[A-List] Re: History and Sacrificial Death/MLK and sex as history

[Waistline2 at aol.com]

<<I'll debate it any time anywhere. I consider MLK just another  demagogue
clearly in love with the tone and "eloquence" of his own  voice.>> 
 
 
 
The vision of ones own revolution becomes the cause of the next revolution  
and herein lies the dance of the dialectic. Without this understanding the real 
 Dr. King as individual cannot be understood and the historical Dr. King 
vanishes  into sexual gossip. Until one has dreamt the dream and embraced the 
vision,  American history remains an inescapable maze without a guide that can 
measure  the impact of 1, such as Martin Luther King Jr. 
 
        Martin Luther King Jr. as  historical figure and historical marker 
means there was a Martin Luther king Jr.  wing of the Civil Rights Movement that 
was constructed as the canals to channel  African American Liberation. 
 
King of course hated J. Edgar Hoover’s wing of the state as much as Hoover  
hated every wing of all political blocs, with the only exceptions being those  
individuals he hated less. Hoover had to die to dismantle his bureaucratic 
power  because it embodied the ugliness that was Hoover body. Hoover was hard to 
look  at - ugly, and his body reeked with the evolved evil that is developed 
evil -  devil. One bowed to Hoover, not out of respect or fear, but from the 
common  sense knowing that to behold such evil is to know it and this knowing 
requires  assimilation. It is the logic and knowing of the slave, not the 
masses, that  carries and gives voice to real American history. It is the knowing of 
the slave  that carries American history and Hoover was master of freemen and 
slave alike.  To stare at him is to slay him, because evil demands the deed. 
 
Hoover’s death  was a happy time in America, filled with enormous drum  rolls 
and bombastic orchestration: "Freedom Of Information Act."
 
Happy is the smile that feels the moment is at hand when the dance between  
dream and vision crosses the threshold and becomes force. 
 
Many happy things happen in history. 
 
One of these was that the mechanization of Southern agriculture, which  
liquidated the economic base for segregation, coincided with the move of  industry 
from the North to the South. Remember how President Eisenhower set  aside 
fifteen billion dollars to assist industry's move from the union towns in  the 
northeast into the non-union south? This move was not only to break the  unions, 
but also to industrialize the South. Thus, as the blacks and whites were  
driven off the plantations and shoved out of the sharecropping class, they had a  
place to go, in order to be able to shop at the malls that were only a decade  
away from leaving the world where dream and vision dance. They went first 
into  small scale Southern industry and into the larger industry of the North.
 
We saw the temporary unity of interest between the Northern oligarchy and  
the political and social strivings of the blacks in the South. And the temporary 
 unity made the Martin Luther King wing of the freedom movement possible. It 
was  the missing ingredient in the struggle prior to WWII. At that time, there 
was no  section of the economy whose interest lay in doing away with 
segregation, so the  Second Constitution laid dormant as doormat. Therefore, we could 
not win, the  promise of the vision. The sad truth is that until a section of 
the white ruling  class interest lay in doing away with segregation, it could 
not be done away  with no matter how hard we fought or how much blood 
alkalinized the earth.
 
   A Dr. King had to happen and everything about him as an  individual was 
historically perfect because he was the measure of the moment  that had to 
happen. He wore the perfectly right hat, the right suit of clothes  and his 
chocolate shade of black was perfect. The sound of his voice, the sound  of the slave 
who would dare was perfect and defined his wing of the movement.  Men admired 
him, women loved him, with both, the real masses from which his  oneness 
could not be separated, wanting to touch his skin. King allowed himself  to be 
touched. 
 
    Did Martin Luther King Jr. understand moments of  actuality; the movement 
of the impossible as it crosses the threshold of the  possible and morph into 
the practical? Was he a dreamer or “The Dreamer?”   Dr. King - Martin, was 
born into the social movement and willed into existence  by masses, whose 
passion -  impulse, for expanded political liberties is  boundless. From the many 
came the one. King was prepared, living the endless  moments of the history he 
already was. Given the historically important role of  the Church as the only 
social organization allowed under slavery and during the  long night of 
segregation, a King would step out of the column of the church. 
 
    Just as the church in America split over the question of  slavery, the 
church split over the question of engagement with the living forces  of evil and 
Dr. King was nothing if not engagement.  
 
   This period of his story - the King period, during the late  1950's to 
early '60's is often referred to as the Second Reconstruction. There  are 
important parallels. Northern financial and industrial interests had to move  into 
the South. To do so they had to exploit African American labor. To do that,  de 
jure segregation had to be repealed. The bloc of Southern reactionaries and  
Northern conservatives, constituting the historic Slave Power of the pre-Civil  
War era had been stood on their head by history’s dance and became Northern  
reactionaries and Southern conservatives, blocking every move by this new  
international financial group. The only way to out was the freedom train, and  
this meant  “enfranchise the blacks“ and vote out the Southern  Conservatives 
and the hoards of local reactionaries. Unlike the pre-Civil War  era, the 
social process could not express itself as a secessionists movement of  states. The 
struggle for the ballot, however, could not be won without some  assistance 
from the legal arm of the state. Jeff Davis had to be buried again  and the 
monuments to slavery toppled. 
 
    King was charged with the same accusing finger  pointed at Malcolm X. “
The leader” (take your pick) “would come to town, stirrup  the natives and then 
leave, leaving all the hard work for the local folk.” “All  Malcolm does is 
give good speeches.” “Outside agitator” and the rest of the  stock in trade 
of reaction since the Paris Commune. That King presided over  important 
meetings of organizations, civil and church groups and did real work  to actually 
organize and register people to vote and fight very real fascist  reaction is 
often discounted or omitted. The fight for the vote is being fought  out even 
today, in states like Florida, but this real fight and work is easy to  discount 
if one does not consider how constitutional crisis unfolds in America. 
 
Just as the bakery is more important to the bread than the slaughter house  
worker, King was important as an individual, in life and death. The slaughter  
house worker has a story. His story is not as large as the story that is Dr.  
Martin Luther King Jr. 
 
Kings destiny with the bullet was not preordained but the consequence of  his 
political shift to maintain relevance in the next phase of the African  
American Liberation Movement. King made political decisions and choices. It was  
not his anti-war stance but his anti war stance in concert with the African  
American peoples rebellion within the armed forces itself - rather than a  
mythical “unity” with the anti-war movement of that period, that put that “date  
with the bullet” on the agenda. It was the demands of black workers and the  
cries of the most poverty stricken sector of the proletariat, that shifted the  
King. And he responded as a responsible leader. King betrayed no one because he 
 was who he became and it was written before he was born.   
 
As the post WW II bloc of Northern Republicans and Southern Democrats was  
broken, the government set about mending the political fabric of the country and 
 it turned out that King was not the man Hoover thought. Dr. Martin Luther 
King  Jr. was not Sambo, the slave in the novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” that beat 
Uncle  Tom to death for his refusal to beat a female slave. King was murdered 
by  Sambo’s betrayal and the question is “who did King refuse to beat to death.
” 
 
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. personifies, better than any individual or event  
between the period of 1952 and 1968, that which is critical to that moment of  
history completion. Malcolm X  does not express this continuity that is the  
American South. Malcolm X in all his phases of life, from drug user to number  
runner, to lady’s man, to jailbird, to religious leader, manifested a side of 
 Dr. King that he could not manifest and their connection is in that 
apartness. 
 
King was Southern and his noted love for Belle, black and white, is admired  
by many.  Uncle Tom is a historical figure who was murdered because he  could 
not and would not beat the already downtrodden and oppressed women -  female 
slave, Belle in the black. 
 
Martin Luther King Jr. was America’s greatest and last Uncle Tom and to  hate 
him, by speaking ill of his individuality, rather than politics is to cross  
the line of decency and a failure to understand that King was on time. 
 
    King personally closed the door on the Second American  Revolution, 
almost exactly one hundred years after the battlefield engagement  between North 
and South. Only Tom could do this. The dance unfolds on a new  basis.  
 
Comrade Waistline 
 





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