Dr. King speaks to us
by Bill Curtis
Thirty-seven years ago on April 4, 1968 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was murdered in Memphis, TN, giving support to striking sanitation workers. What would he say today?
Looking at the Black Church, he said, “Two types of Negro churches have failed to provide bread. One burns with emotionalism, and the other freezes with classism. The former, reducing worship to entertainment, places more emphasis on volume than on content and confuses spirituality with muscularity. The danger in such a church is that the members may have more religion in their hands and feet than in their hearts and souls. At midnight this type of church has neither the vitality nor the relevant gospel to feed hungry souls. The other type of Negro church that feeds no midnight traveler has developed a class system and boasts of its dignity, its membership of professional people, and its exclusiveness.” (from The Strength To Love)
Seeing non-Blacks running most businesses in the neighborhoods, he said, “Black Power is also a call for the pooling of black financial resources to achieve economic security. While the ultimate answer to the Negroes economic dilemma will be found in a massive federal program for all the poor along the lines of A Phillip Randolph’s Freedom Budget, a kind of Marshall Plan for the disadvantaged, there is something that the Negro himself can do to throw off the shackles of poverty. (from Where Do We Go From Here)
Looking at President Bush, he said, “Our priorities are mixed up, our national purposes are confused, our policies are confused, and the must somehow be a reordering of priorities, policies and purposes.” (Dr. King at the 68th Annual Convention of the Rabbinical Assembly, March 25, 1968)
He continued. “We feel that there must be some structural changes now, there must be a radical re-ordering of priorities, there must be a de-escalation and a final stopping of the war in Vietnam and an escalation of the war against poverty and racism here at home.”
Reflecting on authentic justice, Dr. King said, “Justice for black people will not flow into society merely from court decisions nor from fountains of political oratory. Nor will a few token changes quell all the tempestuous yearning of millions of disadvantaged black people. White America must recognize that justice for black people cannot be achieved without radical changes in the structure of our society. The comfortable, the entrenched, the privileged cannot continue to tremble at the prospect of change in the status quo.” (from Testament of Hope)
As he ascended from the mist of April 4, 1968 Memphis, TN, Dr. King said, “I want to say one other challenge that we face is simply that we must find an alternative to war and blood shed. Anyone who feels, and there are still a lot of people who feel that way, that war can solve the social problems facing mankind is sleeping through a revolution. President Kennedy said on one occasion, “Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind.” The world must hear this. I pray God that America will hear this before it is too late because today we’re fighting a war.” (Dr. King’s last Sunday morning sermon, March 31, 1968, National Cathedral (Episcopal), Washington, DC)
Bill Curtis
email: blog@BillCurtisInfo.com
www.NoBoxWeb.com
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Sunday, April 03, 2005
Tuesday, March 01, 2005
Hands Off the NAACP, Fox News Central
On Feb. 28, 2005 Fox New Central commentator Mark Hyman made comments directed at the NAACP. Some things are sacred, Mark, and the NAACP is one. Hands off. Here's my letter in response to Mr. Hyman's commentary. (And in fairness, I've linked the headline of my commentary to his commentary or http://www.foxbaltimore.com/baltimore_md/
Dear Mark Hyman,
My goodness. Is anything sacred to you guys, the conservative movement, than your own numb navel? I can't believe that Fox lets your shortsighted logic onto the airways. The illogic of your thoughts is unacceptable.
American law, no longer the outright endorser of laws of nullification, mob rule and segregation, may be fair but not quite equal.
The thinking people of this country know that equal protection under the law is a moving target. And the majority of the American people cannot see the truth if it was bulls-eyed on the tip of a weapon of mass destruction.
Come on now, Fox. Get real. Even President Bush's pal Russian President Putin sees the illogic.
And there you are, on TV, being trite, trying to make a case for a Caucasian male to head the NAACP, the organization that saved America from its barbaric endorsement of laws that sanctioned hate, segregation and nullification, three of the four deranged offspring of white supremacy mindset.
With Black leadership, the NAACP has helped America to find its humanity and its democracy.
Only Black Americans, the people who ascended from that brutal European slave trade and its ensuing barbarity against human beings in America, could have done that, as proven by history.
Black Americans forced America to be a democracy.
Leave the NAACP alone. Mark, you have no credibility to question its leadership.
Thank you.
Bill Curtis
http://BlackMind.blogspot.com
Dear Mark Hyman,
My goodness. Is anything sacred to you guys, the conservative movement, than your own numb navel? I can't believe that Fox lets your shortsighted logic onto the airways. The illogic of your thoughts is unacceptable.
American law, no longer the outright endorser of laws of nullification, mob rule and segregation, may be fair but not quite equal.
The thinking people of this country know that equal protection under the law is a moving target. And the majority of the American people cannot see the truth if it was bulls-eyed on the tip of a weapon of mass destruction.
Come on now, Fox. Get real. Even President Bush's pal Russian President Putin sees the illogic.
And there you are, on TV, being trite, trying to make a case for a Caucasian male to head the NAACP, the organization that saved America from its barbaric endorsement of laws that sanctioned hate, segregation and nullification, three of the four deranged offspring of white supremacy mindset.
With Black leadership, the NAACP has helped America to find its humanity and its democracy.
Only Black Americans, the people who ascended from that brutal European slave trade and its ensuing barbarity against human beings in America, could have done that, as proven by history.
Black Americans forced America to be a democracy.
Leave the NAACP alone. Mark, you have no credibility to question its leadership.
Thank you.
Bill Curtis
http://BlackMind.blogspot.com
Sunday, February 20, 2005
Black Mind musing #1
Setting in a corner of the future, looking back on the past, I restore the Black Mind to preeminence in the world, which, of course, every thinking person knows has always forced the America people to live up to the enlightened principles of its Founding Fathers.
Without the Black Mind as the conscience of America, then the American people slither down a right tilt, usually quite wrong and violent and what some call organized evil, or a time of legal racist laws (segregation and nullification of the human spirit) and corporate rule, landing the nation in a bizarre labyrinth of illogical reasons for not helping people. Totally bizarre.
The infectious nature of white supremacy mindset (oh boy! that stuff), long thought retired but now redeployed, again imposes mindlessness and fear on the American people, whoever they might be.
Personally, I’ve not decided which is more bizarre:
– 1) To lie and get away with it but ignore the soul or
– 2) To lie and get away with it but never to have had a soul.
As dangerous as option #1 might be, I could live with it. But #2? That’s a toughie. An existence without attention to the soul simply puts people “out of their minds,” as Dr. Naim Akbar says, sort of like being insane with the “rightness” of ego while suppressing the cooperative, uplifting energy of spirit.
A person without a soul is a person who lives in fear of everything. They even fear themselves and that’s what leads to wars. That’s what made American slavery possible. It’s a totally mindless existence, one where the barbarian with the bigger gun takes over the barbarian who only has a spear or a bow and arrow.
Technology could make the world abundant for all, if shared. But a technological bully makes the world dangerous for all. You know, totally bizarre.
“We just want America to be what it ought to be,” said my Commanding Officer Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Memphis, Tennessee on April 3, 1968, the evening before someone murdered him. Dr. King, true to the Black Mind continuum, spoke to the darkness of America that she would come into harmony with her enlightened principles.
The re-emerged Black Mind is the only mind capable of saving America from its mumbo-jumbo of contradictions (also called lies) and its flagrant-denials concerning its aversion to being fair. Much like the mumbo-jumbo of those Christian fanatics who killed every Indian within musket range, it makes for a totally bizarre, violent existence.
Reenter the re-emerged Black Mind with spiritual clarity to teach the American people what respect means and what it means to be human. And peaceful. Now, I know that’s a hard pill for folk to swallow, particularly when their ego chokes them into a thoughtless coma. And they do not know what it means to be well or in harmony.
The Black Mind will save America from her own hubris and hegemony.
Welcome to Black Mind blog - your future, my world, where people are awake.
Bill Curtis
http://BlackMind.blogspot.com
Feb. 20, 2005
Without the Black Mind as the conscience of America, then the American people slither down a right tilt, usually quite wrong and violent and what some call organized evil, or a time of legal racist laws (segregation and nullification of the human spirit) and corporate rule, landing the nation in a bizarre labyrinth of illogical reasons for not helping people. Totally bizarre.
The infectious nature of white supremacy mindset (oh boy! that stuff), long thought retired but now redeployed, again imposes mindlessness and fear on the American people, whoever they might be.
Personally, I’ve not decided which is more bizarre:
– 1) To lie and get away with it but ignore the soul or
– 2) To lie and get away with it but never to have had a soul.
As dangerous as option #1 might be, I could live with it. But #2? That’s a toughie. An existence without attention to the soul simply puts people “out of their minds,” as Dr. Naim Akbar says, sort of like being insane with the “rightness” of ego while suppressing the cooperative, uplifting energy of spirit.
A person without a soul is a person who lives in fear of everything. They even fear themselves and that’s what leads to wars. That’s what made American slavery possible. It’s a totally mindless existence, one where the barbarian with the bigger gun takes over the barbarian who only has a spear or a bow and arrow.
Technology could make the world abundant for all, if shared. But a technological bully makes the world dangerous for all. You know, totally bizarre.
“We just want America to be what it ought to be,” said my Commanding Officer Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Memphis, Tennessee on April 3, 1968, the evening before someone murdered him. Dr. King, true to the Black Mind continuum, spoke to the darkness of America that she would come into harmony with her enlightened principles.
The re-emerged Black Mind is the only mind capable of saving America from its mumbo-jumbo of contradictions (also called lies) and its flagrant-denials concerning its aversion to being fair. Much like the mumbo-jumbo of those Christian fanatics who killed every Indian within musket range, it makes for a totally bizarre, violent existence.
Reenter the re-emerged Black Mind with spiritual clarity to teach the American people what respect means and what it means to be human. And peaceful. Now, I know that’s a hard pill for folk to swallow, particularly when their ego chokes them into a thoughtless coma. And they do not know what it means to be well or in harmony.
The Black Mind will save America from her own hubris and hegemony.
Welcome to Black Mind blog - your future, my world, where people are awake.
Bill Curtis
http://BlackMind.blogspot.com
Feb. 20, 2005
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