Every year on Martin Luther King Day I'm reminded that 40 years ago a guy from my hometown was approached about assassinating MLK. Well, he lived in Tennessee at the time, moved to my town later on to raise a family, but still. I remember hearing this story and it's freaky - is there anything more sinister than being approached by someone to execute someone else? Is there a more chilling word in the English language than "execution"? Anyways, I went all the way through school with this girl, and after graduation she started dating a good friend of mine, and she told him the story. When he was a young buck in Tennesssee, he was known as someone who would not mind there being fewer black people around, apparently. after mulling the offer he declined, saying that he eventually wanted to raise a family et al. A side note, the girl I'm talking about ended up finding out at the age of 23 that one her best friends since first grade was actually her sister. I love small towns!!
But really, how much of a renowned racist do you have to be to get picked for something like this? How do you become THAT famous for hating black people? And we're talking about the mountains of Tennessee; it's not like he was the author of gottstakillmesomekiggahs.blogspot.com, right? Unreal. "Oh, Frank? From Lafayette? Oh yeah, I heard of him, he's good....he's real good. Is he ready for The Show? Let's see..." Real Atticus stuff here.
Looking back, I do recall he had shotguns all throughout his house. Unnerving hittin the pisser with a .22 nestled nicely in the corner. Seemed normal at the time, I reckon....like having a girlfriend, or getting caught trying on your father's brassieres. Life, eh.
It's gotten really easy to simply slot King as some sort of mascot for the Civil rights era so that we don't really have to think too much about it, as if he's the collective white race's version of "oh, but I've got black friends!" we defensively drop in awkward social situations; it's become easy for us to forget what a real thinker he was sbout ALL human rights, not just rioting black people on page 257 of our American History books. A side recommendation, besides the Taylor Branch series mentioned on Op's Unconquerable Gladness joint (see link at top left, my linking thingee on this computer is jacked), is to read "Walking with the Wind" by John Lewis. A point player at every step of the movement, Lewis embodies the compassion and dignity that were the backbone of the non-violent doctrine. Great guy, great read. And get a copy of King's last speech, his "I see the Promised Land" one right before he died (see link below). My all time speech; the "free at last" one is great too but the optimism and gospel fervor of this one combined with knowing he was about to die, and it seeming like he KNEW he was gonna die ("Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now"), along with the venue looking like my school auditorium from kindergarten equals amazing chill moments.
http://www.mlkonline.net/promised.html
2 comments:
I'm currently reading about the Civil Rights era in James Patterson's "Grand Expectations" which I highly recommend as a great survey of American history, 1945-74. It clearly illustrates the dangers faced by protesters and what an uphill battle it was. I didn't know that the March on Washington was originally planned for 3 days, but that Bobby Kennedy, behind the scenes, got the planners to make concessions and reduce the protest to 1 day so that the Kennedy administration didn't look bad. Just goes to show that our "leaders" are often behind the times because of political considerations.
Wait, I heard the MLK story, but who was the secret sister?
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