{"id":178269,"date":"2019-01-21T18:31:00","date_gmt":"2019-01-21T23:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2019\/01\/21\/on-the-100th-anniversary-of-his-birth-am-i-obligated-to-whitesplain-martin-luther-king-jr\/"},"modified":"2019-01-21T18:31:00","modified_gmt":"2019-01-21T23:31:00","slug":"on-the-100th-anniversary-of-his-birth-am-i-obligated-to-whitesplain-martin-luther-king-jr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2019\/01\/21\/on-the-100th-anniversary-of-his-birth-am-i-obligated-to-whitesplain-martin-luther-king-jr\/","title":{"rendered":"On the 100Th Anniversary of His Birth, Am I Obligated to Whitesplain Martin Luther King, Jr.?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Today, on the anniversary of his assassination, the FBI honors the life, work, & commitment of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to justice. pic.twitter.com\/WZInYKQx2g<\/a><\/p>\n

— FBI (@FBI) April 4, 2017<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?<\/i><\/div>\n

No. I am not.<\/p>\n

I am not a historian, and I am not Black, and these days, everyone from David Brooks to Ann Coulter seems determined to show people that he was really one of them.<\/p>\n

I was 6 years old when he died, and lived in a place which (I think) still required an operator assisted call to reach the “Lower 48,” so any recollections that I have are entirely from historical documents.<\/p>\n

There is plenty of primary documentation of his life, his letters, his speeches, film and video, and I highly recommend that you check it out. <\/p>\n

About the only thing that I can say with certainty from what I know of history history is that the FBI under J.Edgar Hoover was a profoundly pernicious organization that aggressively subverted the civil rights of its targets, and that there was never a proper reckoning for their behavior.<\/p>\n

I’m inclined to believe that his legacy still permeates the Bureau, and current<\/a> events<\/a> would<\/a> tend to bolster my opinion.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today, on the anniversary of his assassination, the FBI honors the life, work, & commitment of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to justice. pic.twitter.com\/WZInYKQx2g — FBI (@FBI) April 4, 2017 You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency? No. I am not. I …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[413,389,526],"class_list":["post-178269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-civil-rights","tag-history","tag-law-enforcement-misconduct"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178269"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178269\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}