📄 Transcript [show]
I make you think that God chose America as his divine messianic force to be a sort of policeman of the whole world.
God has a way of standing before the nations with judgment, and it seems that I can hear God saying to America, you are too arrogant.
If you don't change your ways, I will rise up and break the backbone of your power, and I'll place it in the hands of a nation that doesn't even know my name.
Be still and know that I'm God.
The promises of the great society have been shot down on the battlefield of Vietnam.
Making the poor, white, and Negro bear the heaviest burdens both at the front and at home.
Though the civil rights leaders, for various reasons, refuse or can't take a stand or have to go along with the administration, that's their business.
But I'm afraid that I know that justice is indivisible.
Injustice is the law.
Justice anywhere is the threat to justice everywhere.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. talking about righteousness.
Welcome to the Coon Round Report.
May the peace and blessings of the life-giving creative spirit be upon you and upon your family.
My name is Melvin Ishmael Johnson, coming at you live from Skid Row Studios, and I'm in the studio with my co-host Earlene Anthony.
Thank you.
Our call-in number is 1-800-893-9562.
Welcome to the Coon Round Report.
Now this week on this special Dr. Martin Luther King holiday, we will talk about the meaning of Dr. Martin Luther King with Russell Brown, who is from Memphis and was living there when Dr. King was assassinated on April 4, 1968.
Musician Stephen Fiss, who will also do instruments, will also be joining us in the studio to sing about Dr. King and Miss Jessica Catlogs and her mother, Miss Pat Catlogs.
Welcome to the Coon Round Report.
And they will give us a Miss Jessica Catlogs.
She's also going to give us some of her thoughts about this generation view of Dr. King.
Welcome to the Coon Round Report.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Let's start off.
I want to go around and can you tell our listening audience just a little about yourself before we get in?
And then we'll get into our discussion of Dr. King.
Let's start with Russell.
Sure.
My name is Russell Brown.
I've been in L.A.
for 35 years, but I spent most of my young life and college life in Memphis.
And I remember being in Memphis actually when Dr. King was shot.
And it really affected the whole city a lot.
And it was one of the reasons actually I felt that I needed to leave out of college because of the racial division.
And I remember growing up very much with segregated bathrooms, segregated schools, and forced busing, and dealing with just sort of this heart of the city being destroyed and never being able to be repaired.
Uh-huh, okay.
Jessica.
Hi, my name is Jessica Kellogg.
I'm currently pursuing a Master's of Public Policy at Pepperdine University, and I received a Bachelor's in American Studies.
Thank you.
arts and culture from UCLA.
And I'm happy to be here.
I'm from Los Angeles.
I'm in my 20s, so I've grown up here.
I've been a beneficiary of a very multicultural society, especially living on the West Coast.
But I feel like I have a connection to the South because I've been influenced majorly by my grandparents and people in church who came from the very experience that Martin Luther King carried out.
So I'm just happy to be here and join in on this conversation.
Okay.
Good evening.
My name is Patricia Kellogg.
I'm Jessica's mother.
I was also born and raised in Los Angeles and grew up here.
And went to school here in LA and also a very diversified culture.
I went to schools on the West Side.
And that wasn't common when I was growing up because my home school was supposed to be Crenshaw High School, but I went to University High School and Emerson Junior High School.
And they were predominantly white schools.
And in high school, there are only 100 black students at university at the time that I went there.
So I would go to university and be in basically a white community at school.
Then I go home to my community that was basically all black.
So I got the best of both ends, I feel.
And I also, you know, like Jessica said, I was influenced by my parents who were sharecroppers' children.
And they come from where?
Texas.
And they grew up at five and six years old.
They were picking cotton, you know.
But they went on and got their education and moved to California and raised us here.
And when we would go down and explore New New York and New New York and New New York and New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New it a nigger shooter.
You know.
So it was overt.
Right out in the open.
It's at University of the High School.
Is that still here?
It's a treasure.
Yeah, okay.
Where is it located?
It's on Texas and West LA, Texas and basically Santa Monica Boulevard.
Alright.
And I also I'm, my profession is managing kennel at the West Los Angeles Animal Shelter.
And I also teach high school students about animal care.
We're an LA Unified School District.
Okay, beautiful.
Steven.
Alright.
Thank you.
And I'm very glad to be here.
My name is Steven Longfellow Fisk.
I grew up in New York City where I was exposed every day to the rich diversity of humanity.
And when I was in high school, the Civil Rights Movement was in full swing.
And I had learned to become a folk singer, singing the songs of freedom and the songs of the folk music era.
And I participated in the marches and got on a school bus in 1963 and we went down to the Great March.
And there must have been a dozen guitars on the bus.
We sang songs all the way down there.
Songs all the way.
We sang the march and songs all the way home.
So I've always seen music as a, and I know how much music was a critical part of the Civil Rights Movement.
And so I've always seen the importance of music in helping to support and be an essential part of social change.
And that was at the I Have a Dream speech.
Absolutely right.
Okay.
Wonderful.
Earline, did you want to say anything?
You want to go?
Okay, let's roll on.
I have a dream speech.
Absolutely right.
Okay.
Wonderful.
Earline, did you want to say anything?
You want to go?
Okay, let's roll on.
Let's start over here with Russell.
Can you tell me what is the meaning of Dr. King to you?
Let's talk about that for a while.
I don't think there's any way that you could grow up in the South without having as the very first tenet of the division between blacks and whites.
I remember growing up as a kid where you would, it was nothing unusual that you would go into stores and you would see, you know, separate water fountains.
You would see white only signs.
I was talking to a woman who had seen the Selma movie with.
And I remember as a kid we went to the nicest theater in the city of Memphis and had a field trip.
And it was an integrated crowd.
They had white schools and black schools.
The black schools were all in the balcony because the only way for blacks to get into the building was to go through the side of the building and go around the side.
Literally the buildings were not black.
They were white built where there were entrances to go upstairs.
And I imagine as a kid being presented with Gone with the Wind and having half the audience as black and thinking, what is their experience here?
What's going on?
I remember my mom's sisters being very, very involved in civil rights movements and being involved in the anti-war campaign.
And my mom being older was like, you know, she shouldn't be doing that.
She's young.
She's radical.
But you could see the tension in the city building.
And I thought Selma was an excellent, excellent movie to sort of build the case.
And it actually continued from there to Memphis with the sanitation worker strikes.
And that was where the garbage strikes, which went on for quite a while.
And you see people walking around literally with signs saying, I am a man.
I love that.
And the violence that happened in the very first march so scared people and more importantly embarrassed the movement that they felt that they weren't in control of it because they had preached such strong nonviolence.
And that need to sort of redeem and come back and regroup was what brought Dr. King back to Memphis again.
And that's when he was assassinated.
That's right.
And we're going to get into that a little bit deeper.
What is the meaning of Dr. King to you, Jessica?
Well, Russell mentioned Gone with the Wind.
And that's my favorite movie.
So I am a black woman who loves Scarlett O'Hara and the whole saga behind Gone with the Wind.
And most people will look at me and say that's strange because.
So you see yourself as Scarlett, not as Missy?
I saw myself as Scarlett.
I always saw myself as Scarlett.
And I think that is.
An extension of Dr. King's dream being achieved because I've liked the movie since I was probably three, four years old.
And it's been my favorite movie ever since.
And it's also shaped, I think, my femininity in a way.
But, you know, to identify with this person on the screen, I didn't know.
I love the story.
I didn't identify with the slaves or the master class and say I want to be a part of this.
I didn't identify with the slaves or the master class and say I want to be a part of that group or that group.
It was I liked all of the characters.
And then when I grew up, I read the book and I like the characters even more.
But to be able to identify yourself as a person according to your interests, no matter how developed they may be, you know, as a child, I think.
I think.
Adds to Dr. King's idea of.
This colorless society, and I don't think society is colorless or we should negate color, but it allows you to see beyond yourself, beyond, you know, these negative interpretations of what society is telling you you should be like, you know.
What little girl really wants to be like Prissy, you know, I mean, not to say that she's a bad individual, a bad character, but.
Yes.
You take.
All of that and put it into a larger perspective and.
Look at people as individuals, and I think citizenship is what Dr. King was embracing.
He wanted everyone to claim their right as citizens, whether they be black, white, yellow.
He really stood on the principles of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
He believed in the framework of our nation, and he wanted us to progress towards this large ideal that was set before us.
And it's.
It's hard.
It's a hard idea to pursue.
I mean, all of these tenants of liberty and equality when it's human nature to be sinful and hateful.
So I think.
Martin Luther King is just challenging us to see each other on a fair playground.
Okay.
What does Dr. King means to you?
Wow.
What else can I say?
What they haven't said before.
But I just think Dr. King wanted us to embrace equality as citizens of the world, not just citizens of the world.
Not just citizens of the United States.
He wanted everyone to just be equal.
And he wanted just everyone to embrace each other, you know, as people.
You know, not one being more than the other, you know.
But like Jessica said, we don't live in a colorless society.
You know, we do.
The first thing we see is color.
But he wanted us to go beyond that, you know, and see the person as they are, you know, instead of seeing black, white, yellow, you know.
And I think that's what he wanted us to see.
Beautiful.
Stephen, what do Dr. King mean to you?
Well, Dr. King had a profound influence on my life.
And really changed directions for me.
And I was very interested in the philosophy of nonviolence.
It was very intriguing to me because as I grew up in New York City, I heard a lot of racial epithets.
You know, there was a name for everybody.
If you were Italian or you were Jewish or you were black or you were Puerto Rican.
I mean, you had a, there was a slur.
And that's the way you were categorized.
And the streets were violent.
And I was very interested in this philosophy of nonviolence.
And later on, I mean, when I went to that march in Washington, that was a profound impact.
Because there I was with multitudes of people who were marching and saying, you know, I'm going to kill you.
I'm going to kill you.
I'm going to kill you.
I'm going to kill you.
And I was marching and singing and concerned about changing history and ending what essentially was American apartheid.
And Martin Luther King's nonviolent tactics for social change was so different and such a revolutionary idea to me.
That it intrigued me so much that later on, after I had graduated college and was eligible for the draft, I decided that I was going to become a conscientious objector and embrace nonviolence as a philosophy for the rest of my life.
As a matter of fact, to become a conscientious objector, you had to have a religious conviction.
I was not interested in religion and I didn't have a religion.
And I tried to say, well, if I had a religion, it would be nonviolence because I don't believe we're here to kill and to kill each other.
And I don't believe we're here to hate.
And so, but I couldn't.
That wasn't good enough.
You had to be affiliated with a real established religion.
So I went to a rabbi.
I went to a Catholic priest and I went to a universalist Unitarian.
And I told him that I would not submit to forced conscription.
Well, you had to learn to kill other people that that was not what we were here on this earth for.
And that's what Martin Luther King was talking about, too, in his philosophy of love.
And so I embraced nonviolence.
I declared my religion to be Unitarian Universalism because it seemed like the least religious of all the religions.
But I'm to this day, I'm committed and my life has been committed to nonviolence.
OK, wonderful.
How about you, Eileen?
Did you want to comment on that?
What Dr. King means to you?
For me, Dr. King was a preacher, as we call a reverend.
Before he became this well-known Dr. King, nonviolence and everything.
I believe for me, Dr. King believed the Bible, the scriptures as they were given.
He believed that he had heard and had a clear vision from God as to what he was to do.
And I believe he tapped into the spirit realm.
And this is why.
So many people was attracted to the movement that he had.
A lot of people maybe didn't know exactly what it was, but they were drawn to his charisma, his voice, his words and a lot of things that he did.
A lot of people didn't agree with him.
But yet they that magnetism just kind of, you know, they just kind of flowed on with the crowd.
But for me.
I believe he believed what he was doing was his mission in life.
And however short or long it was, I believe the final speech, the one where he said he went to the mountaintop and he had the vision and so on.
I believe that was just a combination of everything that he felt that he was called to do.
Okay.
And to me, peace and nonviolence.
I thought that was a great combination.
Thank you.
I thought that was a great concept.
I thought that's what he had to offer as a man of God, as a preacher man of God.
Also, let's talk about the movie Selma.
What are your thoughts on the movie Selma for those who have seen it?
Let's start with Russ.
Listen, I'm the largest cheerleader I can imagine.
I told folks I've seen the movie four times.
And every time I see it, I see something.
Four times?
Four times.
And from the very beginning.
And from the very first moment sitting there, I almost never stopped crying the entire movie.
And it was tears of sorrow.
It was tears of fear.
It was tears of absolute joy and inspiration.
And I realized that almost all the therapy sessions that I'd never had sort of came through with that movie.
Of having lived there, been there, be a part of it.
I remember as a little kid, my dad putting us in the back of a VW Bug and driving through downtown Memphis in the middle of the curfew.
With National Guard, with huge tanks and machine guns everywhere.
And the curfew was at 5 o'clock.
And zipping through.
And I asked my mom later, I said, why in the world were we driving around in the middle of that?
And my mom, who is very conservative, very Republican, actually was chair of the Shelby County Republicans Women's Association, which to me is sort of horrifying.
Told me that she was one of three white nurses out of 800 that were working at E.H.
Crump Hospital, which was a black inner city hospital.
I said, wait a minute, mom.
That doesn't make any sense.
How can you be doing the political stuff that you're doing?
And actually you were the ultimate sort of civil rights pioneer, sort of liberal progressive then.
Oh, no, no, never use that word.
But, you know, her point was I needed to work that day because there were a lot of people who needed help.
And I had transportation to get back and forth.
And other people needed to stay with their families and protect their neighborhoods and protect their houses.
And that kind of made me feel like I was in a place where I could be a part of that.
And I was in a place where I could be a part of that.
And I was in a place where I could be a part of that.
That kind of dichotomy of sort of pulling in and taking care of the city and taking care of family is the parts that, to me, is the best of Dr. King, and the parts of the fear and the hatred and the violence is the part that actually showed in the movie, and I think it shows in our politics today, is used to intimidate people, to blame people, to destroy movements, and make it impossible for a more enlightened message to actually come through.
to actually come through.
Let me ask you this while we're talking about Selma.
I heard one of the complaints was the portrayal of Lyndon Bane Johnson in the movie.
And I thought the actor that portrayed Johnson was outstanding.
And what are your thoughts on the conflict that we hear about?
What was the...
I've read the commentary going back and forth, and I think it has some validity.
The movie does portray Johnson as being a reluctant partner, I shall say.
And I think it falsely accuses him of being the sole gatekeeper of preventing it from happening.
In reading some of my research recently on Dr. King, I was sort of shocked to find out that the Civil Rights Act that was passed after Kennedy's assassination was actually a part of the Civil Rights Act.
It had actually been proposed by Truman.
And they were fighting 10 years before.
So it wasn't just Truman saying no, and Kennedy saying no, and Johnson saying no, but the entire nation sort of had to say no.
And it wasn't until people were shocked into awareness with Kennedy's assassination that they realized we had to start changing things.
And Dr. King in the movie very brilliantly, I think it shows the strategy.
Of how do we get to where we need to get and do it in a place that tries as much as possible to be nonviolent.
My first activism in the community was actually with civil rights issues and gay and lesbian issues and AIDS issues.
And AIDS Project Los Angeles had a program called Activate U, Activate University.
And we went in and we met with legislative people and did it in an educated way.
And we sort of got nicknamed Act No.
Nice because the group that we weren't, Act Up, was yelling and screaming, breaking windows, throwing blood on the doors of pharmaceutical companies.
And even though that was radical protest, and that was not my way of protest, it was always a million times easier for me to come in as Act Nice after Act Up had gotten their attention.
And I think you see that tension very successfully in the Selma movie.
Of what?
What were the different civil rights voices and the tactics that needed to be used to accomplish what they needed to accomplish?
And I think you can very much see that the government or the powers that be used that same violence to shut the entire movement down in his assassination.
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
Jessica, you saw the movie, huh?
Yes, I seen it.
What do you think?
Yes.
The movie is very moving.
It's emotional.
It's emotional because a lot of visual violence is taking place on the screen.
I know some of my friends have been reluctant to see the movie, or they say they'll wait to watch it later on their own platforms because they are reluctant to engage in that emotional aspect of watching a movie.
Okay.
You kind of...
I don't want to group movies and genres, and I don't want to group Selma into a genre, but if I were to think of it in line with other black movies, especially recently like 12 Years a Slave or The Help, some people don't like paying for those movies because not...
I mean, they like patronizing them, but they don't want to be emotionally taxed.
When they walk out of the movie theater and say, oh, I just spent, you know, $15 and I'm sad.
And I think people should get over it because it is a very uplifting movie in the sense that as soon as someone gets knocked down, someone is lifted up, whether it's through someone physically helping someone up or just someone giving another person words of encouragement or checking someone's attitude.
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We all need reminders of that in life and the camaraderie that took place amongst the characters and even how the actors engaged with one another, I'm sure outside of the movie, it just reflected all throughout the movie.
It just it was very harmonious and even a foe like Malcolm X didn't seem all that harmful in the movie.
It was a nice historical depiction.
It was a nice historical depiction.
depiction and I think that it was executed really well and it helped me add to my imagination because I remember my second grade teacher Miss Parker she told us about how she marched in in that very march in Selma and how she would go to these um these peaceful non-violent movements and as a little girl she was engaged in that as a little girl who was my age at seven years old in the second grade it was just hard to believe that you know this person who lived through all this horrific stuff was teaching me you know she survived being hosed down dogs she survived living in a society where people were hateful towards her and that was inspiring and I told her later on that I did see the movie because I do see her from time to time and she said yeah that's where I grew up so it was just very nice to to add that to my imagination okay yes I really enjoyed the movie and it took you from one spectrum to another you know another spectrum of emotion I too cried during I didn't want to leave I sat through all the credits you know the ushers were coming in cleaning up and I'm still sitting there it's actually even better the second and the third time right and I plan on seeing it again and I you know it's a very influential movie um just to see the struggle that Dr. King went through you and all of us went through you know the whole of you know America United States of America went through um and you know the struggle hasn't ended you know it's still it's still there we struggle every day okay Stephen have you seen the movie yes I have and I think it's an excellent work of art and art when it's really good is going to bring out this uh deeper deeper reflections on life and uh that's what it does but I think more even more than that I think as a society we are traumatized by the difficult stages of history that we've been through whether we've lived it or not it's still carried and uh I think parts of that movie are very traumatizing and what it does is it's a very traumatic movie and I think it's a very traumaticolitic movie and it gets tough and it gets tough and it gets tough and it gets tough and it gets tough and it gets tough and it gets tough and it gets tough and it gets tough and it gets tough and it gets tough and it gets tough and it gets tough and it gets tough and it gets tough and it gets tough and it gets tough and it gets tough and it gets tough and it gets tough and it gets tough and it gets tough and it gets tough and it gets tough and it gets tough and it gets tough and it gets tough and it gets tough and it gets tough and it gets tough and it gets tough and it gets tough and it How it is that we still harbor the kind of racist attitudes, the kind of divisive ways of thinking about anyone who's different.
And I think this is a healthy thing because after we embrace what is so troubling, recognize it, we also need to deal with it.
And we need to move through it in a way that's healthy so that we can heal.
We can heal in a way that we don't repeat the same patterns over and over and over again.
And that's part of what's terrifying for people because today we see the patterns coming back.
And we see the same upheaval.
Ugly things happening, not only in America, but all over the world right now.
And the issues that we're facing in this world are, again, traumatic issues.
Well, let me ask you this.
I'm going to go around again.
Why do you think J.
Edgar Hoover, you know, we talked about him in the movie also, focused so much on destroying Dr. King?
Well, I think that it was blatant racism.
I mean, to me, Martin Luther King was like...
Jesus and the Pharisees.
He was a rebel.
He spoke truth to power.
He uprooted a status quo.
And he had the articulation to be able to give a narrative that hit people here, right in the heart, no matter who you were.
And that's a powerful, powerful thing.
And it's very threatening to the status quo.
Okay.
Let's go around and I want to ask the same question and then come back to Russell.
Why do you think J.
Edgar Hoover wanted to destroy Dr. King, focus so much on him?
I think he wanted to destroy Dr. King because he wanted the movement to end.
He didn't want this civil rights movement.
He didn't want this.
He didn't want this.
So he was out to do anything by any means possible to destroy Dr. King.
Okay.
Jessica, what do you think?
Well, we know that Hoover didn't really have anything else to do but destroy people.
That's what he did.
That's what he set out to do.
That was his mission in life.
He would probably say that he tapped into the spirit world.
And that's what he was...
That's what he was sent here to do.
So...
And he was good.
Yeah, he was good at it.
And Martin Luther King was an easy target because he was leading a movement, a religious movement, a peaceful movement.
But he also had skeletons in the closet as well.
And J.
Edgar Hoover got into all of that.
He was capitalized.
Capitalized on it.
And there's different conspiracies as to who...
Who shot Dr. King.
And it's sad, but we will never know, probably.
But people like J.
Edgar Hoover, people like Bull Connor, and anyone who has hate in their hearts kill good people.
So I think J.
Edgar Hoover was just...
He had an agenda that was primarily for himself.
And that's what he goes down in history as.
He just goes down in history as a rat.
Okay.
Russell.
I thought the scene in the movie was brilliant in the way that in a very, very short period of time, it sort of laid bare the discussion between what do you do with Dr. King when he is really forcing the entire nation to look at its heart and soul and say, we're very, very wrong.
J.
Edgar Hoover was a power broker through many presidents.
And one of the wisdoms of being able to see the movie a couple of times is you interpret things the first time you see it, and then you see it very differently in the next scenes.
There's a scene where J.
Edgar Hoover says, we can take very powerful people out.
And in this, we've done this before.
And at first, that was, I interpret that as a direct threat against Dr. King.
We're going to make sure he's gone.
And Johnson says, no, we're not going to go there.
And so it's like, fine, we'll just destroy his family.
The second time I saw it, I started realizing that that's a threat to Johnson, basically saying, we've taken powerful people out.
We've taken powerful people out.
We've taken powerful people out.
And we will do it again.
And we will do it again.
As he looking at Johnson, who is only in power because Kennedy was assassinated.
So it really sets up this factor of we will use anything in the world that we can to destroy what we don't want to continue through.
If you read much about the sanitation worker strike in Memphis, uh, uh, Mayor Loeb was a Bull Connor.
Mayor Loeb was George Wallace.
He was the one who basically forced the sanitation worker strikes, um, a group called the invaders and other groups when Dr. King was asked to come because the garbage worker strike had now become a big union labor issue.
And he was very real.
Dr. King was reluctantly pulled into it.
Um, they started a March downtown.
I remember if you go to the, go downtown to Bill Street, you can see the route that they went and almost immediately it was disorganized.
It was chaotic.
There were young thugs.
There were police intimidation.
You can read that police actually ran over a couple of people through tear gas at people almost were active partners in the riot.
And then of course, when the riot started, you know who gets blamed and Dr. King literally ran away in the safety of, of the folks trying to save him.
And, and left Memphis in disgrace.
And because the theory of nonviolence was no longer there.
And I think that's the lesson that we need to learn for today in Ferguson and all the other places.
Your righteous message is completely lost when it's about fire and killing people and property damage.
And you lose that upper hand of the morality of your message when it gets sidetracked with all the others.
Dr. King was actually brought back in to try to save that theory of nonviolence.
And that's one of the questions they even bring up in the movie.
How do you, how does nonviolence combat folks that will use any force in the world against you?
And I'm not sure that there's an easy answer on that.
Okay.
And one other thing before I play this clip, I think it's very interesting to look at democracy now, uh, because they found, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, unheard of speech of Dr. King.
I think it was December the seventh, uh, 1964, same year that he was receiving the Nobel peace prize.
And it's, um, a very, very interesting speech.
And they played it this morning on democracy now.
But what I want to do, I want to play this little clip and then we'll come back in a comment on that dealing with our J.
Gohuba.
Okay.
Now, after J.
Gohuba used this methodology to bring down, uh, Marcus Garvey and destroy the universal Negro improvement association.
As I mentioned, he would perfect this into a technique that would be used in the, uh, sixties, uh, most notably against Malcolm X and against Dr. King.
Now, what was it really about minister Malcolm X and Dr. Uh, Martin Luther King that made them such a threat to the, to the, uh, American ways of life in the eyes of, uh, J.
Gohuba?
So to that question is found in a memo by J.
Gohuba, uh, in response to a discussion about Dr. Martin Luther King.
This memo in which J Edgar Hoover would send around to most of his trusted FBI agents will become known as the Hoover memo.
The memo reads to prevent the rise of a Messiah who could unify and electrify the militant black nationalist movement.
Malcolm X might have been such a Messiah, but he was not.
He was not a Messiah.
He was not a Messiah.
He is a model of the movement today.
Martin Luther King, Stokely Carmichael, and Elijah Muhammad all aspire to this position.
Elijah Muhammad is less a threat because of his age.
King could become a very real contender for this position.
Should he abandon his supposed obedience to white liberal doctrine of nonviolence and embrace black, white nationalism?
Now, this was a FBI memorandum that was issued on March the 4th, 1968.
And keeping in mind that just a month, what, a few weeks after that, up in April, the assassination of Martin Luther King in Memphis.
The goal of this memo was to prevent the rise of a black Messiah who could unify the black masters.
He would never forget his experience with Marcus Garvey, and the fear that the Garvey movement caused.
This was the foundation for the creation of the underground program that I mentioned, called COINTELPRO, whose sole purpose was to neutralize any organization deemed un-American.
Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King had the potential to duplicate the success of the Marcus Garvey movement, As long as Malcolm X was part of the organizational structure of the nation of Islam under the control of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, he was no threat to duplicate the success of Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association.
The same in relation to Dr. King.
As long as Dr. Martin Luther King was under the conservative nonviolent movement of civil rights, he was no threat to duplicate the national and international success of the Marcus Garvey movement.
But with the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize in his opposition to the Vietnam War, this took him like Malcolm X when he separated from the nation of Islam.
Out of the National Assembly.
arena of civil rights into the arena of human rights from the national scene to the international scene by malcolm x and dr martin luther king from the national arena of civil rights to the international arena of human rights which signed the death war yeah so um one jay who was first case was a neutralized marcus garvey in the universal negro improvement association which is still the largest mass movements of african americans in this country this is where he developed the whole concept of infiltration and disinformation in which he turned into the um counterintelligence program which became co-intel pro but um i think that as there was many of the uh the uh the uh the uh the uh the uh the uh the uh the uh the uh the uh the uh the uh attention in there when dr king received the nobel peace prize that gave him a international voice and also when he spoke out against the vietnam war because he broke away from the conservative ministers and spoke out on the vietnam war and he became isolated from that but he still stayed uh with that uh we rolling down um let's do a quick community calendar and then i want to come back and get into the time and ramp out so quick with this great discussion.
Let's go to the community calendar.
This is the community calendar for upcoming events.
Wednesday, January 21, 2015 at 6 p.m., the Veterans Theater Workshop presents the Nassana Play Reading Series, a stage play entitled Indictment, State of Missouri, about the Ferguson trial.
This is a Ruffin production, also written and directed by Odell Ruffin.
The location of the reading will be the Vortex, 2341 East Olympic Boulevard, Los Angeles, California, 921.
And the Vortex is located at the corner of Olympic and Santa Fe.
This is a free event.
Donations are accepted.
All are welcome to attend.
Following the reading, there will be a Q&A in time for participants.
Contact information is oruffin at hotmail.com.
That's oruffin at hotmail.com.
On Monday, January 26, 2015, auditions are being held for Yuri and Malcolm X.
This play deals with an Asian activist, Yuri Kochiyama, and Malcolm X.
Open call auditions, again, will be on Monday, January 26, 2015, from 1 to 3 p.m.
The location will be the Vortex, 2341 East Olympic Boulevard, Los Angeles, California, 921.
At the corner of Santa Fe and Mateo, there is free parking on the street.
The act is needed for the audition, and it gets tough on New York City Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight 5th, 2015.
And this will be the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Marka Malcolm X.
Contact information will be 626 486 2460.
Once again, for the audition information, please call 626 486 2460.
Please support knewart.com knewart is a version of abstract art, painting, and drawings produced by artist Leonardo Sr. To support his upcoming project, knewart from the canvas of a broken heart.
To make a donation, go to his Instagram page k-n-e-w-a-r-t the kickstarter dot com and canvas from the broken heart or visit www.k-n-e-w-a-r-t dot com.
If you have a community event that you would like to announce on our show, send the information to dramastage1 at yahoo.com attention Earlene Anthony.
The call in number for our show is 800-893-9562.
Now back to our host.
Okay, thank you Miss Earlene Anthony.
At this time, I'd like to turn it over to Mr. Stephen Fisk.
He's going to do a song about Dr. King.
About Dr. King.
What's the name of the song again, Stephen?
We Carry the Dream.
We Carry the Dream.
It's Stephen Fisk.
Right, and again, this was written based upon my experience in being present in 1963 at the Great March in Washington, D.C.
It gets tough.
It gets tough.
It gets tough.
It gets tough.
It gets tough.
It gets tough.
It gets tough.
It gets tough.
It gets tough.
It gets tough.
It gets tough.
It gets tough.
It gets tough.
It gets tough.
It gets tough.
on Washington, D.C.
They march for freedom, they march for jobs, they march for dignity.
They march for the conscience of a nation, for justice and equality.
A quarter million gathered there in Washington that day.
Hear the Reverend Dr. King lift his voice and say, I have a dream and we witnessed history.
Now it's up to all of us to carry the legacy.
So we're singing, we carry the dream.
Of the way this world could be.
We carry the dream of justice and equality.
When we gather together to find strength and unity.
Yeah, we carry the dream.
All people shall be free.
A quarter million gathered there in Washington that day.
Hear the Reverend Dr. King lift his voice and say, Yes, I have a dream and we witnessed history.
Now it's up to all of us to carry the legacy.
guitar solo So we're singing, we carry the dream of the way this world could be.
We carry the dream of justice and equality.
When we gather together to find strength and unity.
Yeah, we carry the dream of justice and equality.
All people shall be free.
guitar solo Can't keep a baby from needing to be touched in love.
guitar solo Can't keep the trees from reaching for the sky above.
And you can't stop the river from rolling to the sea.
And you can't keep the people from the hunger to be free.
guitar solo So we're singing, we carry the dream of the way this world could be.
We carry the dream of justice and equality.
When we gather together we find strength and unity.
Yeah, we carry the dream of justice and equality.
All people shall be free.
guitar solo From the streets of Birmingham to that Nobel Prize he won Reverend King let freedom bring shines his light for everyone Now people anywhere who've been denied their rights Find vision, strength and inspiration to carry on and fight So we're singing, we carry the dream of the way this world could be We carry the dream of justice and equality When we gather together we find strength and unity We carry the dream of people's shadow and freedom music music All people shall be free music shall be free music shall be free music All people shall be free music applause woo!
Okay!
I know we don't have time for closing comments but I sure wanted to get those 10 concepts of peace but maybe we do that another time.
We got about 22 seconds.
I'd like to thank my in the studio guests Russell Brown, Jessica Callow, Pat Callow, Steven Fisk over here, Bobby Buck over there taking pictures, Charlene Anthony.
Please tune in to the Qumran Report by just Googling in Qumran Report.
Pick up the archives there.
Thank you very much for tuning in to Qumran Report and from your host Melvin Ishmael Johnson.
May the peace and blessings of the life-giving creative spirit be upon you and upon your family.
I'll leave you with Dr. Martin Luther King.
Dr. Martin Luther King Dr. Martin Luther King I come here tonight and plead with you.
Dr. Martin Luther King I come here tonight and plead with you.
Believe in yourself and believe that you're somebody.
I said to a group last night, nobody else can do this for us.
No document can do this for us.
No Lincolnian Emancipation Proclamation can do this for us.
No Tennysonian or Johnsonian Civil Rights Bill can do this for us.
If the negro is to be free he must move down into the inner resources of his own soul and sign with a pen and ink of self-assertive manhood his own emancipation covenant.
New New New New you
