"King's New Dream" by Kevin Jackson

Martin Luther King, Jr. died on April 4, 1968 at the age of 39.  He was killed by an assassin's bullet in Memphis, Tennessee.  Just a few months later on June 6, 1968 another American involved in public life died.  Robert Kennedy had been mortally wounded by another assassin's bullet the previous day.  Thus ended this writer's senior year in college.  On June 8, 1968 I graduated college and the ensuing 42 years have been spent observing dramatic changes in the American way of life, particularly the evolution in the black community from common day workers denied of equal opportunities,  to well educated professionals, in all the academic disciplines. 

Yet in spite of the many success stories, we have not seen a leader like Dr. King, whose inspiring rhetoric and tireless efforts emboldened an entire people to break the chains of bondage and realize that "Man is man because he is free to operate within the framework of his destiny. He is free to deliberate, to make decisions, and to choose between alternatives. He is distinguished from animals by his freedom to do evil or to do good and to walk the high road of beauty or tread the low road of ugly degeneracy. -- Martin Luther King, Jr., The Measures of Man, 1959.

A very large segment of our population only knows about the Civil Rights Movement from what they've learned in school or read in books.  As time goes by, less and less of those who lived through the times remain.  Many of those who write and speak about Martin Luther King, Jr., or Robert F. Kennedy, were not born, or were mere children at the time of their deaths.  Consider that Barack Hussein Obama, the current president of the United States was a mere eight years old at the time. 


There is a great deal of debate and speculation as to Dr. King's political affiliation.  He most likely was a Republican like his father, and like his friend Charlton Heston, who left the Democratic party during the Civil Rights movement.   Dr. King's non violent ideology, and his entire life have been put under a microscope since his death. Rumors  about him have appeared in print, most of which  cannot be verified. What is important today is to acknowledge that his legacy to the Civil Rights Movement  and black Americans transcends political affiliation. 


Could a black man have been elected to the presidency of the United States had it not been because of Dr. King's efforts to end discrimination and bring about a bond of friendship and brotherhood between the races?  This is where the debate lies today.  While researching facts for this article the following article was found:   Is MLK’s ‘Other America’ Still Relevant Today? written by  Anthony Jerrod for the Atlanta Post, Jerrod states the following, "To be sure, race relations have improved when benchmarked to March of 1968 when Dr. King gave this speech.  But, it is relatively safe to state that our nation is still reluctant to have candid recognition and discourse about the problem of racism.  To a large degree, I agree with Attorney General Holder’s relatively controversial assessment that we are a “nation of cowards” when it comes to the topic of race relations."

In order to illustrate his point Mr. Jerrod then proceeds to detail isolated incidents of bias, to malign The Tea Party Movement, Speaker Boehmer, and former Governor Sarah Palin.  To add insult to injury and biased reporting to his essay, he links the recent Tucson Tragedy to American intolerance,  After skewering the Republican party and conservatives in general, Mr. Jerrod, goes on to demonstrate his ignorance and cultural as well as media bias by concluding his article in this manner:   "On the whole, is Dr. King’s “Other America” still vibrant and relevant in our current time and space? Unfortunately, this metaphorical yet literal dualism still exists and will continue to persist until we move beyond partisan rancor, indifference and vitriolic words and move toward genuine recognition, repentance, love and unity, as President Obama eloquently discussed during the recent memorial service in Tuscon."

We ask ourselves the question, "What would Martin Luther King, Jr. think about the age of Obama.  Others have their own opinions, but we would think that he would have been proud that black Americans were able to go out and vote freely without fear of retribution.  However, we do not think that he would approve of the direction in which Obama has taken out country.  Dr. King was all about freedom, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States.  He was all about unity, and brothers and sisters uniting hand in hand.  Instead, the Obama administration has set back race relations by decades.  The man who was to be the great unifier, has brought out the worst rancor and mistrust between the races in generations.

To better understand a different point of view from Anthony Jerrod's we offer an essay from Kevin Jackson, a black conservative whose view and opinion different greatly from the one previously presented.

January 17, 2011 http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/01/kings_new_dream.html
King's New Dream
By Kevin Jackson


MLK Day is today, and it got me to thinking about his legacy and the civility that everyone is now asking for in the wake of the Tucson shooting. MLK would be disgusted at how his legacy is being used: liberal blacks use him to establish a double standard, a sort of "have your cake and eat it, too," while liberal whites prostitute his dream.

When MLK fought for civil rights, there weren't a lot of black mega-millionaires or black industry moguls like Oprah Winfrey or Jay-Z. If BET existed at all, it would have been only because black people would not have been able to appear on "regular" TV.

Fourscore and three years later, the liberal black man in America is still a prisoner. Liberal blacks are no longer "sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination," as King wrote; instead, they have become prisoners of their own minds.

America has made good on that bounced check due to "insufficient funds," and black people were made whole and then some. The black man is no longer an exile in his own land, as King suggested in the '60s. When King spoke of the shameful condition of the black man, it was real and at the hands of white Democrats. Today however, if there is a shameful condition of the black man, it is a condition of the black man's own creation.

There can be no argument that black people have advanced to the highest possible levels in America, and black liberals know in their hearts that the sky is the limit as far as the potential for black achievement is concerned. No longer do black liberals need to feel disingenuous when encouraging their children that they could one day be president of the United States.

Despite all the overwhelming examples of achievement by blacks, however, liberal black people still complain more than any other culture about America -- calling America racist and saying that the black man is being kept down. They are right on the second point. But it is liberal blacks keeping liberal blacks down.

Black liberals are conditioned to complain, the same way a child does to get his way. Meanwhile, millions of illegal immigrants stream across our borders, happy to trade places with any American, and millions more line up legally to reach the same end. All over the world, the longest line of any embassy line is the line at the American embassy. MLK would smile at the fact that America remains the country that people all over the world still fight to get to.

MLK would have seen Obama's squandering of trillions of dollars as wasteful, wholly ineffective, and completely antithetical to his dream. King would recognize what Obama has done by pilfering the taxpayer as the purchase of the poverty industry and the writing of more checks destined to bounce.

If King were alive today, he would explain that we live in a time where America is losing jobs by the thousands every week, when one million people had their homes repossessed, and five million more have the same fate pending. King would know that Obama's promissory note is as good as Obama's word. The content of one's character.

King would have still have a dream today. He wouldn't want black people dependent on the government. As before, King would want black people to get a fair chance at the American dream as promised by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

America is a very different America today from what it was when Democrats were writing oppressive laws against black people. King would be overjoyed to see that in "Alabama[,] little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers." "For Whites Only" is a thing of the past, and King would rejoice that in America today, "justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream."

King's legacy extends beyond the gains made by blacks today, gains that are being squandered in a mad money-grab by leftist politicians both black and white. King's legacy has manifested itself into a group hated by the left -- as much as blacks were hated by the left back in the '60s. King's dream today would undoubtedly be a vision of Tea Party movement.

King talked about the "fierce urgency of now." How true those words remain to this day. King recognized the tyrannical nature of the government, and he would be standing shoulder to shoulder with Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Herman Cain, Allen West, and many others in an attempt to free not only blacks this time, but the entire nation from the very same government that was oppressing blacks during King's lifetime.

King would recognize that the oppression of government had not ended, but only shifted in an attempt to seize the entire nation, morphing as a virus would in order to survive in its host.

King would recognize the disease that has us discussing America's racism in a time when America has a black president. King would understand that a government suing one of its states for protecting the American dream can only be a malady of the brain, or a blatant sign of a government intent on enslavement of its citizens.

As King said back then, "We cannot walk alone ... we cannot turn back."

Today, King would hear freedom's ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire, from the mighty mountains of New York, from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania, from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado, from the curvaceous slopes of California, from Stone Mountain of Georgia, from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee, and from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. Because the Tea Party people would be with him, shouting, "Let freedom ring."

Kevin Jackson is the author of the Amazon best-selling book The BIG Black Lie and The Black Sphere blog.