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… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

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Reader Interactions

17Comments

  1. 1.

    gypsy howell

    If you don’t tear up a little when listening to this, you are not human.

    And if you spend the next 40+ years doing everything in your power to make sure King’s dream doesn’t come true, you must be a Republican!

    snark aside, thanks for playing this. One of the greatest speeches in American history. Maybe one of the greatest speeches in all history.

  2. 2.

    gypsy howell

    I should have said ‘SNIDE comment aside’. “Snark’ might suggest I didn’t mean it.

  4. 4.

    montysano

    I live in north Alabama, and last year my family and I went to Selma for the 40th anniversary of the Voting Rights March. In an age where true progressivism is either ignored or sneered at, it was a true revelation to be among people for whom it is a real, ongoing process.

    We got to see a former president, potential presidents, and real American heroes. We got to hear Rev. Joseph Lowery speak, which sent a jolt of electricity through the crowd (Obama had to follow him, poor bastard).

    Every year in March they walk across that bridge. We plan to go back. Highly recommended for anyone in the neighborhood.

  7. 7.

    Michael D.

    Thank you for posting that today Michael.

    You’re welcome. But you know something? That’s the first time I’ve ever heard the WHOLE speech. I always heard the truncated version. And this time, I really did get sentimental about it all. I was reading the other day (for the first time) about MLKs assassination. I don’t understand how people act. I just don’t.

  9. 9.

    Michael D.

    Wow, Michael; this is painful, powerful stuff.

    You realize how far we’ve come. But at the same time, you realize how far we have to go. By the way, I don’t find it painful. I find it uplifting. I loved hearing this speech in its entirety.

  10. 10.

    Tara the anti-social social worker

    It’s astonishing to remember how much hate was directed at him while he was alive. Racist derision, crazy accusations (just imagine if they’d had chain emails back then). All those petty haters are forgotten by history, while King is remembered as the best that America can be.

  11. 11.

    Brachiator

    I kinda like King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jai.” It is a stirring reminder of how far we have come, and still resonates with respect to obstacles that we currently face. It is also interesting to note that it is primarily a rebuke to moderates and supposed allies, not just outright racists. It challenged people to get beyond their comfort zones. A few tidbits:

    While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling my present activities “unwise and untimely.”

    [Hmm. Isn’t there always someone claiming that somebody “is not ready?”]

    I think I should indicate why I am here In Birmingham, since you have been influenced by the view which argues against “outsiders coming in.”

    [Hmm. Compare Huckabee recently, “You don’t like people from outside the state coming in and telling you what to do with your flag,”]

    But more basically, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here.

    One of the basic points in your statement is that the action that I and my associates have taken .in Birmingham is untimely. Some have asked: “Why didn’t you give the new city administration time to act?” The only answer that I can give to this query is that the new Birmingham administration must be prodded about as much as the outgoing one, before it will act.

    [Hmm. It’s not just about a president doing the right thing from Day One.]

    We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct-action campaign that was “well timed” in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word “Wait!” It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This “Wait” has almost always meant ‘Never.” We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.” …

    [Hmm. This could also be applied to some current issues, such as gay rights. Neither oppression nor the call to justice can be ghetto-ized, or limited by history or circumstance]

    I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.”

    Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

    The full letter here:

    LETTER FROM BIRMINGHAM JAIL

  12. 12.

    Jake

    I’ll tell you what will make me tear up: If I hear George Wanker Bush mumbling and mispronouncing his way through some half-assed platitudes about Dr. King. Watching Al Sharpton and the rest of the parade of poseurs trying to fill his shoes just makes me throw up a little.

    Thanks for posting the entire speech, I know a lot of people haven’t heard the whole thing. And yeah, read the Letter from Birmingham Jail. This version seems to be more complete/have fewer typos.

  14. 14.

    carol h

    Sure, it makes you tear up, unless you’re a republican. I was a teen ager when Dr. gave his speach and he was no hero in my republican house. To my parents he was an object of derision, not admiration. My dad saw him in an airport once and instead of being excited was repelled. Fortunately when I went to college I listened to other points of view became the liberal I am today. My dad at age 86 is still a racist republican. He is a relic of this country’s bitter racial history.

  15. 15.

    Cain

    One thing I thought was that there was a nobility in the movement in those days it seems like to me. Although I wasn’t alive then, but I used to eat up the books about it. Black leadership just doesn’t seem to measure up. They have leaders like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton who can’t touch King.

    Sometimes I wonder what went wrong? What happened to that nobility that I perceived?

    cain

  16. 16.

    horatius

    Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

    That describes Nancy, Harry and the rest of the spineless democrats to a T. It’s just that a sand-negro’s life is worth so much less than a negro’s. If we had an MLK in this day and age, the Iraq war would never have happened.

  17. 17.

    YellowJournalism

    Too bad my elementary school bastardized this and trivialized it for me at a young age by making us play the xylophone in time to a sung version of the line “I have a dream.” We hit one note for every word, then hit a really high note immediately after, singing “Martin Luther King!” really fast. It didn’t help that I couldn’t stand the woman who taught the music class. She was one of those people who thought highly of her own voice and that the louder she sang, the better she sounded. One of the saddest sights in the world is watching a 50+ woman try to drown out a class of second graders by singing MLK’s name at the top of her lungs.

    Great, now I have that tune in my head.

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