For #MartinLutherKingDay, here's a @Space_Station photo of Atlanta, where #MLK, who inspired us to dream, was born: image via NASA @NASA, 19 January 2015
Empire State Building tonight in red, black and
green for Martin Luther King. #MLK: image via Negar Mortazavi
@NegarMortazavi, 19 January 2015
a burnt cross outside #MLK house 1960 We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools #MLKDay: image via Phil @Phillip_Thomas, 19 January 2015
#MLK was only 34 years old when he shared The Dream with 250,000 people. #MLKDay: image via Matthew Ward @HistoryNeedsYou, 19 January 2015
Martin. Joy. #ReclaimMLK: image via deray mckesson @deray, 19 January 2015
Denied access to a white hotel, MLK & Coretta spent their wedding night at a black funeral home. @ReclaimMLK: image via Tyree Boyd-Pates @TyreeBP, 19 January 2015
Via @splcenter: On #MLKDay, remember his deep & still relevant political analysis: image via Elianne Ramos @ergeekgoddess, 19 January 2015
"The time is always right to do what is right" - Martin Luther King #MLK: image via Montee Ball @ballrb28, 19 January 2015
"The quality, not the longevity, of one's life is what is important." - Martin Luther King #MLK: image via ANTONIO CROMARTIE @CRO31, 19 January 2015
Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X, Washington, D.C.: photo by Marion S. Trikosko, 26 March 1964 (U.S. News & World Report Photograph Collection, Library of Congress)
Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.; President Lyndon Johnson
in background, Washington, D.C.: photo by Yoichi Okamoto, 18 March 1966 (Lyndon Baines Johnson Library / National Archives and Records
Administration)
Birmingham, Alabama: average Negro homes: photo by Marion J. Trikosko, 14 May 1963
(U.S. News & World Report Magazine Photograph Collection, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress)
Group of African Americans viewing the bomb-damaged home of Arthur Shores, NAACP attorney, Birmingham, Alabama: photo by Marion S. Trikosko, 5 September 1963 (U.S. News & World Report Magazine Photograph Collection, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress)
Bomb-damaged trailers at the Gaston Motel, Birmingham, Alabama: the wreckage of a bomb explosion near the Gaston Motel where Martin Luther King, Jr., and leaders in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference were staying during the Birmingham campaign of the Civil Rights movement: photo by Marion J. Trikosko, 14 May 1963 (U.S. News & World Report Magazine Photograph Collection, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress)
Riot damage in D.C.: the ruins of a store in Washington, D.C., that was destroyed during the riots that followed the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.: photo by Warren K. Leffler, 16 April 1968 (U.S. News & World Report Magazine Photograph Collection, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress)
Washington D.C. riot, April '68, Aftermath: members of the D.C. National Guard patrolling streets as pedestrians walk by: photo by Warren K. Leffler, 8 April 1968 (U.S. News & World Report Magazine Photograph Collection, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress))
D.C. riot. April '68. Aftermath. A soldier standing guard on the corner of 7th & N Street NW in Washington D.C. with the ruins of buildings that were destroyed during the riots that followed the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.: photo by Warren K. Leffler, 8 April 1968 (U.S. News & World Report Magazine Photograph Collection, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress)
"Don't work" sign promoting a holiday to honor the anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., on a shop on H Street, N.W., Washington, D.C.: photo by Marion J. Trikosko, 3 April 1960 (U.S. News & World Report Magazine Photograph Collection, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress)
King was jailed 29 times over the course of his life. Even arrested for driving 30 mph in a 25 mph zone. @ReclaimMLK: image via Tyree Boyd-Pates @TyreeBP, 19 January 2015
King was jailed 29 times over the course of his life. Even arrested for driving 30 mph in a 25 mph zone. @ReclaimMLK: image via Tyree Boyd-Pates @TyreeBP, 19 January 2015
King was jailed 29 times over the course of his life. Even arrested for driving 30 mph in a 25 mph zone. @ReclaimMLK: image via Tyree Boyd-Pates @TyreeBP, 19 January 2015
The FBI memo where King was labeled "the most dangerous Negro in the future of this nation". @ReclaimMLK: image via zellie @zellieimani, 19 January 2015
Don't believe that? Here are leaked letters sent by the @FBI to MLK [in 1963] in an attempt to break him. @ReclaimMLK: image via TheAnonMessage @TheAnonMessage, 19 January 2015
"We must learn to live together as brothers or we will perish together as fools"- Martin Luther King #MLK: image via Navorro Bowman @NBowman53, 19 January 2015
"In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends." #MLK: image via Nicholas Soto @nEkoSoto, 19 January 2015
reclaimMLK demonstrators block entrances to #Oakland federal building: image via KTVU @KTVU, 16 January 2015
At takeover of #Oakland federal building happening now. #MLKSHUTITDOWN: image via Dani McCain @drmcclain, 16 January 2015
Spotted in #Oakland #Chinatown, Malcolm X and dragons. Of course: image via Timmy @timmyhlu, 16 January 2015
Outside of #Oakland PD Eastmont Station: image via Elissa Harrington @EHarringtonNews, 17 January 2014
Protesters observe MLK Day by shutting down San Mateo Freeway with giant Palestinian flag: image via Max Blumenthal #@MaxBlumenthal, 19 January 2015
Great sign from today's #MLK march: image via Elizabeth Plank @feministfabulous, 19 January 2015 Manhattan, NY
Pagans United for Justice are starting to gather for the march to #ReclaimMLK in #Oakland: image via T. Thorn Coyle @ThornCoyle, 19 January 2015
"@KQED: In #Oakland, a 5 a.m. Protest at Mayor Libby Schaaf’s House Via @KQEDNews #MLKDay": image via Oakland Grown @OaklandGrown, 19 January 2015 Oakland, CA
About 30 people protested outside the home of Oakland, California, mayor Libby Schaaf on Monday, calling on her to fire police officers with violent records: photo by Noah Berger/Reuters via The Guardian, 19 November 2015
Quotes by MLK projected onto #Oakland mayor's garage. #ReclaimMLK: image via Julia Carrie Wong @juliacarriew, 19 January 2015
“The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up.” #MLK: image via Muhammad Ali @MuhammadAli, 19 January 2015
It really has. #ReclaimMLK on #MartinLutherKingDay: image via Occupy Wall Street @OccupyWallStNYC, 19 January 2015
Another reclaimed billboard. #oakland #MLKalsoSaid: image via eli of the tiger @IraSass, 19 January 2015
5 comments:
The Commodores: Night Shift (live, 1985)
Dion Di Mucci: Abraham, Martin and John (live at Joe's Pub, 20 February 2012)
Moms Mabley: Abraham, Martin and John (live on Merv Griffin, 1969)
I well remember the riots in D.C., and how much was lost. Some neighborhoods never recovered. The only other time I can recall troops on the streets was just after 9/11.
We have yet to see emerge a leader like MLK Jr., who can talk about a dream of a future without being cynical.
Maureen,
Thanks so much for the memories, which made us here feel maybe not quite so ancient, as others do share these memories of that convulsive time in this country. Perhaps Martin Luther King's heroic work in so vividly demonstrating to the nation and the world that, as the slogan now has it, Black Lives Matter, makes it possible now for those who wish to do so to compartmentalize or categorize his monumental work as a "single issue" thing; that is, about Civil Rights, solely. But as we recall, in the midst of that terrible war in Southeast Asia, his voice rang out strong and clear against that war, and was heard by everyone. No politician addressed that war with such clarity and courage. King had by his tireless efforts and great strength of character earned the respect of people of conscience, of every colour, across the land. As we now know, there were active government plots to have him killed, then, and of course he could not but be aware of that. The threats were continuous; I've posted one of the chilling FBI missives, plainly intended to cause him to commit suicide. Racist crackers had already (in 1963) firebombed his brother's house in Birmingham. His name was at the top of more than one hit list.... the FBI, the KKK. He knew it was merely a matter of time for him. Yet he went on with the work. His voice carried then an authority of principle that no politician's rhetoric could possibly have matched. It was impossible to hear that voice and not be moved to action of some kind.
The shock of the full meaning of the Tet offensive of the end of January '68 -- that is, the news that that war was not only not being "won" after all, but, in fact, had been lost from the first -- was still just sinking in with a benumbed nation some six weeks later. My new bride and I were in New York, effectively without a home, far from where we'd come from. While we'd been out purchasing a marriage license in NYC my squalid LES apartment had been ransacked by the watchful junkies downstairs; what personal belongings my wife still possessed, after a few years of moving around the world, were gone; I owned nothing worth taking in any case; in this state we set out on a cross country junket; in Ohio we were in a terrific car crash, with bad injuries; the trip became quite arduous. While en route we'd seen an exhausted LBJ announce to a surprised populace he would not run for election. Crossing the bridge out of NYC we'd heard on the radio that King had been shot and killed. Riots were erupting in virtually every northern city with a significant black population. It seemed the assassination of King had been the spark that was going to ignite the whole tinderbox. By the time we finally reached California, there was open civil strife, undeclared warfare in Oakland between police and Black Panthers, one of whom, a 16 year old boy, Bobby Hutton, had been shot and killed.
A month or so after that, Bobby Kennedy, who'd declared himself a candidate for the presidency, was shot and killed.
I thought Dion's beautiful, heartbreaking song, written at that time, encapsulated something of the collective grief of that moment . And I suppose maybe I still do think that now.
Thanks, Tom. Moms got me to weeping here, remembering 1968 and what a powerful and terrible time that was.Good for my fellow Bronxite Dion for the song, which I was dismissive of back then, but whose simple and honest emotion I hear very clearly now.
Thank you, Terry. What is it about us ancient Irishmen? I too wept my way through Dion and Moms Mabley.
Dion, the skills, the reality, early and late.
Actually I go back and forth with myself on the minor question of whether Moms herself might not have been getting a wee bit teary eyed there, that night, on the Merv show (or maybe I ought to say just just "rheumy eyed", we know about that too). It's the "my little Bobby" bit, that moment of wavering, right in the middle of the showbiz.
Or maybe by that time it was all both always and never for the showbiz with Moms.
(BTW, love the way she grabs that one last drag on the smoke just before going on...)
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