WAIT, WHAT?!

CIA releases documents showing past surveillance of Latino civil rights groups,

MLK Jr.

CIA NOT ALLOWED TO DO DOMESTIC SPYING

Kanishka Singh
Mon, January 6, 2025 

CIA's secret museum adds new spy exhibits in Virginia

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The CIA has released documents showing it monitored Latino activists who had supported late civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. and who opposed police brutality and the Vietnam War.

The files were reported first by Axios on Monday, posted on the CIA's website and ranged from 1968 to 1983.

WHY IT'S IMPORTANT

Surveillance by U.S. agencies has a long history, with historians and rights advocates having condemned its sweeping and abusive nature in periods like the Vietnam war, the civil rights movement, as well as the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The latest documents were requested by Democratic U.S. Representatives Joaquin Castro and Jimmy Gomez on CIA's Operation Chaos, which was a domestic espionage program that targeted American citizens and voices of dissent.

CONTEXT

The documents released by the CIA showed that the work of activists like Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzales and farmworker union leader Cesar Chavez was viewed by the agency as a threat and with suspicion. They also showed that the movements of those leaders were tracked.

The documents also revealed surveillance of Mexican American students in universities in that period.

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by Aurora Ellis)

ORIGINALLY A REPUBLICAN DECLARED FEDERAL HOLIDAY

When is Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2025? Everything to know about the federal holiday

Grace Tucker and Haadiza Ogwude, Cincinnati Enquirer
Mon, January 6, 2025 

Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the federal holiday honoring the life and birthday of an icon of America's civil rights movement, is this month.

The holiday, observed annually on the third Monday of January, falls on Jan. 20 this year.

Here's everything to know about Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2025, including why we celebrate it.

What day is MLK Day 2025?

Martin Luther King Jr. Day is observed annually on the third Monday of January. This year, it takes place on Monday, Jan. 20.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day is observed annually on the third Monday of January.

When was Martin Luther King Jr. born?

King, a civil rights icon, was born in Atlanta, Georgia, on Jan. 15, 1929.

Is MLK Day always on a Monday?

Yes, the holiday is observed each year on the third Monday of January due to the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, which former President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law in 1968. The law moved several federal holidays, including Memorial Day, Labor Day and Washington's Birthday, to Mondays to create long weekends for federal employees.

Even though King's birthday is Jan. 15, the holiday is commemorated on Monday like the other holidays under the Uniform Monday Holiday Act.

When did Martin Luther King Jr. Day become a federal holiday?

Ceremonies commemorating King's birthday and legacy have been held since his assassination in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968. However, the road to naming a federal holiday in his honor was a long one.

It wasn't until nearly 20 years after his assassination that Martin Luther King Jr. Day became federally recognized in 1983, when President Ronald Reagan signed it into law.

 The holiday was observed for the first time three years later, in 1986, and celebrated in every state by 2000.

Efforts from King's widow, Coretta Scott King, lawmakers, activists and others helped bring the holiday to fruition, USA TODAY reports. Stevie Wonder also played a role in the law's passage, writing about the importance of recognizing King's legacy in his 1980 song "Happy Birthday."

"I just never understood / How a man who died for good / Could not have a day that would / Be set aside for his recognition," Wonder wrote.

Why and how do we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day?

The federal holiday honors the life and legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a civil rights leader who dedicated his life to speaking out against injustice, inequality, poverty and war. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, the holiday is usually celebrated with marches, parades, speeches by civil rights leaders and politicians, volunteering and special programming at museums and other cultural institutions nationwide.

Each year, Cincinnati's National Underground Railroad Freedom Center hosts a King Legacy Celebration on the holiday, featuring a keynote speaker and musical performances. The MLK Coalition is also hosting its 50th anniversary Freedom March this year with the theme “Jubilee for MLK’s Beloved Community" inspired by King's 1960 Freedom Jubilee speech.

MLK Day is the only federal holiday that is "designated as a national day of service to encourage all Americans to volunteer and improve their communities," per the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Who killed Martin Luther King Jr.?

According to the National Archives, James Earl Ray, a 40-year-old convicted armed robber who escaped from the Missouri State Penitentiary, pleaded guilty on March 10, 1969, to shooting King nearly a year prior on April 4, 1968.

King was shot and wounded on the second-floor balcony outside his room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. He was pronounced dead at St. Joseph Hospital later that day.

Ray was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to 99 years at the state prison. In 1998, he died at the age of 70 from kidney disease and liver failure after serving 29 years in prison.

The owner of an iconic DC restaurant who donated free food to Black Lives Matter protesters did the same 57 years ago for the March on Washington

Anneta Konstantinides

Virginia Ali has owned Ben's Chili Bowl for more than 60 years, feeding protesters from boththe March on Washington and the Black Lives Matter movement. Ben's Chili Bowl/BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via  Getty Images

From the March on Washington in 1963 to the Black Lives Matter demonstrations in 2020, Virginia Ali has been there to feed protesters. 

Ali and her husband Ben opened Ben's Chili Bowl on U Street — then known as "Black Broadway" — in 1958. 

The restaurant is now considered a landmark in DC's dining scene, famous for its half-smoke covered in the family's secret homemade chili sauce. 

Ali spoke with Insider about her restaurant's incredible legacy, what she talked about with Martin Luther King Jr., and why she has so much hope in the Black Lives Matter movement.

Virginia Ali has witnessed the course of history — both the flames of great change, and the dheartening tolerance of the status quo — through a big window at the front of Ben's Chili Bowl.is 

Ali was 24 when she and her husband Ben, yes the Ben, opened their restaurant on U Street in Washington, DC, when the city was still segregated and the neighborhood was known as "Black Broadway."

She was 29 on that historic day in August 1963, when she and Ben fed some of the hundreds of thousands of people who streamed into the city for the March on Washington and heard Martin Luther King Jr. tell the world about his dream.

Now, on the cusp of turning 87, Ali is feeding Black Lives Matter protesters who are fighting the same fight for civil rights that she has witnessed her entire life.

"It would certainly be nice to have them before I leave this earth," she told Insider. "And I'm old."

Ali spoke with Insider about her restaurant's incredible legacy, what she talked about with MLK, and why she has so much hope in the Black Lives Matter movement.

Virginia Ali left her hometown in Virginia and came to Washington, DC — which was still segregated — in 1952.

Ben and Virginia Ali on their wedding day in 1958. Ben's Chili Bowl/Instagram

It was there that she met and fell in love with Ben, who immigrated to the US from Trinidad and attended Howard University.

Shortly after they tied the knot in 1958, the newlyweds converted a former silent movie theater into their own "little restaurant" on U Street. It cost them $5,000.

"We wanted to be self-employed," Ali told Insider. "We decided on chili dogs because there were a lot of hamburger places already around."

From the cabinet maker to the electrician, the couple hired local African-American businesses to help build their restaurant.

Ben's Chili Bowl during its early days. Ben's Chili Bowl

"It was very new and modern-looking at the time," Ali recalled with a laugh. "Definitely colorful."
"And we had a big glass window in the front, you could see through the whole thing. It was a new and exciting place."
Ben's Chili Bowl became well-known (and loved) for its half-smoke, now considered a signature DC dish.

The iconic half-smoke, accompanied by potato chips, at Ben's Chili Bowl. Astrid Riecken For The Washington Post via Getty Images )

Tucked inside a warm steamed bun with mustard and onions, the half-smoke is topped with a generous heap of Ben's spicy homemade chili sauce — still a secret family recipe.

"Sober up with a chili dog," the restaurant's slogan used to read.

Just two blocks up from Ben's Chili Bowl was Martin Luther King Jr.'s satellite office.
Martin Luther King Jr. during CBS' "Washington Conversation" program in DC on May 20, 1962. CBS via Getty Images

"Whenever he was in town, he'd make his way to the Chili Bowl," Ali said. "I had the opportunity to sit with him and listen to his dreams and hopes, what he was going to do and accomplish."


Before they watched MLK speak during the March on Washington in 1963, Ali and her husband were handing out sandwiches to protesters as they streamed into the city.

Ali on the front grill in the early days of Ben's Chili Bowl. Ben's Chili Bowl

"It was an ecstatic day," Ali said. "Filled with hope and pride because so many people came from all walks of life. Thousands of people were there, and Dr. King delivered that amazing 'I Have a Dream' speech."

"It was just a glorious day, that's how I remember it," she added. "A history-making day, a very peaceful day of demonstration and love and hope."

Less than five years later, MLK was assassinated in Memphis on April 4, 1964. The mayor of DC put the city under curfew as days of protests began.

Flames engulf a building during the DC riots in 1968. Wally McNamee/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images
"I remember that evening so vividly," Ali said, speaking of the day MLK died. "When someone rushed through the front door at Ben's Chili Bowl and said, 'Dr. King has been shot.' Then we found someone with a transistor radio and heard, 'He's no longer with us.'"

"People were crying, we're all in tears. That sadness turned to frustration, the frustration turned into anger, and that rising began."

In the days following MLK's assassination, referred to as the Holy Week Uprisings, there were protests in cities across the US. The nation's capital saw days of unrest that led to 13 deaths, according to a 2018 Washington Post article, which noted that MLK's "assassination ignited an explosion of rioting, looting and burning that stunned Washington and would leave many neighborhoods in ruins for 30 years."

Civil rights leader Stokely Carmichael obtained special permission to keep Ben's Chili Bowl open after curfew to provide food and shelter. The restaurant kept its usual business hours, staying open until 3 a.m. during the week and 4 a.m. on the weekend.

"You could see the fire across the street, glass windows shattering, buildings burning, tear gas all over the place," Ali said. "It lasted for three nights. When that period was over, we noticed that a lot of the businesses didn't reopen."

In 1988, Ben's Chili Bowl was hit by another challenge. The city dug up the entire street in front of the restaurant and began building a new Metro station.

The city of DC dug up the entire street in front of Ben's to build a new Metro station in 1988. Ben's Chili Bowl
"That was very, very hard," Ali said. "But I did make them have signs made, metal signs that said, 'This way to Ben's.' And I went down blocks and blocks and directed traffic to come to the one-way street behind us. If there happened to be three cars, they'd have to wait until everyone was served."

"We managed to hold on and hang in there and survive," she added. "In 1990, the subway opened and I had a banner across the building that said, 'We survived Metro.' The new businesses began to roll in."

In the last three decades, Ali has witnessed the revitalization of U Street, celebrated the restaurant's 60th anniversary, and served President Barack Obama.

Obama orders his lunch at Ben's Chili Bowl restaurant on January 10, 2009. MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images

Ben's Chili Bowl was one of the first establishments that Obama visited when he moved to DC two weeks before his inauguration.

"You don't get a warning or anything," Ali said. "The next thing you know, someone looks up and the Secret Service is there and he opens the door and here he comes!"

"He was escorted in by our mayor at the time and it was just, it was a dream come true to have him there," she added. "At my age, we certainly had no idea we'd see an African American become president of the United States of America."
As Obama was sworn in on his first Inauguration Day in 2009, the line was out the door to get into Ben's Chili Bowl. Many waited for up to three hours.

A line stretches around the corner at Ben's Chili Bowl on the day of Obama's inauguration as the 44th president of the United States on January 20, 2009. Mario Tama/Getty Images

"Many people had read that his first outing in Washington, DC, had been at Ben's Chili Bowl, so can you imagine how many people wanted to come to Ben's because of that?" Ali said. "There was a line out there all day long on that cold January day."

Ben died in October 2009 from natural causes. The couple's three sons now run the restaurant.

Ben and Virginia Ali. The Washington Post/Michael Williamson/Getty Images
"I'm not in the day to day things at my age," Ali said. "I have three wonderful sons that surprised us by becoming part of the business, and their wives as well. They do the hard work now. Restaurant work is truly hard work now."

While Ali is no longer at Ben's Chili Bowl every day, she is still very much involved. This month she joined her family's efforts to feed hundreds of Black Lives Matter protesters, just as she did with Ben over 50 years ago.

An image of George Floyd is seen at Ben's Chili Bowl as a customer leaves during the COVID-19 outbreak on June 15, 2020. BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images

Ali and her family have prepared and handed out hundreds of sandwiches, chili dogs, and burgers for protesters during the demonstrations in DC.

"I'm very proud of what we're seeing today in terms of protesting," she said. "I find it rather disheartening to know that they had to come back and do this again all these many years later, and fight for the same basic human rights laws that we fought for in the '60s. But I'm proud of the fact that they're doing it, and doing it well."

Ali and her family have also been donating as much food as they can to frontline workers, even as Ben's Chili Bowl faces new businesses challenges due to the pandemic.

Ali with her sons and daughters-in-law. Ben's Chili Bowl

"The pandemic has certainly affected our business severely, as it has all businesses in our community," Ali said.

But an outpouring of donations from locals and fans has allowed Ben's Chili Bowl to keep giving back to the community that it loves so much.

"Our Ben's Chili Bowl community has been tremendous, and I'm so grateful to them for that," Ali said. "We've got donations to help us and whatever we get, we turn into feeding the community and the local hospitals."

As with the many obstacles that Ben's Chili Bowl has faced in its 62 years, Ali said she knows it will survive the pandemic as well.

Ali sits near photos of her and Ben at their restaurant during the COVID-19 outbreak on June 15, 2020. BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images
"This too shall pass," she said. "I'm the optimist."

And when it comes to the challenges of American society, Ali has hope that the next generation will bring change.

Ali told Insider she has hope in the next generation. Ben's Chili Bowl/Instagram
"Today we have the young people just coming out based on their own hearts, to protest for the basic human rights laws that we fought for, without that strong leadership of Dr. King that we had back then," Ali said. "And I just think that's tremendous. They're diverse — people from all walks of life, backgrounds, races. And not only is it in Washington, it's in every city in this country and all over the world."

"That's amazing to me, and that certainly has to speak to hope," she added. "And I encourage them to keep the pressure on and not give up."

"Because we need basic systemic human right laws — and we need them now."

‘Embarrassingly incompetent’: NAACP official scolds Kellyanne Conway who can’t explain Trump’s diss of MLK Day

 January 20, 2020 By David Edwards


Sherrilyn Ifill, who serves as president of the NAACP Defense Fund, on Monday lashed out at presidential adviser Kellyanne Conway after she could not explain what President Donald Trump was doing to mark Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

“He’s preparing for Davos,” Conway said in a Monday morning interview, “and agrees with many of the things that Dr. Martin Luther King stood for and agreed with for many years, including unity.”

“What an embarrassingly incompetent answer,” Ifill later told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell. “There’s is no answer that she can give that would be acceptable because he’s doing nothing to commemorate MLK Day, and frankly, it would be hypocritical if he tried to do that.”


“Just in the last week, the tweets that he’s put up, knowing that [the pro-gun rally in Virginia] was coming today, knowing that the governor of Virginia had declared a state of emergency today because of credible threats of violence given what happened in 2017 in Charlottesville,” she continued. “We’ve now reset what the president is supposed to do. He’s not supposed to call for calm and peace.

“He just gets to tweet whatever he wants,” Ifill pointed out. “He’s not doing anything to commemorate MLK Day and that’s why it’s important that we do that work. We don’t need Mr. Trump to lead us in knowing what to do around equality and justice.”

Watch the video below from MSNBC.

Trump likens himself to Martin Luther King Jr while boasting about low black unemployment

Kellyanne Conway claims civil rights leader would not support impeachment

Alex Woodward New York Tuesday 21 January 2020 

Donald Trump has linked his achievements on the anniversary of being sworn in as president with Martin Luther King Jr‘s birthday, as the he boasted of low unemployment among black Americans.

On Twitter, the US president wrote: “It was exactly three years ago today, January 20, 2017, that I was sworn into office. So appropriate that today is also MLK jr DAY. African-American Unemployment is the LOWEST in the history of our Country, by far. Also, best Poverty, Youth, and Employment numbers, ever. Great!”

Asked how Mr Trump is celebrating this year’s nationwide memorial recognising the murdered civil rights leader, White House adviser Kellyanne Conway said the president “agrees with many of the things” Dr King stood for, including “unity and equality”.

Then she pivoted to the president’s upcoming impeachment trial in the Senate, saying: ”He’s not the one trying to tear the country apart.”

Ms Conway said Dr King’s “vision” did not include “Americans dragged through the process where the president is not going to be removed from office”.

The adminisrion listed no public events celebrating Dr King on Monday. The president issued a proclamation on 17 January in advance of the federal holiday, writing that the administration “works each day to ensure that all Americans have every opportunity to realise a better life for themselves and their families regardless of race, class, gender, or any other barriers that have arbitrarily stood in their way”.

Mr Trump and Mike Pence, the vice president, did visit Dr King’s memorial marker in Washington DC. This year, his campaign’s Twitter account posted a photograph showing Mr Trump walking through the memorial – a photo taken at last year’s wreath-laying ceremony – to “honour the life” of Dr King, but it did not disclose that the image was from last year.

His campaign account also juxtaposed images of Dr King with footage of the president appearing with black Americans as part of a fundraising video.

Mr Trump largely spent the day in Washington in 2019 because of a government shutdown that effectively grounded the first family. In 2018, he was in Palm Beach, Florida. He spent this weekend in Florida and Texas, where he addressed the American Farm Bureau Federation.

Ms Conway said she spent the morning “reading some of the lesser-known passages by Dr King” and said that she appreciates that “we as a nation respect him by giving him his own day”.

This morning, the White House issued a message on Twitter, saying the president will “pause to honour the incredible life and accomplishments” of Dr King, who was assassinated on 4 April 1968 at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, where he was addressing striking sanitation workers amid preparations for a Poor People’s Campaign.

Minutes later, the president wrote his support for a “Lobby Day” rally in which thousands of gun rights activists – including far-right militia members – gathered in Virginia to protest gun control legislation in the state.

The president accused Democrats of “working hard to take away” Second Amendment rights. “This is just the beginning. Don’t let it happen, VOTE REPUBLICAN in 2020!”

   Martin Luther King's daughter calls out  Kellyanne Conway for saying her father would oppose Trump's impeachment

The youngest daughter of Martin Luther King Jr has condemned Kellyanne Conway after she claimed that the impeachment of Donald Trump would have been against King's values. 

Speaking to NBC News on Martin Luther King Day, Conway was asked what the president is doing to commemorate the day. In reply, she said:

I can tell you that the president is preparing for Davos and agrees with many of the things that Dr King stood for including unity and equality and he's not the one trying to tear the country apart through an impeachment process and lack of substance which is really very shameful at this point. 

I've held my opinion on it for a very long time but when you see the articles of impeachment that came out, I don't think it was within Dr King's vision to have Americans dragged through a process where the president is not going to be removed from office, is not going to be charged with bribery, extortion or high crimes and misdemeanours.

Conway's egregious and completely baseless comments on King's values sparked a strong reply from Bernice King, who is now the CEO of the King Centre in Atlanta, Georgia. 

The 56-year-old quote retweeted the above video, asking Conway and the Trump administration to refrain from using King's name to somehow justify their own issues. 

Unfortunately, Conway wasn't the only Trump loyalist to invoke King's name on Monday, as a way of almost trying to prove that nothing they have ever said could be interpreted as bigoted. 

Jeff Sessions, a former senator for Alabama and member of the Trump administration tweeted a King quote that said:

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

Journalist Britanny Packnett Cunningham then quote retweeted Sessions with a quote from Coretta Scott King, Martin Luther King Jr's wife, where she strongly criticised the appointment of Sessions to government. 

As an almost perfect tonic to this level of hypocrisy from modern-day Republicans, Bernice King delivered a speech complaining that due to the resurgence in racism and white supremacism, a day to celebrate the legacy of her father "is not enough."

Watch more
The story behind Martin Luther King Jr Day

 MLK’s ‘I Have A Dream’ speech


SEE  https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=MLK

SEE  https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=MLKDAY

Martin Luther King: A Revolutionary, Not A Saint

Michael K. Smith

 January 22, 2026

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Photo by Unseen Histories

“When I say poor, I don’t just mean black people.”

–Martin Luther King Jr.

“The true enemy is war itself.”

–Martin Luther King Jr.

For thirteen years he lived and worked with the knowledge that a violent death awaited him, that it might come at any moment from a knife thrust out of a crowd, a sudden gunshot, a bomb tearing him to pieces. His wife was plagued with nightmares about it.

Reminders were frequent: a shotgun blast through his front door, the bombing of his home, a dozen sticks of dynamite found smoldering on his porch, a razor-sharp Japanese letter-opener plunged into his chest by a crazy woman, and, of course, the regular late-night phone threats that began with, “Nigger . . . .”

Prayer and a deep Christian faith dissipated his paralyzing fear, giving him the strength to act. His eloquence, soaring idealism, and amazing composure under relentless pressure inspired millions to act with him, leading to the fall of Jim Crow, and contributing to the collapse of public support for the Vietnam War, the most criminal military intervention in U.S. history.

Unfortunately, the public image of Dr. King handed down to us by our mind-managers bears only the faintest resemblance to the impassioned rebel he was in real life. These days Dr. King tends to be remembered as a reformist, African-American preacher who went to college to better himself, believed in God and his fellow man, and won a Nobel Prize for Peace, along with the admiration of both whites and blacks for his decency and non-violent reminders of the nation’s essential goodness. Lost completely are his feverish intensity, tactical brilliance, and anguished incomprehension of a society permeated by racism, exploitation, and deceit.

From the very beginning King was a political radical whose aspirations went far beyond reform, a Christian revolutionary who dedicated himself to creating a culture of social justice that would give substance to the freedom and equality the U.S. political system merely talked about. He opposed in principle “systems of oppression” like colonialism, imperialism, and segregation, and denounced capitalism for being “predicated on exploitation.” He saw racism not as a feudal anachronism of the Old South, but as anational problem implicating all Americans. He found all those isms incompatible with “the natural goodness of man and the natural power of human reason.”

Though he had gone to school in the North and only with reluctance returned to the South, he was never naive about the informal apartheid that characterized life above the Mason-Dixon line. (No one had wanted to rent to him during his student years in Boston.) As a pastor, he regularly traveled to the North years before the ghetto rebellions of the 1960s, plugging into activist structures pushing back against racist exclusion and police brutality.

One such visit was to Los Angeles in the wake of the police killing of Ron Stokes outside a Muslim mosque in 1962 (an event usually associated only with Malcolm X), where King supported locals calling for the ousting of openly racist Police Chief William Parker,* expressed zero tolerance for police brutality, and talked of the need to build black power, by which he meant blacks organizing themselves into a force for real democracy.

The year after the Stokes killing he visited Los Angeles multiple times to protest segregation, and did so again right before the Watts rebellion (1965), when he declared that Los Angeles schools were as segregated as those in Birmingham. In all, he made more than fifteen visits to the area prior to the black uprising, and followed up with another visit in the wake of that event, calling for a Civilian Complaint and Review Board to deal with police brutality, which proposal was angrily shot down by Mayor Sam Yorty, whose racial instincts weren’t all that different from Bull Connor’s.

King understood that blacks being manhandled by police was related to their being corralled into ghettos. Thus, he was deeply critical of California’s Proposition 14, passed in 1964 (supported by 75% of whites), which he called the “vote for ghettos” initiative, since it re-affirmed the practice of deeded covenants mandating that homes remain exclusively in the hands of white owners. Such deeds were common in the North, and King criticized Northern liberals for their hypocrisy in applauding the end of official segregation in the South while perpetuating an informal apartheid in the North.

When the Watts powder keg inevitably exploded, King was devastated by the destruction (thirty-four people were killed) and shocked at the attitude of residents, who cheered on the destruction of “their” communities.

“Burn, baby, burn,” they chanted, as store after store, building after building, was put to the torch and consumed by flames. In a sea of police roadblocks, broken plate glass, and strewn rubble, they cut the hoses of firemen battling the blaze and lobbed Molotov cocktails into the expanding inferno.

Though it may have looked like they were destroying their communities, in fact the residents were fighting for the resources to maintain them, and were, in any case, ironically conforming to the logic of their degraded capitalist environment: Looters loaded up cars with as much merchandise as they could carry off, surrounded by signs celebrating instant acquisition on easy terms.

According to Bayard Rustin, King was deeply affected by Watts, realizing more acutely than ever before the real depth of economic oppression, which overlapped with racism, but also went beyond it.  Having the right to sit at a lunch counter and order a hamburger, for example, meant little to those who lacked the money to pay for one.

With his usual amazing patience, King put himself to the task of explaining to those who thought that black grievances should have ended once civil rights legislation passed, that the urban uprisings in Harlem (1964), Watts (1965), and Newark and Detroit (1967), were caused by longstanding socially-sanctioned crimes committed against blacks, not by them. Building and housing codes were routinely violated to perpetuate slums, meager social allotments owed blacks were often slashed or denied them, and black civil rights didn’t even rise to a theoretical concern for police who brutalized them.

After seeing the devastation of Watts, King moved on to a fair housing campaign in Chicago with a renewed sense of urgency in 1966. He didn’t call the slums there “neglected areas,” nor did he describe its residents as “deprived” or “left behind,” code words the professional servant class uses to imply that mass poverty is somehow incidental to capitalism, when, in fact, it is characteristic of the system, since profit-takers are encouraged to “externalize” costs (i.e., make the public absorb them), among which mass poverty is especially prominent. King called the wretched Chicago ghettos a system of “internal colonialism,” comparing it to the exploitation of the Congo by Belgium. In charge of the system was Mayor Richard Daley and his corrupt regime, who loathed King for shining a public spotlight on their activities, at the same time finding it incomprehensible that he couldn’t be bought off.

Crazed mobs repeatedly turned out to scream racist obscenities and pelt Dr. King and his fellow marchers with bottles, rocks, cherry bombs, and lumps of coal. On a Sunday march a nun was struck in the head by a rock, and the crowd cheered when her wound began to bleed visibly. On a march through Marquette Park and Chicago Lawn Dr. King himself was felled by a fist-sized stone that slammed into his temple. A hurled knife missed him but struck another marcher. Stunned by the depravity, King confessed to reporters that he had “never seen – even in Mississippi and Alabama – mobs as hostile and hate-filled as I’ve seen in Chicago.”

Except for Operation Breadbasket, most people involved in the Chicago campaign ended up writing it off as a failure. Nevertheless, King was impressive, even convincing gang members to lay down their arms and peacefully march for change, but the massive resources needed to end slums in Chicago were being allocated to obliterate Vietnam, not deal with the tragic legacy of slavery at home. Meanwhile, King’s sincerity and eloquence were as powerful as ever. On a trip to rural Mississippi he spoke so movingly that a five-year-old-girl started sobbing and repeating over and over, “I want to go with him.”

After Watts and Chicago, King publicly stated the need for revolution: “I think you’ve got to have a reconstruction of the entire society, a revolution of values.”

More clearly than any other civil rights leader, King saw that racism abroad was related to racism at home, that freedom for American blacks was tied to self-determination for the Vietnamese people, then fighting to expel the United States from their country. He had already begun speaking out against the war starting in 1965, continuing to do so until his death, in spite of strong criticism from other leaders, a hostile press, and harassment by the FBI. When told he was alienating friends and supporters with his stance, King remained unmoved: “I am not a consensus leader.” “I don’t care who doesn’t like what I say about it.” “This madness must stop.”

He was especially gripped by the suffering of the children, but also protested that twice as many black soldiers as whites were dying as cannon fodder in an imperial war whose crimes rivaled those of the Nazis. Water and land were poisoned, harvests destroyed, and people tortured and murdered in staggering numbers, using funding that should have been allocated to ending poverty at home.

In his 1967 “Beyond Vietnam” speech, Dr. King called out the U.S. for being, “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today,” and did not mince words about the form that violence was taking in Vietnam:

The peasants watched as we supported a ruthless dictatorship in South Vietnam which aligned itself with extortionist landlords and executed its political opponents. The peasants watched as we poisoned their water, bombed and machine-gunned their huts, annihilated their crops, and sent them wandering into the towns, where thousands of homeless children roamed the streets like animals, begging for food and selling their mothers and sisters to American soldiers. What do the peasants think as we test our latest weapons on them, as the Germans tested new medicine and tortures in Europe’s concentration camps? Where are the roots of the independent Vietnam we claim to be building? Is it among these voiceless ones? We have destroyed two of their most cherished institutions: the village and the family. We have inflicted twenty times as many casualties on them as have the Vietcong. We have destroyed their land and crushed their only non-Communist revolutionary political force – the Unified Buddhist Church. We have corrupted their women and children and killed their men. What liberators!

A year later he was cut-down by a bullet full in the face at the age of 39, leaving behind an astonishing list of achievements, all attained against the pressure of barbaric segregation in the South, horrendously complex racism in the North, a prolonged vilification campaign waged against him by the FBI, considerable jealousy on the part of other civil rights leaders, a savage imperial war that devoured the resources needed for social transformation, and a vengeful Lyndon Johnson.

In spite of such formidable obstacles, Dr. King reached more blacks, more Americans, and more citizens of the world, than any U.S. reform leader of the 20th century, and at a depth of understanding few leaders ever even entertain. Referring to King’s “Beyond Vietnam” speech, John C. Bennett, then president of the Union Theological Seminary, said that “there is no one who can speak to the conscience of the American people as powerfully as Martin Luther King.”

January 19 is the fortieth anniversary of the U.S. national holiday for Dr. King. This remembrance is a nice gesture, but if we are to truly honor him, we’ll have to establish the culture of social justice he struggled to create, in order to reign in a lawless U.S. government carrying us to utter destruction.

*Chief Parker explained the 1965 Watts uprising this way: “One person threw a rock and then, like monkeys in a zoo, others started throwing rocks.” (italics added) Taylor Branch, At Canaan’s Edge: America In The King Years 1965-68, (Simon and Schuster, p. 399)

Notes

MLK visits to Los Angeles, Theoharis interview

Racist housing covenants, see (Branch, p. 637)

Watts rebellion, description of . . . (Conot pps. 40, 99, 219, 239, 362, 364)

MLK can’t be bought . . . (Oates, p. 408)

Sobbing five-year-old girl wanting to go with MLK, (Oates, pps. 399-400)

MLK on Chicago mobs being most hate-filled he had ever seen, (Oates, p. 413)

MLK on the need for revolution .. . (Cone, p. 257)

MLK, “This madness must stop” . . .(Cone, p. 297)

MLK, “greatest purveyor of violence in the world today” (Cone, p. 237)

“Beyond Vietnam” excerpt (Oates, p. 435)

John C. Bennett quote, (Cone, p. 294)

Sources

Jeanne Theoharis, MLK Jr.’s Life of Struggle Outside The South, Counterpunch Radio, www.counterpunch.org

Conot, Robert E., Rivers of Blood, Years of Darkness, (Bantam, 1967)

James R. Ralph Jr., Northern Protest – Martin Luther King, Jr., Chicago, and the Civil Rights Movement,” (Harvard, 1993)

David J. Garrow, Bearing The Cross, (William Morrow, 1986)

Stephen B. Oates, Let The Trumpet Sound – The Life of Martin Luther King, Jr., (Harper & Row, 1982)

James H. Cone, Martin & Malcolm & America – A Dream or a Nightmare, (Orbis, 1991)

Taylor Branch, At Canaan’s Edge – America In The King Years 1965-68 (Simon & Schuster, 2006)

Michael K. Smith is the author of  The Madness of King George, and Portraits of Empire