Some economics for Martin Luther King Day
Newburyport, Mass. — Every year on the third Monday of January, Americans of all races, backgrounds and ideologies celebrate the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He is rightly lionized and sanctified by whites as well as blacks, by Republicans as well as Democrats.
It is easy to forget that, until fairly recently, many white Americans loathed Dr. King. They perceived him as a rabble rouser and an agitator; some rejoiced in his assassination in April 1968. How they got from loathing to loving is less a story about growing tolerance and diminishing racism, and more about the ways that Dr. King’s legacy has been scrubbed and blunted.
The Dr. King we remember today is particularly at odds with his radical turn in his last years. In 1967 he denounced the Vietnam War and warned that America was courting “spiritual death.” In early 1968 he planned the Poor People’s Campaign, in which millions of impoverished Americans — black, white and Latino — would gather in Washington for an enormous demonstration. He called for $30 billion annually in antipoverty spending, and asked Congress to guarantee an income for each American. To many Americans, this sounded like socialist lunacy...
Starting to Look Up: Be the Best of Whatever You Are, by Al Sturgeon (Dean of Graduate Programs, Pepperdine):
Fifty
years ago, and just one year before his assassination, Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr. preached a sermon at the New Covenant Baptist Church in
Chicago titled, The Three Dimensions of a Complete Life. Dr. King’s 3D sermon
emphasized the height dimension of life (God) along with the length
(self) and breadth dimensions (others). Some of his thoughts about
breadth made the entire sermon known as “the street sweeper speech.”
Today, on the holiday that remembers Dr. King, I ask you to remember
this:
When
I was in Montgomery, I went to a shoe shop quite often, known as the
Gordon Shoe Shop. And there was a fellow in there that used to shine my
shoes, and it was just an experience to witness this fellow shining my
shoes. He would get that rag, you know, and he could bring music out of
it. And I said to myself, “This fellow has a Ph.D. in shoe shining.”
What I’m saying to you this morning, my friends, even if it falls your
lot to be a street sweeper, go on out and sweep streets like
Michelangelo painted pictures; sweep streets like Handel and Beethoven
composed music; sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry; sweep
streets so well that all the host of heaven and earth will have to pause
and say, “Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well.”
- See also via Stanford – The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute
- The King Enclyclopedia
- View and search a selection of primary source documents about the African American Freedom Struggle chosen from the King Papers collection
- Freedom’s Ring “I Have a Dream” Speech – Annotated
- Recommended Readings
- American Prophet: The Inner Life and Global Vision of Martin Luther King, Jr. –The King Institute is launching a free online course wih Stanford Open EdX about the inner life of Dr. King
TaxGrrrl, Why Justice Matters: The Tax Trial Of Dr. Martin Luther King:
Consider the story of Dr. Martin Luther King, a leader in the civil rights movement, who years ago, was on the receiving end of repeated harassment by government officials, including state and local tax authorities. Inquiries into Dr. King’s finances were not new: he was investigated in two separate states (Georgia and Alabama) on numerous occasions. In 1960, he made news as the first person ever criminally charged in the state of Alabama on tax fraud.
The complexity of the tax law and the ability of prosecutors to indict a ham sandwich are much of what makes political use of tax administration so disturbing.
