Martin Luther King Day (2013)

Happy Martin Luther King Day to everyone.  I decided to write a little about Dr. King because I was alive and well during the civil rights era (power to the people! right on!!) and mention a few odd facts guaranteed to drive every Moonbat within five miles into a watermelon dance.  Keep surfing if you have a thin skin.



Before I continue, I'd like to pass along a link to Maggie Thurber at Thurber's Thoughts who has written a short, succinct piece on the same subject, and it's worth reading.

Doctor Martin Luther King Junior was a Republican.  This likely comes as a heart stopping surprise to the Moonbats, but it's true.  Since Dr. King never ran for office there very little official mention of his political party persuasion, and you'll never see commercial media mention this in passing.  The National Black Republican Association - Black Republican History makes it clear that Dr. King was a Republican and just why that was.

Dr. King founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and organization that coordinated the nonviolent civil rights demonstrations prevalent during this period.  It was largely due to the efforts of the SCLC and its president, Dr. King, that the civil rights movement continued in spite of opposition that most young people today will not believe.  This wasn't the first organization of its kind.  In fact, Dr. King got a lot of his civil rights demonstration training at Highlander Research and Education Center (former Highlander Folk School), which also trained Rosa Parks prior to her high profile role in the Montgomery bus boycott.

Dr. King's PhD was in Systematic Theology which, if you believe Wikipedia, is defined thusly:

Systematic theology is a discipline of Christian theology that attempts to formulate an orderly, rational, and coherent account of the Christian faith and beliefs

After his death it was discovered that a large part of Dr. King's dissertation had been, at best, made up in a large part of improperly credited verbatim quotations from other sources.  In less polite language, King plagiarized a large part of his thesis, but since he was dead, well, then, why speak ill of the dead - whitey?

Although he was a minister, theologian and a charismatic leader in the civil rights movement, he was also an incorrigible philanderer.  Bluntly, he chased tail.  Dr. King had a weakness for women.  In an effort to oppose the civil rights movement and Dr. King, the F.B.I. compiled audio and video evidence of King's many infidelities and passed the tapes along to commercial news media.  The media refused to give it any air time.  Incensed, the F.B.I. sent the material to Dr. King as a threat, the message being that unless King laid off all that civil rights hogwash, the material would be made public.  Dr. King's wife Coretta intercepted the package and reviewed the entire business, then quietly called their hand.  The F.B.I. blinked and folded, and that was that.

Here's a hat tip and a hoist of the morning bourbon glass to Coretta, who quietly did what she had to do.

I toured the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tennessee when California Dave and I were in Memphis on vacation.  The museum used to be the Lorraine Motel, a ubiquitous two story motor hotel where Dr. King was known to stay whenever he was in Memphis, and where he was assassinated by James Earl Ray.  When he was killed, Dr. King was standing on the second floor balcony just outside his room, talking to a small group of civil rights workers who were standing in the parking lot.  The conversation was extended and lasted about 20 minutes, which was plenty of time for Ray to get into position.  The shot, by the way, was a fairly easy one to make.  The range is about 100 yards.

Some people think the assassination was carried out by the United States government and that Ray was a fall guy.  There are other conspiracy theories as well, too many for me to count without removing my footgear.  Most are fairly improbably, generously speaking, but that doesn't mean that a few don't hold some water.  I think it's likely Ray made the shot.  I also think it's likely Ray received encouragement from outside sources, and possibly (maybe even probably) tacit approval from the government, as Ray got clean away and was ultimately arrested in Jolly Old for bank robbery.  My thought is that when I hear hoof beats, I think horse and not zebra.  The brutal truth is that Dr. King got death threats all the time.  He was not a popular person in some circles (Kough... Kough-Kough) but he didn't let that slow him down any, and certainly he should have.  It was common knowledge that Dr. King was in Memphis to support a labor strike involving sanitation workers, and that when he stayed in Memphis he preferred room 306 at the Lorraine.

The shooter, James Earl Ray, was a felon on the lam.  To complete the assassination, Ray had to be in the right place at the right time with a Remington .30-06 rifle that had a telescopic sight mounted on it.  I have no trouble believing that Ray could make the shot, but someone had to sight that rifle in.  I think that it's likely Ray had help in getting everything set up, that Ray did, in fact, make the shot.  I also think that Ray had non-governmental logistical help both before and after the assassination, and that the government helped Ray by not looking for him during the aftermath.  Remember, this is Memphis in the late 1960s.  I think it's very likely the Memphis police would not look too hard for the man who murdered Dr. King.

Those are just a few of my thoughts.  Now I'm going to have lunch and enjoy MLK day.