1/16/2012

50 Responses to “Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day”

1. Also a notorious plagiarist, but then all the greats repeat each other.

   sarahW (b0e533) — 1/16/2012 @ 6:36 pm

   
   

2. MLK’s Birmingham speech features prominently in Aaron’s recent book, too.

   …which has been called offensive by one of the most offensive people I’ve ever known of, so you could hardly find a finer endorsement.

   King knowingly put his life in extreme peril for what he knew to be right, which is a high standard for patriotism a surprisingly high number of Americans are capable of.

   But even in less dire circumstances, the best way to fight evil always includes refusing to give in and let it prevail by default, which is a mistake a surprisingly high number of folks are capable of. I can only imagine how often those who fought segregation or slavery were tempted to just let someone else fight the good fight.

   Dustin (cb3719) — 1/16/2012 @ 6:47 pm

   
   

3. The thing about Dr King, that a lot of people miss — including a lot of black folks — is that unlike others who sought to free blacks from oppression from whites, King realized that WHITE folks were also trapped by history into being the oppressors.

   He realized that white folks’ fear of “getting off the tiger” was the single most important obstacle to black civil rights, and that a non-violent message aimed at whites, shaming them for the continuation of an unjust system — and allowing them the wiggle room to change it — was the key to everything.

   So, Dr King has a holiday, and widespread reverence, where Malcolm X and a host of others do not. He didn’t free black folks from white tyranny, he freed a nation from a terrible part of its history.

   Kevin M (563f77) — 1/16/2012 @ 6:51 pm

   
   

4. Racists.

   JD (d5e24e) — 1/16/2012 @ 6:55 pm

   
   

5. Having lived through the period, and remembering particularly the day King was killed and the fissure it put through white society (the “Good!” camp and the “F U!” camp, largely on generational lines), it remains amazing to me that things turned out as well as they have. Things could have gone far worse, and probably would have, if not for Dr King.

   Yes, there are issues, such as affirmative action and group politics that are unfortunate, but it’s a damn sight better than the Edmund Pettis bridge.

   Kevin M (563f77) — 1/16/2012 @ 6:59 pm

   
   

6. I love the anti-semetic nazis………accuse the joooooooooooos of commiting 9-11 but in the same breath saying da jooooooooooos are too dumb to care.

   Da jooooooooooooos don’t care about christians or anyone else……………projection from the left as usual.

   Naziesque conspiracy theories and their perpetrators need to be shot.

   Dohbiden (ef98f0) — 1/16/2012 @ 7:12 pm

   
   

7. I’m surprised Alveda King wasn’t fingered as the 9-11 perpetrator.

   Dohbiden (ef98f0) — 1/16/2012 @ 7:13 pm

   
   

8. He realized that white folks’ fear of “getting off the tiger” was the single most important obstacle to black civil rights, and that a non-violent message aimed at whites, shaming them for the continuation of an unjust system — and allowing them the wiggle room to change it — was the key to everything.

   Very interesting observation. I wish I knew a way to apply that wisdom, but I wonder if it’s more a matter of circumstance.

   Dustin (cb3719) — 1/16/2012 @ 7:16 pm

   
   

9. I don’t have anything against joooooooooooooos…………but they committed 9-11.

   /Liberal

   Dohbiden (ef98f0) — 1/16/2012 @ 7:18 pm

   
   

10. He had more contempt for the ‘White moderate’ that didn’t act, in some ways, than the Jim Crow participants that didn’t know the difference,

    narciso (87e966) — 1/16/2012 @ 7:18 pm

    
    

11. Anyway Martin Luther King would be ashamed of the democrap party but if he were alive today he’d be fingered as a jooooooooooo-loving womanizer.

    Homeland Insecurity hasn’t stopped muslimes have they.

    [note: fished from spam filter. –Stashiu]

    Dohbiden (ef98f0) — 1/16/2012 @ 7:24 pm

    
    

12. narciso,

    Indeed, he had contempt for moderates of all races who refused to act. Yet at the same time he understood the need to achieve specific objectives to maintain morale, and considered it a mistake to simply stand on principle as a general matter, with no specific attainable goal in sight. Both a pragmatist and a man of principle.

    Patterico (d508e7) — 1/16/2012 @ 7:53 pm

    
    

13. Malcolm X was definitely the “tough guy” of his day. The guy who said: they are being violent towards us — why not we towards them?

    Yet King, while he might have been painted as a weakling by Malcolm X, was the winner in the end — and his nonviolent methods were vindicated as wise and effective.

    Patterico (d508e7) — 1/16/2012 @ 7:56 pm

    
    

14. A good post, one I can’t find fault with. My heart and mind agree with you on this one, Patrick.

    angeleno (33f532) — 1/16/2012 @ 7:57 pm

    
    

15. ____________________________________________

    it remains amazing to me that things turned out as well as they have.

    In my case, I’m not quite as positive. If I had a crystal ball back in the 1960s and saw only the event that was momentous as the one that occurred in November 2008, I’d have assumed that images from the future in general would reveal cultural and economic trends of American society that were no less momentous–in a good, uplifting way.

    I would have guessed that with the huge decline of obsessively, ridiculously pro-conformist trends — best exemplified by the “white-bread” 1950s, in which cases of both formal and informal bigotry and discrimination were blatant and nonchalant — that nonsensical attitudes of woe-is-me liberalism (symbolized by figureheads like Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and Jeremiah Wright) would have gone in the opposite direction, and, most crucially, less dysfunction would be roiling black America.

    I would have thought with far more people throughout America being truly different in their attitudes about diversity — with, if anything, more of them than ever before being awash in political-correctness from A to Z — that certain trends of over 60 years ago would still not be quite so apparent today, per below:

    usatoday.com, December 2010

    Despite increased racial and ethnic diversity, American neighborhoods continue to be segregated and some of the progress made toward integration since 1980 has come to a halt this decade, according to an analysis of Census Bureau data released Tuesday.

    • The average non-Hispanic white person continues to live in a neighborhood that looks very different from neighborhoods where the average black, Hispanic and Asian live. Average whites in metropolitan America live in a neighborhood that’s 74% white — although it’s not as segregated as in 1980, when the average was 88% white.

    • Blacks continue to be the most segregated minority followed by Hispanics and Asians. The average black American lives in a majority black neighborhood.

    Segregation for African Americans was largely the result of racist policies that created concentrations of poor neighborhoods, [Brown University sociology professor John] Logan says. “You’re not going to get substantial declines in segregation until you start breaking up these nearly all-black neighborhoods in central cities,” [Howard University demographer Roderick] Harrison says.

    The segregation index in six metropolitan areas with the largest black populations still hovers near 80, the same level as 30 years ago. It’s at its highest in New York, Milwaukee, Newark, Detroit and Chicago, home to about one in five blacks.

    “Black-white segregation in most of the country is a residue from blatant exclusion (of blacks) from white neighborhoods” from 1920 to 1970, Logan says. “Although residential patterns are always partly due to people’s preferences of where to live, limited choice continues to be a larger factor for African Americans. Immigrant neighborhoods are more often Asians’ and Hispanics’ preferred location.”

    washingtonpost.com, December 28, 2011: Across the Washington area, black students are suspended and expelled two to five times as often as white students, creating disparities in discipline that experts say reflect a growing national problem.

    An analysis by The Washington Post shows the phenomenon both in the suburbs and in the city, from the far reaches of Southern Maryland to the subdivisions of Fairfax, Prince George’s and Montgomery counties.

    Last year, for example, one in seven black students in St. Mary’s County were suspended from school, compared with one in 20 white students. In Alexandria, black students were nearly six times as likely to be suspended as their white peers.

    The problems extend beyond the Washington area to school districts across the country and are among a host of concerns about school discipline that sparked a joint effort by the U.S. Justice and Education departments in July to look into reforms.

    …71 percent of suspensions for insubordination, a relatively rare offense in [Montgomery] county, were handed out to black students. African Americans make up 21 percent of students in Montgomery’s schools.

    The most recent national figures, from 2006, show that 5 percent of white students are suspended, compared with 15 percent of their black classmates, 7 percent of Hispanics and 3 percent of Asians.

    ^ If I attempted to predict the future back when MLK was still alive, I would have theorized (and hoped) that by the first decade of the 21st century, even more people in black America would be registered to the same political party he was a part of (ie, Republican). I would have assumed that the community he most closely identified with wouldn’t have become so pathetically monolithic in its politics—ie, around 90-plus percent in favor of liberals, liberalism and the Democrat Party.

    Mark (411533) — 1/16/2012 @ 8:14 pm

    
    

16. Thank you, Patterico, for posting this. I grew up studying MLK’s speeches. As I grew older, I learned about the feet of clay that all people have, including MLK. Some folks will dismiss the good that flawed people have about them; kind of a perfection business I don’t understand. The ideas a person submits to society are separate from the person himself or herself. The ideas simple are.

    But the ideals behind MLK’s speeches, and his personal bravery and commitment to his own ideals…well, they make me teary to think about.

    The “content of their character” line is with me always.

    I, too, took Aaron’s advice long ago about the CD. It truly is remarkable (and Aaron, if you are reading this, thank you again…and I am enjoying your novel!).

    Simon Jester (9d3a20) — 1/16/2012 @ 8:16 pm

    
    

17. MLK despite his moral imperfections is a good man who would have been thrown aside by the poverty pimps for outliving his usefulness.

    Dohbiden (ef98f0) — 1/16/2012 @ 8:18 pm

    
    

18. I would also add that the racialists are committed to seeing prejudice everywhere and in everything. So they focus on what still needs to be done, without recognizing the progress that has been made. Reading about MLK’s journey today reminded me of that progress.

    A wise man I knew once was talking to me about some folks who were agitating about multiculturalism. He himself was an African American academic, and had lived through segregation and Jim Crow. When I expressed some irritation with the people who seemed to see the worst in everyone, he smiled wryly and remarked:

    “Some people would rather have a cause than an effect.”

    So very true.

    Simon Jester (9d3a20) — 1/16/2012 @ 8:19 pm

    
    

19. Even though he might have agreed politically with the likes of Sharpton and co, particularly under
    the influence of Stanley Levinson, he is so far
    above the current leadership, it’s not even quantifiable, the easy answer was what Malcolm Little urged, that requires little thought.

    narciso (87e966) — 1/16/2012 @ 8:26 pm

    
    

20. UPDATE: From the eulogy:

    These children—unoffending, innocent, and beautiful—were the victims of one of the most vicious and tragic crimes ever perpetrated against humanity.

    And yet they died nobly. They are the martyred heroines of a holy crusade for freedom and human dignity. And so this afternoon in a real sense they have something to say to each of us in their death. They have something to say to every minister of the gospel who has remained silent behind the safe security of stained-glass windows. They have something to say to every politician who has fed his constituents with the stale bread of hatred and the spoiled meat of racism. They have something to say to a federal government that has compromised with the undemocratic practices of southern Dixiecrats and the blatant hypocrisy of right-wing northern Republicans. They have something to say to every Negro who has passively accepted the evil system of segregation and who has stood on the sidelines in a mighty struggle for justice. They say to each of us, black and white alike, that we must substitute courage for caution. They say to us that we must be concerned not merely about who murdered them, but about the system, the way of life, the philosophy which produced the murderers. Their death says to us that we must work passionately and unrelentingly for the realization of the American dream.

    It’s a case study in effective rhetoric, and it’s impossible to come away unmoved.

    Patterico (d508e7) — 1/16/2012 @ 8:45 pm

    
    

21. And he was a Republican, like his father, which shocks most Libs. He also despised Je$$e Jackson who paraded around the day after the assassination in a blood stained shirt even though he had not been standing anywhere near MLK on the balcony.

    Gazzer (b6e750) — 1/16/2012 @ 8:45 pm

    
    

22. Wouldn’t surprise me if Louis Farrakhan ordered the hit on MLK.

    Dohbiden (ef98f0) — 1/16/2012 @ 8:46 pm

    
    

23. “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.”

    Ag80 (ccff59) — 1/16/2012 @ 9:27 pm

    
    

24. And he was a Republican,

    This is widely disputed. While MLK Sr was a Republican, he also voted for Kennedy. And MLK Jr maintained that he himself was registered in no party.

    Kevin M (563f77) — 1/16/2012 @ 10:13 pm

    
    

25. Kevin M,
    Lots of folks have a axe to grind in that regard. Hell the Rev Al Charlatan gets mad if whitey even celebrates on MLK day as it is “their” day. A position that MLK would most certainly not have approved of. His family claim that he was an R but in reality we will never really know for sure. The sight of Lib heads exploding is worth throwing it out there, though

    Gazzer (b6e750) — 1/16/2012 @ 10:21 pm

    
    

26. The left use MLK to bash republicans like they use the black columbians to bash Uribe.

    If there was no Uribe the black columbians would be hung out to dry.

    If there was no MLK the left would not give a dman about blacks.

    Dohbiden (ef98f0) — 1/16/2012 @ 10:48 pm

    
    

27. damn*

    Dohbiden (ef98f0) — 1/16/2012 @ 11:03 pm

    
    

28. ‘Starting in 1965, King began to express doubts about the United States’ role in the Vietnam War. In an April 4, 1967 appearance at the New York City Riverside Church—exactly one year before his death—King delivered a speech titled “Beyond Vietnam”.[92] He spoke strongly against the U.S.’s role in the war, insisting that the U.S. was in Vietnam “to occupy it as an American colony”[93]:107 and calling the U.S. government “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today”‘–wiki

    If you ask me, the guy was an asshole.

    Dave Surls (46b08c) — 1/16/2012 @ 11:19 pm

    
    

29. ____________________________________________

    This is widely disputed.

    Does the notion that he perhaps was a down-to-earth centrist or even conservative bother you more than the image of him as a liberal? (Although I’m guessing if the records fully confirm his being registered as a Republican, he probably was one along the lines of a Rudy Giuliani or Arnold Schwarzenegger) If so, that needs to be qualified with the observation that a person of the left over 40 years ago — when the middle-point of the socio-political spectrum was further to the right than where it is today — was different from what his modern-day version is similar to. IOW, if Martin Luther King Jr were a liberal in the context of 2011, he’d have to be quite simpleminded, foolish and even a bit dumb. That’s because to be a typical “lefty” in 2011 means one cannot understand the sentiments voiced by the following person:

    csmonitor.com, August 2011:

    As violent mobs of young men continued to wreak havoc in Philadelphia for a second summer in a row, Mayor Michael Nutter has taken a hard line against the roving “flash mobs,” tightening weekend curfews, endorsing stiff “stop-and-frisk” polices, and blasting the mostly black teenagers involved in the violence with fiery words from the pulpit this weekend.

    In a combative speech on Sunday at Mount Carmel Baptist Church in Philadelphia, Mayor Nutter said that young black men have to stop acting like “sperm donors” and “human ATMs.” He admonished parents for failing to supervise and expect good behavior from their children. And he directly implicated habits and styles of some young black men in the city.

    “If you walk into somebody’s office with your hair uncombed and a pick in the back, and your shoes untied and your pants half-down, tattoos up and down your arms and on your neck, and you wonder why somebody won’t hire you?” Nutter told the congregation “They don’t hire you ’cause you look like you’re crazy. You have damaged your own race.”

    “I am a proud black man in this country,” Nutter said in a subsequent interview with the Associated Press. “It was a message that needed to be said. It needed to be said at this time… People have had enough of this nonsense, black and white.”

    “Mayor Nutter deserves credit for stepping up and being a leader,” said Deneen Borelli, a fellow with the National Leadership Network of Black Conservatives, in a statement. “Nutter is doing what Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, President Obama and the Congressional Black Caucus have thus far failed to do by speaking out against the epidemic of violent ‘flash mobs’ and rampant, random crime and violence.”

    [note: fished from spam filter. –Stashiu]

    Mark (411533) — 1/16/2012 @ 11:23 pm

    
    

30. “He stood at all times for nonviolence…”

    Kinda comes with the territory when you’re a Christian minister, doesn’t it?

    Dave Surls (46b08c) — 1/16/2012 @ 11:55 pm

    
    

31. Hell the Rev Al Charlatan gets mad if whitey even celebrates on MLK day as it is “their” day. A position that MLK would most certainly not have approved of.

    Oh, it’s ok with the Rev if whitey celebrates it. Just so long as whitey celebrates it properly. That involves the same process, and the celebrant achieves the same result, as at the Ashura festival.

    I’ve grown agnostic on what MLK’s position on that would be. It occurred to me during an MLK day USO show, a time long ago in a place far away, that maybe the BET comedians on stage “entertaining” us with their repertoire of “white boy” jokes were capturing the spirit of the occasion.

    Alveda King tries to make the case that her uncle would be considered a pro-live social conservative these days. And she get’s widespread ridicule for that position. A civil rights movement historian at University of Cambridge, David Garrow, says he was a Democratic Socialist and strongly pro-abortion. There’s quite a bit of evidence that he was a wealth redistributionist via government spending (massive public employment and guaranteed incomes). Despite the impression I got from his “I have a dream” speech,” apparently he was a strong supporter of racial preferences.

    Much as I dislike Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, there is a lot of evidence that MLK’s soaring rhetoric served an agenda that is far more radical then MLK let on publicly. He’s certainly remembered for his rhetoric.

    But what if his legacy, just as with the religion of Islam, isn’t being hijacked? MLK, like JFK, died young and tends to be romanticized in my opinion. He could have turned out to be exactly the sort of disaster his associates describe (although his disastrous asssociates don’t think they’re describing a horror show).

    How did civil rights leader & hero John Lewis turn out? Now he’s fabricating “N” word episodes to smear people who don’t support his party’s wealth redistributionist agenda as racists. Not too strong a way to put it, in my opinion, because when the house dems conducted a smirking victory parade (also known as the “Gavel Walk”) after passing ObamaCare, cameras and microphones were everywhere. This isn’t how bills normally go from the house to the senate, but they wanted to provoke a reaction and get it on video. They didn’t. So John Lewis made up a story about the crowd “chanting” the “N” word over and over so he could falsely accuse the crowd of being just like those he had to march through for civil rights. If it had happened that way, somebody would have claimed Breitbart’s $10k prize.

    (Apparently the media is sitting on that video out of all the love and respect they have for the Tea Party.)

    So, in the spirit of the occasion, here’s a video of the South Carolina Democratic Chairman making the case it’s racist for the Republicans to defile MLK’s memory by having a debate on his day. Or at least, without first paying proper obeisance at the Democratic party’s secular services in MLK’s memory.

    [note: released from moderation. –Stashiu]

    Steve (1f4b7c) — 1/17/2012 @ 4:35 am

    
    

32. Yes, he started listening to Stanley Levinson and the likes of William Pepper, the lawyer who tried to propose the notion that CIA and the head of the Special Forces, GEn, Yrborough had him ‘whacked’
    and he went off course.

    narciso (87e966) — 1/17/2012 @ 5:42 am

    
    

33. “…If you ask me, the guy was an asshole…”

    Well, Dave, to each their own. But I didn’t ask you. And you could have aaaallll day long, on this day, without that.

    I mean, why give people reason to discount you and your ideas?

    Simon Jester (9d3a20) — 1/17/2012 @ 6:59 am

    
    

34. Well surls no one asked you but thanks for stating your honest opinion.

    Dohbiden (ef98f0) — 1/17/2012 @ 8:10 am

    
    

35. The trouble with Mr. Surls is that he holds everything in, and does not share his thoughts. It’s very difficult to tell what he thinks about a given situation.

    Seriously, everyone does have a right to an opinion.

    Simon Jester (9d3a20) — 1/17/2012 @ 8:13 am

    
    

36. I wonder what Ahmanutjob and his communist friends think about MLK?

    Dohbiden (ef98f0) — 1/17/2012 @ 8:16 am

    
    

37. ______________________________________________

    I wonder what Ahmanutjob and his communist friends think about MLK?

    It’s odd and ironic that various leaders of the left today in certain Central and South American nations have an affinity for an ultra-rightist (in the context of the Middle East and Islamism) similar to the president of Iran. Actually, not a small number of liberals in the US express sentiments that aren’t too different from those of ultra-leftists in places like Venezuela or Cuba.

    They probably illustrate the observation that if a person goes far left enough on the political spectrum, he or she will eventually end up meeting and greeting someone on the other side—on the far right. Example: The sickness of an Adolph Hitler, who had a background as a vegan, a fan of animal rights, and someone who happily used “socialist” in the title of his organization.

    Mark (411533) — 1/17/2012 @ 8:39 am

    
    

38. You don’t have to thank me, I’m always happy to express my iconoclastic opinions.

    Dave Surls (46b08c) — 1/17/2012 @ 9:25 am

    
    

39. Well, agree or disagree with you, Mr. Surls…you remains fearless.

    Simon Jester (c8876d) — 1/17/2012 @ 9:28 am

    
    

40. It would be nice if I would proofread before I send, of course. “…you remain fearless.”

    Simon Jester (c8876d) — 1/17/2012 @ 9:29 am

    
    

41. He realized that white folks’ fear of “getting off the tiger” was the single most important obstacle to black civil rights, and that a non-violent message aimed at whites, shaming them for the continuation of an unjust system — and allowing them the wiggle room to change it — was the key to everything.

    This was considered a radical idea. Indeed, for the previous ten thousand years of recorded history, ethnic dominance and privilege was a given in every society.

    Michael Ejercito (64388b) — 1/17/2012 @ 9:07 pm

    
    

42. Indeed Michael.

    Yes, ethnic privilege. It’s still a given.

    Except now that MLK has been copyrighted by the political left, the political left is an ethnicity. The one with the privilege.

    You can’t really be black if you’re not a leftist. Thanks to MLK’s legacy, Bill Clinton can be black, but Herman Cain can’t.

    In the spirit of MLK’s legacy, I bring your attention to:

    MSNBC’s Wagner says it’s racist to boo a black journalist on MLK day.

    For asking a GOP candidate to admit he’s racist.

    Apparently it was also racist for Gingrich to disagree with Juan Williams’ that nothing comes out of his mouth except a constant stream of racism.

    Civil rights icon Rev. Lowery says Obama is being twarted by Racism

    We racist h8rs would be cool with the idea of a centrally-planned economic scorched-earth policy if a white dude was in charge of it.

    Per the SC DNC chair it’s racist for the GOP to have candidates debate on MLK day. If you do, then it’s racist per liberal journalists to boo a black journalist on MLK day. And from Rev. Lowery it’s racist to disagree with a black man any day.

    When you combine all this, it’s just racist for the GOP to even run a candidate at all against Barack Obama.

    In a way, MLK’s dream has been realized. Now people really are judged by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin. And those ultimate arbiters of character on the left will exercise their “ethnic privilege” to run down that of those who aren’t 24/7. But in honor of MLK’s legacy, with particular enthusiasm on his day of remembrance.

    Steve (1f4b7c) — 1/17/2012 @ 10:05 pm

    
    

43. MLKS dream was perverted.

    Dohbiden (ef98f0) — 1/17/2012 @ 10:11 pm

    
    

44. __________________________________________

    This was considered a radical idea.

    Then again, the phrase “as much as things change, some things never change” also comes to mind when reading about the history of this society well before the rise to prominence of MLK in the 1960s.

    There’s a tendency for the Baby Boomer generation, and those who came later — meaning just about all of us — to believe it’s somehow the most enlightened or sophisticated, while the preceding generation was pretty stuck in the Dark Ages. Moreover, after seeing the following information, I’m even more underwhelmed by liberalism/Democrats, then and now.

    calvin-coolidge.org, Alvin S. Felzenberg:

    Which were the first presidents to propose a commission to engage in a national conversation on race? Not Bill Clinton. Nor Lyndon Johnson…

    Presidents [Warren] Harding [29th President of US, Republican] and [Calvin] Coolidge [30th President, Republican] proposed a commission to bridge the divide between the races more than a generation before Mr. Clinton was born. Harding told Congress in 1921 that such a body could formulate “if not a policy, at least a national attitude” that could bring the races closer together. Coolidge in 1923–and again in 1925 echoed this theme. He urged the creation of a “Negro Industrial Commission” to promote a better policy of mutual understanding.”

    [Theodore Roosevelt, 26th US President, Republican] enjoyed friendships with black Americans and had them to his home and at his table. One overnight guest at his Oyster bay home was black attorney William H. Lewis. Lewis was a friend of Coolidge’s too. As he named African Americans to federal posts, Roosevelt consulted Booker T. Washington, founding president of Tuskegee.

    Although Woodrow Wilson [28th President of the US, Democrat—and liberal] received only 5% to 7% of the black vote (in the states where they could vote) [black activists] [Monroe] Trotter and W.E.B. Dubois had backed him, believing anything would be an improvement over the two previous Republican presidents. They were wrong. The new Democratic Congress immediately enacted laws barring racial intermarriage in Washington, DC. Wilson went along. Signs bearing the words “whites only” and “blacks only” began appearing above toilets and drinking fountains throughout the city. Jim Crow practices crept into federal agencies. The number of black presidential appointees dropped sharply-from 33 to 9. Blacks only divisions were created, beginning with the Departments of Treasury, Post Office, Navy, and later the Interior, all headed by Southerners.

    When black leaders voiced concern [about blacks-only windows being created in post offices], Wilson told them segregation was necessary because of the friction between [postal] clerks of both races. When Trotter reminded the president that for fifty years, clerks had worked together harmoniously–even during the previous Democratic administrations of Grover Cleveland–Wilson, by his own admission, lost both his temper and his judgment.

    [D.W. Griffith’s film, “The Birth of a Nation”]…had been based on a novel, The Klansman, [a sympathetic portrayal of the KKK] by Thomas Dixon, a friend of Wilson’s. The President said the production was “like writing history with lightning. My only regret is that it’s true.” Others called it “history upside down, complete inversion of historical truth.”

    A representative of the Irish American League proclaimed the production a “disgusting, brutal, libel on the colored people of the country.” Harvard’s President Emeritus Charles Eliot denounced the movie as “false history.”

    With regard to patronage, Coolidge named blacks to judgeships and other prominent posts. His record here was better than Wilson’s and probably better than Taft’s. He resisted William Lewis’s suggestion that he name blacks to posts that had customarily been held by members of their race. Coolidge did not like the idea of “Negro,” “Jewish,” or other “seats” on boards, courts, and agencies.

    In a conversation with the president, secret service agent Edmund Starling referred to White House butler Arthur Brooks as a fine, colored gentleman.” Coolidge replied sharply, “Brooks is not a colored gentleman. He is a gentleman.”

    ^ BTW, Calvin Coolidge was one of the presidents most admired by Ronald Reagan. Coolidge also was a Republican, who unlike another Republican president (and successor), Herbert Hoover, didn’t believe a tax-and-spend policy was the ideal answer to a serious recession.

    Mark (411533) — 1/17/2012 @ 11:25 pm

    
    

45. Since I’m in an iconoclastic mood…

    Warren Harding was the best president of the 20th century (which is why he’s so reviled by the liberal Dem controlled media and academic empire), and Reagan is way overrated as a president.

    I liked the man…but he wasn’t that great of a president.

    Dave Surls (46b08c) — 1/18/2012 @ 2:30 am

    
    

46. Harding, Coolidge, and Reagan all had to play with the cards they were dealt, and all did about as well as could be expected. I think you’re underselling Reagan; he made plenty of mistakes, but he put the spirit back in America after the Dems had almost killed it in the ’70s.

    Milhouse (9a4c23) — 1/18/2012 @ 3:05 am

    
    

47. Looks like we have a gingrichus historianicus virus spreading insidiously through our community.

    Colonel Haiku (b486eb) — 1/18/2012 @ 3:34 am

    
    

48. “I think you’re underselling Reagan”

    Could be. We all want different things and value different things, so there isn’t likely to be a consensus, even if we had a way to judge by fixed objective standards…which we don’t.

    Dave Surls (46b08c) — 1/18/2012 @ 11:58 am

    
    

49. “Harding, Coolidge, and Reagan all had to play with the cards they were dealt”

    No doubt. Reagan, unlike Harding and Coolidge, had to deal with not having majorities in both houses of Congress, and he also had to deal with a huge, highly entrenched, and highly leftist federal bureacracy that basically didn’t exist in Harding and Coolidge’s day.

    Dave Surls (46b08c) — 1/18/2012 @ 12:20 pm

    
    

50. Hey, one more little news item displaying the inclusive post-racial spirit of the MLK Day celebration.

    King Day bank opening spurs call for justice

    Your business can’t be open on MLK Day. The civility police will barge in and try to shut you down for your incivility.

    I normally don’t quote from anything except government documents that can’t be copyrighted. But since the article itself quotes from the flyers the protesters were trying to pass out as they barged into the bank chanting, clearly what was on the flyer itself can’t be copyrighted material.

    “Dear TD Bank, you are defying the King holiday. Shame, Shame, Shame. This is a racist act. Shame, Shame, Shame.”

    It’s like food for the soul.

    Steve (1f4b7c) — 1/18/2012 @ 3:13 pm