Martin Luther King, Jr. - An Extremist
Posted by Roger on Monday, January 18th, 2010
Today, being Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, I read his long letter titled "Letter from Birmingham Jail". In it, I noticed that the man we honor today was called an "extremist" in his day by his contemporaries.
Isn't that funny? How may people have called those who peacefully pray and counsel outside the Aurora Planned Parenthood "extremists"?
Perhaps we are in good company. Perhaps it will take a few years for people to see the value of our peaceful, non-violent actions?
Here are a few excerpts from the letter:
"You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations. I am sure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes."
"There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair."
"One may want to ask: 'How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?' The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that 'an unjust law is no law at all'
Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust."
"I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is … the white moderate, who is more devoted to 'order' than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: 'I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action'"
"Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with."
"We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation."
"But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love: 'Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despite-fully use you, and persecute you.' … So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice?"
I encourage to read the full text of the letter, or find other writings and speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. His words ring true in all generations.
God Bless,
Roger
I am a huge fan of MLK. My favorite quote is "Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity."
Here is Dr. King's letter to PP when re received the Margaret Sanger Award:
Dear Mr. Canfield:
Words are inadequate for me to say how honored I was to be the recipient of the Margaret Sanger Award. This award will remain among my most cherished possessions. While I cannot claim to be worthy of such a signal honor, I can assure you that I accept it with deep humility and sincere gratitude. Such a wonderful expression of support is of inestimable value for the continuance of my humble efforts.
Again let me say how much I regret that at the last minute urgent developments in the civil rights movement made it impossible for me to be in Washington to personally receive the award. My wife brought glowing echoes of the wonderful reception and impressiveness of the total occasion.
I am happy to be the recipient of the Margaret Sanger Award and I can assure you that this distinct honor will cause me to work even harder for a reign of justice and a rule of love all over our nation.
Sincerely yours,
Martin Luther King Jr.
The full text of his speech can be found here. Dr. King realized the important work being done by Planned Parenthood.
January 19th, 2010 at 12:40 pm
Thanks for pulling out the link between PP and MLK. But it's not the full picture of what happened. The following are excepts from the article titled "An analysis of the PPH MLK brochure" By Alveda King.
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
"Colored people are like human weeds and are to be exterminated. We should hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We don't want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.”
Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood.
Regarding the award:
“Please note that Dr. King is cited for the advancement of social justice, not population control. On the other hand, the first two recipients of the award were noted eugenicists. President Johnson was on board for population control. Dr. King was not aware that the population control agenda aimed primarily at Negroes during his lifetime, included sterilization, abortion, and chemical birth control that would ultimately be linked to stroke, heart attack and breast cancer. He was mislead to believe that he would be ‘helping his people.’ Such help would lead to mass genocide. See Maafa21.com.” Alveda King
“Note the clever use of Dr. King’s compassion for “securing for all people their basic human right…” Notice that they did not mention the dehumanization of the baby in the womb. This effort would be revealed after Dr. King’s assassination and the passage of Roe VS Wade in 1973. In 1966, abortion was primarily illegal in America. In his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, Dr. King spoke of the evils of infanticide: “By their effort and example they brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide. and gladiatorial contests.” Yet, Planned Parenthood would Have us believe that my Uncle would support the violent dismemberment, or suffocation of little babies in the sanctuary/wombs of their mothers? No! They hid their agenda until after his death..” Alveda King
It's good to see a bigger picture. One would have us believe that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. advocated to the extermination of the negro people. This is ludicrous.
God Bless,
Roger
January 19th, 2010 at 2:10 pm
Well, Roger, of course, it would be ludicrous!!! However, neither Dr. King nor Margaret Sanger advocated "the extermination of the negro people" (although I think the politically correct term is "black").
************
“We do not want word to get out that we want to exterminate the Negro population.” Sanger was aware of African-American concerns, passionately argued by Marcus Garvey in the 1920s, that birth control was a threat to the survival of the black race. This statement, which acknowledges those fears, is taken from a letter to Clarence J. Gamble, M.D., a champion of the birth control movement. In that letter, Sanger describes her strategy to allay such apprehensions. A larger portion of the letter makes Sanger's meaning clear:
It seems to me from my experience . . . in North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, and Texas, that while the colored Negroes have great respect for white doctors, they can get closer to their own members and more or less lay their cards on the table. . . . They do not do this with the white people, and if we can train the Negro doctor at the clinic, he can go among them with enthusiasm and with knowledge, which, I believe, will have far-reaching results. . . . His work, in my opinion, should be entirely with the Negro profession and the nurses, hospital, social workers, as well as the County's white doctors. His success will depend upon his personality and his training by us.
The minister's work is also important, and also he should be trained, perhaps by the Federation, as to our ideals and the goal that we hope to reach. We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs (1939).
“As early as 1914 Margaret Sanger was promoting abortion, not for white middle-class women, but against 'inferior races' — black people, poor people, Slavs, Latins, and Hebrews were 'human weeds.'” This allegation about Margaret Sanger appears in an anonymous flyer, "Facts About Planned Parenthood," that is circulated by anti-family planning activists. Margaret Sanger, who passionately believed in a woman's right to control her body, never "promoted" abortion because it was illegal and dangerous throughout her lifetime. She urged women to use contraceptives so that they would not be at risk for the dangers of illegal, back-alley abortion. Sanger never described any ethnic community as an 'inferior race' or as 'human weeds.'
********
But hey, why let the facts get in your way now.
January 20th, 2010 at 9:22 pm
Contraception: A deliberate human act to abort the reproductive process.
Right or wrong? (a good or a evil)?
ANY arguement wherein there is disagreement of above is futile (in my opinion).
January 21st, 2010 at 6:32 am
Wow, student. That's an amazing version of the quote. Perhaps she also said this somewhere else, but the quote I referenced was from a letter from Margaret Sanger’s December 19, 1939 letter to Dr. Clarence Gamble.
You go ahead and believe what you want about Margaret Sanger. Go ahead and don't believe that she advocated eugenics. Don't believe that she thought blacks and other immigrants were inferior.
For everyone else, do your own research on the quote. Yes, you can't believe everything you read on the web (obviously), but there is some good data.
The original link with the article by Alveda King, the niece of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., has the quote in context on the first page, so please read it for yourself. (Letter from Birmingham Jail)
Also, the following article titled Margaret Sanger-In Her Own Word includes references to the original sources. Here's a portion:
God Bless,
Roger
January 21st, 2010 at 9:26 pm
Why deny Sanger's eugenic bent when it's a matter of public record? She organized "the Negro Project" aimed at getting blacks to take birth control. The reason for this, the "Negro Project" explained in its report, was that "the mass of significant Negroes still breed carelessly and disasterously with the result that the increase among Negroes… is [in] that portion of the population least intelligent and fit."
January 21st, 2010 at 10:50 pm
If you want an HONEST take on this subject, I'd strongly encourage you to watch this interview with Mike Wallace and Margaret Sanger.
In 1930, Sanger opened a family planning clinic in Harlem that sought to enlist support for contraceptive use and to bring the benefits of family planning to women who were denied access to their city's health and social services. Staffed by a black physician and black social worker, the clinic was endorsed by The Amsterdam News (the powerful local newspaper), the Abyssinian Baptist Church, the Urban League, and the black community's elder statesman, W.E.B. DuBois.
Beginning in 1939, DuBois also served on the advisory council for Sanger's "Negro Project," which was a "unique experiment in race-building and humanitarian service to a race subjected to discrimination, hardship, and segregation” (Chesler, 1992). The Negro Project served African-Americans in the rural South. Other leaders of the African-American community who were involved in the project included Mary McLeod Bethune, founder of the National Council of Negro Women, and Adam Clayton Powell Jr., pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem.
The Negro Project was also endorsed by prominent white Americans who were involved in social justice efforts at this time, including Eleanor Roosevelt, the most visible and compassionate supporter of racial equality in her era; and the medical philanthropists, Albert and Mary Lasker, whose financial support made the project possible.
A passionate opponent of racism, Sanger predicted in 1942 that the "Negro question" would be foremost on the country's domestic agenda after World War II. Her accomplishments on behalf of the African-American community were unchallengeable during her lifetime and remain so today. In 1966, the year Sanger died, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. said:
There is a striking kinship between our movement and Margaret Sanger's early efforts. . . . Our sure beginning in the struggle for equality by nonviolent direct action may not have been so resolute without the tradition established by Margaret Sanger and people like her.
Charges of racism against Sanger are most often made by anti-choice activists (hello Roger) who are unfamiliar with the history of the African-American community or with Margaret Sanger's collegial relationship with that community's leaders. The tangled fabric of lies and manipulation woven by anti-choice activists around the issues of class, race, and family planning continues to be embroidered today, more than three-quarters of a century after the family planning movement began.
There is a striking kinship between our movement and Margaret Sanger's early efforts. She, like we, saw the horrifying conditions of ghetto life. Like we, she knew that all of society is poisoned by cancerous slums. Like we, she was a direct actionist — a nonviolent resister. She was willing to accept scorn and abuse until the truth she saw was revealed to the millions. At the turn of the century she went into the slums and set up a birth control clinic, and for this deed she went to jail because she was violating an unjust law. Yet the years have justified her actions. She launched a movement which is obeying a higher law to preserve human life under humane conditions. Margaret Sanger had to commit what was then called a crime in order to enrich humanity, and today we honor her courage and vision; for without them there would have been no beginning. Our sure beginning in the struggle for equality by nonviolent direct action may not have been so resolute without the tradition established by Margaret Sanger and people like her. Negroes have no mere academic nor ordinary interest in family planning. They have a special and urgent concern.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (19660
January 22nd, 2010 at 9:14 pm
After the fact efforts to clean up her mess don't negate what she said and did at the time. Nice try, student. Maybe it's time to graduate.
January 22nd, 2010 at 9:55 pm
There really is no getting around it: Margaret Sanger was a devotee of eugenics. In the 1920's and 1930's courses in eugenics were to be found in ivy league schools and even in many high schools around the United States. Margaret Sanger was perhaps the leading figure of the eugenicist movement in America. Not unlike abortion rights, the elitist roots of the eugenics movement is plain for all to see.
Part of eugenicist movement was that populations of the "unfit" and the "negro" had to be suppressed. Planned Parenthood's embrace of birth control and in vitro child dismemberment is a means to that end. The percentage of aborted black babies is consistently disproportionate with those of whites and thus is another example of PP's racism.
As long as we are quoting Dr. King we may as well find out why he said what he said. The follwing was taken from a google search: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Abortion.
THE CLAIM
Reproductive rights (i.e. "abortion" rights) for women is like civil-rights for blacks and other minorities. To try to deny women reproductive rights is the same as trying to deny African-Americans civil-rights. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a great advocate of women's reproductive rights, and for this he was awareded Planned Parenthood's Margaret Sanger Award on May 5th, 1966.
THE TRUTH
"Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. certainly believed in birth-control, but all the evidence available shows he was staunchly against abortion.
One researcher writes:
"Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., stridently denounced abortion as a form of genocide in many speeches." (Lifelines, Winter 1997, p.14 online)
Dr. King did in fact receive the Margaret Sanger Award in 1966. But it is also a fact that in 1966, Planned Parenthood was still (at least publicly) anti-abortion. They were still using a pamphlet they wrote and published in 1963 titled Is Birth Control Abortion?. The pamphlet read:
"Is birth control abortion? Definitely not. An abortion kills the life of a baby after it has begun. It is dangerous to your life and health. It may make you sterile so that when you want a child you cannot have it. Birth control merely post-pones the beginning of life." (Is Birth Control Abortion, Planned Parenthood pamphlet, Aug. 1963, p.1)
Planned Parenthood was anti-abortion until the early 1970s because of two reasons:
1) Some of its members and directors were anti-abortion.
2) PP did not wish to hurt their campaign to promote and legalize birth-control by advocating legalized abortion.
In 1966, and before, Planned Parethood was publicly against abortion, but for birth-control. So was Dr. King; so it shouldn't be surprising that he accepted an award from them.
Dr. King did not know (as most people even today don't know) that Margaret Sanger was a racist, elitist, and eugenecist. She knew that if he hopes for a controlled black population were to be realized then PP would have to enlist the help of black ministers. She knew that black ministers were very well respected in their communities. She once wrote:
"The mass of Negroes, particularly in the South, still breed carelessly and disastroubly, with the result that the increase among Negroes, even more than among Whites, is from that portion of the population least intelligent and fit.***
"The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population and the Minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members." (Black Pro-Lifers March, Protest Racist Nature of Planned Parenthood and Abortion, p.1 online)
Planned Parenthood used Dr. King in order to promote birth-control; a practice he would have vehemently agreed with. But today, pro-Choice advocates use the memory of Dr. King to promote abortion; a practice which he vehemently disagreed with." (end of quote)
Today, Dr. King's niece confirms her uncle's pro-life beliefs. Dr. Alveda King recognizes that the pro-life movement is the civil rights movement of today. Thus it is that Drs. King and King are what some would call "anti-choice." It is foolish word play, but nevertheless a moniker worn proudly by all who believe in the sacredness of human life and are willing to stand in solidarity with those brutally denied their right to life. I am glad I am on the side of history with Drs. King and King.
January 23rd, 2010 at 7:49 pm
As an interesting aside, who wrote that abortion amounted to "genocide against the black race" and added in all caps "AS A MATTER OF CONSCIENCE I MUST OPPOSE THE USE OF FEDERAL FUNDS FOR A POLICY OF KILLING INFANTS"?
The same man who stood in Dr. King's blood on April 4, the Rev. Jesse Jackson. But when you want to run as a Democrat, throw your conscience aside and collect Planned Parenthood money.
January 23rd, 2010 at 10:19 pm
Brian:
It never ceases to amaze how the quest for power within the Democratic party produces the 180 degree turnabout on abortion. There are far too many examples of this.
Also, a correction in my post above. I meant to say "in utero" rather than "in vitro."
January 24th, 2010 at 12:47 pm
"quest for power" lol! how about quest for MONEY with even more from the PENSION!
January 24th, 2010 at 1:40 pm
EASY money and GUARENTEED pension!
January 24th, 2010 at 1:52 pm
Plus fantastic non-Obamacare Health Insurance!
January 25th, 2010 at 10:51 am
Could it be that sometimes those who are on "thin ice", believe that they are in charge of the weather also?
February 17th, 2010 at 4:30 am