Plenty of “White Icons” have been removed from public display because of their past being an embarassment to present-day politicians. The problem with making MLK jr a big icon is that he was so problematic. The plagiarism wasn’t just one or two things, it was extensive. Not just three or four speeches, not just a few passages in the dissertation. Anyone else would probably have had his degree revoked for the plagiarized dissertation. The personal life wasn’t what most people look for in a minister. A lot of problems. But he was a very effective speaker. You said it, MLK jr is a very problematic figure, and very difficult to make into a role model. But I think you are wrong – the one place he hase something to say that really could work to help heal the legacy of racism is the speech you find so objectionable.

As for racism, yes, there is plenty left. You probably don’t want to hear this, but one of the biggest problems confronting racial healing is the race baiting of the revenge minded folks on the left. For exhibit A there is the Durham fiasco, which is just Tawana Brawley, Chapter III. Race hustlers, of all races, have managed to keep the divisions wide open, not heal them. Again, as I said in response to a different essay, the one thing MLK jr can offer us to help us become a more tolerant nation is the speech that you dislike. A call for us all to see the basic humanity in each other. Which is the point, I think. King was a deeply flawed man, like many of us. But he had some good ideas, and he was a very effective speaker, with an idea that is worth following up.

As I stated above, I HAVE read and heard this before. A lot of it has been initiated by groups like Stormfront (and various other groups of similar ilk) as a way to discredit King. And I acknowledge that some of the information has come from more “mainstream” sources.
It was also well known that the FBI also wanted to discredit King and released all sorts of negative information. So this was a conserted effort.

Right wingers love to point out problems with I HAVE A DREAM… which goes back to my original message. It is as if you folks believe and want America to believe that this was the only speech that he gave. Unfortunately, you have done a good job of spreading that idea. But as I mentioned, King was more than I HAVE A DREAM. That was a very small piece of the man. I personally can’t stand hearing the speech….don’t care for it anymore….partly because Whites like to put King in the I HAVE a DREAM box each year and they overplay the hell out of it as a way of disarming King and keeping him “safe” for America. And also because most of what he spoke of in the speech (or as he was reading from someone else’s speech)….has never been lived up to in America, and I suspect never will be. It’s a fairytale.

You point out problems with 3 or 4 pieces of work from a man who wrote and gave hundreds of speeches, wrote hundreds of essays and articles, and wrote several books….and the inference is his collective body of work was all copied. This is in fact, the purpose of the movement by Whites to discredit King on some of his work, and to bring up as much negative information as possible….to discredit his overall impact. When he was shot to death in 68, the mission to discredit him did not die. That is still going on to this day, and I imagine, it will not stop until he is completely vilified in the media and his legacy is downgraded. But I am not convinced that most of this mans work was simply a copy of other material.

Taking a chain of thought from someone else, taking a statement from someone else, and expounding on it with your own observations…. taking parts of ideas from other writers, philosophers, etc…. is nothing new. Writers, and philosophers have done this through the centuries. They always take from generations who proceeded them, and even from their peers. But the inference with King is that he somehow did not come up with any of his own ideas…. they were all from someone else. Again…. the man would have needed an unbelievable memory….because he very rarely read from prepared notes. But we are to believe that none of his ideas were his own?
And when he would make a quote he would often give credit…and openly state who he was quoting. He often didn’t try to hide the fact that he was taking from someone else or building on someone else’s observation. But this mission to discredit this man and turn him into a joke will never end.

When White icons are celebrated in this country, I never see this same kind of effort…or in fact, the same mission, to discredit and vilify them. In fact, it’s hard to find any negative information about them at all. But when it’s a King…or someone labeled as a troublemaker….then all hell breaks loose….and you see negative derogatory reports everywhere.

The character assassins (unsatisfied with his physical death) have put out so much negative information on King that I started wondering a few years ago …..why bother with having a Holiday?

I was never a fan of King even having a Holiday…. I thought that it was a mistake. And this is the reason why. The targeting of King only intensified after the National Holiday was granted.
It would have been better to have kept things the way that they were…. so that King could have remained a folk hero & Martyr to HIS people (where he had a special place)… rather than being forced on the rest of America….an America that is still infested with racism….and a country that will never truly honor him anyway. Once you force what is seen by many as a race based Holiday on an entire country that doesn’t share the message of that person….then the character assassins will always come out and you get the situation that we have today, where his Holiday has been turned into a joke by the rest of the country. Having a national Holiday has also led to the comidification of his legacy. He would have been better appreciated as just a folk hero….honored by his people each year…informally.

Now they have gone and created a National Monument for him….This is another mistake. It’s another move that I am not in favor of for the same reasons. This monument will be desecrated as soon as it is completed. I can only imagine the paint and feces that this monument will be subjected to. The monument, like the Holiday, will be turned into a joke fairly quickly.

As I mentioned in my original post, it was totally a coincidence that I came across this info about MLK. Prior to this I had, in my ignorance, what SFB describes as a “super-humanitarian” view of the man, which was clearly simplistic.

As the African American historian I consulted, and SFB notes, the man and the movement are more complex than popularly seen.

To AngryIndependent, I was not slandering MLK. Merely noting my own simplistic “super-hero”-like view of the man. Do we think less of FDR because of his extramarital affairs?

I thought this was “on point” with the post as Joe was referencing his speeches and his message. If MLK sourced from other civil rights commentators and speeches throughout his career, his “message” can be considered more a collective than an individual vision.

I know this thread is probably dead, but just wished to explain further.

King and his legacy were protected by the people at BU, who didn’t want to make it public, and tried to ignore the plagiarism. King’s legacy has also been protected by his widow, who, like Elizabeth Custer, made a career out of protecting her late husband’s interests – financial as well as memorial. Ironically, this may have included copyrighting the words and ideas of others that MLK jr took without permission.

As I said above, King is not the squeaky clean guy portrayed in middle school civics classes, he is a much more complex man. His work for civil rights was positive, but there was much about him which was not.

I suspect that one reasons this does not get much coverage in the history books is the politics behind the situation. Being 100% truthful would be good history, but poor politics. The Democratic party has made minority rights a keystone of its platforms. Admitting that the person most widely praised for civil rights work was a plagiarist and cheat is not going to win them many votes. The Republicans certainly don’t want to be tarred as racist bigots by telling a truth a lot of people don’t want to hear.

Racial politics is particularly nasty, and the truth is often the first casualty of political ambitions. No matter how much the MSM studiously avoid reporting on the facts, the books are out there. Of course, if you are that concerned, go to the original sources. The Ph.D. dissertations, and the 1952 speech, and compare them to King’s work. Others have – and the results are as Marlowecan summarizes. As I said elsewhere, King is a problematic figure. It may not be tactful to bring it all up on the day honoring him, but it is not exactly honest to take the simplistic view of King the super-humanitarian that the civics classes hear about. He is a much more complicated and problematic man than that.

I hear/read these things all the time. Some may be true. But what does that have to do with the original posting by Mr. Gandelman?

And King would have needed an extraordinary memory to steal so many speeches, since he very rarely read from a script. He wrote hundreds of speeches…. (or according to you & your crowd… he stole hundreds of speeches). But he gave many other speeches ad libitum.

Would you mind providing all of these original speeches (and sources) and what King Speech they represent? That way… we can all review them….and see what was stolen. Kings speeches were taken word for word from other works??????? Where are these original works? Provide the information.

And I find it interesting that Stanford University has never made this a particularly huge issue…. Stanford and other top educational institutions have examined these writings extensively.

But please provide your information…. and sources. I am curious as to what is there.

My point was to note my ignorance about King himself…by simplistic view of the man…and of the role of African American women in the movement.

It has been an eye-opening experience…and a prompt to learn more.

Folks might be surprised to note that about 1/3 to 1/2 of his PhD dissertation, and many of his college essays, were plagiarized…including even the mistakes of the originals.
Boston decided against revoking his doctorate (they would, I suspect, for anyone else given the scale of the plagiarism). Many of his speeches have been originally sourced elsewhere as well, including the “I Have a Dream” which has been traced to Archibald Carey’s Jr.’s address to…of all things…the 1952 Republican National Convention.

I was certainly surprised to come across this, and asked an African American historian about it. She noted that this has been widely known for years. She also pointed me to an excellent book about how King and many male Black civil rights leaders “bigfooted” on work done by female Black activists who, as women, were not as recognized for their achievements: “Freedom’s Daughters” by Lynne Olsen.

I suspect my view of MLK and his message has been simplistic in the past…tending to view him in a Ghandiesque way, given the connections between the two, and that I know much more of Ghandi. Clearly, the movement is more than the man. But both are more complex for me today than they were yesterday.