Every year, Martin Luther King Jr. day comes around and I hope we all take time to remember his life and legacy, remind ourselves of the power of the principles of non-violence that he followed from the example of Jesus (and Gandhi) and that we are inspired to take peaceful action ourselves as he did. I’ve written some thoughts on Dr. King’s life/legacy, what inspired his work, why he was killed and how research is showing that active pacifism is the most effective way to defeat oppressive governments here. There’s also a critical thinking exercise in the middle for people to try to answer about Dr. King and some of his critics…or critics of his successors.
THOUGHTS TO PONDER/PROVOKE/INSPIRE
- “Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves; ensure justice for those being crushed. Yes, speak up for the poor and helpless, and see that they get justice.” Prov. 31:8-9
- “Whoever gives to the poor will lack nothing, but those who close their eyes to poverty will be cursed.” Proverbs 28:27
- “Give justice to the poor and the orphan; uphold the rights of the oppressed and the destitute.” Psalm 82:3
- “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
- “Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
- “We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
- “Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
- “Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
- “Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. I am not unmindful of the fact that violence often brings about momentary results. Nations have frequently won their independence in battle. But in spite of temporary victories, violence never brings permanent peace.” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
- “We must rapidly begin to shift from a ‘thing-oriented’ society to a ‘person-oriented’ society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered…..”
- A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”
- “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?”
Everyone knows that Dr. King led the civil rights movement in the 1960s in America and a few lines from his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. But there are some very crucial things that most people, myself included, never learned in school or elsewhere about his life and highest goals. I will briefly summarize several important points that I have learned about Dr. King for those who are short on time (but I’m sure there is more to learn and feel free to add any others you know of). Then I’ll list some links for further reading and study and a documentary by James Corbett that cites very powerful evidence about the real reason he was killed (and it wasn’t just his work with the civil rights movement). Then I’ll include some more in depth details about 4 of the points for those who have more time and some highlights of the James Corbett documentary. Also in the middle there are some critical thinking questions with answers at the end.
First, there are 2 links. The first is probably the most profound anti-war speech by Dr. King or frankly anyone that I have ever heard. It explains why he firmly opposed the Vietnam war as did many others. It has some similarities to the warning that president Eisenhower gave against the evils of war and the danger of the power of militarism and the military industrial complex. This speech and Dr. King’s anti-war position was 1 huge factor in why Dr. King was killed exactly 1 year later as the documentary by James Corbett shows. It is a reason why we need to check carefully every war that happens now because many are waged for the very same reason that most wars have always been waged regardless of the public reason. That reason is greed and power since as the Bible says, all evil goes back to greed (1 Tim. 6:10), and that certainly includes war. It may be on one or both sides, but greed is almost always the major factor behind any war you look at.
Beyond Vietnam
http://www.aavw.org/special_features/speeches_speech_king01.html
The second is a short thought on how the gospel of Jesus which inspired Dr. King is the best answer to racism today (It is righteousness that makes nations great, not any one person no matter who that person is. Prov. 14:34).
https://answersingenesis.org/blogs/ken-ham/2019/01/20/gospel-is-the-answer-to-racism-mlk-jr/
A) For starters, many don’t know that a jury trial convicted the police and government at the highest levels in cooperation with the mafia of being deeply involved in Dr. King’s assassination.
www.thekingcenter.org/assassination-conspiracy-trial
B) The government was deeply involved in killing King because King was trying to unite the civil rights movement, anti-war movement and economic justice movements against the Vietnam War and that just couldn’t be tolerated by those in power.
death.
https://www.corbettreport.com/mlk/
On a side note, I was in Vietnam 3 times in 2017-8 and it’s an incredibly beautiful country with a very rich culture! While there, I listened to a number of interviews at the women’s museum in Hanoi by Vietnamese women about how they resisted invaders from France, then Communist China and then a military industrial complex that had colonizing on its mind (Franklin Roosevelt wanted Vietnam and other nations in Asia to have independence. Truman however did not as this CFR article states. The rest is history).
Regardless of whether we agree with their views exactly or not, you have to admire their bravery, perseverance and ingenuity in finding ways to keep their independence against overwhelming odds. They made truly heroic efforts to be free and determine their own future.
It is so sad that Vietnam was forced to go through war and that materialism is doing a lot of damage to it now as it has done to many countries. Dr. King would oppose the war of materialism in their culture now, just as he did the military war in the past.
But Vietnam is still very beautiful. You can see some videos of some cultural dances that I took while I was in Sapa here :
C) King’s murder is just one of many comprehensively proven conspiracies to do terrible evil by people with wealth and power, confirming the Bible’s claim that greed is the root of all evil (1 Tim. 6:10). The Bible has stories of many completely proven conspiracies, but also warns us that not everything is a conspiracy (Isaiah 8:12). People who dismiss all conspiracy theorist do not make their conclusions based on truth. The first person to use the term conspiracy theory to discredit people with solid evidence of crimes was Josef Stalin, but many now follow that same path he laid down as an expert on conspiracy theories explains (see the longer section C below). An expert on conspiracy theories has a lecture here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlvS-GrA00I
D) Many people don’t understand that the pacificism that Dr. King advocated has been confirmed by research to be the most effective path to freedom, ever. Professors like Dr. Chenoweth have analyzed protest movements for over 100 years and have found that non-violence is far more effective than any other action in terms of bringing about long term freedom. This is partly because those who commit violence to get political power, will often also use violence to keep political power once they get it. The persecutee’s/victims all too often become the persecutors. Below are some links to ways to oppose and bring down authoritarians based on what research has shown is most effective.
E) Dr. King was against wage slavery. He said for example:
“It is a crime for people to live in this rich nation and receive starvation wages”.
https://www.democracynow.org/2018/4/2/starvation_wages_are_a_crime_lessons
Also, Dr. King was arrested 30 times.
http://www.thekingcenter.org/faqs
“Capitalism forgets that life is social. And the kingdom of brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of communism nor the antithesis of capitalism, but in a higher synthesis.” –Speech to Southern Christian Leadership Conference Atlanta, Georgia, August 16, 1967.“Call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism, but there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country for all God’s children.” – Speech to the Negro American Labor Council, 1961.
“The evils of capitalism are as real as the evils of militarism and evils of racism.” –Speech to SCLC Board, March 30, 1967. “You can’t talk about solving the economic problem of the Negro without talking about billions of dollars. You can’t talk about ending the slums without first saying profit must be taken out of slums. You’re really tampering and getting on dangerous ground because you are messing with folk then. You are messing with captains of industry. Now this means that we are treading in difficult water, because it really means that we are saying that something is wrong with capitalism.” – Speech to his staff, 1966.
“[W]e are saying that something is wrong … with capitalism…. There must be better distribution of wealth and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism.” – Speech to his staff, 1966.
“If America does not use her vast resources of wealth to end poverty and make it possible for all of God’s children to have the basic necessities of life, she too will go to hell.” Speech at Bishop Charles Mason Temple of the Church of God in Christ in support of the Memphis sanitation workers’ strike on March 18th, 1968, two weeks before he was assassinated.
“I started thinking about the fact that right here in our country we spend millions of dollars every day to store surplus food. And I said to myself: ‘I know where we can store that food free of charge — in the wrinkled stomachs of the millions of God’s children in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and even in our own nation, who go to bed hungry at night.’”
G) Last, Dr. King is a wonderful hero, but an SDA pastor friend of mine, Jasper St. Bernard explains that the third Angel’s message and righteousness by faith which SDAs started teaching in 1888 was the foundation for Ellen White’s strong push for full racial equality in 1891 (Read esp. “Our duty to the Colored People” by EGW at 1891 GC conference. The sermon she gave is in the book “The Southern Work”.).
The Third Angel’s Message for my people
https://soundcloud.com/witnesstotherealist/sets/the-third-angels-message-for
Listen especially listen to the 3rd message, “1888 And 1891”
https://soundcloud.com/witnesstotherealist/3-1888-and-1891?in=witnesstotherealist/sets/the-third-angels-message-for
He shows how the very immediate and practical result of righteousness by faith is a deep understanding of the equality of all sexes, races and classes of people. Dr. Benjamin Baker and James Standish show that SDAs were strongly opposed to abolition and strongly supported equality from their beginnings in the 1860s, more than almost all other denominations, but we dropped the ball badly in the early/mid 1900s. We could have been the pioneers of the civil rights movement. We had the truth ~75 years before he preached it. But we missed our chance and others got the credit.
Jasper o also works with the adventists4socialjustice.org movement,
https://www.facebook.com/groups/282472782107504/ which I highly recommend all SDAs join and I am a part of.
We’ll look more deeply at 4 of these points below. But first a couple other things.
A CAUTION & CRITICAL THINKING QUESTION
A temptation that many have is to treat those who have died as if they are infallible and give honor to them instead of God, the source of their truth and inspiration. The Bible makes no bones about the sins of its leaders. David committed adultery. Abraham committed polygamy and so on. It’s important to be real about the mistakes of our leaders too since no human is infallible. God also always has truths beyond what any man has understood. So
“Test everything that is said. Hold on to what is good.” 1 Thess. 5:21
That includes teachers, scientists, pastors, presidents, parents and whoever.Do you know of any serious mistakes or sins that happened in Dr. King’s life or that of other leaders you admire? Also test everything that critics of Dr. King say and people in both the conservative and liberal parties say. For example, there is a video and an article by a highly intellectual black thinker, Jason Riley below. But there are some very serious errors in what he says. Can you identify them?
I like Prager University a lot in many areas, but in some political/economic areas, they make some serious mistakes. They do rightly quote Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who told a congregation in 1961.
“We know that there are many things wrong in the white world, but there are many things wrong in the black world, too. We can’t keep on blaming the white man. There are things we must do for ourselves.”But can you find anything wrong with what they/Jason Riley say in their video here?
https://www.prageru.com/videos/where-are-you-martin-luther-king
Jason Riley has written an article here on the same issue.
https://johnib.wordpress.com/2013/07/16/dr-martin-luther-king-jr-said-in-1961-do-you-know-that-negroes-are-10-percent-of-the-population-of-st-louis-and-are-responsible-for-58-of-its-crimes-weve-got-to-face-that/
Many other people, black and white have made the same arguments.What is their flaw? Some answers are at the end in the “Critical Thinking Answers” section below.
3) One of King’s greatest speeches, and one big reason for his assassination. Beyond Vietnam.
4) A powerful documentary with links to more evidence that shows why the government was convicted for complicity in Dr. King’s death.
5) Reasons why pacifism is powerful.
6) How to build an authoritarian regime — and how to stop one | Timothy Snyder
7) Authoritarian breakdown — how dictators fall | Dr. Natasha Ezrow
And a bonus, a 3 minute summary of some ideas from researchers on pacifism, such as the above.
How to Defeat Authoritarianism
Let’s fill in some details.
A) The Martin Luther King center reports on a trial that concluded that quite a number of govt. officials/organizations were deeply involved in his assassination based on overwhelming evidence. Coretta King says,
“The jury was clearly convinced by the extensive evidence that was presented during the trial that, in addition to Mr. Jowers, the conspiracy of the Mafia, local, state and federal government agencies, were deeply involved in the assassination of my husband. The jury also affirmed overwhelming evidence that identified someone else, not James Earl Ray, as the shooter, and that Mr. Ray was set up to take the blame.”
B) There is quite conclusive evidence that leading govt. officials decided to assassinate and/or allow the assassination of Martin Luther King. They were concerned when he started campaigning for civil rights. But they became livid and determined to exterminate him when he tried to unite the Civil Rights movement, the anti-war movement and the economic justice movement against the Vietnam war because he recognized like many did that it wasn’t a war for freedom at all and was in fact very dangerous to freedom. In fact, it was one year to the day after his speech condemning the Vietnam war that he was assassinated. His efforts were just too big a threat to those in power sadly.
You can listen to the Beyond Vietnam Speech here. It is one of the most eloquent and powerful speeches ever, brilliantly cutting to the core issue, that greed is the root of all evil and that greed/materialism, militarism and racism were key causes of the Vietnam war, racism and other evils in society and (and that is true of almost every war America and other countries have waged). He said something that is still true today:
“We must rapidly begin to shift from a ‘thing-oriented’ society to a ‘person-oriented’ society. When machines and computer, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered…
A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor, both black and white, through the Poverty Program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the build-up in Vietnam and I watched this program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.
Perhaps the more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them 8,000 miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in Southwest Georgia and East Harlem. And so we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. And so we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village but we realize that they would hardly live on the same block in Chicago. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor.
My third reason moves to an even deeper level of awareness, for it grows out of my experience in the ghettos of the north over the last three years, especially the last three summers.
As I have walked among the desperate, rejected and angry young men I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through non-violent action. But they asked, and rightly so, what about Vietnam? They asked if our own nation wasn’t using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today, my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.
…A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”
Read/listen to more here:
In another speech, he said:
” … And who are we supporting in Vietnam today? It’s a man by the name of general Ky [Air Vice Marshal Nguyen Cao Ky] who fought with the French against his own people, and who said on one occasion that the greatest hero of his life is Hitler. This is who we are supporting in Vietnam today. Oh, our government and the press generally won’t tell us these things, but God told me to tell you this morning. The truth must be told.”
One of the best documentaries I have seen on this issue showing that the mafia, police and government leaders at the highest level were involved is done by James Corbett and this link has the script and many links to primary and independent sources that you can check out.
Some highlights from this documentary are below and the script with links to many references is at the link above.
SIDE NOTE: I visited Vietnam 3 times while I was in China during 2017-8. It’s phenomenally beautiful. You can see some tribal dances I recorded from the CatCat village of the Black Hmong here.
Interestingly, ~20-80% of these village tribes in Vietnam are Christian. I stayed at the Joy House with some Christians and the woman told me some of their history, some of the suffering under communism, how many people became Christians because of seeing miracles or trying the principles of Christianity and finding that they helped them live better lives and solve problems better. I also visited several museums in Hanoi. The most impressive was the women’s museum in Hanoi which had an amazing audio tour including interviews with many Vietnamese women about their history/culture, life challenges they face and how they are overcoming them, and some with women who fought in various ways for their freedom to determine their own destiny against the colonizers from France, Communist China and America and somehow amazingly succeeded despite 3 million or so Vietnamese tragically dying in the process.
Of course Americans often hear about the tragedy of ~60,000 US soldiers dying in Vietnam and they should be honored for their sacrifice. But sadly, it was not for freedom. They died for the greed and power goals of the military industrial complex/control of the world and the war should never have happened. There were many off ramps where it could have been avoided as many scholars have shown. Ho Chi Minh asked multiple times for the USA to help his nation become a democracy. He even copied some of the Declaration of Independence for his nation’s constitution. Franklin Roosevelt wanted to aid countries like this in becoming free. But he was dead and Truman had no interest in that as a CFR report states. Read this link from the major United States Council on Foreign Relations (or the 2nd post with excerpts from it).
You can also watch this documentary called “The New American Century” which documents that many wars the US has fought were based on false claims. And insiders in the govt. admit this on video. For example Robert McNamara was United States Secretary of Defense and announced that Vietnam had attacked the US in the Gulf of Tonkin. But many years later he openly admitted that this was just not true as you can see in watching ~2 minutes of this documentary (I’ve put it at the right time to watch already).
C) People need to realize that people who mock evidence with the term “conspiracy theory” are victims of propaganda. This tactic of mocking evidence as a conspiracy theory was first pioneered by Joseph Stalin, the one of the worst mass murderers in history (after Mao Tse Tung and a number of corporations such as the alcohol/tobacco/military industrial corporations) and was and is a technique which is often used to absolve the worst criminals and enable them to get away with their crimes. There are true conspiracy theories which are the best conclusion of the evidence and false ones which are based on flimsy or no evidence.
There are many fully proven and true conspiracy theories all over history, since a conspiracy theory just means some people conspired to cheat, steal, commit a crime, kill or murder unjustly, esp. with government power or using media power on a large number of people but it can be done in other ways too.
There are many conspiracies listed in the Bible. Jesus crucifixion is the biggest conspiracy theory in history. 40 men conspired to kill Paul. But the Bible also says not to call everything a conspiracy (Isaiah 8:12). I included one TED talk at the end by one of the world’s best experts on conspiracy theories. The idea of trying to discredit those with evidence of criminal acts by the government by calling them conspiracy theorists started with Stalin in Russia actually…then the CIA used it (and we even have their actual memo instructing their agents to use this tactic to discredit the critics of the Warren Committee Conclusion in the assassination of JFK) and many other powerful people have used it to try to get away with a lot of crimes.
CONSPIRACY THEORIES TALK Just because it’s a conspiracy doesn’t mean it isn’t true | Matthew Dentith | TEDxChristchurch
Dr Matthew Dentith specialises in the analysis of conspiracy theories and also teaches critical thinking skills. He has an insightful and humorous talk where he explains that those who use the term “conspiracy theorist” are actually using a term and method of “thinking” pioneered by Joseph Stalin, the 2nd worst mass murderer in history, a technique which is often used to absolve the worst criminals and enable them to get away with their crimes.
6:00 Stalin, one of the greatest mass murders in history, believed that Trotsky wanted to take over the USSR. But there was no evidence. The secret police manufactured evidence, arrested people, tortured them, found them guilty in trials and executed them. Because the evidence was so shoddy, many said they were shams. To cover up their crimes and conspiracies to murder innocent people, Stalin called his critics conspiracy theorists. The US and UK governments tragically believed him and he got away with many murders sadly.
~8:00 He discusses the story of Alexander Litvenko who was assassinated by polonium-210. A textbook case of a conspiracy theory, since that grade of polonium is almost always located in tightly controlled government organizations.
~10:00 If you believe Al Queda or terrorists attacked the WTC towers on 9/11, you are a conspiracy theorist. If you think the government did it, you are also a conspiracy theorist. The real question is which conspiracy theory is most warranted by the evidence.
D) Many people don’t understand why pacificism is so effective. But professors like Dr. Chenoweth have found that non-violence is far more effective than any other action in terms of bringing about long term freedom. When there is oppression and injustice at the top levels of government, what should we do? Is violence the best solution to that or is there another way that is more effective? Sometimes the news makes things seem hopeless, and I do believe that the church has far better and more effective solutions to change the world. But here is some of what solid research says about violent activism and a couple insightful articles on how peace activism is more effective than war, both short term and crucially long term.
One important point is that people like Dr. Timothy Snyder and Dr. Chenowith and others have pointed out that dictatorships can’t survive if 5% of the population or sometimes even just 3.%% of the population. Dr. Chenoweth who has researched this extensively (see her article below), says:
“Researchers used to say that no government could survive if just 5 percent of the population rose up against it,” Chenoweth says. “Our data shows the number may be lower than that. No single campaign in that period failed after they’d achieved the active and sustained participation of just 3.5 percent of the population.” She adds, “But get this: every single campaign that exceeded that 3.5 percent point was a nonviolent one. The nonviolent campaigns were on average four times larger than the average violent campaigns.”…
“<a>Why Civil Resistance Works</a>,” co-authored by Chenoweth and Maria Stephan.
See also:
Dr. Timothy Snyder of Yale has seen quite few nations fall into dictatorship in Eastern Europe. He talks about the traits of societies in danger of falling into dictatorships and how to get oppose them in several articles, talks and a couple books. Here are a couple short ones.
Authoritarianism is making a comeback. Here’s the time-tested way to defeat it
How to Defeat Authoritarianism
How to build an authoritarian regime — and how to stop one | Timothy Snyder
Authoritarian breakdown — how dictators fall | Dr. Natasha Ezrow
Maybe the best short documentary with powerful evidence that I have seen on who killed Martin Luther King Jr. is this documentary from the Corbett report. Here are a couple excerpts.
=================================================
HIGHLIGHTS OF Episode 334 – Truth At Last: The Assassination of Martin Luther King
=================================================
After decades of investigation, Dr. Pepper has uncovered the man he believes pulled the trigger that day.
PEPPER: MLK was shot by a man called Frank Strausser. He was the best shot of the Memphis Police Department. And we know it was Strausser because he was assigned to the rifle range—the shooting range of the Memphis Police Department. And a man who was a janitor in that Police Department saw a rifle being brought in, and he was actually even shown the rifle as a “special rifle,” they called it. And Strausser was given that rifle and he practiced with it all day the day of the killing. He practiced shooting all day with it. And around about three o’clock he packed up, took the rifle, and got in a car—a car of a colleague of his who was a fireman—and drove down to the to the area of the rooming house. And this man, this witness we had, indicated very clearly that there was no doubt in his mind that he was the shooter and he was he was going to effect the assassination…
The well-publicized trial and acquittal of Ray opened the floodgates as new witnesses stepped forward with new pieces of information. One of those stepping forward was not just a witness, but an actual party to the conspiracy: Loyd Jowers.
As owner of Jim’s Grill, located across Mulberry Street from the Lorraine Motel, Jowers claimed that he had been paid $100,000 by Frank Liberto, a member of the Dixie Mafia, to arrange the hit on King. He even—according to Jim’s Grill waitress Betty Spates—had been seen running from the bushes behind the building into the kitchen, where he stowed a rifle directly after King was shot.
Jowers’ admission, which he repeated on national television, formed the basis for the next battle in the legal odyssey of Dr. King’s assassination. In 1998, the King family filed a wrongful death suit against Jowers. The trial stretched into 1999 and presented the testimony of over 70 witnesses and thousands of new pages of evidence that had never before been seen by the public.
And then, remarkably, on December 8, 1999, a jury found Jowers guilty of a plot to kill Dr. King that, they found, involved a “high-level conspiracy” that included the federal government.
PEPPER: Today a jury of 12 men and women, after hearing the proof for nearly a month, decided that there was a conspiracy to kill Martin Luther King that involved Loyd Jowers, a local man, as well as other unknown co-conspirators associated with the Memphis Police Department, the state of Tennessee, and the government of the United States. That’s what the jury actually held—that’s what they actually ruled today.
SOURCE: Martin Luther King Jr. Conspiracy Trial Verdict, 1999
One might expect that this startling finding would bleed out of the 24-hour news cycle and into the pages of the history books. But one would be wrong.
The government’s reaction was perfectly predictable. Years later, it was shown that the FBI never even investigated Loyd Jowers, the man who confessed to, and was convicted of, his role in the conspiracy to assassinate King.
Even more galling, though, has been the steadfast refusal of the media to cover any aspect of Dr. Pepper’s investigation or to hold any governmental agents or entities’ feet to the fire with regards to the assassination.
PEPPER: The media has covered up all aspects of the truth about this case and this horrific killing of this great prophet. The mainstream media has been totally controlled by the owning corporate rulers, and it has never revealed this. When we had the trial, the media was present when Coretta King took the stand or any member of the King family took the stand, Andy Young took the stand, testified. They were present for that. But then they were absent for the evidence. They walked out when it came time for the evidence under instructions. Court TV was supposed to cover the trial and they said, “This is the trial of the century. We definitely need to cover this trial.” And they didn’t at the last minute. They refused.
And it’s not only the killing of King or Kennedy or Malcolm or Robert Kennedy—and I’ve also been involved in the Robert Kennedy assassination—it’s not only those critical assassinations in the 60s, but it’s anything to do that will shake the core of credibility in the institutions and the agencies of the American government—and how they actually function. You have to remember, Carl Sulzberger gave Allen Dulles twelve slots on The New York Times back in 1959. Those twelve slots in my view have probably been rotated right to the present day. They are agents who will deal with the most sensitive matters.
I have been blacklisted by The New York Times forever. Forever. They won’t use my name—they didn’t use my name on virtually anything. I think they slipped once—one report on the trial that they had to do, they quoted a witness and the witness said, “Mr. Pepper showed us. . .” and they were quoting him. They put that in. But other than that I may be recognized as the attorney for the King family, but never named, and I am not to be named in that newspaper. And it’s as simple as that. I’ve had to live with this, as have many other progressive journalists in areas of very delicate strategic issues. They don’t want this out and they won’t allow it out. That’s the basis of corporate control over the media.
TRUTH AT LAST
KING: All we say to America is be true to what you’re saying on paper. [Applause] If I lived in China or even Russia or any totalitarian country, maybe I could understand some of these illegal injunctions. Maybe I could understand the denial of certain basic First Amendment privileges, because they haven’t committed themselves to that over there. But somewhere I read of the freedom of assembly. Somewhere I read (Yes) of the freedom of speech. (Yes) Somewhere I read (All right) of the freedom of press. (Yes) Somewhere I read (Yes) that the greatness of America is the right to protest for right. [Applause]
SOURCE: I Have Been To The Mountaintop
50 years. 50 years of investigation. 50 years of lies. 50 years of cover-up.
James Earl Ray was not a lone nut acting on the spur of the moment. He was one cog in a much larger plot, one that involved the federal government, military intelligence, local mafia and local officials. A plot that converged on one point: Memphis, April 4, 1968….
Much more in the documentary…but such a tragic loss of a great godly man and a moment in history where America could have taken a very different road to change and support real justice and principles that really make nations great…but did not. The road not taken. When will our nation ever learn to do justice consistently at the state/national/government level to all people everywhere..both inside and outside the nation…
——————————————————-
CRITICAL THINKING ANSWERS SECTION
——————————————————-
These are some of the unfortunate mistakes of Dr. King and also those of his critics above.
A) It is pretty well established fact that Dr. King did some plagiarism as a student.
B) Evidence shows that Dr. King unfortunately committed adultery while married.
C) Dr. King supported universal basic income. But that just keeps people dependent on the government as do other economic systems. He needed to follow and advocate Bible economic and health principles much more than he did.
D) He focused mostly on government actions. But there is an awful lot people can do at the individual and church level to work with God for their own freedom. Horace Greely said that you can not long enslave a truly Bible believing people. And there is much truth in that. Dr. King needed to emphasize more the Bible’s Jubilee economics and it’s health principles.
E)
ERRORS OF THE CRITICS:
F) Many of Dr. King’s critics and conservatives now claim that racism is over and is not a serious factor anymore. Most of these are well off people, both white and some black. But they are very wrong, dead wrong. There is still much racism in America, at the individual level, but the especially serious problem is racism at the institutional level.
Dr. David Williams, professor of African and African American studies at Harvard spoke at Southern Adventist University.
He has published ~450 papers. He was ranking one of top 10 most cited social scientists in 2005, most cited black scientist in social sciences worldwide.
“The House that Racism Built and its Consequences for Health”. David Williams
https://livestream.com/collegedalesdachurch/events/8305584/videos/185998211. Jan. 17, 2019.
PDF http://urbanhealth.jhu.edu/_PDFs/Williams_PPT_The_House_that_Racism_Built_4-25-16.pdf
PPT http://healthystpete.foundation/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Williams-St-Petersburg-2017.pptx
~9:00+ “Researchers have calculated how many black people die prematurely every day, who wouldn’t die if there were no black/white differences in health. It’s 220 black people die each and every day in America who wouldn’t die if there were no racial differences in health.”
13 Dr. Williams explains that socio-economic status heavily influences SATs (sometimes called the student affluence test), death rates and much more. “Low income Americans (less than $25,000/year income) have a death rate 3 times larger than those of high income Americans.” “Globally, socio-economic status in every country where we have data is the largest predictor of variations in health. It’s even a greater predictor than race.”
G) Some of the critics claim that economic injustice has widened since the time of Dr. King and that it is due to weaker leaders like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. That is not factual. The real problem is greed as it has always been, especially greed in the form of capitalism, communism and most versions of socialism. Greed causes every evil under the sun as the Bible says and science proves. And that includes racism. See some examples of this here.
http://blog.truth-is-life.org/rights/equality/
One reason why capitalism always causes prejudice and/or racism at some level is because capitalism always concentrates huge wealth in a few hands over time. The game monopoly was designed to demonstrate this fact. 1 person gets enormous amounts of wealth while everyone else gets poor or bankrupt. In a game, it’s fun. In life, it’s devastating. When a few people get super wealthy, they don’t want to be blamed or targeted for that. So those in power have learned to create prejudice and strife between races, between cultures, between religions, between sexes, between the young and old, and between any other group they can think of to divert attention from their greed. That way they can keep gaining more wealth and power by exploiting others and few will realize that they are the real problem.
This documentary shows some of the tragedies and broken families that result from the naked pursuit of profit that drives people into poverty and causes them to live in desperation and consider desperate solutions. Many lawmakers in all parties agree that there is institutional racism and injustice in America’s so called justice systems. It needs to be fixed.
Fixing the System
This article points out that many historians have linked capitalism and racism.
“The argument that capitalism was dependent on slavery is, of course, not new. In 1944, Eric Williams, in Capitalism and Slavery, made the case. In 1968, the historian Lorenzo Greene wrote that slavery “formed the basis of the economic life of New England: about it revolved, and on it depended, most of her other industries.” Even before the expansion of slave labor in the South and into the West, slavery was already an important source of northern profit, as was the already exploding slave trade in the Caribbean and South America. Banks capitalized the slave trade and insurance companies underwrote it. Covering slave voyages helped start Rhode Island’s insurance industry, while in Connecticut, some of the first policies written by Aetna were on slave lives. In turn, profits made from loans and insurance policies were plowed into other northern businesses. Fathers who “made their fortunes outfitting ships for distant voyages” left their money to sons who “built factories, chartered banks, incorporated canal and railroad enterprises, invested in government securities, and speculated in new financial instruments” and donated to build libraries, lecture halls, universities and botanical gardens.” https://www.thenation.com/article/capitalism-and-slavery/
Another article does the same:
“Derek Hyra, an American University professor and author of Race, Class and Politics in the Cappuccino City, stated that “Developers want to maximize their return. This is not a conspiracy. This is capitalism.” The suggestion inherent in his quote is that land happens to be cheap in African-American communities and if developers buy low and sell high, well that’s just capitalism in action. I wonder if Dr. Hyra and others who hold his position would refashion their thinking about capitalism if they more deeply considered its genesis in America. For example, the capitalism that drove the success of cotton and other industries was predicated on land stolen from Native Americans and the unpaid labor of African Americans. The capitalism that drives gentrification depends on a history of racism and segregation.” www.consumerhealthfdn.org/2018/05/30/racism-cannot-be-separated-from-capitalism/
We must honor Dr. King for all the incredible good he did for the world, but not be satisfied with staying where he was. We must keep moving forward with inspiration from God and if we do that with courage, “the truth shall set you free” John 8:32
