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When Roger West first launched the progressive political blog "News From The Other Side" in May 2010, he could hardly have predicted the impact that his venture would have on the media and political debate. As the New Media emerged as a counterbalance to established media sources, Roger wrote his copious blogs about national politics, the tea party movement, mid-term elections, and the failings of the radical right to the vanguard of the New Media movement. Roger West's efforts as a leading blogger have tremendous reach. NFTOS has led the effort to bring accountability to mainstream media sources such as FOX NEWS, Breitbart's "Big Journalism. Roger's breadth of experience, engaging style, and cultivation of loyal readership - over 92 million visitors - give him unique insight into the past, present, and future of the New Media and political rhetoric that exists in our society today. What we are against: Radical Right Wing Agendas Incompetent Establishment Donald J. Trump Corporate Malfeasence We are for: Global and Econmoic Security Social and Economic Justice Media Accountability THE RESISTANCE

Wednesday, August 28, 2013

“Tell Them About the Dream, Martin.”

Mahalia Jackson Singing At Jackson Speech

We all know about the 1963 march on Washington where Martin Luther King, Jr. galvanized the multitudes with his “I Have a Dream” speech.

Most did not - nor do they now know how this great speech came to be, that is until now.

Clarence Jones, the adviser to the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. who co-wrote an early draft of the "I Have A Dream Speech," recounted the story Monday of how King delivered the most famous part of the speech spontaneously.

Jones was part of a Television Critics Association panel Monday about PBS's "The March." Denzel Washington provides the narration for director John Akomfrah's PBS film about the 1963 March on Washington. It airs on Aug. 27, the eve of the 50th anniversary of the march.

The day culminated in King's address to hundreds of thousands of people at the Lincoln Memorial, and millions watching him on television for the first time.
"Very few people know -- most people do not know -- that the speech that he gave was not the speech that he had intended to give," said Jones, author of the books "What Would Martin Say?" and "Behind the Dream: The Making of the Speech That Transformed a Nation."
The speech might have turned out very differently if not for an exhortation from King's favorite gospel singer, Mahalia Jackson, Jones said.
"As he was reading from the text of his prepared remarks, there came a point when Mahalia Jackson, who was sitting on the platform, said, 'Tell them about the dream, Martin! Tell them about the dream," Jones continued.

"Now I have often speculated that she had heard him talk in other places talk and make reference to the dream. On June 23, 1963, in Detroit, he had made very express reference to the dream.

"When Mahalia shouted to him, I was standing about 50 feet behind him... and I saw it happening in real time. He just took the text of his speech and moved it to the left side of the lectern. ... And I said to somebody standing next to me: 'These people don't know it, but they're about to go to church.' I said that because I could see his body language change from the rear. Where he had been reading, like giving a lecture, but then going into his Baptist preacher mode.
"Had there been anyone else -- anyone else -- who had shouted anything to him -- I think he would have been a little taken aback. I'm not so sure he would have departed from the text of his speech. But Mahalia Jackson was his favorite gospel singer. When Mahalia said that it was almost like a mandate to respond."

To know that the greatest speech ever spoken was adlibbed, only makes the speech that much more phenomenal!

And now in the famous words of Paul Harvey......"now you know the rest of the story"




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