The Unfinished Business of Martin Luther King Jr.

[Xavier_Onassis]

If many of the distinguished heros from the 60's had lived, we probably would not have had the Vietnam war, to boot!
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Well, yes we would have had Vietnam in some form. It was started way back in the 1950's when the agreement to partition Vietnam and withdraw the French troops (who were partially armed by the US, by the way) after the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu, was to hold elections in all of VN to determine who would rule the whole country.

John Foster Dulles and his equally colonialist brother CIA chief Allen Dulles, advised NOT to allow these elections, since they didn't think the Communists could lose. And the US supported a guy named Diem and his dragonlady wife. When he proved incompetent, he was assassinated and another puppet was chosen, and in 1960, the US started sending "advisers". The plan, which Kennedy approved, was to score an easy triumph over the Communists. This came before the major push for civil rights occurred. The Civil Rights Act was passed after JFK was assassinated in 1963. LBJ promoted it a lot more than JFK would have been able to do, based on LBJ's political vsion: "When you have them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow".

Right before MLK went to Memphis to support the sanitation workers, he was panning a major thrust against the VN War, being as it was soaking up most of the funds that he felt should have been spent on the War on Poverty.

And it was then that a penniless minor thief named James Earl Ray, using the pseudonym of Eric Starvo Galt (Galt as in the Ayn Rand novel 'Atlas Shrugged', by the way) suddenly flew to Portugal and South Africa on a bogus Canadian passport, bought himself a brand new white Mustang and shot MLK, and had about $10,000 in his account.

We are to believe that there was no conspiracy. We are to believe that the money Ray had with him and the price of his new Mustang fell out of the sky.

[Plane]

3. "Not particulary well covered is the actual mechanism that really got reform to happen"

The problem Plane, and the author points this out, is that poverty is just as bad at trapping and isolating people as were the Jim Crow laws of old.


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No way , there is no equivelent large group of disenfranchised persons , there isn't even half so much poverty.

[Cynthia]

We are to believe that there was no conspiracy. We are to believe that the money Ray had with him and the price of his new Mustang fell out of the sky.

Interesting, indeed.

I have seen interviews with one of MLK's children (name escapes me) and Ray, himself. Ray emphatically denies killing King.
Is it possible that J E Ray did not assassinate MLK, afterall? I have "heard speak" that some civil rights activists believe HE DID NOT.
curious.
I'll look it up.

[Xavier_Onassis]

I suppose that it could be possible, but then, how and why would Ray have gotten the money, the plane tickets, the fake passport and the nice white Mustang? He was not at all successful as a thief. He stole small amounts of stuff, and got caught frequently. The only ting he sort of excelled at was escaping from jails ands prisons.

KIng was not assassinated by a single disgruntled nut. I think that much is pretty obvious.

[_JS]

3. "Not particulary well covered is the actual mechanism that really got reform to happen"

The problem Plane, and the author points this out, is that poverty is just as bad at trapping and isolating people as were the Jim Crow laws of old.


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No way , there is no equivelent large group of disenfranchised persons , there isn't even half so much poverty.

Really? Evidence?

[Xavier_Onassis]

No way , there is no equivelent large group of disenfranchised persons , there isn't even half so much poverty.

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What we had in the 1960's was a large number of people living in rural poverty: subsistence farmers with malnourished kids. Skinny poor people with rickets and tapeworms.

What we have now is urban poverty. People who can't pay the rent or the electricity, living in places where they can freeze to death. Fat poor people with hypertension and diabetes.

[Plane]

No way , there is no equivelent large group of disenfranchised persons , there isn't even half so much poverty.

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What we had in the 1960's was a large number of people living in rural poverty: subsistence farmers with malnourished kids. Skinny poor people with rickets and tapeworms.

What we have now is urban poverty. People who can't pay the rent or the electricity, living in places where they can freeze to death. Fat poor people with hypertension and diabetes.

So the trap is in a diffrent place , diffrent people and diffrent reasons,it can't be the same trap can it?

[Xavier_Onassis]

So the trap is in a diffrent place , diffrent people and diffrent reasons,it can't be the same trap can it?
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The people are different, because over 40 years have passed and people have moved. The poor people of today are the children of yesterday's poor people.

I have no idea what you mean by "trap".

[Plane]

So the trap is in a diffrent place , diffrent people and diffrent reasons,it can't be the same trap can it?
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The people are different, because over 40 years have passed and people have moved. The poor people of today are the children of yesterday's poor people.

I have no idea what you mean by "trap".

JS_ said....

The problem Plane, and the author points this out, is that poverty is just as bad at trapping and isolating people as were the Jim Crow laws of old.

Jim Crow laws were opression , poverty is not necessacerily done to anyone on purpose.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Jim Crow laws were opression , poverty is not necessacerily done to anyone on purpose.

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Jim Crow laws existed because the White people that ran everything felt that Black people were created deliberately inferior to work  as servants to White people. Until fairly recently, many White people felt that slavery was the God's natural plan. There were slaves in Israel, slaves in Judea, slaves everywhere written about in the Bible. Jesus didn't try to abolish slavery, did he? and he was the Son of God.

Slavery was not abolished because of a desire for justice, it was abolished because the North defeated the South. Jim Crow was simply a capitalist version of the feudal slavery system.

Nowadays, Jim Crow is discredited, but a lot of people still believe that poverty is the result of the poor people's own making. It is possible for a poor illegitimate kid to grow up and be Jesse Jackson, it is possible for a poor  millworker's son to grow up and be John Edwards. the people who never make it out of poverty have no one but themselves to blame for being poor.

[Plane]

Jim Crow laws were oppression , poverty is not necessarily done to anyone on purpose.

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Jim Crow laws existed because the White people that ran everything felt that Black people were created deliberately inferior to work as servants to White people.

This sentiment comes as justification after the fact , the original reason was fear.

[Xavier_Onassis]

So Black people were brought to the US because the people of the South needed someone to scare them?

This does not seem very logical

[Plane]

So Black people were brought to the US because the people of the South needed someone to scare them?

This does not seem very logical

Jim crow laws do not date from the times of slavery .

The reasons slavery was first instituted were reasons related to greed .

[Xavier_Onassis]

The Jim Crow laws were passed to insure that Black people would work for very little, mostly as sharecroppers, and if they refused, as chain gang convict labor. They were not to be allowed to vote or to run any part of the government.

They date from the time that the North withdrew the Freedmen's Bureaus and the Union Army that defended it from the South. In 1872, Tilden was elected president by the Democrats, but the Southern Democrats allowed Hayes to become president with the proviso that Hayes would withdraw the Union Artmy from the unreconstructed South. The Jim Crow Laws were written and passed shortly afterward.

[Plane]

The Jim Crow laws were passed to insure that Black people would work for very little, mostly as sharecroppers, and if they refused, as chain gang convict labor. They were not to be allowed to vote or to run any part of the government.

They date from the time that the North withdrew the Freedmen's Bureaus and the Union Army that defended it from the South. In 1872, Tilden was elected president by the Democrats, but the Southern Democrats allowed Hayes to become president with the proviso that Hayes would withdraw the Union Artmy from the unreconstructed South. The Jim Crow Laws were written and passed shortly afterward.

Generally Jim Crow laws made it hard to vote or participate in government for the subjects of the opression , I think we are just disagreeing on the reason why anyone wanted them.