Reposted by permission of the author:
by Joe Moore on Monday, January 17, 2011 at 5:16pm
http://www.facebook.com/#!/note.php?note_id=181607205204533&id=100000494926747The first oddity was finding that some of the posted videos on Youtube of the speech, usually referred to as his "I have been to the mountain top" speech, or just "final speech" (although I've read about a speech he was due to give a couple days later, titled "Why America might go to hell"), had the audio removed with a note that says the audio is not authorized by WMG (Warner Music Group? though i've also read that his estate exerts considerable control over the rights of his speeches.)
We listened to Part One (10min) of the final speech. Then we tried to listen to Part Two, but again the audio was removed. So we searched for and found the text on-line. I decided to read it aloud, and looked for where we'd left off in the YouTube version. What I found was that the Youtube version had been edited, removing a considerable section of the speech. So I just read aloud from where I found the first stuff we hadn't yet heard.
He was inarguably a "great orator". His voice and his words are moving. The speech is powerful. The part that had been edited out of the Youtube version included a section that was startling. He stated that black people in America are a "poor" people, but that collectively they had more financial resources than all but 9 nations on earth.
"Now the other thing we'll have to do is this: Always anchor our external direct action with the power of economic withdrawal."
MLK was talking about foreign policy, about Vietnam. He may have been aligning the black cause politically with communism. I haven't read that closely enough to say exactly. Clearly he was a dangerous man to the power structures of wealth and social control. However, I really think it was when he starting calling for boycotts; calling out BY NAME the companies that blacks should deny their money and why. When he told millions upon millions of black folk to take their money out of the bank, today, and put it into a single bank that was aligned with the cause of equality for blacks; I believe that's what prompted the series of phone calls that certainly took place somewhere(s) and led to the professional sniper shots that killed him in Memphis on April 3rd, 1968.
He was commanding, with no obscurity, an exact means by which a poor class in our socio-economic structure can claim direct power over a governing minority. That is serious, dangerous stuff. And Martin Luther King Jr. knew what it meant. He knew he was about to be taken out. You can hear it so fucking clearly in this speech. Like lots of other people, whites, blacks and other non-whites who commemorate him today as a hero of civil rights in America, who joke lightly about the benefits of bank holidays and post links to his great "I have a dream" speech, I'm accepting my chance to weep at his awesome truth and tragedy. I'm glad we have Obama as our president today. It means a lot just that he can be identified as a black man. I also do not believe we live in a "post-racial" society, by any stretch of the imagination. And we are far, far from even having a clear public discourse about the class structure of our society.
But why can't I find any audio source of that section of his speech? I understand that far fewer people will ever take the time to read the full, lengthy and complicated texts than will click a button and listen to his magnificent voice.
Why isn't anyone today saying "Hey poor people, blacks, whites, all of you, take your money out of the banking institutions of established power"?
Was Malcolm X killed because he, too, began talking about class as the real structure of power in America, inviting folks to cross the racial lines and unite by class? Was that the straw that broke the gunmen's pause in his situation?
If anyone has read this note this far, maybe you have time to read that speech that I read aloud last night? I'm gonna put a couple links when I'm done writing, because all we did was use Google, Youtube and Wikipedia. The Internet is an important new landscape of non-heirarchical access to free speech as speaker and listener. i hope to the gods that it stays that way.
Ok, I feel sloppy and not well-focused. I hope my gist is here for you. Thanks for reading this. I feel vulnerable and embarrassed. Just another white guy posting about his appreciation for MLK today. Take it or leave it, my friends.
Ok, just a couple more things that stick in my craw: we also read the wikipedia page about James Earl Ray. Before he died in prison, he retracted his confession. Members of King's family supported the idea that Ray was not the man who killed Martin. A "mock trial" was held publicly, according to the wiki-page, where MLK's friend advocated as lawyer for Ray, and the trial found him NOT GUILTY of shooting MLK. Then an actual, legal, civil trial is mentioned where King's family sued Loyd Jowers, a restaurant owner in Memphis, for acting in conspiracy to have MLK killed. They won, and received the amount of $100 in restitution, symbolic only to demonstrate that money was not the object of the trial, but truth.
What does this all mean today?
Ok, enough of me. Here's some links, just a couple obvious ones. The rest are out there to be found:
("full text" of final speech, from Stanford MLK collection.)
http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/documentsentry/ive_been_to_the_mountaintop/ (part one of youtube video of speech. this is part where we found the significant text edited out. part two has the audio removed, as per WMG.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BI_tQ5DdFAk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Earl_Ray
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