The Martin Luther King Jr. whose birth we observed yesterday is not the man who really walked this earth, but the myth our society has carved for itself.
This tends to happen with most historical figures, and even many contemporary figures as well. Unable to dedicate the time to study these men and women in-depth, we only learn a few basic facts early on in life as we are exposed to the same iconic images and stories.
In King's case, there are many passionately held beliefs that have been suppressed because even today, more than thirty years later, they are deeply controversial.
Most Americans know King's "I Have a Dream" speech, but how many are familiar with his "Beyond Vietnam" speech, delivered April 4, 1967 -- a year before his assassination?
In this speech, he delivers a devastating attack against our government and its foreign policy: "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."
Wow. That sounds like the kind of thing that we loony, left-wing, America-hating traitors might say.
King also addressed our history with Vietnam in depth. "For nine years following 1945, we denied the people of Vietnam the right of independence. For nine years, we vigorously supported the French in their abortive effort to recolonize Vietnam. Before the end of the war we were meeting 80 percent of the French war costs. Even before the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu, they began to despair of their reckless action, but we did not. We encouraged them, with our huge financial and military supplies, to continue the war even after they had lost the will. Soon we would be paying almost the full costs of this tragic attempt at recolonization," he said.
Speaking of the poor Vietnamese peasants, he said, "They wander into the hospitals with at least 20 casualties from American firepower for one Vietcong-inflicted injury. So far we may have killed a million of them, mostly children."
He even goes as far as making the Nazi comparison: "What do they think as we test out our latest weapons on them, just as the Germans tested out new medicine and new tortures in the concentration camps of Europe?"
This is the man for whom you got Monday off.
So many of his words continue to be frighteningly applicable today as though little has changed: "Let us not join those who shout war and, through their misguided passions, urge the United States to relinquish its participation in the United Nations."
King was hated by many people while he was alive. Even his own government wire-tapped his phones and blackmailed him to try to get him to shut up. If he were still alive today, he would be hated even more -- for reasons having little to do with racism and civil rights.
King's "Poor People's Campaign" was not approved of in 1968, and it would not be today. And if you thought the protests against the war in Iraq were big, just imagine the civil disobedience that King would have led.
I urge everyone to honor King by reading his "Beyond Vietnam" speech. It's available online at http://www.africanamericans.com/MLKjrBeyondVietnam.htm.
Write to David at
swimminginbrokenglass@gmail.com
visit http://www.bsu.edu/web/dmswindle
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