mitt Romney’s “prophet” Joseph Smith, who believed that the Black people were cursed, was.

1. I Have A Dream. This might be one of the most well known and referred to  speeches in modern American history.

2. Why I am Opposed to the War In Vietnam. Many people forget about King’s strong anti-war stance. Many of the reasons he opposed the war in Vietnam relate to the current conflicts in Gaza and Iraq.

3. I’ve Been to the Mountain Top. King’s last speech was prophetic. He would die shortly after but his words would live on and inspire people forever.

4. The Urgency of Now. In a theme later used by Barack Obama Martin Luther King showed why integration couldn’t wait.

5. A Time to Break Silence. In this speech, Martin Luther King again outlined his opposition to the war in Vietnam

On Martin Luther King day NewsOne honors him by presenting the top 5 songs paying tribute to him. Here’s our Top 5 Martin Luther King Tribute songs.

1. Happy Birthday-Stevie Wonder. I love this song. They used to play it on the loudspeakers on every MLK day and elementary school.

2. Pride in the Name of Love-U2. I didn’t know this song was about King till the inaugural concert. Now that I do, it makes the song all the more powerful.

3. By The Time I Get to Arizona-Public Enemy. Chuck D’s militant charge for Arizona to honor MLK was a strike against racism and Arizona’s Senator, John McCain who opposed the holiday.

4. King Holiday-Various Artists. Whitney Houston, The Fatboys, Run DMC, and other artists combined for a We are The World style MLK tribute. Well intentioned, if a bit corny.

5. Common-I Have a Dream. By sampling King’s voice, Common and Will I Am show the wonderful musical and spiritual quality of King’s voice.

6. Ed OG and Masta Ace-Wishing

This song uses an excerpt from MLK’s “I Have Dream Speech” and was featured in the MLK episode of “The Boondocks” Great song embodying the spirit and politics of Martin Luther King.

Our honorees are the bridge builders and the nation healers.

CHECK FOR MORE HONOREES AS THEY ARE REVEALED BEFORE MLK DAY HERE.

——————

Name: Sens Musiq

Age: 31

City of Residence: Los Angeles

Occupation: Inspirational Hip-Hop artist

His Work: Sens looks to uplift and inspire through his rhymes and haircuts.

On His Brotherly Walk With Dr. King:

My non-profit organization “Transcending From The Bottom Up” prepares young men for a future filled with endless prosperity by giving them the tools that it takes to succeed. Regardless of race, religion or gender, we all deserve to be shown an example of Agape love. Circumstances and hardships don’t determine your life’s outcome, but the amount of love that you receive can.  We don’t take the time to show love to our brothers and sisters, and I work diligently every day to do my part to change that.

Cuts-For-Kids, a program under the organization’s umbrella, provides free edge-ups and hair cuts to inner city youth from Los Angeles to San Bernardino, Calif. Every other Saturday, two different barbershops provide the services to about 30 young boys and men.

Our purpose is to increase both income and self-esteem. When researching this endeavor, we calculated that parents spend, on average, $20 to $24 a month, averaging approximately $300 to $400 per year on haircuts. Not only do we want to provide that financial booster, freeing up income for other needs, we also want to provide that confidence booster as well. Dr. King spoke about economic power and collective worth, and I try to implement that philosophy in creative ways that speak to this generation in everything that I do.

On Inspiration:

God and music inspire me to give and be more to not only myself, but to a world of people hurting and searching for something. I became an inspirational hip-hop artist, because I feel like music is the only tool that can reach a person’s spirit and soul without an open invitation. Music can control what we eat, drink, wear, how we converse with each other, our emotions, and moods.

We allow music the opportunity to become a part of our everyday lives, and before you know it, you have become what you are listening to. Most rappers create a fictitious story to add to the persona of their street cred, and I wanted to use my life circumstances as a testimony to bring people out of social economic bondage and not a movie script that keeps people trapped in it. So my lyrics are a combination of continuing to strive, fight, and grow through God’s love, while dealing with issues from politics, religion, and reality.

On How We Can Continue The Work Of MLK:

By continuing Dr. King’s dream and making it a reality, this community will press forward as it always has. Hopefully, with my music speaking to the heart and spirit of the people as we hold on to faith and purpose, I can play a role in changing the mind-set and spirit of those trapped by mediocrity and hopelessness.

Favorite MLK Quote:

First written by this nation’s founding fathers in the Declaration of Independence, then imbued with hope, love, and persistence in Dr. King’s “I Have A Dream” speech, the powerful words, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal” serves as the inspiration for my community outreach and musical career.

SEE ALSO: Dead Friend Buried Beneath Christmas Presents

The network said Wednesday it will air a documentary in February culled primarily from local news footage in Memphis, Tennessee, where the civil rights leader was murdered on April 4, 1968. Most of the footage hasn’t been seen on television since it originally aired.

Many such moments are lost since local television stations usually taped over old broadcasts or threw away film reels, said David Royle, executive producer at the Smithsonian Channel. But some University of Memphis professors sensed in March 1968 that civil rights history was happening with a strike of local sanitation workers, the event that drew King to Memphis, and they collected footage of the events through King’s murder and its aftermath.

“What they were doing was absolutely visionary — and very unusual,” Royle said.

It enabled the production of a documentary with a vivid, “you-are-there” feel and the uncovering of some fascinating moments.

Royle said he was drawn, for instance, to coverage of King’s famed “mountaintop” speech at the Mason Temple the night before the assassination. Cameras followed King after the speech to where he slumped in a chair, and viewers could sense the man’s fragility.

The producer said he recognized how the existence of such film was unusual when he researched an older documentary on Sam Ervin, the North Carolina senator who chaired the Watergate investigative committee in the 1970s. Royle said he traveled across North Carolina and could find only a minute and a half of tape of Ervin in his home state.

Another stroke of luck for Tom Jennings, who produced “MLK: The Assassination Tapes,” was finding Vince Hughes, who was a 20-year-old Memphis police dispatcher on his second day of work when King was killed. Hughes kept audiotapes of police calls on that day and crime scene photos from where King was shot, and the material was made available for the film.

Jennings also went to radio station WDIA to collect interviews from black Memphis residents at the time. The white-owned and operated TV stations at the time had little such material, Royle said.

“This (documentary) plunges you into the immediacy of the period and allows you to absorb it the way people at the time absorbed it,” Royle said. “There’s something that’s electric about that. It gets you to sit up and pay attention.”

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MLK Memorial 2011: Pictures From Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Dedication

Still, many who made those comparisons may want to see Obama be more of an advocate for the poor like King was and perhaps use some of King’s non-violent tactics to solve problems in the world.

Despite all this, there are still several ways Obama can be compared to King.

In a recent piece, BET shows 11 Things King And Obama have in common.

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NewsOne’s Guide To DC For MLK Memorial Dedication

Civil Rights Legends Return To D.C. To Pay Tribute To A King

Click or print the map below for details!

Check out more of our MLK Memorial coverage here:

• Top 5 MLK Speeches of All-Time
• Get Empowered: Books authored by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

View NewsOne’s Guide To DC For MLK Memorial Dedication in a larger map

Ben’s Chili Bowl & Ben’s Next Door  (1213 U St. NW)

Ben’s Chili Bowl is a long time local landmark that has built in rabid cult following including famed notables such as Bill Cosby and President Obama, who are such huge fans of Ben’s chili half smokes that the eatery hung a sign that said that nobody but them can eat for free.

Outside of its world renowned chili half smokes, Ben’s standing as an iconic Black-owned institution came about in the late 1960s. After Dr. King’s assassination in 1968, while the U St. neighborhood around Ben’s was being burned to the ground from rioting the diner’s owner Ben Ali kept its door’s opened to the community. It was left untouched.

Bus Boys and Poets (2021 14th St. NW)

Busboys and Poets, traditionally a community gathering place for the area’s progressive types, draws on Langston Hughes’ budding days working as a busboy in DC prior to becoming a historically important poet.

Eatonville (2121 14th St. NW)

Eatonville was opened in 2009 by the same guy who founded Bus Boys and Poets and it sits directly across the street to its sister property. Even though some may think that Eatonville’s name sprang up in the annals of a lazy name search involving the word “eat”, it’s actually inspired by another great Black writer, Zora Neale Hurston. The restaurant is actually named after her Florida hometown and thus becomes the perfect moniker for southern cuisine.

Georgia Brown’s (950 15th St. NW)

If you’re in the mood for high-end Southern low-country cuisine in downtown DC you may want to check out Georgia Brown’s, a favorite of the K Street crowd. The menu is pricey but the portions are full and the food is down right good.

B. Smiths (50 Massachusetts Ave. NW)

Union Station is home to one of restaurateur and television host B. Smith’s three award-winning soul food restaurants. If fact, the dining is undeniably one of the most beautiful dining rooms in the country.

African American Civil War Memorial & Museum (1925 Vermont Ave. NW)

After memorializing the legacy of the man who marched for freedom in civil rights visit the memorial of the 200,000 selfless African-American soldiers and sailors who fought for freedom during the Civil War. The African-American Civil War Museum recently opened a bigger, better location directly across from the stunning memorial that sits on U Street.

Bohemian Caverns (2001 11th St. NW)

Once a landmark lounge known for hosting the great jazz icons such as Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, and DC’s own Duke Ellington. Today, you can catch great food, live music and open mic poetry sessions.

Frederick Douglass National Historic Site  (1411 W St. SE)

You can’t visit Washington without visiting the home and estate of Frederick Douglass, one of the country’s first great Black leaders. Southeast D.C. is home to the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site, which is administered by the National Park Service as a National Historic Site.

According to the National Park Service, “Douglass lived in this house, which he named Cedar Hill, from 1877 until his death in 1895. Perched high on a hilltop, the site also offers a sweeping view of the U.S. Capitol  and the Washington D.C. skyline.”

Howard University (2400 Sixth St. NW)

Howard University, one of the preeminent HBCUs in the country, is founding campus of many of the Divine 9 Black Greek organizations including fraternity Alpha Phi Alpha, which counts Dr. King as a member, the sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha, to which Coretta Scott King is a honorary member. Among Howard University’s many very distinguished alumni are Civil Rights greats such as Stokely Carmichael, who spearheaded the student led “freedom rides”, and Thurgood Marshall, who’s prolific work led to the desegregation in public schools.

Malcolm X/ Meridian Hill Park (2500 16th St. NW)

Meridian Hill Park, also known as Malcolm X Park, is one of the most beautiful sights in DC. The long held Drum Circle and a number of civil rights marches have originated in the nationally historic park that features a 13 basin cascading waterfall.

Lincoln Theater (1215 U St. NW)

Lincoln Theater was known as the “jewel of Black Broadway” in its hey day. The iconic theater was the center piece of America’s Black cultural movement, which was centralized in DC and predated Harlem. It hosted regular performances from the jazz era’s most noted entertainers including Washington natives Duke Ellington and Pearl Bailey as well Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holliday, Nat King Cole, Cab Calloway, Louis Armstrong, and Sarah Vaughn.

The Park At Fourteenth (920 14th St. NW)

The Park At Fourteenth is the latest venture by DC’s most successful nightlife promoter Marc Barnes. The man responsible for revitalizing the city’s nightlife with previous iconic nightclubs such as Republic Gardens and Love has done it again with a classy four-story restaurant and lounge that shifts the epicenter of DC nightlife to the downtown.

P.O.V. Lounge at W Hotel (515 15th St. NW)

If you want to see Washington in a new perspective head across the street from the White House to the roof terrace of the W Hotel’s Point of View Bar and look down. Have a drink while peering into the Obama residence while  seemingly being an arms length away from the top of the Washington monument. Be prepared to RSVP on OpenTable.com.

Madame Tussauds Wax Museum (1001 F St. NW)

Meet wax replicas of Martin Luther King, Barack Obama and other historical figures.

The White House (1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW)

Martin Luther King marched so Barack Obama could run. No visit to Martin Luther King’s memorial would be complete without a visit to the White House while the nation’s first Black president is still sitting in office.

The Lincoln Memorial (The National Mall)

Stand in the very spot where Dr. King delivered his famous “I Have A Dream” speech during the 1963 March on Washington.

NCNW Building (633 Pennsylvania Ave. NW)

National Council of Negro Women building on Pennsylvania Avenue is the only black-owned building in the nation’s “corridor of power.” The organization’s long time leader Dorothy Height, often considered the “godmother of the women’s movement” and mentor to both Dr. King and President Obama, laid in repose after her death in 2010.

Martin Luther King, Jr National Memorial (The National Mall)

Dedication festivities from 8:30a to 4p, August 28, 2011

Washington Convention Center (801 Mt Vernon Pl NW)

Where many of the MLK Memorial dedication festivities will be held. See  www.dedicatethedream.org for details

OTHER IMPORTANT WASHINGTON LINKS:

Metro – DC Transit

Washington.org – Official Tourism Site of Washington, DC

Martin Luther King Memorial Official Festivities Schedule

The Martin Luther King Estate and record label EMI own the rights to the speech and have banned it from YouTube use, despite its historical significance.

The Huffington Post Reports:

And yet, because CBS settled with the family out of court for an undisclosed sum, the law never fully considered the matter of the speech’s copyright. Today, the audio version of the speech can be hard to come by, and unabridged film footage of it has escaped the cultural memory banks of YouTube. The single unabridged video that had been floating around YouTube is now unplayable, thanks to a copyright claim by EMI.

Excerpts from the speech can still be used under “fair use,” of course, like in this analysis of King’s rhetoric and various remixes. (My favorite MLK remix is not of the “I have a dream” speech but of the ’I’ve been to the mountaintop’ speech. But no one knows what the limits of “fair use” are, at least not until they receive a letter frhttp://newsone.com/wp-admin/post-new.phpom the King family’s lawyers.

Read More At The Huffington Post

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A new book titled “Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy,” says that the former first lady didn’t think too highly of civil rights leader, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

She called him “phony” and “tricky” in a 1964 interview in which she spoke about life in the White House.

Former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy described King as “phony” and “tricky” in a 1964 interview just made public in a new book about White House life with her husband.

Kennedy, in one of seven Q&A sessions with former JFK aide Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., said King had mocked her slain husband’s funeral Mass and its celebrant, Cardinal Richard Cushing.

“He made fun of Cardinal Cushing and said he was drunk at it,” Kennedy recounted. “And things about they almost dropped the coffin. I just can’t see a picture of Martin Luther King without thinking, you know, ‘That man’s terrible.’”

Read more at TheLoop21

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White supremacists hijack MLK on Google

On site that disrespects King has even managed to outrank the official Martin Luther King Site on Google.

The Root reports:

“My hands are shaking with anger as I type this. A sick, cowardly, and racist website (hereafter referred to in insult-laced bold type) that trashes the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr is outranking the official Martin Luther King Jr website on Google. I will not provide a link to the racist site, as I will not directly contribute a single visit to them. However, I will show exactly how the official Martin Luther King website (found at http://www.thekingcenter.org) got beaten in the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) battle. My dream to improve The King Center’s SEO and Google Rank may not be as lofty and inspirational as Martin Luther King Jr’s, but I do have a dream … “

Read More At The Root

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Executive architect Ed Jackson Jr. told The Associated Press that the hurricane bearing down on the East Coast had forced the postponement of the dedication originally planned for 11 a.m. Sunday. President Barack Obama was to have been one of the scheduled speakers at beside the King sculpture erected on a 4-acre site in the nation’s capital.

Harry Johnson, the president of the foundation that built the memorial, said at a subsequent news conference that he decided Thursday afternoon to postpone the dedication after studying forecasts suggesting Irene’s passage would potentially make weather conditions unsafe for visitors amid the threat of high winds and rains. He also said a Saturday black-tie gala event had to be postponed.

“We all are saddened by this. I remained optimistic all day, but Mother Nature is Mother Nature,” Johnson said at a news conference. But he added, “The memorial is going to be there forever.”

The forecasts threatened heavy winds and rains in Washington as Irene was expected to take an unpredictable path up the East Coast this coming weekend, the weather service said.

Organizers had previously said they had expected up to 250,000 people for the dedication and celebration of the King legacy on the mall. The memorial was to have been dedicated on the 48th anniversary of King’s famous speech delivered less than a mile away on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

The hurricane was only the second disruption or organizers who also had to contend with a rare East Coast earthquake on Tuesday.

The 5.8-magnitude earthquake that caused a crack on the upper part of the Washington Monument had forced organizers to change a venue for a Saturday service anticipating the memorial’s dedication. The interfaith service had been planned Saturday the National Cathedral, but that landmark building suffered damages from falling capstones from the quake centered in neighboring Virginia.

Located between monuments to Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson, King’s memorial is the first monument on the National Mall honoring a black leader. The memorial is a 30-foot-tall sculpture in which King appears to emerge from granite carved to resemble the sides of a mountain.

The memorial faces southeast across the Tidal Basin from the Jefferson Memorial and was sculpted by Chinese artist Lei Yixin.

The site was set to open without fanfare around 11 a.m. to kick off a week of celebrations ahead of Sunday’s official dedication.

The memorial sits on the National Mall near the Tidal Basin, between memorials honoring Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson. It includes a 30-foot-tall sculpture of King and a 450-foot-long granite wall inscribed with 14 quotations from the civil rights leader.

The sheer size of the sculpture of King sets it apart from nearby statues of Jefferson and Lincoln, which are both about 20 feet tall, though inside larger monuments.

A panel of scholars chose the engraved quotations from speeches by King in Atlanta, New York, Washington, Los Angeles and Montgomery, Ala., as well as from King’s books and his letter from a Birmingham, Ala., jail.

One of the stone engravings reads: “We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

The National Mall site will be surrounded with cherry trees that will blossom in pink and white in the spring.

Sunday’s dedication ceremony will mark the 48th anniversary of the March on Washington and King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech. President Barack Obama is scheduled to speak at the dedication.

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The Poll found that most Americans– 90% of whites and 85% of Blacks– say civil rights for Black people have improved in the USA during their lifetime, although far more whites believe African-Americans have progressed.

While nearly eight in 10 whites say Black people have an equal chance in their community to get any kind of job for which they are qualified, six in 10 African Americans say job discrimination persists, USA Today reports:

“Whatever the civil rights movement did or did not accomplish, there remain very different perspectives, on average, between blacks and whites on how they view the country,” says Vincent Hutchings, a political scientist at the University of Michigan who studies racial politics. On such non-policy issues as acceptance of interracial marriage or the prospect of a black presidential candidate, “there is something verging on a sea change.”

Read more at USAToday.com

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King founded the civil rights organization in 1957.

The Rev. Howard Creecy, who had been president of the SCLC, died last month.

SCLC officials also announced that Bernard LaFayette Jr., co-founder of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, has been named national board chairman. He replaces Sylica Tucker, who resigned.

The SCLC board also named Don Cash, a Washington, D.C. labor official, as vice chairman, and Louisiana attorney Randal L. Gaines as acting vice president.

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10. W.E.B. Du Bois

Du Bois contributed greatly to the struggle of African-Americans through his writings and activism. Du Bois helped form the NAACP and was perhaps the most prominent African-American intellectual of the 20th century. Du Bois became a communist during the height of the Cold War. He was investigated by the FBI for his so-called socialist views. Du Bois died a Ghanaian citizen, after the U.S. refused his passport.

9. Jeremiah Wright

While Fox News may have painted Wright as an America-hating madman, Wright was just judging the U.S. with the same Christian principles that he lived by. Wright was a Marine who served in Vietnam, risking his life for the country he would be condemned for criticizing. A close view of Wright’s controversial sermon shows that did not hate America, but expected America to live up to its Christian values and leave unjust wars.

8. Boots Riley (The Coup)

Riley is an anti-imperialist and a Marxist, which puts him in direct opposition to American policies. In 2001 his group, The Coup, had an album cover with the World Trade Center blowing up and Boots pushing a button on a guitar, a few months before the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

7. Assata Shakur

Assata Shakur, is a Black Panther who was charged with convicted for killing a police officer, though many have cast doubt on her conviction. Asata with the help of rapper Tupac’s stepfather, Mutulu Shakur, escaped from prison and found political asylum in Cuba, a country hated by the United States.

6. Paul Robeson

Paul Robeson was an actor, singer, football player, lawyer and scholar. He was also a civil rights activist and labeled a communist. Robeson, like Du Bois had his passport taken away in 1950, for fear he would tell the world about how Black people were oppressed in America. In 1951 he charged the U.S.A. with genocide for turning a blind eye at African-Americans being lynched. Though Robeson traveled to Russia, won the Stalin Prize For Freedom, and even wrote a song for Stalin, he remained an American citizen his whole life.

5. Stokely Carmichael/Kwame Ture

Stokely Carmichael was a major figure in both the civil rights and Black Power movements, as the head of SNCC and the Honorary Prime Minister of the Black Panther Party, helping coin the phrase “Black Power.” He eventually split with the Black Panther party and moved to Guinea in Africa where he married South African activist and singer, Miriam Makeba, changing his name to Kwame Ture.

4. Josephine Baker

Josephine Baker moved to France after being a dancer in Harlem to escape racism in the USA after a successful tour of Europe. Baker helped the French rebel against the Nazis. While in France, Baker supported the Civil Rights Movement, and was the only woman to speak at the historic March on Washington with Martin Luther King Jr. at her side.

3. Martin Luther King Jr.

Though Martin Luther King Jr. said his dream was deeply rooted in the American dream, and would frequently site the Constitution and the Declaration Of Independence to further civil rights, he condemned America over the war in Vietnam.

God has a way of standing before the nations with judgment, and it seems that I can hear God saying to America, ‘You’re too arrogant! And if you don’t change your ways, I will rise up and break the backbone of your power, and I’ll place it in the hands of a nation that doesn’t even know my name. Be still and know that I’m God.’”

2. Marcus Garvey

Although Marcus Garvey was born in Jamaica, he came into prominence after moving to America in 1916, where he would start the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and the Back To Africa movement. Garvey raised money to repopulate Liberia but was charged by J. Edgar Hoover, with mail fraud and later deported.

1. Malcolm X

Malcolm X, like Marcus Garvey advocated for the complete separation of African-Americans from America, establishing their own country. Malcolm famously criticized U.S. foreign and domestic policy after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, saying it was a case of “the chickens coming home to roost.” Malcolm made plans to charge the USA with violating the rights of African-Americans before he died.

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NEW YORK — Samuel L. Jackson will make his Broadway debut this fall as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

ALSO READ: Hello Beautiful’s 25 Women To Know

Producers of “The Mountaintop” said Thursday that the Academy Award-nominated actor will star in the play that reimagines the night before the civil rights leader’s assassination.

The play, by Katori Hall, made its debut in London in 2009. It had been rumored that Halle Berry would join Jackson but producers said “child custody issues” ruled her out.

Performances on Broadway will begin Sept. 22 at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre on 45th Street. The official opening is set for Oct. 13.

Jackson, known for films like “Pulp Fiction” and “Snakes on a Plane,” originated roles in two of August Wilson’s plays at Yale Repertory Theatre and appeared at the New York Shakespeare Festival.

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The network has acquired television rights to nearly 400 movies, including classics like The Wiz and Car Wash; several Spike Lee productions such as Jungle Fever, Mo’ Better Blues and Do the Right Thing; and Denzel Washington headliners like The Hurricane, Glory and Philadelphia.

Rainforest Films co-founders Rob Hardy and Will Packer are on Bounce’s leadership team, and ex-Sony Pictures Television executive Jeffrey Wolf is leading distribution efforts. The digital network is designed to be carried on local television stations.

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Atlanta — Bernice King called into one of our radio sites, Praise 102.5, and spoke with Rhodell Lewis today on what is the 43rd death anniversary of her father, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Saying that today is a sad day for her on a lot of fronts, she talked about all of the problems in the world and wondered whether her father died in vain.

Listen to our exclusive interview below!

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MLK Assassination Anniversary: Donate To Complete The Memorial

Today marks the 43rd anniversary of the assassination of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

In the 43 years since King’s assassination, African-Americans have made tremendous progress, and the legacy of Dr. King has continued to live strong.

Today, a short distance from where King delivered his famed “I Have a Dream” speech, a 28-foot-tall statue of the slain civil rights leader has risen as part of a new memorial that will be dedicated in August.

Two years ago, talks began to build this historic memorial on the National Mall for Dr. King. Millions have been raised for this landmark monument which will be dedicated on August 28th, 2011. So far, only $111 million of the $120 million goal has been raised.

We at NewsOne have decided to help this memorial reach its goal with your assistance.

As we celebrate his legacy and his vision of freedom and equality for all mankind, we encourage you to contribute to the memorial today by donating a small portion of only $5 in hopes of meeting the remaining goal and helping to put the final touches on this historic work.

To donate $5 from your mobile phone follow this simple 2-step process to follow:

STEP 1: Text MLK to 20222

STEP 2: You will receive a text asking you to confirm your $5.00 donation. Please note that in order for your donation to be processed, you must reply to this “confirmation” text message.

A one-time donation of $5.00 will be added to your mobile phone bill or deducted from your prepaid balance. All charges are billed by and payable to your mobile service provider. Service is available on most carriers. Donations are collected for the benefit of the MLK Memorial Foundation by the Mobile Giving Foundation and subject to the terms found at www.hmgf.org/t . Messaging & Data Rates May Apply. All donations must be authorized by the account holder. You can unsubscribe at any time by texting STOP to short code 20222; text HELP to 20222 for help.

Donate more here

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A close look at the MLK Jr Memorial

In a recent newsletter to supporters of the American Islamic Congress, Ziada indicated that the translated Martin Luther King comic book had been identified as contributing to the air of peaceful revolution in Egypt. The Fellowship for Reconciliation agreed. Ziada shared this anecdote in her communique:

When, at first, we went to print the comic book, a security officer blocked publication. So we called him and demanded a meeting. He agreed, and we read through the comic book over coffee to address his concerns. At the end, he granted permission to print and then asked: “Could I have a few extra copies for my kids?”

The comic book has been credited with inspiring young activists in Egypt and the larger region (we have a Farsi version as well). Last week I distributed copies in Tahrir Square. Seeing the scene in the square firsthand is amazing. Despite violent attacks and tanks in the street, young people from all walks of life are coming together, organizing food and medical care, and offering a living model of free civil society in action.

Read The Whole Story

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1. Martin Luther King, Jr.
2. Barack Obama
3. W.E.B. Du Bois
4. Thurgood Marshall
5. Malcolm X
6. Frederick Douglass
7. Harriet Tubman
8. Rosa Parks
9. Ida B. Wells-Barnett
10. Ella Baker

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Every idiot likes to speculate on what the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. would be thinking or doing if he were alive today so I figured, why should I be any different?

So here’s what I think: Dr. King would be married to a white woman and living in Africa if he were alive to day.

This probably leaves you with two questions immediately: why a white woman and why Africa?

Well, you may not know this, but Dr. King actually contemplated marrying the white girl that he was seeing back while he finished up his doctorate at Boston University.

He was as engaged in the concept of Civil Rights as he was when he eventually became famous, but weighing the pros versus the cons of presenting the world with a dynamic mixed-race couple at the forefront of Civil Rights and becoming and iconic black family man, he ultimately and maybe even wisely chose to marry Coretta Scott.

Also of note is the fact that the overwhelming bulk if not every last one of the women that Dr. King was alleged to have had affairs with were white.

The guy just had a taste for white chicks.

Sorry.

Plus when you consider that a lot of Black, militant and angry OGs—Frederick Douglass, Ishmael Reed and Quincy Jones immediately come to mind—either finally marry white or consistently marry white, it wouldn’t have surprised too many people if, after Coretta passed in 2006, the Dr. pulled a “Hef” and got a young, hot one.

Now, why Africa?

Dr. King was so bitter and disillusioned with America near the end of his life that he was probably only a day or two away from flag burning.

Everybody remembers him questioning near the end whether or not it was indeed wise to “integrate into a burning house”, but almost nobody picks up on one of the most amazing things he ever said in the last public speech he ever made on the last night of his life.

Think about it: “we as a people shall get to the promised land.”

He wasn’t talking about Cleveland, my Damies (shout out to Pootie Tang)!

All the great Black minds from Marcus Garvey to Bob Marley argued in favor of repatriation to Africa with two men in particular, men that King definitely respected and one that he actually ran with, having done so; W.E.B. Du Bois, and King’s ace boon… you know, Stokely Carmichael.

Doc would be an 82 year-old naturalized citizen of Ghana right now somewhere with an ex-playmate on his arm, watching sports, mad that the Falcons lost, but rooting for Lovie Smith and Mike Tomlin to make it to the Super Bowl.

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Gov. Paul LePage declined invitations to attend a dinner in Portland on Sunday night and a breakfast in Orono on Monday because of prior commitments.

The NAACP’s state director said the group felt it was being neglected by the new governor, a Republican elected in November with tea party support.

When asked by a reporter Friday to respond, LePage said: “Tell them to kiss my butt.”

LePage made news last fall on the campaign trail when he told a group of fishermen that if he were elected, “you’re going to be seeing a lot of me on the front page, saying ‘Governor LePage tells Obama to go to hell.’”

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Given that it is his 80th birthday, here’s photo retrospective on Martin Luther King’s life. See his many defining moments as well as the other great men and women he worked with.

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There are several parallels between President Barack Obama and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. They spoke at several of the same places and met with many of the same people. Check out these pictures to see the parallel journeys of our two greatest leaders.

President Barack Obama issued a statement, saying:

Brazier was one of the country’s leading moral lights and his community work touched the lives of countless Americans

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In a speech in Chicago Saturday, U.S. Department of Education Secretary Arne Duncan said if Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. were alive today, he’d be disheartened to see so many schools still effectively segregated.

“Dr. King would have been angered to see that too often we underinvest in disadvantaged students, that they still have fewer opportunities to take rigorous college prep courses, that many black and brown and low-income students are still languishing in aging facilities,” the former chief of the Chicago Public Schools said.

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Just about everyone knows about the problems facing Bishop Eddie Long, senior pastor of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church. Specifically, there are the four young men who allege that the prominent Atlanta-area pastor coerced them into a sexual relationship, and possibly more waiting in the wings. They claim that Long used his status to seduce them with money, clothes, bling, cars, foreign trips, access to celebrities and the like. The men allege that they called Long “dad” or “daddy,” which sounds awfully cultish. One of the plaintiffs even claims that he was 14 when his relationship with Long started, which brings up issues of child abuse and statutory rape.

These accusations will be addressed in court, and who knows, maybe there will be a quiet out-of-court settlement. To be sure, this is not the first religious leader to face accusations of sexual and professional misconduct and abuse of authority, nor the last. Similarly, the Bishop is not the first homophobic preacher to be outed as a gay man.

But Bishop Long’s sexual orientation ultimately is not the subject of this commentary, although it provides some valuable context. Now, if these accusations are true, then Bishop Long is at least guilty of hypocrisy and self-hatred. And if the charges are not true, he is still an anti-gay minister who has damaged many people. Either way, he is a prosperity preacher who preys on the black community and shames the legacy of the civil rights movement. And that’s most of what we need to know.

When the Southern Poverty Law Center decides to write an intelligence report about you, you know you’ve done something wrong. SPLC calls Bishop Long “one of the most virulently homophobic black leaders in the religiously based anti-gay movement.” In one sermon, he says to gays and lesbians, “God says you deserve death!” The message of “hate the sin and the sinner” are strong words in a religion that is supposed to teach love, healing and redemption.

Long believes that homosexuality is spiritual abortion, “a manifestation of a fallen man.” He believes that if black gays and lesbians feel alienated and abandoned by the black church, the problem is not intolerance against them but their own sins. But before these people go to Hell as he contends they are, Long is trying to cure gays and lesbians (except himself, we can assume). And his church bookstore sells the works of authors such as the homophobic James Dobson of Focus on the Family — no friend of the black community.

And Long’s misappropriation of the King legacy is shameful. Coretta Scott King’s funeral was held at New Birth in 2006 rather than at Ebenezer Baptist Church, the King family’s church. Civil rights giants Harry Belafonte and then-NAACP-chair Julian Bond were so mortified by this fact that they boycotted the funeral. After all, Mrs. King was a supporter of gay marriage, and she called it a civil rights issue. The late Yolanda King, the oldest child, took after her mother in that regard, but Bernice King, the youngest child in the King family, called Long her “new father” and symbolically passed a torch to him.

To add to the insult, Bernice King and Long participated in a march to Dr. King’s gravesite to support a national constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. In 2004, Long and others successfully pushed for a similar amendment to the Georgia state constitution. And it should be noted that Alveda King, Dr. King’s niece, is herself a homophobic minister who exploited her uncle’s name at Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally, an event replete with aggrieved white supremacists, Obama-haters and gun-enthusiasts. “Homosexuality cannot be elevated to the civil rights issue,” Alveda King said in a 1998 speech. “The civil rights movement was born from the Bible. God hates homosexuality.”

Bishop Eddie Long is a prosperity-oriented minister, adhering to a theology that essentially says God will financially hook up the believers. Some would call it a false gospel, given Jesus’ targeting of the money changers, and his proclamation that it is easier for a camel to enter the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. Others would call it pimping.

Long’s New Birth megachurch has a membership of about 25,000 and sits on 240 acres in the Atlanta suburb of Lithonia, Georgia. The nonprofit religious “charity” he started in 1997 has served him well — a $1.4-million, 20-acre home with nine bathrooms, a $350,000 Bentley, and a $3 million salary over three years, not to mention all of the expensive jewelry. Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) launched an investigation into the finances and tax-exempt status of six megachurches, including New Birth, and Creflo Dollar’s World Changers International Church. Due to the recession, New Birth had to cut back on its $250,000 Easter Sunday service last year, and that is not a misprint. Tithes and membership dropped 20 percent, given that it is hard to be about prosperity when you are poor and hurting, and black folks have been hit harder than most in this recession.

And as Wall Street bankers, megachurch preachers and other prosperity pimps live like lottery winners, people in America are suffering. The Census Bureau recently reported that poverty is higher than it was 10 years ago, with nearly 15 percent of Americans in poverty. The gap between rich and poor has tripled in three decades, and is the highest it has been since the 1920s. Meanwhile, unemployment is entrenched and not going anywhere anytime soon.

Surely, Bishop Long and his supporters would maintain that his reputation is being dragged through the mud. But his reputation was already muddied via his homophobia and corrupt bling theology. Rather, Long should worry far more about what Dr. King would say about him.

Although King fought against and even disobeyed unjust laws, Long supports them. Dr. King decried the triple evils of racism, materialism and militarism, and called for a radical revolution of values, from a “thing-oriented” society to a “person-oriented” society. Figures such as King and Malcolm X walked the talk by fighting for the people — and for causes greater than their personal bank account — through great personal sacrifice and a modest existence. Remember that Dr. King donated all of his $54,000 Nobel Peace Prize money to the civil rights movement. I dare say it would be hard to find many leaders today — black or otherwise — who would follow in the footsteps of this great man. How many of them would lift a finger to help the downtrodden?

Meanwhile, Bishop Eddie Long just wants to get paid and beat the case.

BlackCommentator.com Executive Editor David A. Love, JD is a writer based in Philadelphia, and a contributor to the Huffington Post, theGrio, the Progressive Media Project and McClatchy-Tribune News Service, among others. He contributed to the book, States of Confinement: Policing, Detention, and Prisons (St. Martin’s Press, 2000). Love is a former Amnesty International UK spokesperson. His blog is davidalove.com.

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Thousands of people joined the Rev. Al Sharpton and other leaders Saturday to commemorate the anniversary of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington in 1963. The event, billed as “Reclaim the Dream,” included a five-mile march that culminated at the Mall, where conservative talk show host Glenn Beck had organized the simultaneous “Restoring Honor” rally.

In an interview before the gathering began at Dunbar High School in Northwest Washington, Sharpton said he called the event to show respect for the ideals of King, who made his famous “I Have a Dream” speech 47 years ago near where Beck spoke to thousands Saturday.

“People are clear in what Dr. King’s dream was about, and we will not react to those who try to distort that dream,” Sharpton said. He was one of several prominent leaders who condemned Beck’s rally, despite cries from organizers that “Restoring Honor” was not intended to dishonor King or his work.

Read more at WashPost

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While the official Tea Party estimates of Saturday’s rally attendance may range between a gajillion and the fafillion, the company CBS hired to give an estimate placed the turnout at a respectably large 87,000, larger than the official estimates of turnout last year’s 9/12 rally but no where near the estimated 1.8 million that attended Obama’s inauguration.

The number of people who showed up for Beck’s rally was also considerably smaller than the 1963 March for Jobs and Freedom, at which Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I Have A Dream” speech and which Beck self-consciously styled his “restoring honor” event after, to the irritation of many liberals. The 1963 march drew around 200,000 people, according to contemporary estimates. The crowd then was considerably more diverse, had a leftist economic agenda and was organized by admitted socialists who palled around with a number of other lefty types who likely would have ended up on Glenn Beck’s chalkboard back in the day. That crowd also was produced without the kind of financial support provided by Freedomworks and Americans for Prosperity, and at a time when long-distance communication tools were considerably more limited.

Read more at WashPost

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Alveda King, a niece of Martin Luther King, Jr., spoke at a rally for the antigay National Organization for Marriage and said marriage equality would lead to “extinction” and called it “genocide.”

King, who heads King for America, addressed a rally Saturday in Atlanta whose attendees were outnumbered by counterprotesters, according to theGeorgia Voice.

“King also spoke of her family’s commitment to strong marriages, including her uncle and ‘his lovely wife,’” reported the Voice. “She did not mention that Coretta Scott King, Martin Luther King Jr.’s wife, spoke out in favor of gay marriage on several occasions and was a speaker at Atlanta’s Gay Pride festival in 1996.”

Click here to read more

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From The Huffington Post

ATLANTA — A Catholic anti-abortion group used the site of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s grave on Saturday for a large rally to protest against legalized abortion.

“Martin Luther King, Jr. was an advocate for the oppressed, and no one is more oppressed than the 52 million unborn children who have been killed in the womb,” said Denis Wilde, the Associate Director of Priests for Life, and an Augustinian priest. “The womb is the most dangerous place to live.”

When the “Pro Life Freedom Ride” bus reached Atlanta, there was a group of pro-choice protesters from the groups SisterSong, SPARK, and SisterLove waiting there to meet them. The pro-choice groups chanted “Trust black women!” and “Can’t Re-Write History!” through a megaphone.

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We never anticipated the popularity of this article, nor the controversy that it would cause.  But all we can say is, “Thank you, Rush, for being you.” Before we get into the Top 10 Racist Limbaugh Quotes of All-Time, here are some of Limbaugh’s most recent racist statements.

Do you think any of Limbaugh’s recent rants belong in the TOP 10?  If so, let us know in the COMMENTS!

THE TOP TEN RACIST RUSH LIMBAUGH QUOTES

1. “Have you ever noticed how all composite pictures of wanted criminals resemble Jesse Jackson?”

Source

No, but I’ve noticed that all racist bigots think like Rush Limbaugh. Comparing a respected black politician and minister to common criminals is Jim Crow racism. Maybe all black people look alike to him, but I’ve never seen a picture of a wanted criminal that looks like Jesse Jackson. A serial killer that looks like Rush Limbaugh on the other hand.

John Wayne Gacy

2. “Right. So you go into Darfur and you go into South Africa, you get rid of the white government there. You put sanctions on them. You stand behind Nelson Mandela — who was bankrolled by communists for a time, had the support of certain communist leaders. You go to Ethiopia. You do the same thing.”

Source

The communist connection is an old way of dealing with black leaders. They used it on Martin Luther King, they’re using it on Barack Obama and Limbaugh used it on Nelson Mandela. By siding with the racist apartheid regime over a world-wide symbol of peace and freedom, Limbaugh has shown he’s a global racist.

3. “Look, let me put it to you this way: the NFL all too often looks like a game between the Bloods and the Crips without any weapons. There, I said it.”

Source

Limbaugh is once again fear mongering and race baiting by associating professional black athletes with criminals and gangmembers. He continues the fear mongering association of good, decent, hard working African Americans as criminals.

4. “The NAACP should have riot rehearsal. They should get a liquor store and practice robberies.”

Source

Now Limbaugh is saying that an organization with a storied tradition of representing the positive black people for change in their communities are criminals and rioters. An organization that has been represented by intelligent professional African Americans, that has played a part in the Civil Rights movement and continues to be an intelligent, concerned voice for the African American community is degraded to common criminals. There you go Rush. Keep racism alive!!!!

5. “They’re 12 percent of the population. Who the hell cares?”

Source

Decent human beings care Rush. Someone out of that 12% is the President of the United States. Not caring about black people? Even George Bush wouldn’t admit to that.

6. [To an African American female caller]: “Take that bone out of your nose and call me back.”

Source

Okay, Rush, that’s classy. The old African bone in the nose stereotype. Wasn’t funny when the racist white school kids called the black kids that and it’s definitely not funny when a grown man with audience of millions of easily influenced dittoheads says it either.

7.  ”I think the media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well.  They’re interested in black coaches and black quarterbacks doing well.  I think there’s a little hope invested in McNabb and he got a lot of credit for the performance of his team that he really didn’t deserve.”

Source

I wasn’t super offended by this, the whole black quarterback/coach thing has been going on for years in sports, but the quote was so offensive that Retired General Wesley Clarke said:

There can be no excuse for such statements. Mr. Limbaugh has the right to say whatever he wants, but ABC and ESPN have no obligation to sponsor such hateful and ignorant speech. Mr. Limbaugh should be fired immediately.

When a respected, retired general condemns the statement of a sportscaster, you know he’s gone too far.

8. Limbaugh’s many attacks on Obama.

Limbaugh has called Obama a ‘halfrican American’ has said that Obama was not Black but Arab because Kenya is an Arab region, even though Arabs are less than one percent of Kenya. Since mainstream America has become more accepting of African-Americans, Limbaugh has decided to play against its new racial fears, Arabs and Muslims. Despite the fact Obama graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law school, Limbaugh has called him an ‘affirmative action candidate.’ Limbaugh even has repeatedly played a song on his radio show ‘Barack the Magic Negro’ using an antiquated Jim Crow era term for Black a man who many Americans are supporting for president. Way to go Rush.

So Rush Limbaugh has managed to make racist attacks on four of the most admired and respected people of African descent in the past one hundred years, in Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Colin Powell and Barack Obama. He has claimed that Joe the Plumber, who isn’t even a plumber is more important in this election than Colin Powell, a decorated military veteran who has served honorably in three administrations. How can the Republican party stand by this man and let their candidates appear on his show? Rush Limbaugh’s comments are so racist, they’re funny, in a Borat, Archie Bunker kind of way. What is not funny is the millions of dittoheads who listen to him, who take in and re-spout all the racist rhetoric that he spits. Limbaugh’s statements are echoed in the racist, angry Palin/McCain supporters who shout ‘kill him,’ ‘terrorist,’ ‘communist,’ ‘traitor,’ ‘socialist’ and ‘off with his head.’

9. “We need segregated buses… This is Obama’s America.”

Source

Okay Limbaugh let’s take back all of the Civil Rights movement and bring segregation back. But you’re not a racist.

10. “Obama’s entire economic program is reparations.”

Source

So everything Obama is doing is a big plot to give money to Black people. Any evidence? Stop the racist fear-mongering.

THE TWO CONTESTED QUOTES

We ran these two quotes as part of our original list of ten. However, in the fall of 2009, this post surfaced in the debate that followed Limbaugh’s dismissal from an investment group attempting to purchase the St. Louis Rams. NewsOne has, as yet, not been able to determine the veracity of these quotes.  We note the following for the record:

• These two quotes were both sourced to a book by Jack Huberman called “101 People Who Are Really Screwing America,” published by Nation Books in 2006. The author of this book, in turn, claims that he procured these quotes from a source which he has refused to reveal “on advice of counsel.”
• Rush Limbaugh has vigorously denied that he said these things.

In sum, NewsOne can no longer vouch for the accuracy of these quotes. Nor can we trust Limbaugh, who never denied saying the other eight racist quotes on our original list, and whose own track record of duplicity gives us pause.  We keep them in our post for their news value as a controversial, and perhaps dubious attribution. Segregated, of course. Which should make some people very happy.

1. “I mean, let’s face it, we didn’t have slavery in this country for over 100 years because it was a bad thing. Quite the opposite: slavery built the South. I’m not saying we should bring it back; I’m just saying it had its merits. For one thing, the streets were safer after dark.”

Source

2. “You know who deserves a posthumous Medal of Honor? James Earl Ray [the confessed assassin of Martin Luther King]. We miss you, James. Godspeed.”

Source

BONUS QUOTES

(…because ten isn’t enough!)

“Obama is “more African in his roots than he is American” and is “behaving like an African colonial despot”

Source

How exactly does and African colonial despot behave? Trying to degrade our President by attacking his African roots?

“Obama is an angry Black guy”

Source

Was John McCain an angry white guy? Was George Bush a dumb white man? Is your hero, Dick Cheney, an evil white demon? Why are you playing off the angry Black guy stereotype to disrespect our President?

ANTI-LATINO QUOTES

“Let the unskilled jobs that take absolutely no knowledge whatsoever to do — let stupid and unskilled Mexicans do that work.”

Source

“You’re a foreigner. You shut your mouth or you get out.”

Source

“A Chavez is a Chavez. We’ve Always Had Problems with Them”

Source

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From TheGrio.com:

African-American leaders denounced TV and radio pundit Glenn Beck’s Tea Party rally next month that will occur on the same date and at the same spot where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech nearly 50 years ago.

And as Beck hosts his “Restoring Honor” event Aug. 28th at the Lincoln Memorial, civil rights organizations, including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the National Urban League and the National Action Network, will hold events to commemorate King’s legacy and the March on Washington.

“It is just an outright attempt to flip the imagery of Dr. King and the imagery of that march, and distort it for some opposite purposes,” said the Rev. Al Sharpton, president of the National Action Network, which is hosting the “Reclaim the Dream” rally in Washington, D.C. at the same time as Beck’s “Restoring Honor” event. “They’re not talking about celebrating Dr. King, they’re talking about circumventing him and distorting him.”

But some African-American Tea Party members said there was nothing wrong with Beck holding his “Restoring Honor” rally at the Lincoln Memorial on the 47th anniversary of the March on Washington.

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The most ridiculous contention that William Styron reaches in his laughably bad Confessions of Nat Turner is that slave rebellions were totally unnatural for Black people.

Styron seemed shocked, not only at the organization necessary for Turner’s rebellion to be the success that it became, but also at the fact that Negroes bore the type of animosity towards slavery necessary to rebel in the first place.

Take a look at our gallery of Black history in America:

It’s this mind state which is and has been, if not prevalent, than certainly consistent in the American psyche for possibly as long as Blacks and whites have shared these shores.

You find it at the heart of statements like “Lincoln freed the slaves” and when certain whites speak of the abolition of Jim Crow and the attainment of Civil Rights as something that they worked for.

This isn’t, of course, to suggest that no white people were ever involved in the cause of Black rights, it’s just that far too often, the cause of Black rights is seen as something that was done for us and not, appropriately, something done primarily by us and done for the betterment of the country overall.

Dr. King gambled that non-violence would be the best approach towards winning equal rights and in an almost Pyrrhic way, his gamble paid off.

What used to anger me before I studied up on the subject and what probably angered many other Black people before they did their own research was the notion of being a member of a race that was continually bashed in the head without retaliation.

It got so bad that there was a time, sadly I must admit, that I joyfully read of any slave rebellion that ended in the spilling of white blood and also got borderline giddy at any mention of Jim Crow-ear Black violence towards whites, believing, as I was led to, that this was a rarity.

Of course by now most of us know that the reason for the lack of literary documentation of Black violence against our then-oppressors is to convince us that we are a long-suffering people for whom our salvation was to be found in the faces of the same folks that enslaved us.

But dig; isn’t it an amazing irony that now when we hear of Blacks committing violent crimes against whites, people like me cringe while the Rush Limbaughs of the world behave as if it’s totally natural?

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From Black Voice News

NEW YORK (NNPA) – Black Civil Rights leaders are furious that they will not be able to organize a march to commemorate the 47th anniversary of the historic March on Washington and Dr. Martin Luther King’s famed “I Have A Dream” speech at the location where it happened this year because infamous right wing Fox News personality and radio host Glenn Beck already booked the Lincoln Memorial on Aug. 28th to hold his own rally.

“We’re going to get together because we are not going to let Glenn Beck own the symbolism of Aug. 28th, 2010,” National Urban League President and CEO Marc Morial said during a National Newspaper Publishers Association breakfast at NNPA’s 70th Anniversary Celebration at the Sheraton Hotel and Towers on Friday. “Someone said to me, ‘Maybe we shouldn’t challenge him. Maybe we should just let him have it. “I was like,’ Brother, where have you been? Where is your courage? Where is your sense of outrage?” We need to collaborate and bring together all people of good will, not just Black people, on Aug. 28 to send a message that Glenn Beck’s vision of America is not our vision of America.

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From Think Progress

Rand Paul, who appeared on the Rush Limbaugh show today, is trying to distance himself from his racist stance on the Civil Rights Act of 1964, by comparing himself to one of its champions, Dr. Martin Luther King and to abolitionist, Frederick Douglass. While Martin Luther King fought against Jim Crow laws and segregation and Frederick Douglass fought against slavery, Rand Paul claims his major fight is to allow restaurants to let people smoke. Here is his op-ed from the Bowling Green Daily News.

I am unlike many folks who run for office. I am an idealist. When I read history I side with abolitionists such as William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglas who fought for 30 years to end slavery and to integrate public transportation in the free North in the 1840s. I see our failure to end slavery for decade after decade as a failure of weak-kneed politicians. [...]

Segregation ended only after a great and momentous uprising by idealists like Martin Luther King Jr., who provoked weak-kneed politicians to action.

In 2010, there are battles that need to be fought, and they have nothing to do with race or discrimination, but rather the rights of people to be free from a nanny state.

For example, I am opposed to the government telling restaurant owners that they cannot allow smoking in their establishments. I believe we as consumers can choose whether to patronize a smoke-filled restaurant or do business with a smoke-free option. Think about it — this overreach is now extending to mandates about fat and calorie counts in menus. Do we really need the government managing all of these decisions for us?

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From NPR.org:

Organizations led by civil rights leaders Dorothy Height and Benjamin Hooks, who both died this month, were in the forefront of the fight for equal rights, but they are now struggling to stay relevant. And nowhere is that fight more evident than in the group founded by Martin Luther King Jr.: the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

Click here to view photos.

Just answering questions about the SCLC is a challenge these days. Take last week, when two factions of the group had dueling board meetings.

In Atlanta, board member Bernard Lafayette declared: “The meeting of the board, the national board of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, is here.”

But hundreds of miles away, in rural Eutaw, Ala., board member Markel Hutchins said: “This is the only official meeting of the national board of directors of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.”

The venerable civil rights group has been embroiled in a power struggle for months — ever since it elected Bernice King to be president of the organization her father helped form. That was in October, and she has yet to be installed. She did not returned phone calls from NPR seeking comment.

Two board officers, Chairman Raleigh Trammel of Ohio and Treasurer Spiver Gordon of Alabama, are the target of federal, state and internal SCLC investigations into whether some $500,000 has been misspent. They were voted out by a special board meeting in Atlanta earlier this month.

Click here to read more.

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One of the biggest misconceptions about the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is that during his lifetime, he was a man beloved by all.

The main reason this is done, I think, is to make his assassination look like the random act of a lone madman.

Subsequently, we’ve been re-issued a Dr. King, sterilized, impotent and weak, that barely even physically resembles the man that said “We as a people will get to the promised land.”

King is now, very much, the ideal Black man. This means he’s dead.

Think about it.

My least favorite writer ever is Richard Wright. I could and can never forgive Wright for writing the book Native Son.

At a time when Blacks throughout America were being lynched without reason, Wright gave us in Bigger Thomas, his lead character from Native Son, a Black that had been given a chance by good white folks, only to turn around and murder the daughter of the family that hired him.

Bigger then goes on to kill a Black woman also, but that’s of little consequence. Wright’s point, intentional or not, was proven. Regardless of whether you do or don’t give those Negroes a chance, they’re gonna ruin everything.

Do I even need to go into detail about how widely and spectacularly Native Son was received? Must I explain that Wright became, for all intents and purposes, the sole creator of genuine Negro literature?

Now there’s some kind of uproar because Harvard genius Skip Gates is running around saying that Blacks in Africa are as much responsible for the transatlantic slave trade as whites.

What surprises me is that everybody else seems so surprised. This dude’s at Harvard! What do you expect him to say? He’s probably got bills to pay.

He’s not gonna say anything that benefits Black people at the expense of white people.

Doing that would get his ass sent right over to Medgar Evers.