SARAH PALIN IS NOW A MLK EXPERT

PALIN ON MLK



Some things never change -- and then, some things only get worse.

Sarah Palin is a very twisted piece of work:

Sarah Palin 

Happy MLK, Jr. Day! 

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." – Martin Luther King, Jr. 

Mr. President, in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. and all who commit to ending any racial divide, no more playing the race card.

Sarah Palin actually uses words from MLK's famous "I have A Dream" speech to make as ignorant and phony a claim as she can on this most important day. And get this, over 12,000 people liked her comment, too. There are some truly disturbed people out there in Conservativeland.

Cross posted from Crooks and Liars





NFTOS
STAFF WRITER

THAT AWKWARD MOMENT WHEN YOUR NOT A RACIST BUT YOU FAIL TO SPEAK AT THE MLK 50TH ANNIVERSARY

Watching the events of the day, these are the notes that I took - and my synopsis 50 years later.

Can you guess how many GOP speakers took part in today's celebration of the March on Washington?

The 50th anniversary of the March On Washington has given the country a chance to reflect on how far we have come, and yet how much further we still have left to go toward achieving Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream.

MSNBC yesterday discussed the great reluctance for all conservatives to recognize the reality that we have not solved all of the racial problems in America, and to often they label any discussion of the subject as “race baiting.”

Earlier this year, Justice [Supreme being] John Roberts demonstrated this sort of thinking in his opinion justifying the Supreme Court’s evisceration of the Voting Rights Act when he wrote, ”the conditions that originally justified these measures no longer characterize voting in the covered jurisdictions.” As we have seen in the subsequent months, there are many in said jurisdictions who would beg to differ - differ the ignorance and subjective discrimination from the Supreme Beings.

Julian Bond, chairman emeritus of the NAACP, and Bryan Stevenson of the Equal Justice Initiative discussed today the importance of conveying the lack of racial equity to these special tin foil hat patriots, once known as the conservatives. Bond noted this continued denial was evident even in today’s events commemorating the march, noting “what’s really telling is the podium behind me today, how many tea baggers will be there…They asked a long list of "conservatives" to come, and to all men and woman asked, they all said no…The fact that they seem to want to get black votes…they’re never ever going to get them this way.”

This current brand of the "conservative" is a disgusting lot! In reality, as long as they continue this path of ignorance - it will be an eternity before they ever occupy the oval office again!

RELATED:

Every Republican That Was Asked Refused to Attend March On Washington Event

Republican leaders asked to speak at March on Washington anniversary, declined

NFTOS

Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

“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"

NFTOS

Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

50 YEARS AGO TODAY

DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING "I HAVE A DREAM"

50 years ago today, Rev Dr. Martin L King Jr. led a march against injustice, an injustice that unfortunately still has a foothold today in this country, fifty years ago to the exact day, when the chains where to be broken, but yet still exist - courtesy and via of the GOP.

While I can' be at the march - as was my intent - I am there in spirit, for the hatred that my race has inflicted on another, is a source of both an embarrassment and shame for me - that white folk can hate another human - just for the color of their skin.

There is only one hate bigger than America's, and that was Hitler's towards the Jewish.

No amount of "I am sorry", no amount of apologies can erase the ignorance of the white folk in America, as we certainly hold the crown jewel of being the greatest race haters to ever troll the earth!

Now is the time to finish Dr. King's dream, the time to complete the work of Medgar Wiley Evers, its time to end the hate - because ones skin tone doesn't match yours!

Today women make 77 cents to the dollar of the male. Today, GOP run states are turning back the hands of time with concepts like radical voter suppression laws, Gerrymandering is at epidemic proportions within the American Taliban's plan, a priority in their "Southern Strategy".

Equal rights means equal rights, not partial rights, nor rights entrapped by smoke and mirrors.

The number of blogs I have written on race are a plethora - my stance is clear and concise, race is still a huge problem in these United States, we can choose to ignore its existence, or we can choose to kill this ugly beast once and for all!

We owe it to Dr. King to see this through!

Dr. King's speech; It was/is a monumental work, which will stand independently as one of the greatest speeches/oratories of all time.

In support of the march today, I leave you with the speech that rocked this country, and no doubt in this bloggers mind - the most profound of speeches ever given in the history of this world.

MARTIN LUTHER KING JR's "I HAVE A DREAM"




I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.

In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the "unalienable Rights" of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds."

But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.

We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. And those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. And there will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice: In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.

The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.

We cannot walk alone.

And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead.

We cannot turn back.

There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their self-hood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating: "For Whites Only." We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until "justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream."¹

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. And some of you have come from areas where your quest -- quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.

Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.

And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one day right there 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.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together."2

This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with.

With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

And this will be the day -- this will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning:

My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.

Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim's pride,

From every mountainside, let freedom ring!

And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.

And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.

Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.

Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.

Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.

But not only that:

Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.

From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:

Free at last! Free at last!

Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

NFTOS

Editor-In-Chief

Roger West