Wednesday, January 30, 2002
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Wednesday, January 30, 2002 |
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Letter slamming Dr. King certainly contained interesting 'revelations' I read with interest Victoria Wanzer's groundbreaking revelations concerning Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. ("Some truth-telling needed about MLK Jr.") which was published as a letter the editor Jan. 23, just two days following the national observance of the King holiday. While I have always considered myself to be a fairly literate person, I must confess that I learned an awful lot concerning King that I had never heard before. Given the extraordinary volume of media coverage (not to mention truckloads of biographical, substantive and historical material) concerning King and the civil rights movement over the past 40 years, it is quite frankly shocking to now learn that Dr. King started the Watts riot of 1965, was a communist sympathizer, a Vietcong sympathizer and orchestrated his own assassination to "further his political career." Ms. Wanzer's contentions caused me to challenge my own interpretation [of] King's place in history. Was King's message of nonviolence indeed a "phony" one? Were Ms. Wanzer's "dozens of black friends who lived in the Watts area of Los Angeles" in 1965 really victimized by King's speeches in Birmingham, Ala. (King was in Birmingham on Aug. 11, 1965, the day the Watts riots started)? Were the good people of Watts really "murdered by rampaging MLK supporters"? Am I one of those "gullible blacks" to whom she referred? Is all of this newly discovered information proof of a widespread, systemic media "whitewash" (no pun intended) of the facts surrounding King's rise to prominence? Ultimately, only history and the Good Lord will judge King if the charges leveled against him by Ms. Wanzer are true. Ms. Wanzer's letter did have one perhaps unintended consequence, at least as relates to me. It made me more proud than ever to be an American and grateful to live in the greatest country in the world. For, you see, only in America does there exist a First Amendment right of free speech which has no corresponding literacy requirement. Only in America can opinion represented as fact represented as opinion be lobbed into the public domain like a shotgun blast which doesn't kill but nonetheless injures us all a little. Finally, in America we can demonstrate our contempt for a national holiday by the strongest means at our disposal: We can get up that day and go to work anyway. Yes, I'm proud to be an American and I fervently believe that God has and will continue to bless America (and Ms. Wanzer, too!). John Lewis, Jr. Peachtree City
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