Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and Open Thread
Posted on Mon Jan 16, 2012 at 08:51:00 AM EST
Tags: Martin Luther King, Jr. (all tags)
One of my favorite of Dr. King's quotes:
That old law about "an eye for an eye" leaves everybody blind. The time is always right to do the right thing. (He was quoting Mahatma Gandhi who said, "An eye for eye only ends up making the whole world blind."
and
Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.
Among my favorite long pieces: Declaration of Independence from the War in Vietnam and Letters From Birmingham City Jail.
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly."
[More...]
And, of course, his I Have a Dream sprech.
From Crim Prof Blog a few years back, here are some reported cases involving Dr. King.
In King v. State, 119 S.E.2d 77 (Ga. App. 1961), the court upheld a conviction for a traffic offense but vacated the sentence of 12 months in the work house. Dr. King was a defendant in Gilligan v. King, 264 N.Y.S.2d 309 (Sup. Ct. 1965), aff’d, 290 N.Y.S.2d 1014 (App. Div. 1968), a libel action pursued by a NYPD Lieutenant who killed a 15 year old black which set off rioting in New York. Article here. He was also a defendant in the New York Times v. Sullivan action, a libel case in which the plaintiff was a police executive criticized for brutalizing and/or failing to protect protesters. Parks v. New York Times Co., 195 F. Supp. 919 (M.D. Ala. 1961), rev’d, 308 F.2d 474 (5th Cir. 1962), certiorari denied, 376 U.S. 949 (1964). As Mark Eckenwiler pointed out, he was convicted of criminal contempt for violating an injunction against picketing in Walker v. City of Birmingham, 181 So.2d 493 (Ala. 1965), aff'd, 388 U.S. 307 (1967). He was the plaintiff in King v. Mister Maestro, Inc., 224 F. Supp. 101 (S.D.N.Y. 1963), an intellectual property action protecting his copyright on the “I Have a Dream” speech, and in Bond v. Floyd, 251 F. Supp. 333 (N.D. Ga.), rev’d, 385 U.S. 116 (1966), an action protecting Julian Bond’s right to a seat in the Georgia legislature in spite of his opposition to the Vietnam war.
Alternet had a good round-up a few years ago of memorable quotes from Dr. King. And here is his famous speech, I've Been to the Mountain Top.
It's sad that while his teachings have become so accepted, we've made so little progress towards achieving many of them. We need to try harder.
On a more humorous note, here's Bush Attorney General, John Ashcroft, invoking Dr. King in a 2003 speech at an MLK event:
More eloquently than any attorney general before or since, Dr. Martin Luther King spoke of making justice -- quote -- 'a reality for all God's children,' " Ashcroft told a gathering of civil rights lawyers and supporters at the Justice Department.
"From the first days of our administration, honoring the diversity of the American people has been a priority for President Bush and for me," Ashcroft said.
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