Monday 4 May 2020

Special Guest Blogger: Martin Luther King, Jr

There are two kinds of people in the world, those who accept things as they are and those who try to change them and i was completely in the latter camp.
Like me, the protests were peaceful but mainly because after my house was bombed in 1956, i tried to get a carry permit though this went about as well as you'd expect for a black man in 50's America.
I became famous during the Montgomery boycotts in 1956, marching on Washington in 1963 and and giving my 'I have a dream' speech, marched in Selma in 1965, and getting murdered in 1968 but my actions changed the country, white America saw the light, and today my birthday is even a national holiday.
I was not just a black activist though, i also protested American involvement in Vietnam while it was still all about killing Commies abroad and before it was a cool thing to be against and campaigned for social relief for the poor.
My detractors accused me of being a Communist and seeking new causes because i felt that i had gotten too big for the Civil Rights Movement so it's one thing to get white America to agree that black people should not be murdered and lynched for the crime of being black, but start talking about wages and economic inequality and the hate mail and death threats become a regular occurrence, and not just from the idiots in the pillow case hats.
I was shot while standing on the balcony of my hotel room by James Earl Ray and just days after the assassination, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1968.
My birthday is remembered by a national holiday and i have heard views expressed by White Americans that the racism has gone too far with things such as lowering college entrance requirements for black and minorities and it is them who are now the persecuted race.
I must have missed that bit where they were sold as slaves, lynched and hung from tree limbs and endured laws requiring separate schools and made to sit in different parts of trains, hotels, theaters and restaurants.

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