Riding the Elevator With George Wallace: What Would MLK Do?

and wanted to add how it made me think of my Pulitzer-prize winning editorial writing prof in college back in the early 1970s as a journalism major. Buddy Davis in class one day impressed us with the point that you use the arguments that will persuade your audience, not necessarily the ones YOU prefer. To illustrate this point he told us the story of how he had editorialized against George Wallace for president. He certainly could have gotten his personal liberal arguments against Wallace printed, no problem, but he figured those reasons wouldn't have dissuaded any Wallace voters.
What he needed to do instead of indulging his own beliefs, he told us michievously, was to cast about for an effective argument that would give southern white men serious pause before voting Wallace. That could make a real difference. (The men he called Joe Sixpack.)

So he wrote his editorial arguing that a man in a wheelchair nd therefore unable to control his own bowels, might not be able to control the country. A despicable argument (which he readily acknowledged) yet much more effective at reaching the audience that needed to be influenced, and thus much better editorial writing to change the world than any argument from liberal principle would have been . . .

thank you for reading, JJ.

I have recently been reading Taylor Branch's great pulitzer prize winning three part biography of King ("Parting the Waters", "Pillar of Fire", "At Canaan's Edge") Branch portrays King as one of the greatest of all americans, but one who was far from perfect.

King, a deeply religious southern baptist minister, is portrayed as strongly sexist, as were Ralph Abernathy and most of his other fellow ministers in the SCLC. He believed women had specific roles (keeping the home, raising children). He would never have allowed Coretta Scott King, in spite of her college education, to have her own career outside his home during their marriage. Her job was to have and raise his kids, and play the traditional role of the wife of the pastor at the church.

In the chapter on the famous 1963 march on Washington, where King made his "I have a dream" speech, it is pointed out that while King and his fellow ministers marched at the head of the procession, arms locked together defiantly, he did not allow the wifes of the ministers and other prominent women of the movement to march up front with him. The women were made to march separately in the back of the procession somewhere, as a group. Because their role was not to bring attention to themselves, but to be discreet and let the men lead.

King met numerous times at the White House with John F. Kennedy. King dined in the White House residence with JFK and Jackie Kennedy. He never bought Coretta with him to the White House or to other high level social occasions. Coretta never met the Kennedys ever, in spite of their repeated requests to meet her. Why? Because King wanted his wife at home.

Also it is pointed out that the evil J. Edgar Hoover wiretapped King continuosly and found out he had a longterm mistress in New York and women in other cities. King was clearly a typical man of that era.

King was also enlightened in a lot of other ways. One of his best friends/closest advisors-- the one who organized the famous march-- was openly gay, a fact that many fellow ministers complained to him about

i appreciate you posting this. i would like to pick up this biograhpy. since one of his close advisors was gay, i wonder how MLK would feel about gay marriage?

i have heard things about King and his opinion of women for years. it upsets me greatly.

i thought we were having frank discussions about race/poverty on this site. so what do people think about the church/jail comment? southerners and blacks? is this true?

And I'm anxious to read the second. MLK is 7 years younger than I, so I look at him through the eyes of someone who has seen major questions arise in Woman's lib. In the 1970's our local chapter of NOW discussed bringing in more black women. It was widely believed that they were holding their activism to a low key because it was important in early civil rights days to give their men a shot at being perceived as men. If we think of Barbara Jordan, who was so forceful during the Nixon impeachment hearings, or Donna Brazile, who ran Al Gore's southern campaign, we know that many black women were not so reticent.
In Dr. King's work, there were many black female leaders, especially in organizing the youth for demonstrations and voter drives. Prof. Taylor holds no punches with MLK's attitude toward women, and I was glad to see his forthrightness. I've had hints from African-Americans that there was always a preacher/teacher team in their society. He tells em. She shows em how. It's like the white society. I always remember "High Noon" with the schoolmarm and the sheriff. And that points to economic opportunity. Dr. King's real coming to grips with the struggle was, in my view, made when he gave his last speech in Memphis. Give men a decent wage and get them off the battlefield.

King's views were heavily influenced by his years studying up north at Crozer seminary, a left wing institution where he studied the India independence movement intensively and in particular the works of Gandhi and Reinhold Neibhur. King adopted Gandhi's non-violent, integrationist views, which put him at odds with many other black leaders who favored a separatist movement.

At the time this included people like Malcolm X, who pretty openly detested King's politics. There were those who openly advocated non-integration, either combining the black areas of several southern states into a new black nation called New Africa or something, or a Back to Africa movement (demanding billions of dollars from the u.s. government to help blacks repatriate to Africa) Even today you will find some of the more radical black leaders (louis farrakhan and others) who don't like King's ideas, who don't think either a non-violent movement or especially an integrationist movement will ever work.

It was only the strength of King's commitment, the power of his charisma and the loyalty people had to him that prevented these and other radical movements from gaining steam. Martin Luther King quite literally saved this country, and that to me far outweighs whether he was personally sexist, homophobic, or whatever.

One other thing that might surprise you about King-- he was a republican. The King family were upper class wealthy (relative to most of his parishioners at least) and staunch republicans and King voted GOP all his life up until 1960 when Robert F. Kennedy interceded to help King get out of jail. This caused King Sr. and the rest of the family to switch parties and support the Kennedys. The reasons for their being republicans were fairly obvious-- the corrupt racist southern politicians and authorities they were constantly fighting in the south were all democrats. Some southern states democratic parties wouldn't at that time even seat black delegates to state and national party conventions, nor actively encourage registration of black voters.

I agree, Tara, about northern cities being segregated. Looking back on the King years, I'm amazed how differently longtime Southernors view the North, and vice versa. I have a friend who lives in Maryville TN where I live but lived her adult life in Birmingham. She's a college graduate and widely read, but was amazed to find that we in Chicago were used to race riots during those times. It's for sure that we who lived in northern cities did not have a true sense of what was taking place in the South. I followed a lot of news in those days and still learned more of what John Lewis is known for by reading Taylor's book than I ever knew.
But I will have to say after living in Chicago from from 55 to 77, that I saw a lot of changes. The influx of Southern blacks was tremendous after the Supreme Court loosened the rules for welfare relief when changing to a new state. We had a saying when discussing a black person: "First generation or second?" First generation people often ended up in Gary, Ind. until they could get established in Chicago. Those who had gone to school in Chicago had better chances of getting work. (Something similar to what happens to Mexican-Americans today.)
I worked at Spiegel in Mayor Daley's back yard. The "Gary girls" were bussed in to do keypunching. We had black programmers. The total workforce was 95% black because of the warehouse. When the tollways were expanded Speigel moved to the suburbs. By then keypunching was out and those who had worked in the warehouse had no way to get to the suburbs without a car, which wasn't feasible because of low wages.
The city now, I hear from my friends, is a lot better. One of them, a schoolteacher (second generation) who had a house on the South Side and one which had belonged to her parents on the West Side says that I wouldn't recognize Chicago now. It is so much better. I don't know what the real poverty rate is. When I later taught computer programming, most of my students were black and many were from the projects. Upward mobility is hard to describe, but a good part of its success comes from education.
And the Board of Education in Chicago is something which is a contentious topic. During the time the Nixon impeachment hearings were going on I was getting a Masters in Vocational Guidance at Roosevelt University and most of my classmates were Chicago schoolteachers advancing to counsellors by taking the course.
Jessie Jackson and now his son, were a big part of the conversation. It will be interesting to see how Obama adds to it.

For MLK, party identity wasn't paramount then?

I agree with Tara on this -- if party ever were as central to who we are here in the South as regional and religious identity is, it wasn't in my lifetime. Group identity as a southerner is still very strong and the university community one identifies with is strong, but party not so much, and maybe that's an underlying difference between New York and the Southeast, that explains much of what we were attributing to personalities in the other threads?

And hmmm, now that you get me thinking about it, southern Christians typically identify church and region as one inseparable whole, in a way northern Christians I know don't, so much. Maybe this explains why Dem Christians feel their identity has been stolen out from under them, appropriated as part of the opposite party's identity ?

As a progressive southerner who doesn't identify with Church or Party , there's no group identity for me! I do find common ground with individual southern progressives like Bill Clinton (but not Hillary who never "got" the South imo) and John and Elizabeth Edwards, especially well-educated and intellectually omnivorous folks doing more than party politics and preaching to the choir. That works fine for me as long as I don't get competitive religion and party shoved down my throat too many times. But when I believe someone can and will transcend group identity and uplift us all -- like MLK -- I am happiest of all.

ADDING - and in fairness, I should say party "leadership" means nothing during race riots, bombings and hijackings etc. The South of my childhood was a scary place to me personally and the news was unwatchable, unbearable. I didn't know party, just blood and anger and burning and race, wonder if we're there again with global terrorism, and whether it illuminates why people in both parties or no party all feel so polarized and threatened from all directions.

It can't just be the few R personalities so regularly burned in effigy around here, any more than what threatens us in the Middle East was all Saddam Hussein's fault. Well, he's dead and party politics are duking it out, anyone feel safer or freer or vindicated?? Someone used the example of Nazi window-breaking earlier and said that was the time to rise up behind party and fight. I think that is exactly the time party politics has failed, as it did in the South more than once, the time universal principles like MLK's must step forward and transcend party and killing and breaking things.

chokes, especially good conversation. You are right on about that. What I have come to believe is that by looking at what happened to the Baptist church before the Civil War is an impetus for how the two regions, and many of their citizens, try to make an either/or question out of it. No doubt that the South was more agrarian and farmers are not likely to think corporately. It's as old as the spat John Adams and Thomas Jefferson got into. And no doubt that superstitions toward people not like ourselves builds animosity and even hatred. As we tend to emphasize in these pages, culture trumps party politics. So when Southern Baptists were afraid that the national church was going to make them accept abolition, they split. A curious thing I learned from Branch Taylor's book was the trouble Dr. King had with national leaders in his African-American church heirarchy. When it comes to talking about black folks and white folks there is equal-opportunity among the folks.
I think you hit the nail on the head about a university/reasoned environment. We like to think of ourselves as deeper thinkers. If there is any downside to staying rational, it might be that we don't understand those who are estranged from the academic environment. An eager young black man just out of high school came to our school, a commercial-type college, and said he would like to be just like another young black man who was operating a computer. The current student came from an integrated school in the Evergreen Park section of town. I was to learn that the new enrolee lived in a huge highrise public housing complex. When I asked for their addresses, he gave me his apartment number at Robert Taylor homes. They eventually both got programming jobs at the same company. All stories don't have such easy endings, but it gets back to what learning can do, and how teachers are needful of social antennae.

and rightly doesn't belong in this discussion. Nevertheless, there is a connection. It's the kind of country, geologically so to speak. The people who live in Appalachia live in "hollers" and don't really know what's over the next hill. Those who live in cities are required to have a certain trust, as well as a certain wariness, of strangers. There's an inbuilt social structure where most people don't feel the need to confront (or even acknowledge) everyone whom they encounter. Small towns and even rural areas give a lot of leeway to roam in space, but IMO are very bound to do oneupmanship. Spaces are large enough but economic opportunities are finite. In that regard, I don't think living in Maryville in the South as very different from living in, say, Ottumwa IA or Rapid City, SD.

what word would you put in front of "Democrat" such as Blue Dog, Progressive, etc.? I'd say "FDR" just because that's how I started as a Democrat and still feel a lot of the tenets of Roosevelt's philosophy apply today. The programs, in practice, have often changed. However, as history tells it, he had a hard time holding his overwhelming base in 1936 because the economy still wasn't good and there were already war clouds. What he had to tell the American people was that not all the alphabet programs would turn out to be what they should have been--that it was necessary to think about new approaches. Alf Landon certainly couldn't trump that
My experiences in e-chatting leave me with the notion than many good sincere Democrats are quite certain of what the issues are. They are what is proposed by their own favorite candidate(s). My take on the matter is that I've got to think about what I think is best for me and for the common good. And then I can later decide which prospective candidates it makes sense to follow more closely. Polls, war chests, & media attention are pretty low on my list of qualifications for President of the United States of America.

Just spent two hours finishing the PBS documentary on Inside China. And came back to cyber reality. So this is the latest number on the string of posts in my mailbox. And then I can go to bed.
I'm beginning to know the folks here and I like what I see. Make that read. Some of the others don't have pictures. I'll figure that one by the weekend, I think.
Can I make a little suggestion? Why don't we all write an essay on what a real Democrat is? Kidding, of course, because I think we agree that Democrats are not made by a cookie cutter. (It's for sure we wouldn't contenance Rovian techniques on our watch.) Or another topic almost as facetious at this time in the election cycle: Who will you vote for? If someone starts to tell me about Barack and somehow finds a YouTube of his signing his book, I might forget my age and get taken in by his "biography." Honestly, it's that sexy voice. And if some male participant wonders why some female participant doesn't vote for Hillary, I would just have to sit down and write a long spiel, wondering why some men don't vote for the man of my choice. Oh, those tangled webs.
Seriously, there's so much intellectual energy going on here. Now if I could get the picture on my intro. And also I still have to know how to treat all those email messages when I leave the premises for a little while. I don't want to ignore anyone's invitation to join the fun.

well.

i don't know what to say.

i got the idea to write this while watching a doc about King. i think this post deals more with the mythology of people--- it's not all black and white. bada boom bada bing! thank you! i'll be here all week!

but seriously... not that Dr. King did not do exceptional things, but we should realize he was a man of prejudice as well. i have often thought about what he would think of the world today, with openly gay relationships played out in the media and the advancement of women, among other things. i do the same with lots of people----the mythology of Jefferson, for example. in the south, i never understand why black children are named after this man (used to happen quite a lot). now, he was a genius on so many levels but imagine if you were his slave. that indoor toilet he invented wouldn't mean so damn much, would it?

people get really offended by this and i guess i just don't care bc these things need to be discussed in hopes of change.