Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Fanfiction

30th Annual Martin Luther King Jr., Rally and March

2012-01-19T10:14:00.000-08:00

The Martin Luther King, Jr. Celebration Committee announces the 30th annual region-wide Martin Luther King Jr. Birthday Celebration on Monday, January 16, 2012, beginning with Workshops (9:30am-11am), Rally (11am-12:30pm) and the March beginning at a new time of 12:30pm. This year's theme is "30th Anniversary Celebration: Recapturing MLK Jr.'s Revolutionary Spirit!"

This year we will march from Garfield High School to the Federal Building via Union St. & Madison St. We will march Monday- rain or snow. Lunch will be provided FREE following the march in Garfield's Commons area. We look foward to seeing you for Monday!

Do you want to have a table at the MLK celebration? The opportunity to have a table is on a FIRST come, FIRST served basis. You must bring your own chairs and table to have a table in the hallway at Garfield. Doors open at 8am. No charge for having a table.

Seattle has one of the largest annual Martin Luther King Day Celebrations in the U.S. We honor Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., for his work toward racial equality and economic justice for all people, for his commitment to nonviolence, and for his stand against war and militarism.

"The problem of racism, the problem of economic exploitation, and the problem of war are all tied together. These are the triple evils that are interrelated."

-Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

History of the MLK Celebration Committee

The Martin Luther King Celebration Committee is composed of dozens of grassroots, labor, business, minority, and progressive community organizations and volunteers from throughout the Puget Sound region. Annually, these groups come together and organize our community's largest tribute to the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

History of the MLK Celebration Committee
The Martin Luther King Celebration Committee is composed of dozens of grassroots, labor, business, minority, and progressive community organizations and volunteers from throughout the Puget Sound region. Annually, these groups come together and organize our community's largest tribute to the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. This year marks our 29th year honoring Dr. King's legacy.

Membership on the Committee is open. Individuals become voting members at their second meeting of the year (see our Principles of Unity). The chair of the Committee is Larry Gossett. Mr. Gossett has been chair of the Committee for 14 years. The Committee has many longtime members who have been planning and participating in planning of the march for over 25 years. A few longtime members are Lacy Steele, Eddie Rye Jr., Oscar Esaon Jr.,and Bob Barnes. The Committee has many labor unions that support the annual march and rally. A few members who serve on the Committee who are also active in labor unions: Abdul-aleem Ahmed, Verlene Jones, Jacquie Jones-Walsh, and James Davis. We are proud to have a broad based coalition of members.

Every year the MLK Celebration Committee identifies a local issue facing citizens here in King County, the only geographic jurisdiction named in Dr. King's honor. Then we organize a campaign to draw attention to the issue. Each year, thousands of local citizens participate in one of the biggest and most racially diverse rallies and marches ever held in Seattle. Here are some of the themes from recent years:

2010: JUSTICE NOW! Healthcare, Housing, Jobs and Education!
2009: YES WE CAN: Change Begins Now!
2008: Let Freedom Ring: End Racism, Poverty and War!
2007: Solidarity for Peace, Human Rights, and Economic Justice!
2006: Racism, Poverty, War: Iraq, Katrina, No More!
2005: Speak Truth to Power: End Racial Disparity Now!
2004: March in MLK's Footsteps: Justice Begins at Home!
2003: MLK's Call to Conscience: Support the Poor, No More War!

The theme usually speaks to the need for justice in all facets of our society: locally, nationally, and globally. Through workshops, a rally, and a march organized around this theme, we will keep the spotlight on our responsibility to correct the injustices in our world, from our criminal justice system to our public schools, to senseless military misadventures that threaten human rights and rob our communities of funds. This year's program will inform and empower those who attend.

This is the 30th year the committee will bring together people from every community and walk of life to commemorate the life of Dr. King and celebrate his birthday.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. returns to nation’s capitol

2011-10-24T17:37:00.000-07:00

The DePaulia
By Jerae Duffin
Published: Monday, October 24
Updated: Friday, October 21, 2011

Thousands gathered Oct. 16 in West Potomac Park in Washington D.C. for the dedication of the Martin Luther King Jr. memorial. Despite its delay due to hurricane Irene in August, President Barack Obama led the dedication ceremony along with notable civil rights leaders from across the country.

The 30-foot granite monument is located on the National Mall, adjacent to the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial and sits on a line directly between the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials. The monument's official address is 1964 Independence Ave, a reference to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, in which Dr. King played a major role.

It took several years for completion, starting in 1996 when Congress allowed King's former fraternity, Alpha Phi Alpha, to establish the memorial. Nearly $120 million were raised from the "Band Together to Build a Dream" donations used to create the site.

"The tribute is long overdue," said Laura Washington, a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times. "The monument is a sculpture. I hope that people will capture the spirit of what King represented. The spirit of equality."

Nearly 50 years ago, Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his famous "I Have a Dream Speech" in Washington in an effort to push for racial equality and to rally against discrimination against African Amerians.

"King was the face of the civil rights movement," said Dr. Howard Lindsey, assistant professor of History at DePaul. "You can't talk about civil rights without talking about Martin Luther King."

Dr. Lindsey teaches African American history courses at DePaul including the History of the Civil Rights Movement and of the Black Power Movement.

"I do wish, though, that the monument somehow gave some recognition to the thousands who made up the movement," said Dr. Kohli, assistant professor of African Black Diaspora Studies at DePaul University. Dr. Kohli recently discussed some of Dr. King's speeches with his African American and African Diaspora and Culture class.

When asked about the dedication of the memorial, Kohli said, "I thought it was about time."

It took 15 years for Dr. King's monument to arrive to Washington, but in the words of President Obama at the ceremony, "This is a day that would not be denied."

"President Obama did a great job at catering Martin Luther King's message to the issues we are facing today," said Josh Perez, a junior in Political Science and Communication at DePaul. Perez also has campaigned for President Obama for the upcoming 2012 election as a community organizer in the first ward of Chicago.

In 1963, King arrived in Washington, D.C. to speak before thousands at the Lincoln memorial, but today he sits near it again. Alongside his memorial are the embedded words: "Out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope."

2011 marks yet another milestone in Dr. King's accomplishments and is a testament of the continuing power of his legacy in shaping the national psyche of the United States.

Coretta Scott King, Martin Luther King’s other half

2011-10-21T17:13:00.000-07:00

By Rev. Barbara A. Reynolds
Posted 10/21/2011
The Root DC

The recent dedication of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. monument offered a splendid tribute, crowned by President Barack Obama linking his presidency to the martyred human rights leader.

The centerpiece of the monument on the National Mall is a towering 30 foot statue of Dr. King carved out of stone. It is a grandiose salute to a man who--without an army, weapons or a national treasury--commanded a war so unlike that of Presidents George Washington and Abraham Lincoln who are enshrined in memorials nearby.

But there is a glaring omission: any mention of the words and deeds of Coretta Scott King

Dr. King commanded a spiritual army that helped liberate the heart and soul of America from its deepest hatred and molded it into a liberation movement for freedom and dignity that resounds around the world.

Coretta King was his other half. She did more than anyone else to advance his legacy. And, dare I say, if it were not for this woman by his side, his legacy would never have risen to such heroic proportions.

Somewhere on that vast four acres there should be a statue, a bust, a plaque or something showing that she was a co-partner in this great freedom movement. (She died on Jan. 30, 2006.) Why not a mention of her on the monuments wall of great quotes? He once said, “In every campaign if Coretta was not with me, she was only a heartbeat away.”

As I started interviewing Mrs. King in the mid-1970’s, it was clear that she did not see herself as an appendage or a footnote in history. She often emphasized that she was more than a wife during Dr. King’s life and more than a widow after his death. She once told me “My story is a freedom song of struggle. It is about finding one’s purpose, how to overcome fear and to stand up for causes bigger than one’s self.”

In fact, one of Coretta’s most cherished quotes symbolizes what kind of woman she was. Horace Mann, the founder of Antioch College, her alma mater, once said, “If you have not found a cause to die for, you have not found a reason to live.”

Those were not mere words to her. Coretta lived at a time when she virtually had to have the faith of a prophet and nerves of steel. During the 1956 Montgomery bus boycott, carloads of Ku Klux Klan drove through black housing sections. The Kings received constant threatening calls. On January 30, she was in the house with her infant daughter, Yolanda, when their house was bombed.

“We could have been killed but it was just not our time to die,” she told me.

Despite the terrorism and the pleas of her parents to leave Montgomery, Coretta stayed with Martin until the 369-day boycott successfully ended.

“During the bus boycott I was tested by fire and I came to understand that I was not a breakable crystal figurine,” she said. “If I had been fragile and fearful, this would have been too much a distraction for Martin. Certainly his concern for my safety and that of the children would have prevented him from staying focused on the movement. But he came to understand he could trust me with trouble. In Montgomery, I was tested and found I became stronger in a crisis.”

In 1968, the test turned to heart break. On April 4, Dr. King was gunned down in Memphis while campaigning for the rights of striking garbage workers. During the national upheaval and riots following the assassination, much of the nation was awed by her poise and inner strength as she took her slain husband’s place and led the march.

“What most did not understand then was that I was not only married to the man I loved, but I was also married to the movement that I loved,” she said.

In taped interviews, Mrs. King told me how after her husband’s death her faith gave her the strength to raise her four children and to build a world-class center in Atlanta to continue the non-violent work of Dr. King. This move brought her into a bitter contention with some of Dr. King’s chief aides who had their own agendas for self-promotion and tried unsuccessfully to push Mrs. King out of the way.

In Atlanta, she led an effort to redevelop deteriorated neighborhoods that helped create the diversity that attracted the 1996 Summer Olympics. The Center, King’s birth home and his gravesite--where both Kings are entombed--draws thousands of tourists each year and has helped Atlanta become the spiritual Mecca of America, according to Steve Klein, communications director of the Center.

After successfully raising funds for the center, Mrs. King started lobbying for the King Holiday Bill. Only a sentence or a phrase is ever used to describe this effort that took more than 15 years of years of hard-core organizing. It took 6 million signatures, intense lobbying from state to state and organizing by civil rights supporters in Congress and in the streets to pass the legislation to make Dr. King’s birthday a national holiday. It was signed into law on Nov. 2, 1983.

As she worked to institutionalize her husband’s legacy, Mrs. King emerged as an incomparable human rights spokesmen in her own right. “Where ever there was injustice, war, discrimination against women, gays and the disadvantaged, I did my best to show up and exert moral persuasion,” she said.

Coretta King and Martin Luther King were two souls with one goal of giving their lives to create a Beloved Community where all people would have dignity and justice. Telling one story without the other creates a flaw and imbalance, a scar on history. It would be shameful for this not to be corrected.

Dr. Barbara A. Reynolds, the author of six books, including “Jesse Jackson: America’s David,” is working on a biography of Coretta Scott King. An ordained minister, she is a former columnist and editorial board member of USA Today.

President Obama to dedicate new MLK Memorial in DC

2011-10-21T17:10:00.000-07:00

By BRETT ZONGKER - Associated Press
AP – Sun, Oct 16, 2011

WASHINGTON (AP) — Thousands of people have gathered at dawn to give the new Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial a proper dedication after its opening in August.

Some started lining up at 5 a.m. or earlier Sunday morning. Aretha Franklin, poet Nikki Giovanni and President Barack Obama will be among those honoring the legacy of the nation's foremost civil rights leader.

Organizers anticipate as many as 50,000 people will attend. An earlier ceremony planned for August had to be postponed because of Hurricane Irene. More than 250,000 were expected for that event.

King's sister and two of his children are scheduled to speak. The choir from King's historic Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta will sing.

Giovanni will read her poem "In the Spirit of Martin," and Franklin will sing.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day would-be bomber pleads guilty

2011-09-12T13:49:00.000-07:00

Global Post
Sept. 7 2011

A man with ties to white supremacists plead guilty on Wednesday to charges that he planted a homemade bomb along a Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade route in Spokane, Washington earlier this year.

Kevin Harpham, 37, admitted to building a pipe bomb designed to be set off by a remote car-alarm trigger, and leaving the bomb in a backpack along the parade route, The Los Angeles Times reports.

"The placement of an explosive device in a crowded public area is horrific at any time, but this attack, planned to occur during an event celebrating the bonds of our community, makes it all the more reprehensible," Laura Laughlin, special agent in charge of the FBI's Seattle office, said in a statement after Harpham's plea.

According to the Associated Press, Harpham's deal with prosecutors calls for a recommended sentencing range of 27 to 32 years in prison.

The judge at today's hearing asked Harpham if he had placed the bomb in an attempt to hurt people because of their race, color or national origin.

"Yes," Harpham said.

The plea deal charged Harpham with attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction, and the hate crime of placing the bomb in an effort to target minorities. Harpham spoke in a clear voice when he said "guilty" to each of the two counts.

He will be sentenced Nov. 30.

Harpham told the judge it had taken him about a month to build the bomb. It was discovered by parade workers before the event, and disabled by law enforcement.

The detonator was a remote car starter purchased over the Internet. The shrapnel that would have maimed victims was lead fishing weights purchased from Walmart. Harpham's DNA was on the handle of the backpack that held the bomb. After the arrest, officers found deleted photos in a digital camera that included pictures of Harpham at the parade, pictures of young black children gathering for the march and of a Jewish man who was wearing a yarmulke.

Investigators later discovered Harpham had posted many times over a number of years on a white supremacist website called Vanguard News Network.

United States

A Dream Fulfilled, Martin Luther King Memorial Opens

2011-09-12T13:41:00.000-07:00

By SABRINA TAVERNISE
Published: August 22, 2011
The New York Times

WASHINGTON — Now we know: The arc of the moral universe is long, but it leads to a picturesque glade beside the Tidal Basin, with the Washington Monument providing sentry.

Washington residents and others got their first chance to visit the four-acre memorial on Monday, when it opened after more than two decades of planning. After more than two decades of planning, fund-raising and construction, the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial — a four-acre tract south of the Mall featuring a granite statue of Dr. King — has officially opened to the public.

The memorial will be formally dedicated on Sunday in a ceremony that is expected to draw perhaps a few hundred thousand people from around the country. But some of its earliest judges came on Monday, as hundreds of city residents and visitors stood in line for their turn to take a look.

“I wanted to be part of this history,” said William Wilson, a retired federal employee. “This is the architecture of progress.”

The dedication, which is to include remarks by President Obama, coincides with the 48th anniversary of the March on Washington and Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, delivered at the Lincoln Memorial.

The monument is the first on the Mall and its adjoining memorial parks to honor an African-American, said Harry E. Johnson Sr., the president of the foundation in charge of erecting it. That made it an emotional occasion for many who came to see it.

“This is important as a black American,” said Jerome McNeil, who was there on Monday taking photographs for his grandchildren. “It’s not just a statue, it’s a symbol of what we can do if we put our minds to it.”

In 1996, Congress authorized the memorial’s establishment, and Alpha Phi Alpha, an African-American fraternity, set up a foundation to accomplish that.

A Chinese sculptor, Lei Yixin, was selected to create the 30-foot sculpture, and ROMA Design Group, a company in San Francisco, designed the layout, which includes a bookstore, a wall with Dr. King’s quotations and nearly 200 cherry trees. The cost was $120 million, and organizers said they are still trying to raise the last $5 million.

The design gave form to a line from Dr. King’s “Dream” speech — “With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope,” said Mr. Jackson. In the memorial, he noted, Dr. King is seen emerging from the stone of hope. The two towering mounds set slightly behind him, forming a sort of passageway to the statue, are mountains of despair.

Some visitors said they did not like the fact that Dr. King was facing the Jefferson Memorial, not the Lincoln Memorial, but Mr. McNeil said he did not mind.

“The only thing I don’t like is that I have to wait until 11 a.m. to get in,” he said. During a press briefing on Monday, Mr. Johnson chose to emphasize Dr. King’s focus on poverty and justice, steering away from questions about race. It was more a gesture of hope, he said, than a tactic of avoiding an inevitably difficult conversation.

“We hope that in the next 100 years, that won’t be important,” he said, referring to race relations. He sought to emphasize universal themes. “What’s important is that you have food in your belly.”

For Mr. Wilson, race is still very much present, but he did not expect the monument to do much to change that.

“I don’t think this will resolve a lot of things,” he said. But, glancing up toward the statue of Dr. King, he added: “He definitely earned it.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: August 29, 2011 An article on Tuesday about the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial in Washington misidentified its designer. It is the ROMA Design Group, a company in San Francisco — not Ed Jackson Jr., the lead architect on the memorial project. (Mr. Jackson led the effort to select a winning design, and later oversaw its construction, but did not design the memorial or its layout.)

Another Role for Buses in Civil Rights History

2011-03-19T20:40:00.000-07:00

BIRMINGHAM JOURNAL
By KIM SEVERSON
Published: March 18, 2011
The New York Times

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Get people talking about civil rights-era buses and it’s all Rosa Parks all the time.

“I don't think they intentionally left him out of the history books, but because he operated so under the radar they didn't know what he did," said Donald Crawford, on his father and his bus line.

Museums are dedicated to her role in the boycott in the mid-1950s that forced Montgomery to stop banishing African-Americans to the back of city buses. Schools and stamps bear her name. There is a Rosa Parks cookie jar and a Rosa Parks app.

But no one talks much about Worcy Crawford, who died in July at age 90, leaving a graveyard of decaying buses behind his house on the outskirts of Birmingham.

His private coaches, all of them tended by Mr. Crawford almost until the day he died, do not have the panache of the city buses that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. refused to ride. But they have significance nonetheless.

With their cracked windows and rusting engines thick with brambles, they are remnants of something that was quite rare in the South: a bus company owned by an African-American.

Mr. Crawford’s work was simple. He kept a segregated population moving. Any Birmingham child who needed a ride to school, a football game or a Girl Scout outing during the Jim Crow era and beyond most likely rode one.

So did people heading to dozens of civil rights rallies — including the 1963 March on Washington where Dr. King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech — during a time when chartering a bus from a white-owned company was impossible and driving past the city limits was dangerous for a busload full of African-Americans.

Now, Mr. Crawford’s only remaining child is trying to keep his father’s much more humble dream alive.

“Dad felt he was never really given any recognition,” said Donald Crawford, 62, a longtime Birmingham high school band instructor and jazz musician. “I don’t think they intentionally left him out of the history books, but because he operated so under the radar they didn’t know what he did.”

To try to make things right, his son sat Mr. Crawford down a few years ago and recorded his story, turning it into a self-published book. He titled it “The Wheels of the Birmingham Civil Rights Movement,” which is what a pastor called Mr. Crawford at an appreciation the community held for him in 1999.

It is sold at a local black-owned bookstore (though the digitally inclined can find it on Amazon.com) or from the trunk of Donald Crawford’s car. He thought about sending a copy to Oprah Winfrey, but his cousin in Chicago said she thought it was unlikely to reach her.

Copies made their way to the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, where curators store Mr. Crawford’s oral history.

That is about where formal interest in Mr. Crawford ends. But like people who ran the grocery stores and doctors’ offices and other essential businesses in the era when blacks were not allowed to mix with whites, Mr. Crawford was an essential part of daily life for black Birmingham.

“This is the only bus company that we had in the days of the segregationist era,” said Horace Huntley, who recently retired as a professor of African-American history at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and was a board member at the institute.

“Knowing the width and depth of segregation, this is something that was very, very necessary if black people were to move from point A to point B in any semblance of numbers,” Dr. Huntley said. “The importance of it goes without saying.”

Mr. Crawford’s first job in the transportation business was taking the popular Ensley All-Stars black baseball team to games around the South in a truck he used to haul coal. He traded the truck for a bus in 1951.

“As far as I knew I was the only black person that had a bus,” he told his son.

That he could start a bus line occurred to him when his mother-in-law asked him to take her and her church friends to a Seventh-day Adventist convention.

He added another bus and started transporting other church and school groups, sometimes free. But when he went to the county clerk’s office for a commercial license, city officials used a racial slur and laughed him out of the office.

Mr. Crawford figured out that if he “sold” his buses to churches in name only, he could get a special permit and operate a commercial line in a kind of legal gray area. It was cheaper, and he did not have to pay taxes.

“This was the one time racism really worked in my favor,” he said in the book.

His bus line grew, and Jim Crow laws faded. Mr. Crawford’s drivers started taking weekend partiers to New Orleans, Panama City, Fla., and other cities. Eventually, the company was cited for improper permits and other violations.

In 1979, after a series of legal hearings and protests from established interstate bus companies, he got his interstate commercial permit, according to interviews he gave.

“Didn’t nobody know who I was,” Worcy Crawford told The Birmingham News in an interview a few years before he died. “And to this day some people still don’t know who I am. I say that’s the way the Lord planned it.”

Today, 18 of Mr. Crawford’s buses sit in various states of repair on a grassy lot behind his house. Family members still charter two newer coaches, keeping his legacy alive. The others are being sold for parts or kept for reasons of nostalgia.

One of them, a tan GMC bus built in 1958, is nicknamed the Rosa Parks.

A version of this article appeared in print on March 19, 2011, on page A15 of the New York edition.

Leesburg Martin Luther King Memorials Dedicated

2011-02-12T14:19:00.001-08:00

In a month that celebrates the important contributions African Americans have made to history, members of the Martin Luther King Jr. "I Have a Dream" Committee gathered in front of the Loudoun County Courthouse Saturday morning to formally dedicate a set of memorial bricks and plaques, some bearing the Civil Rights leader's countenance and famous quotes, placed along several town sidewalks.

The MLK "I Have a Dream" Committee approached the Leesburg Town Council last year about placing memorial plaques and bricks along the route traveled every year by those participating in the annual MLK March and subsequent assembly at Douglass Community Center.

Held on the annual Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday, the MLK March route begins at the Loudoun County Courthouse and extends along East Market Street to the Douglass Community Center. The new route designation includes two granite plaques engraved with a profile of King and information about the "I Have A Dream" Committee and the annual MLK Day March; five granite plaques engraved with quotes from King's speeches and writings; and 10 bricks engraved with "MLK Dream." The first plaque is located in the brick sidewalk on East Market Street, adjacent to the Loudoun County Courthouse and across from the post office. The other plaques are placed along the march route, in the sidewalk on the north side of East Market Street. The last plaque is located in front of the Douglass Community Center. The 10 bricks are interspersed along the route between the engraved plaques.

The "I Have A Dream" Committee was established in 1992 by the Loudoun Douglass Alumni Association, the Baha'i Community of Loudoun, the Loudoun County branch of the NAACP, and Bluemont Concert Series. During Saturday's brief dedication ceremony, the founding members of the committee were given plaques in recognition of their 19 years of service.

Committee chairman Tammy Carter said the memorials were not meant to solely be of importance to local African American residents, yet serve as a reminder of the true goal of King's words.

"This is about bringing the community of Leesburg together," she said.

Committee member Mary Randolph said the event was truly symbolic for her. She noted that plaques were laid in front of the courthouse, where slaves had been recorded right next to cattle; along a route that many African American children used to walk to school, because during segregation they were not permitted to ride the buses; and extended to the Douglass School, the result of many African Americans banding together to help fund a school for their children, and also the former site of a lynching post.

Most serial killing victims are women, FBI reports

2010-11-28T15:51:00.000-08:00

THOMAS HARGROVE Scripps Howard News Service
Posted November 27, 2010

America’s serial killers prey on women — to an extent only hinted at by Hollywood films and best-selling novels.

According to never-before-released FBI data, women accounted for 70 percent of the 1,398 known victims of serial killers since 1985. By comparison, women represented only 22 percent of total homicide victims.

The FBI’s Violent Criminal Apprehension Program (ViCAP), based in Quantico, Va., released the data at the request of Scripps Howard News Service. SHNS is conducting an investigation into the nation’s more than 185,000 unsolved homicides committed since 1980.

According to the FBI’s Supplementary Homicide Report, local police reported that about 33,000 homicides of women remain unsolved.

FBI agent Mark Hilts, head of the bureau’s Behavioral Analysis Unit No. 2 that profiles serial killers, said “a large number” of serial killers act with a sexual motive.

“Sex can be a motivation, but it’s a motivation in conjunction with something else — with anger, with power, with control,” Hilts said. “Most serial killers do derive satisfaction from the act of killing, and that’s what differentiates them” from those who kill to help commit or conceal another crime.

Crime experts for decades have tried to define serial murder and to determine its causes and motivations. The Justice Department currently defines a serial killer simply as someone who kills two or more people in separate incidents, a definition that ignores the issue of motive.

The Justice Department for years has estimated that less than 1 percent of all homicides are committed by serial killers, but that assumption has come under question recently.

Retired FBI agent Mark Safarik, a veteran serial killer hunter, discounts the official definition of serial murder.

“Serial murder is more related to motive. We use a definition of two or more, but that’s really just for research purposes,” said Safarik, now of Forensic Behavioral Services International, a legal consultant firm based in Fredericksburg, Va. “For us, there is almost always some sort of sexual component to the homicide.”

The FBI has compiled victim data for 25 years. They also released information showing that nearly half the victims of known serial homicides were in their 20s and 30s, although people of every age and from every region of the county have been victims.

“We look at homicides and attempted homicides. We look at sexual assaults. We look at unidentified human remains cases where homicide is suspected,” said Special Agent Michael Harrigan, who headed ViCAP from 2007 to 2010 and agreed to release the data.

“We catalog this in a database to try to identify serial killers or serial offenders that transcend jurisdictional boundaries.”

Among states, New York leads in a grim statistic: It has had 137 victims of serial murder since 1985. California has had 128 and Florida 112.

When shown the FBI data, criminologists and veteran homicide investigators asked why New York leads the nation. Does it lead because it has more serial killings or because it does a better job in detecting such killings?

“That surprises me. I thought the numbers would always be higher in California and some of the Southern states,” said retired veteran New York City homicide detective Augustine “Gus” Papay.

California, which its immense population, ought to lead in every major crime statistic, Papay said. And he felt Southern states would be overrepresented because of recently documented highway serial killings by Southern truckers.

Papay was a key participant in the successful hunt for Alejandro “Alex” Henriquez, convicted in 1992 of murdering a woman and two girls, including 10-year-old Jessica Guzman.

Papay said serial killers may be drawn to a major metropolitan area like New York City.

“They think it’s easier to get lost in the big city. And think of all the victims! There are also sorts of different people here they could target,” Papay said. “And maybe they think it will be harder to get caught here.”

Newspaper's revelation rocks photographer's family

2010-09-17T13:48:00.000-07:00

By ADRIAN SAINZ
Associated Press Writer
September 17, 2010

MEMPHIS — Civil rights movement veterans are struggling to explain the motives of a revered photographer recently unmasked as an FBI informant who spied on the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and others even as he captured their most intimate moments. His children don’t believe it’s true.

This was to have been the season to honor the late Ernest C. Withers for his historic work, with his photos displayed at a museum bearing his name.
All that has been overshadowed by The Commercial Appeal newspaper revealing he was an informant who regularly tipped authorities about civil rights leaders, many of whom trusted him so completely that he was allowed to sit in on their most sensitive meetings.

‘‘Personally, and as a family, we do not believe what has been alleged. It still has to be proven,’’ Withers’ youngest daughter, Rosalind Withers, told The Associated Press in an interview at the unfinished museum on Memphis’ Beale Street, set to open later this year.

The newspaper reviewed thousands of pages of federal documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, providing a glimpse into the FBI’s surveillance of civil rights leaders.

D’Army Bailey, a former Memphis judge and activist, said colleagues knew the FBI was watching.

‘‘It’s a very serious and disturbing thing, it’s not a surprising thing,’’ Bailey said, adding that he suspects Withers wasn’t the only one passing information on to the FBI.

‘‘If you take it all the way back to slavery, there was never a successful slave revolt because the house Negroes would go and tell the boss man what the field Negroes were planning,’’ Bailey said. ‘‘And this is all part of the same pattern. It teaches us a lesson that the more things change, the more they stay the same.’’

Ernest Withers, often called ‘‘the original civil rights photographer,’’ died in 2007 at age 85.

His crisp black-and-white pictures chronicled the seminal Emmett Till murder trial in 1955, racial integration at the University of Mississippi in 1962 and the 1968 sanitation workers’ strike in Memphis that brought King to the city where he was assassinated.

Withers marched with King, and was beaten by police while covering Medgar Evers’ 1963 funeral. Relatives tell how white bystanders would hurl insults or spit at him as he covered civil rights marches.

But the FBI documents obtained by The Commercial Appeal present a story of spying and secrecy.

The newspaper did not have access to Withers’ informant file because it is sealed. The Justice Department twice denied The Commercial Appeal’s requests for that file and won’t acknowledge it exists, the newspaper reported.

Instead, the government released 369 pages related to a 1970s public corruption probe that targeted Withers, who pleaded guilty in 1979 to extorting kickbacks from a nightclub owner while he was a Tennessee Alcoholic Beverage Commission agent. Those pages included redacted references to informants, but in one instance the FBI failed to hide a single reference to Withers’ informant number, ME 338-R.

The newspaper then studied more than 7,000 pages of other FBI reports released 30 years ago under FOIA for references to the number. Those reports pinpoint specific actions by Withers and show he was one of several informants.

Withers proved ‘‘most conversant with all key activities in the Negro community,’’ according to an FBI report cited by the newspaper.

It’s not clear if Withers was paid for his information. However, retired Marquette University professor Athan Theoharis, an expert who reviewed the newspaper’s findings, said Withers fits the profile of a paid informant who was closely supervised by area agents.

‘‘It would be shocking to me that he wasn’t paid,’’ Theoharis told the newspaper.

During the sanitation workers’ strike, Withers met with two FBI agents in Memphis, the newspaper found. A report indicates informant ME 338-R — Withers — supplied them a newsletter listing names and photographs of community leaders who likely organized the strike.

The day before King’s April 4, 1968, assassination, the informant passed on details about a high-level strategy session at the Lorraine Hotel between King and young militants who had a role in the strike. Withers also revealed details from King’s funeral in Atlanta, reporting that two Southern Christian Leadership Conference workers planned to return to Memphis ‘‘to resume ... support of sanitation strike,’’ the newspaper reported.

In response to those nuggets and others in the story, some activists of the era acknowledged they were approached by the FBI or thought they were shadowed by the agency at one time or another.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, then a close aide to King, said no one suspected Withers was an informant. Although Withers had access to the leaders, he was not in any ‘‘decision-making, influencing position.’’

‘‘He was a basic photographer who was always around,’’ Jackson said. ‘‘He was a man we had high regard for.’’

Warner Dickerson, a former teacher who now heads the NAACP’s Memphis office and knew Withers well, said the photographer was ‘‘part of the ’hood, disadvantaged and denied.’’

Dickerson said Withers had selfish motives and committed a ‘‘subtle betrayal,’’ but he expressed sympathy for the man who had children to raise.

‘‘I don’t think he was a mean person, I don’t think he sold the race out,’’ Dickerson said. ‘‘You cannot ignore the fact that he needed money ... It wasn’t like he gave information to the FBI who used that to murder my people.

‘‘I’m not quick to judge people,’’ Dickerson added. ‘‘You have to walk in their shoes some time before you can understand what motivates them to do that.’’

To his children, Withers was just a photographer, a charitable family man and a believer in King’s message of racial equality.

Andrew Jerome Withers, Rosalind Withers and Frances Williams vow to do their own FOIA request and talk to the FBI themselves in efforts to clear their father’s name.

‘‘It will not diminish his legacy,’’ said Andrew Withers, known to friends as ‘‘Rome.’’ ‘‘If you take a survey of Memphis, ask the people in the streets, you’ll probably get 10 out of 10 that say ’I can’t believe it.’’’

Perhaps their biggest concern, and one that was echoed by movement veterans like Memphis resident Maxine Smith, was that Withers is not alive to respond to the revelations.

‘‘We know that his good name will overcome anything that has come to him in his death,’’ Rome Withers said. ‘‘He would be awfully mad for somebody to bring up an issue that has no proof.’’

———

Associated Press Writer Lucas Johnson in Nashville contributed to this report.

Dr. King’s Newest Marcher

2010-09-04T18:14:00.000-07:00

By TAYLOR BRANCH
Published: September 4, 2010
Baltimore
The New York Times

LIKE the historic original in 1963, Glenn Beck’s commemorative march on Washington has produced a clash of perception. Marchers celebrated rather than besieged the capital, and sweet piety floated above tribal antagonisms. Responses of disbelief have mingled once again with giddy, puzzled surprise. This time, by embracing the legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., stridently conservative speakers revived hard questions about symbolic fusion in politics. Did their words invite a rare shift in the landscape? Or did they merely paint a mirage?

A week ago Saturday, from the Lincoln Memorial steps, Mr. Beck himself described undergoing a stark conversion as he organized the rally. “When I put this together, in my head,” he told the crowd, “I felt it was supposed to be political.” His promotional announcement had put him “into a cold sweat” of doubt, however, until personal crisis made him grab an assistant by the lapels, Mr. Beck declared, “and I pulled him in close, and I screamed in his ear, ‘I don’t know how, but we’re wrong!’” He said an inner voice had told him to drop his slashing polemics, then politics entirely, for an unspecified new theme grounded in spiritual values. “I don’t understand it,” he said he had told his flabbergasted staff, “but this is where we’re going.”

A skilled dramatist, given to surging displays of emotion, Mr. Beck announced that paralysis had gripped him until last spring, when “we were still kind of lost, and we didn’t know what we were going to do when we got here.” He offered his audience no further clues to a mysterious transformation, but my cringing search of his program archives turned up — amid diatribes on Dr. King as a dangerous socialist, and on President Obama as an alien Muslim — a novel encounter with Dr. King’s niece, Alveda. Her first invitation to appear on Mr. Beck’s show suited his political mold, because she is a defiant crusader against abortion rights and gay marriage.

In their interview, Mr. Beck focused instead on a souvenir from the civil rights movement that Alveda King brought with her. The 10-point “pledge of nonviolence,” a copy of the form signed by demonstrators preparing to face persecution and jail, seemed to strike him with the force of revelation. “These people were serious about nonviolence,” Mr. Beck told his cable audience.

He posted the commandments on his Web site, then analyzed them over several broadcasts on the Fox network last April: “No. 3 is ‘walk and talk in the manner of love.’ This one’s going to be hard.” Sacrifice personal wishes, he recited, that all may be free. Observe with friend and foe the ordinary rules of courtesy. Remember the nonviolent movement seeks justice and reconciliation, not victory.

Mr. Beck extolled disciplined sacrifice by marginal, misunderstood people, noting that most newspapers had branded Dr. King a troublemaker stirring up violence. He added his own saucy twist to the final pledge: As you prepare to march, meditate on the life and teachings of Jesus. “If it’s Buddha, it’s Buddha. If it’s Moses, it’s Moses. But meditate,” Mr. Beck exhorted his viewers. “Jesus, he’s my guy. Your guy might be different.”

Glenn Beck did not adopt nonviolence explicitly for the “Restoring Honor” rally in Washington. That would have been too wrenching a leap for his followers and opponents alike. After all, nonviolent doctrines have been submerged, ignored or forgotten across decades of ethnic assertion and perpetual warfare, even by many heirs of the nonviolent movement themselves.

Mr. Beck obtained a simpler, tamer version from Alveda King last spring, when she recalled her childhood counsel from “Uncle Martin” that nonviolence boiled down to St. Paul’s three abiding guides in the Bible: faith, hope and charity. Mr. Beck told viewers back then that he walked dazed from the studio, gripped by a new theme. “I love this woman!” he announced on April 21. His crisis was ending. “I see the landing strip after last night,” he declared. He would apply organizing techniques from the civil rights movement. On the 47th anniversary of Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, he would bestow citizenship medals for faith, hope and charity.

Only Mr. Beck knows the alternative. Perhaps he would have mocked the 1963 march on its sacrosanct turf, remaining the daredevil ideologue who has posed in a Nazi-like uniform to spice his torment of liberals. The actual rally befuddled and bored many viewers, especially sophisticated ones. A huge crowd swayed to a three-hour tent revival of prayer and patriotism. “God is the answer!” cried Mr. Beck. Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man” echoed above the vast National Mall for tributes to the bravery of American soldiers...

Next Page »

Taylor Branch is the author of “Parting the Waters,” “Pillar of Fire” and “At Canaan’s Edge,” a three-volume history of the modern civil rights era.

Where Dr. King Stood, Tea Party Claims His Mantle

2010-08-30T18:05:00.000-07:00

By KATE ZERNIKE
Published: August 27, 2010
The New York Times

“Thank you, Glenn!” Brenda Herr of Grant-Valkaria, Fla., shouted Friday as she waved to Glenn Beck near the rally site.

WASHINGTON — It seems the ultimate thumb in the eye: that Glenn Beck would summon the Tea Party faithful to a rally on the anniversary of the March on Washington, and address them from the very place where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I have a dream” speech 47 years ago. After all, the Tea Party and its critics have been facing off for months over accusations of racism.

But many of the busloads of Tea Party activists expected in Washington this weekend do not see any irony or offense. In fact, they have come to see the Tea Party as the aggrieved — its loosely affiliated members unfairly characterized, even persecuted, as extremists.

Eighteen months ago, many were moved to the streets by a belief that they had been not listened to by their representatives in Washington. (“How dare they ignore us?” reads a sign often seen at Tea Party rallies.) Now, encouraged by Tea Party leaders and people like Mr. Beck and Andrew Breitbart, whose BigGovernment.com is a source of news for many Tea Party supporters, they have adopted the language of the civil rights movement to describe their cause. Their sense of persecution has become a galvanizing force.

Consider the response last month when the N.A.A.C.P., the nation’s oldest civil rights organization, called on Tea Party leaders to denounce racist elements in their ranks — citing signs with racist slogans at Tea Party rallies.

Tea Party Patriots, the largest umbrella organization for thousands of local groups across the country, posted a petition on its Web site calling for the N.A.A.C.P. to revoke its resolution “condemning the Tea Party movement as ‘racist.’ ”

“It is nothing less than ‘hate speech’ for the N.A.A.C.P. to be smearing us as ‘racists’ and ‘bigots,’ ” the petition declared. “We believe, like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., in a colorblind, postracial society. And we believe that when an organization lies and resorts to desperate tactics of racial division and hatred, they should be publicly called on it.”

On his radio show, Mr. Beck said he had not intended to choose the anniversary for his “Restoring Honor” rally on Saturday but had since decided it was “divine providence.”

Dr. King’s dream, he told listeners, “has been so corrupted.”

“Judge a man by the content of his character?” he said. “Character doesn’t even matter in this country. It’s time we picked back up the job.”

He later added: “We are the people of the civil rights movement. We are the ones that must stand for civil and equal rights, justice, equal justice. Not special justice, not social justice. We are the inheritors and protectors of the civil rights movement. They are perverting it.”

It has become an article of faith among Tea Party groups that any racist signs at rallies — “Go back to Kenya,” directed at President Obama, is just one example — are carried by Democratic plants sent in to make the Tea Party look bad.

In March, when members of the Congressional Black Caucus accused protesters at a Tea Party rally against health care of spitting on them and shouting racist epithets, Tea Party leaders suggested that those episodes had not occurred, saying there was no video proof.

At a rally in Searchlight, Nev., a week later, Mr. Breitbart argued that black Democratic lawmakers had set out to provoke the protesters. When they did not make racist comments, Mr. Breitbart said, the Democrats simply accused them of doing so.

He looked into the crowd and said it proved that the Tea Party was not racist. “I see black faces, Hispanic faces. I’m Jewish,” he said. “Shalom, Nevada!”

In response to the N.A.A.C.P. resolution last month, Mr. Breitbart claimed reverse racism. He publicized a video of an Agriculture Department official, Shirley Sherrod, saying that she had discriminated against a white farmer. The video turned out to be heavily edited — in fact, Ms. Sherrod had helped the farmer and had actually been telling a longer story to make a point about the need for racial understanding.

Still, Tea Party leaders say they are outraged, as anyone would be, by accusations of racism: they do not see themselves that way.

Still, Tea Party leaders say they are outraged, as anyone would be, by accusations of racism: they do not see themselves that way.

FreedomWorks, a Washington advocacy group that has encouraged the growth of the Tea Party, is planning to take out full-page newspaper advertisements highlighting black, Hispanic and Jewish Tea Party members to make the point that the movement is diverse. It is also sponsoring a new documentary about black involvement in the cause.

Tea Party supporters argue that it is progressives who are fomenting racial division.

In a rally in April here at the National Mall, Deneen Borelli, a black conservative, told the crowd that Tea Party supporters were in an impossible position: “If you are white they call you racist or a redneck. If you are black, they call you a token, a traitor, an Uncle Tom.”

Polls show that the movement has not attracted blacks proportionate to their representation in the larger population. And some Tea Party leaders acknowledge that.

FreedomWorks advises Tea Party leaders to put Hispanics and blacks on stage at rallies to show that the movement is not racist.

Alveda King, a niece of Dr. King, is scheduled to speak at Mr. Beck’s rally, and many Tea Party supporters say this is evidence that they hold no racial animus.

Lloyd Marcus, a black singer who has performed on the cross-country tours of the Tea Party Express, often introduces himself by saying, “I am not an African-American, I am a Lloyd Marcus American!”

In a letter posted Friday on the social networking Web site Tea Party Nation, Mr. Marcus wrote, “Glenn Beck’s values and principles are far more consistent with M.L.K.’s values than the black civil rights leaders who have sold their souls to the anti-God, anti-family and anti-America progressives for political power.” He signed it, “Lloyd Marcus, unhyphenated American.”

In the Tea Party’s talk of states’ rights, critics say they hear an echo of slavery, Jim Crow and George Wallace. Tea Party activists call that ridiculous: they do not want to take the country back to the discrimination of the past, they say, they just want the states to be able to block the federal mandate on health insurance.

Still, the government programs that many Tea Party supporters call unconstitutional are the ones that have helped many black people emerge from poverty and discrimination. It is not just that Rand Paul, the Republican nominee for Senate in Kentucky, said that he disagreed on principle with the provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that required business owners to serve blacks. It is that many Tea Party activists believe that laws establishing a minimum wage or the federal safety net are an improper expansion of federal power.

Critics rightly note that Dr. King spoke over and over of the need for this country to acknowledge its “debt to the poor,” calling for an “economic bill of rights” that would “guarantee a job to all people who want to work and are able to work.” In Mr. Beck’s taxonomy, this would make him a Marxist.

Even if Tea Party members are right that any racist signs are those of mischief-makers, even if Glenn Beck had chosen any other Saturday to hold his rally, it would be hard to quiet the argument about the Tea Party and race.

A version of this article appeared in print on August 28, 2010, on page A9 of the New York edition.

Glenn Beck rally on anniversary of Martin Luther King speech, featuring Palin, draws ire of Sharpton

2010-08-27T13:54:00.000-07:00

BY Richard Sisk
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU
Originally Published: Thursday, August 26th 2010
Updated: Thursday, August 26th 2010

Glenn Beck rally will mark 47th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s 'I Have a Dream' speech.

WASHINGTON - Right-wing media stars Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, supported by a Tea Party cast of thousands, will try to lay claim to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s legacy in a rally Saturday on the National Mall.

That's not sitting well with the Rev. Al Sharpton, who is planning his own rally to mark the 47th anniversary of King's galvanizing "I Have a Dream" speech.

With Fox News commentator colleague Palin as his keynoter, Beck is hosting a "Restore Honor" gathering on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial - the site where King made his historic address.

"This is going to be a moment that you'll never be able to paint people as haters, racists, none of it," Beck said on his show. "This is a moment, quite honestly, that I think we reclaim the civil rights movement."

Beck, a Tea Party movement favorite, said he initially was clueless that the rally coincides with the MLK anniversary. But he now thinks it was "divine providence."

"Whites don't own Abraham Lincoln, blacks don't own Martin Luther King," Beck said.

Sharpton, whose National Action Network is sponsoring a "Reclaim the Dream" rally, scoffed at Beck's aim to restore honor to the nation: "I didn't know he had it."

Sharpton said he is concerned the Beck rally will focus on divisive issues such as the controversy over the mosque near Ground Zero rather than "building an equal society."

"They probably will raise it," Sharpton said of the mosque issue. Beck and Palin are vociferous foes of the mosque plan.

Sharpton's rally at Dunbar High School, with Martin Luther King 3rd and Education Secretary Arne Duncan, will be followed by a march to the planned site of the MLK Memorial near the Lincoln Memorial.

But Sharpton said he will avoid any confrontations with the Beck group. "We're not going to desecrate the memory of Dr. King," he said.

Beck claimed his rally will be nonpolitical and is hoping his crowd will surpass the estimated tens of thousands who joined the 9/12 Taxpayers march last year that fueled the Tea Party movement.

But official GOP groups have steered clear, and even some Tea Party activists are skittish.

"We have no involvement in it," said a Republican National Committee spokesman. Paul Affinita, executive director of the Tea Party365 group in New York City, said "We're not officially supporting this. We're more focused on fiscal responsibility."

rsisk@nydailynews.com

An Honor for Dr. King That Leaves Few Satisfied

2010-08-19T15:52:00.000-07:00

Anchorage Journal
The New York Times
By WILLIAM YARDLEY
Published: August 17, 2010

ANCHORAGE — The new Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue here is a fine-looking road. Spruce and birch trees line both sides. The Chugach Mountains rise in the distance. It feels, and it is, far away from the struggling streets that bear the civil rights leader’s name in many other cities.

Unlike those streets, often in historically black or poor neighborhoods, or both, Dr. King Avenue was previously woods where bears wandered. It does not have an extensive human history, and that is part of the problem.

“It is on the periphery of the city,” said the Rev. Alonzo B. Patterson of the predominantly nonwhite Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church here. “It was put there because it disturbed the minimal amount of people.”

It might seem reasonable to wonder why Anchorage would name a street for Dr. King. The city is less than 6 percent black and, while it has had chapters of black-white conflict, it is not known for the legacy of discrimination that scarred so many other places.

Racism is another story here. Alaska Natives were stripped of their language and culture by white settlers. They now suffer from much higher rates of suicide, alcoholism, rape and homelessness than do non-Natives.

With more Natives moving in from rural villages, as well as an influx of migrants arriving from Asia and Africa, the white population in the city is declining as an overall percentage, down to less than 70 percent. There is and will be plenty of work to do when it comes to getting along.

That was evident in the nearly quarter-century it took to find something to name for Dr. King. For years, residents and city leaders were not all enthusiastic. At one point, voters rejected Mr. Patterson’s goal of renaming Ninth Avenue, a prominent road downtown.

Later, when Mark Begich, a Democrat, was mayor, he signed an executive order naming a planned new road in southeast Anchorage for Dr. King.

“He gave me his word when he came into office,” said Mr. Patterson, who is black. “ ‘I promise you I will do something about this.’ He kept his word.”

The city opened the road to much fanfare this month. The new mayor, Dan Sullivan, a Republican, attended. A banner and posters declared, “Dreams do come true.” But Mr. Patterson noted that there are no houses on the new street. The offices of several city and state agencies are nearby, including the city Police Department. A major state crime laboratory is under construction. The road, which cost $37 million and is 1.2 miles long, may have plenty of practical purposes but it does not necessarily satisfy those on either side of the naming issue.

“It’s nice, you know, but what’s the significance of a street?” said Carol Jones, a microbiologist who is black and was walking her dog, Caillou, on the bike path beside the new road recently.

Max Wilke, 31, a white construction worker outside the crime lab site one recent afternoon, said that the new road is “not a bad thing” but that he would rather have seen it named “something more Alaskan.”

“I guess every city has to name something for Martin Luther King these days,” Mr. Wilke said.

Mr. Patterson says comments like Mr. Wilke’s show just how pertinent Dr. King’s message of unity is for the city. He noted that the relative emptiness surrounding the new road, while not what he would have preferred, could present possibilities.

“It’s in that area toward which the city is growing,” he said.

A version of this article appeared in print on August 18, 2010, on page A13 of the New York edition.

Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial in Washington, DC

2010-07-24T19:03:00.000-07:00

Building a Memorial Honoring Martin Luther King, Jr.

By Rachel Cooper, About.com Guide

The Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial in Washington, DC will honor Dr. King’s national and international contributions and vision for all to enjoy a life of freedom, opportunity, and justice. One of the most prestigious sites remaining on the National Mall in Washington, DC has been selected for a memorial for Martin Luther King, Jr., adjacent to the Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial, between the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials. The expected completion date is summer 2011.

See Photos of the planned design of the Memorial

Construction of the Martin Luther King Memorial

A ceremonial groundbreaking for the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial was held on November 13, 2006. Speakers at the ceremony included former president Bill Clinton, Talk show host Oprah Winfrey and poet Maya Angelou. In October 2009, the National Capital Planning Commission gave final approval to a new security configuration, clearing the way for construction to begin on the Memorial. It will be the first major memorial along the National Mall to be dedicated to an African-American, and to a non-president.

Design of the Memorial

The Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial will occupy the northeast corner of the Tidal Basin and will convey three themes that were central throughout Dr. King’s life – democracy, justice, and hope. The centerpiece of the Memorial will be the “Stone of Hope”, a 30-foot statue of Dr. King, with a wall that will be inscribed with excerpts of his sermons and public addresses.

Official Website
www.mlkmemorial.org

Suggested Reading

•Monuments in Washington, DC
•On the National Mall
•Martin Luther King Jr. Birthday Events
Washington DC Sightseeing
•Washington DC Frequently Asked Questions
•Best Sightseeing Tours in Washington DC
•25 Historic Buildings in DC
Related Articles
•Sen. Barack Obama's Speech at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Grou...
•Events Honoring Martin Luther King Jr. in Oklahoma City
•Martin Luther King Jr. Birthday Events in Washington, DC
•Lesser Known Wise and Prophetic Words of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
•Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Clip Art

Martin Luther King Jr.

2010-07-09T18:42:00.000-07:00

Times Topics > People > K > King, Martin Luther Jr.

A New York Times Obituary

Jan. 15, 1929 to April 4, 1968

“Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!”

With these words, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. built a crescendo to his final speech on April 3, 1968. The next day, the civil rights leader was shot and killed on a balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn.

At the roots Dr. King’s civil rights convictions was an even more profound faith in the basic goodness of man and the great potential of American democracy. These beliefs gave to his speeches a fervor that could not be stilled by criticism.

He rose in 1955 from a newly arrived minister in Montgomery, Ala. to a figure of national prominence. It was Dr. King who dramatized the Montgomery bus boycott with his decision to make it the testing ground, before the eyes of the nation, of his belief in the civil disobedience teachings of Thoreau and Gandhi.

In the summer of 1963, Dr. King led the March on Washington, stirring the emotions of millions with the words “I have a dream.” On Dec. 10, 1964, he won the Nobel Peace Prize.

His strong beliefs in civil rights and non-violence made him one of the leading opponents to American participation in the war in Vietnam.

At the time he was assassinated in Memphis, Dr. King was involved in one of his greatest plans to dramatize the plight of the poor and stir Congress to help blacks. He called his venture the “Poor People’s Campaign.” -- Adapted from the New York Times' obituary. April 5, 1968.

Was Malcolm X Bi or Gay?

2010-07-02T13:11:00.000-07:00

Womanist Musings
Memo to Jimi Izrael: Fronting as Straight Always Pays Off

This is a cross post by blksista. She blogs at This Black Sista’s Page.

I’m a mid-Boomer/Jones Generation/unmarried/straight/Nichiren Buddhist/progressive and writer, interested in just about everything live and in color. Presently, I live in Madison, WI. But not for long.

There are some days that I think Jimi Izrael of The Root doesn’t know what else to say. I wanted to reply to him forthwith about his March 12 comment about Bayard Rustin, and the beatdown he received during a famous debate with Malcolm X in the early Sixties. But I held my peace. While Izrael was supportive of a bio flick about Rustin’s life, and was appreciative of pacifist Robert Gore’s eyewitness report on the event that made him question his own politics, I went back and forth about responding on The Root’s pages, and then finally resolved that I couldn’t let this lie.

The late Rustin had promoted a political line incompatible with that of the then-spokesperson of the Nation of Islam in 1962, and that was an alliance with progressive and liberal whites to reach the goal of racial equality. Izrael rightly put forth that it was perhaps “an unfortunate incident of backseat (homosexual) passion that got Brother Rustin thrown in the pokey” that hampered his ability to get a rise out of ordinary blacks and scared the civil rights hierarchy. However, it seems as if Izrael felt that he couldn’t criticize (or conveniently forgot to criticize) the Black Prince himself, El Hajj Malik El Shabazz, in light of recent scholarship, for fronting off as militantly heterosexual when his sexual history had proven otherwise. At least Bayard Rustin never hid who he was, like James Baldwin; Malcolm, though, according to one of his biographers, Bruce Perry, had far more to hide and everything to lose.

Bruce Perry’s landmark biography of Malcolm X, Malcolm: The Life of the Man Who Changed Black America, appeared in 1991, and caused shock waves among those who had taken his Autobiography as gospel truth. It wasn’t. And it’s been very hard and very painful, in the eighteen years since it was published during the resurgence of interest in Malcolm, for blacks to accept the very real possibility that Malcolm may have been bisexual or gay. Moreover, that his faith and marriage to the beloved and revered Betty Shabazz may have been a way to subsume his desires as well as his affinity for living on the edge and fit somewhere, anywhere in the world. It’s commonly known as putting up a front.

I do not, however, share the view of British gay rights activist Peter Gary Tatchell who wrote in The Guardian in 2005 that Malcolm El Shabazz was some kind of black gay hero. Furthermore, blacks still rationalize Malcolm’s previous homosexual activities as stuff that he did before he got “cleansed” through the teachings of Elijah Muhammad, and became “straight.” They see homosexuality as something close to criminality, that it was a “white (or Arab) disease,” and that it can be altered or changed through the right religion or woman. They point to Betty Shabazz’ unwillingness to work with Perry when he researched his book as proof that he had some fish to fry or some dirt to expose. I would ascribe it to a widow’s unwillingness to speak ill of her marriage bed and an inability to detach herself from a famous–and some would say, near-mythological–husband, which is perfectly apt in the circumstances. Tatchell says something, however, that I do agree with:

Was Malcolm X gay? Bisexual? In his schooldays, he was apparently a passive participant. Others masturbated or fellated him. Later, while working as a male prostitute, he took a more hands-on role in sex, especially with [William Paul] Lennon [a rich bachelor who hired Malcolm as a butler]. This part-time whoring may have been pecuniary. There is, however, plentiful research suggesting that many guys who have sex with men for payment are in denial about their homosexuality. They tell themselves they are doing it for the money. This is their way of coping with same-sex desires that they are unable to accept. Was this Malcolm’s excuse? Surely there must have been some degree of queer desire to enable Malcolm to sustain his sexual experiences with men over a period of 10 years? If this desire was within him from adolescence to early adulthood, could he have erased it completely in later life?

Sexuality is not like a newspaper–read today and discarded tomorrow. Established desires can be sublimated or repressed, but never eliminated. If people have a homosexual capacity, it stays with them for life - even if they never act on it. (Emphasis mine)

I doubt whether we would have seen Malcolm X on Oprah talking about his life on the downlow. But like many religious leaders from Henry Ward Beecher to Elijah Muhammad, their sexual behaviour off the pulpit or the lectern hasn’t always been pristine–it’s been downright weird. (The same could be said for political leaders as well.) The ways in which the Nation of Islam brought Malcolm and Betty together in matrimony seem rather distancing and has little to do with what I think of as courtship rituals. The faith showed the same fear of, and depreciation of women as with other ultra-orthodox Islamic groups. It was the same distancing that Malcolm had towards women in general, tainted by his relationship with his mother. In other words, his was an arranged marriage, made up to ensure and to confirm Malcolm’s masculinity and power in the relationship. The woman came to him, or was brought to him. And it does not imply that Malcolm did not come to love Betty. However, in pursuing gay relationships as an adult, in Perry’s book, he went after what he wanted.

I can now think of all this in light of the debate between Bayard Rustin and Malcolm X in 1962; it is what we know now against what we didn’t know then. When Malcolm died, all of his potential died with him. He remains frozen in time, the Black Prince who embraced heterosexuality as well as a black, black woman, as Alice Walker once said of him. He was also fronting. Even the Autobiography is a front, that is, a lie. This is not food for gossip magazines, but food for thought in all of our relationships and alliances.

When Bayard Rustin died, he died reviled for being an openly gay man who had few regrets for living his life, as well as being a black man and a progressive, who supposedly nearly hampered our walk to freedom. The redeemed, but hidden Malcolm was able to witheringly excoriate Rustin from a high place of judgment and superiority in everyone’s mind. He was unable to evince little empathy or even a pang of insight for Rustin across the differences, even backstage of the public arena, for fear of being exposed. It paid for Malcolm to remain heterosexual for the rest of his life, and for the life of his legend. And that is both the horror and the regret of that moment in time, in that debate between Malcolm X and Bayard Rustin, that needs to be iterated in any kind of film biography of this great, nearly-forgotten black leader.

The five victims of Jack the Ripper

2010-06-23T09:49:00.000-07:00

The stories of the five unfortunate victims murdered by Jack the Ripper in London's Whitechapel district during the late nineteenth century.

Jack the Ripper is believed to be the most famous serial killer of all time. Most know that he selected prostitutes as his victims and that he used a sharp knife or surgical instrument to mutilate their bodies. Yet his victims – five women living in the destitute East End of London called the Whitechapel district – do not necessarily share the same renown as the man who took their lives. All of these women had lives and families before they were eternally marked as the prostitute victims of Jack the Ripper.

In the early morning of Friday, August 31 1888, the body of Polly Nichols was discovered lying on the ground before a gated stable entrance on Whitechapel’s Buck’s Row – a narrow, dimly lit passage. She suffered a deep slash to her throat and severe cuts to her abdomen and womb. Polly was believed to be the first victim of Jack the Ripper. The daughter of a locksmith, she was born in London on August 1845 and married William Nichols, a printer’s machinist, in 1864. They had five children before their marriage broke up in 1880, some pointing the blame to William, who was said to have had an affair with their nurse during Polly’s last pregnancy, and others to Polly for her heavy drinking and deserting her family on many occasions. Polly spent her remaining years in workhouses and boarding houses, living off her meager earnings as a prostitute. She was a poor, destitute woman that most liked yet pitied.

Annie Chapman, known as "Dark Annie," was a 47-year old destitute prostitute who roamed the streets and moved from one common lodging house to the next when she could afford to pay for a room. On the morning of September 8, 1888 she was thrown out of her lodging house to earn money for her bed. Her body was found several hours later in the backyard of 29 Hanbury Street in the same condition as Polly Nichol’s. At one time Annie’s future must have seemed much more secure when she married John Chapman, a coachman, in 1869. The couple had three children but sadly, her firstborn died of meningitis and her youngest son was born crippled. Likely due to the stress caused by the misfortunes of their children, the couple took to heavy drinking and separated. They lived apart for four years during which time Annie received an allowance from her husband until his death in 1886. Life became much worse after his loss. Suffering from depression and alcoholism, Annie never seemed to recover from the loss of her husband and child and died a homeless prostitute.

Elizabeth Stride was born in Sweden in 1843, the daughter of a farmer, who most likely came to England as a domestic. She married a carpenter by the name of Thomas Stride in 1869, yet little information exists as to if the couple had children or the reason for their separation. It is known that Thomas died in 1884 of heart disease and Elizabeth spent her last three years with a waterside laborer named Michael Kidney. Nicknamed “Long Liz” by her friends, she did occasionally prostituted herself, but earned the bulk of her living as a domestic. She was described by associates as so good-natured that she would “do a good turn for anyone.” Liz, dressed to go out, left her boarding house after 7:00 on the night of September 29,1888. Approximately six hours later her huddled body was discovered in a narrow yard on Berner Street.

Amazingly enough, another woman was murdered by Jack the Ripper on the same night as Elizabeth Stride. Her name was Catherine Eddowes, a friendly woman known for her good spirits. Called “Kate” by her friends and family, she had a problem with drinking and was believed to prostitute herself when under the influence of alcohol. She was born in England in 1842. She met Thomas Conway when she was only sixteen years old and even though they never married, she lived with him for twenty years and produced three children. They eventually separated in 1880 after years of abuse. On the night of the double murder, she told John Kelly, the man she had been living with for the last seven years, that she was off to borrow money from her daughter. Kelly warned her about the Whitechapel killer and asked her to come home early. Kate assured him "Don't you fear for me. I'll take care of myself and I shan't fall into his hands." Kate never arrived at her daughter’s house but instead was arrested by the police for drunkenness. After sleeping it off, she was released at approximately 1:00 am, joking with the sergeant “I shall get a damned fine hiding when I get home them.” Kate never made it home. The woman’s body in Mitre Square was identified as the drunk they had released a few hours earlier.

Nerves were starting to settle in Whitechapel. There had not been a murder for over a month and the streets began to fill again after dark. Mary Kelly was one of the streetwalkers resuming her trade, desperate to make the rent she had fallen several weeks behind on. An Irish girl born in Limerick, she married a collier when she was sixteen but a mine explosion killed him after a mere three years together. In 1884 she came to London and found work at a brothel. Being an attractive woman, she did not have to rely solely on prostitution, for her various lovers often supported her. On the evening of November 8, 1888, Mary’s lover Joe Barnett came to apologize for being out of work and unable to give her any money. When they parted at 8:00 that night, he didn’t realize it would be the last time he would see her alive. The next morning, the landlord’s assistant knocked on the door to Mary’s room at 13 Miller’s Court, planning to ask for the past due rent. When there was no answer, he reached inside a broken window and peered through the curtains. What he saw inside was Mary’s mutilated corpse lying on the bed, her body so viscously mangled that Joe Barnett would only be able to identify her by her hair and eyes.

After the murder of Mary Kelly, Jack the Ripper mysteriously stopped his attacks. The police, regardless of all their investigating, knew little more about him than the public. Their failure to catch the serial killer made the headlines; articles questioned if the crime was unsolved because the victims were mere prostitutes. Because the case was never solved, the mystery surrounding the murders of these five unfortunate women has made it a legend. The names of the Ripper’s victims live on with this captivating puzzle that people still want to solve over a century later – five women recognized not for their lives, but for their brutal deaths under the hands of a vicious killer.

Martin Luther King national memorial on pace for 2011 debut

2010-05-10T19:13:00.000-07:00

Updated 4/2/2010
By Melanie Eversley
USA TODAY

Forty-two years after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968, a memorial in Washington, D.C., honoring his legacy is a year and a half from completion.

Rica Orszag, spokesperson for The Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial Project Foundation, said the 4-acre space on the National Mall will open in fall 2011.

After 14 years of fundraising, the memorial is now $14 million from its $120 million goal, said Harry Johnson, president and CEO of the foundation.

"It's just exhilarating knowing that we have come this far," Johnson said.

The road to reaching the fundraising goal has been long, Johnson said, as world events including the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, 2005's Hurricane Katrina and the recent earthquake in Haiti have all taken some focus away from the project's fundraising efforts.

"We have learned that every 18 months, something is going to happen to take up the attention span of Americans, and rightly so," he said. "But Americans are very giving, and so we still managed."

Multimillion dollar donations from organizations including the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, of which King was and Johnson is a member; and the foundations for General Motors, Tommy Hilfiger, Bill and Melinda Gates and others have helped. A $12.5 million letter of credit from the Wal-Mart Foundation announced in November allowed organizers to buy a construction permit from the National Park Service and begin building, Orszag said. The National Capital Planning Commission approved the site for the King memorial in 1999, amid concerns about building too much on the National Mall and using up too much of its green space from the National Coalition to Save Our Mall, a nonprofit based in Rockville, Md.

Bernice King, one of King's four children and a minister, said she hopes the memorial serves as a reminder for the necessity of helping others. "As the last born of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott King, my family is honored to see a memorial built in our nation's capital in honor of the freedom fighters of a critical era in America's history," said King, who was elected president of the Southern Christian Leadershp Conference in October.

"It is imperative that we never forget the past while keeping a mindful eye on the future of the global 'World House' we have inherited," she continued. "As my father warned, we must not sleep through the revolutions necessary to bring about true, sustainable social change for the global disinherited masses. Let the King Memorial in Washington D.C. stand as a beacon of hope, truth and justice for all, especially generations unborn. The memorial is a fitting symbol of the progressive struggle of a people and the promise of our nation and the world."

Andrew Young, the former United Nations ambassador, Atlanta mayor and congressman who was among civil rights activists in Memphis on April 4, 1968, for rallies to support striking sanitation workers and at the Lorraine Motel the evening when King was shot through the jaw and neck while on a balcony outside his room, says it's time for a King memorial on the Mall in D.C.

Young helps oversee the foundation's executive leadership group and notes that even among monuments to former presidents, "there's nothing in Washington that speaks of non-violence."

"Maybe Jefferson, but Washington and Lincoln were both heroes who achieved America's independence and had to resort to violence," Young said. "Martin pushed for the liberation of America without killing anybody and without destroying any person or property. I think that's ideal and that's the goal that we have to work toward — a peaceful and prosperous world."

According to the foundation's website — www.mlkmemorial.org — the memorial, located on the Tidal Basin between the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials, will feature water, trees and stone that create niches throughout the space. Each niche will include writing on stone detailing contributions of civil rights martyrs, such as slain NAACP field secretary Medgar Evers or the four little girls killed in the 1963 church bombing in Birmingham, Ala., says the website, which features a virtual tour of the site. Also according to the website:

• A 28.5-foot-tall centerpiece sculpted by Lei Yi Xin, a master artist from China, will feature King's likeness. Large stones will mark the entrance and feature King's words. One stone will read, "With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope."

• Another will feature the words also carved into the Civil Rights Memorial near Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church, King's old congregation in Montgomery, Ala.: "Let justice roll down like the mighty waters and righteousness like a mighty stream."

Organizers will place 200 cherry trees at the site, Johnson said, adding to the many trees around the Tidal Basin donated to Washington by Japan in 1912. The annual white blossoms mark spring in the capital.

"Knowing that the cherry blossoms happen to bloom the same week Dr. King gave up is life is kind of metaphorical," Johnson said.

He believes the water, trees and King's words will make visitors feel the leader's spirit of non-violence.

"There will be a sense of peace," Johnson said. "A sense of tranquility will come over you as you think about what Dr. King really meant not just to this country but to the world."

Build the Dream: Countdown to Completion

2010-04-27T13:50:00.000-07:00

We received the letter below today:

Dear Karen,

Order your special packet of Shasta Daisy seeds today!

We're going to run out soon, so please respond immediately.

A few weeks ago, I told you about the special Shasta Daisy (Leucanthemum superbum) seeds we're sending in special packets to our generous supporters as our way of observing the anniversary of Dr. King's assassination.

These are from the same family of flowers that were used to celebrate Dr. King's life in the aftermath of that tragedy 42 years ago, and we feel that planting these seeds is a fine way to celebrate Dr. King's life and all of our progress here in 2010.

We've sent them to a lot of folks in time for Spring planting, but I just realized you did not respond.

I'm saving one package of Shasta Daisy seeds for you, but I need to hear back from you today, so please don't delay.

Please make one special donation of $42 or more today to help finish construction on the Memorial.

Your seed package will come with some brief care instructions and your Shasta Daisies will serve as a constant reminder (they are perennials) of our special partnership to "Build the Dream" and keep Dr. King's legacy alive forever.

Remember - building the Washington, DC Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial is a way for us to celebrate his life...

...not just Dr. King's life, but the lives he touched with his message, and the lives of countless Americans who are better off because of Dr. King's work in the civil rights movement.

In that spirit of vibrant renewal and progress, please make this simple gesture - plant your own Shasta Daisy seeds in your own home.

Thank you so much.

Sincerely,

Harry E. Johnson, Sr.
President & CEO

P.S. Please make one special gift to help us finish construction on the Washington, DC Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial. When you do, I'll send you these Shasta Daisy seeds as a special reminder of Dr. King's life, his sacrifice, and how far we have come together. Thanks again.

Washington, DC Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial Project Foundation, Inc.

401 F Street, NW, Suite 334, Washington, DC 20001 | 1-888-484-3373

Malcolm X assassin is freed on parole in NYC

2010-04-27T13:00:00.000-07:00

69-year-old convict was the last man still serving time in the 1965 killing

By JENNIFER PELTZ
Associated Press
April 27 2010

NEW YORK - The only man to admit shooting Malcolm X was freed on parole Tuesday, 45 years after he assassinated the civil rights leader.

Thomas Hagan, the last man still serving time in the 1965 killing, was freed from a Manhattan prison where he spent two days a week under a work-release program, state Department of Correctional Services spokeswoman Linda Foglia said.

Hagan, 69, has said he was one of three gunmen who shot Malcolm X as he began a speech at Harlem's Audubon Ballroom on Feb. 21, 1965. But Hagan has said the two men convicted with him were not involved.

They maintained their innocence and were paroled in the 1980s. No one else has ever been charged.

The assassins gunned down Malcolm X out of anger at his split with the leadership of the Nation of Islam, the black Muslim movement for which he had once served as chief spokesman, said Hagan, who was then known as Talmadge X Hayer.

'Out of rage'
He has repeatedly expressed regret for his role in the assassination, which he described in a 2008 court filing as the deed of a young man who "acted out of rage on impulse and loyalty" to religious leaders.

"I've had a lot of time, a heck of a lot of time, to think about it," Hagan told a parole board last month, according to a transcript of the interview.

"I understand a lot better the dynamics of movements and what can happen inside movements, and conflicts that can come up, but I have deep regrets about my participation in that," said Hagan, adding that he had earned a master's degree in sociology since his conviction.

The board granted Hagan's parole request on his 17th try. He was initially scheduled for release Wednesday, but the date was moved up because his paperwork was completed, Foglia said.

Hagan declined to comment Tuesday afternoon.

"I really haven't had any time to gather my thoughts on anything," he said.

The Malcolm X & Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center, an organization founded by the civil rights leader's late widow, hasn't taken a position on Hagan's parole, board chairman Zead Ramadan said.

"We just don't think it's ours to decide the fate of this man. We allowed the laws of this nation to develop that," Ramadan said.

But another group, the Malcolm X Commemoration Committee, decried Hagan's parole at a press conference earlier this month. The organization holds essay contests and other events in his memory.

© 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

AUTHOR AND COMPOSER JOIN FORCES TO HONOR THE MEMORY OF DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.

2010-04-12T20:11:00.000-07:00

DANVILLE, IL – As the 42nd anniversary of the arrest of James Earl Ray, assassin of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., draws near, author P.L. Ryan and composer George Sladek announce a joint collaboration of their creative works - to deeply honor the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Ryan, author of "The Boys of Birmingham," a book chronicling the tumultuous time in the South leading up to and immediately following the assassination of Dr. King and the ingenious, unorthodox methods used to identify and apprehend James Earl Ray, recently launched a website to promote her work and honor the memory of Dr. King.

Sladek, a skilled composer has joined with Ryan in the venture by providing her with access to his composition appropriately titled, "I Have a Dream."

“One morning in December of 2004, I woke up with the inspiration for this piece. I labored throughout and in what seemed to be no time at all, had completed the lyrics and score,” Sladek said.

Sladek describes the composition as “a heartfelt and loving tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. by reflecting on his life and philosophies.”

Meanwhile, the book "The Boys of Birmingham" by P.L. Ryan chronicles the efforts of the agents, led by Ryan’s father William Saucier, to identify and apprehend James Earl Ray.

“It was Dad’s idea of how to identify the assassin. Once identified he was arrested in London’s Heathrow Airport two months and four days after the assassination,” Ryan said.

According to Ryan the book took five years to write and was done as a joint project with her father.

“There were some who thought the subject matter was ‘old news’ but I felt it was important to show that not all white FBI agents working in the South were racists. My dad and his associates endured their own form of prejudice by being called ‘Yankees’ and ‘outsiders.’ I wish that my father had lived long enough to see the finished product. Unfortunately, dad died three years into the process,” Ryan said.

The site, www.drmartinlutherkingjrassassination.com, is still in its development stages but will eventually showcase excerpts from the novel; archival photographs of the Boys of Birmingham; feature Sladek’s composition as background music; and allow visitors to order the book and a CD copy of the composition.

For more information about on The Boys of Birmingham and their investigation into the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. visit www.drmartinlutherkingjrassassination.com

Memorial to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.‏

2010-04-12T19:37:00.000-07:00

We received this letter last week:

The month of April marks the 42nd anniversary of the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. We are commemorating the life and work of Dr. King by creating a memorial in our nation's capital.

Washington DC's Martin Luther King, Jr., National Memorial will honor his life and contributions to the world through non-violent social change. I'm reaching out to ask if you and your readers would help spread the word by posting about this wonderful project on Serious World Politics.

I've put together this blogger-friendly micro-site to help get the message out - there are videos, photos, banners, and even a web toolbar that, when used, donates money to the creation of the memorial:

http://mlkmemorialnews.org

After years of fund raising, the memorial is now $14 million away from its $120 million goal. This will be more than a monument to a great humanitarian, the National Memorial will be a place for visitors from around the world to share the spirit of love, freedom, and peace.

If you are able to post (repost) or tweet about this, please let me know so I can share it with the team. If you have any questions please pop me an email. And if you are able to help, thank you so much.

Lowell Dempsey,
BuildTheDream.org
Twitter @mlkmemorial
Facebook.com/MLKNationalMemorial

"An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity"
-- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Author recounts MLK killer’s arrest

2010-04-01T17:22:00.000-07:00

BY BRIAN L. HUCHEL
Commercial-News
April 1, 2010
Danville, IL Commercial News

DANVILLE — A local author has taken the stories she listened to as a child and turned into a documentary of the investigation and capture of assassin James Earl Ray.

“The Boys of Birmingham” by author P.L. Ryan takes the experiences of former FBI investigator William Saucier and their investigation into the April 4, 1968, shooting death of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis.

Ryan, a longtime resident of Danville, said she had listened to the stories from Saucier, her father, as a child. It was a need to “let people know what really happened” that prompted her to write the book.

“My father knew all the steps of the investigation into James Earl Ray,” she said. “There’s been so much controversy as to whether (Ray) was the assassin or not. It’s a big piece of history and my father knew every step they took, everything they did.”

Ryan said she worked for five years on the book, which is currently available on Amazon.com and the Barnes and Noble Web site. Her father worked with her for two years before he passed away.

According to Ryan, he father enjoyed recounting the details of the investigation.

“I didn’t know the inside details of what he did,” she said. “Every step he took, going to the gun shops, interviewing everyone that was around when James Earl Ray was in the gun shop, the people that actually ended up identifying him. All the details that are in the book.”

FBI investigators were actually forced to wait out college exams before they got the information needed against Ray. Ryan said a dental student refused to talk to the FBI until after he finished he exams for the year.

Agents were outside the classroom with a photo to get a confirmed identification when the student’s last exam ended.

Ray was arrested in July 1968, about two months after King’s death. He was taken into custody at Heathrow Airport in London and extradited back to the U.S. to stand trial. Ray confessed to the crime, but changed his story days later. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 99 years in prison. Ray died in 1998 in prison.

The arrest of Ray is not the climax of the book, however. Ryan points out that the racially divided South left investigators facing more than the usual on-the-job challenges.

“They had a difficult job to do because blacks down South were afraid to give them information for fear they’d be harassed by white law enforcement down there,” Ryan said, debunking the stereotype that FBI agents in the South worked with prejudiced law enforcement officers. “They were harassed by the Ku Klux Klan because they were northern-born men and there’s information in the story about that.

“It was a very difficult time for them.”

Ryan, who has enjoyed writing as a hobby, said working on this book was difficult with a lot of additional research.

“It was very intense,” she said. “There were times that I got frustrated with it. It’s very hard to piece together a book with a bunch of stories. You have to find an order and sequence for them. It was a lot of work.”

THE BOYS OF BIRMINGHAM - NOW ON SALE

2010-03-19T22:54:00.000-07:00

Black River Media
8033 Sunset Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90046
1.800.983.0540 ext. 202
www.blackrivermediallc.com
www.blackriverfilms.com
E-mail: travisshortt@hotmail.com

DANVILLE, IL – It has been over four decades since the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at the hands of James Earl Ray. Now a new book chronicles the investigation and subsequent arrest of Ray and the racial tension mounting throughout our country.

The Boys of Birmingham by P.L. Ryan chronicles those tumultuous times in the South leading up to and immediately following the assassination of one of America’s greatest heroes.

Her book outlines and chronicles the personal lives and stories of a highly professional team of northern-born but southern-based FBI agents – the very men undertaking Dr. King’s assassination investigation. An added dimension of depth is that Ryan’s father William Saucier was lead investigator of this disparate group of white Irish-Catholic federal agents, dubbed the “Boys of Birmingham.”

The “Boys” were the brightest and brightest agents that the Bureau boasted in the mid-Sixties, bearing some very intriguing nicknames: “Dallas Duplicator,” the agent who arrested Lee Harvey Oswald, Pres. Kennedy’s killer; “Sailor;” “Ringo Starr;” and also “Tampa Fats” – while each agent enjoyed his own success rates – but their one brief shining moment came unheralded in the summer of 1968.

Saucier and his team are the men truly credited by J. Edgar Hoover, “lifetime director” of the FBI during the Sixties, with the identification, location and legwork leading to the arrest of James Earl Ray, MLK’s convicted assassin. Hoover even paid Saucier a special bonus for his investigational insights, only a couple of hundred dollars added to his paycheck. But it was considered good money at the time.

“It was Dad’s idea – exactly how to identify the assassin. Once identified, he (Ray) was arrested in London’s Heathrow Airport, two months and four days after the assassination,” Ryan has stated.

According to Ryan, the book took five years to write and was done as a joint project with her father, who told many of the stories contained within this interesting and historical volume over time at small parties and other family gatherings.

“There were some who thought the subject matter was ‘old news,’ but I felt it was important to show that not all white FBI agents working in the South were racists. My dad and his associates endured their own forms of prejudice, being called ‘Yankees’ and ‘outsiders.’ I wish my father had lived long enough to see the finished product. Unfortunately, Dad died three years into the process,” Ryan said.

This author has also written a history novel and If I Was a Willy Worm, a children’s picture book. The Boys of Birmingham is available for sale at Barnes and Noble and on Amazon through print edition and on the Kindle, and at SmashWords, MobiPockets, B&N and Sony as an eBook.

Lee Daniels Finds His Martin Luther King Jr. For 'Selma'

2010-03-19T22:32:00.000-07:00

Posted 3/17/10
By Adam Rosenberg in News
MTV Music | Shows | News | Movies

Lee Daniels might not have picked up his own Oscar statue at last week's 82nd annual Academy Awards ceremony, but his 2009 gutpunch "Precious" has left people wondering about what's coming next. It's already known that he's doing a Civil Rights-era drama called "Selma," set around demonstrations arranged by Martin Luther King, Jr. in the titular Alabama city in 1965. We also recently heard from Lenny Kravitz that he'll follow up his "Precious" role with a juicier one in "Selma," politician and King collaborator Andrew Young.

Now there's news that Daniels has found his King: David Oyelowo, who played Dr. Junju in "The Last King of Scotland" and who we'll see later this year in the George Lucas-conceived story of World War II's Tuskegee Airmen, "Red Tails." The news comes from The Hollywood Reporter, and it sounds like Oyelowo is locked in for the role.

There's also some new info about the role Hugh Jackman will be playing: Jim Clark, "the short-tempered Alabama sheriff whose violent arrests of civil-rights protesters got international attention." That news comes from Jackman's comments made to Vulture last week.

The THR piece also mentions that the part of Alabama Governor George Wallace is still available. It had been speculated that that part would be filled by Robert De Niro, which may well still be the case. Daniels told MTV last month that he's going to work with De Niro on "something," but he refused to clarify at the time exactly what.

Is "Selma" the right move as a follow-up project to "Precious" for Daniels? What do you think of the King casting?

AUTHOR P.L.RYAN ANNOUNCES LAUNCH OF WEB SITE

2010-03-03T13:25:00.000-08:00

Black River Media
8056 Santa Monica Blvd.
Suite 13722
Los Angeles, CA 90069
276.970.2352
www.blackrivermediallc.com
www.blackriverfilms.com
E-mail: travisshorttvp@hotmail.com

AUTHOR P.L.RYAN ANNOUNCES LAUNCH OF WEB SITE

DANVILLE, IL – As the 42nd anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. draws near, P.L. Ryan, author of The Boys of Birmingham, announces the launch of her new website. It honors the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and also promotes her book, which chronicles the tumultuous Southern times leading up to and immediately following the assassination of this great American hero.

“It’s been over four decades since the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at the hands of James Earl Ray. I felt that that the time was right to address a dimension of the King assassination that was long overlooked,” Ryan said.

According to Ryan, that dimension is the unique thought and effort placed into the FBI’s unorthodox plans for identifying and apprehending James Earl Ray.

To address this aspect of the King story, Ryan wrote The Boys of Birmingham, first published August 2009, and launched www.drmartinlutherkingjrassassination.com to honor the memory of Dr. King – and to chronicle the efforts of the specific FBI team of agents who worked tirelessly to bring MLK’s assassin to justice.

The site is still in its developmental stages, but will eventually showcase excerpts from the novel, feature archival photographs of the FBI’s own “Boys of Birmingham” and allow visitors to place orders there for the book.

In her book, Ryan outlines and spins special new stories of the professional and personal lives of the special FBI agents undertaking the investigation into King’s assassination, which was considered to be a federal crime. An added dimension of depth here is that Ryan’s father, William A. Saucier, was lead investigator of those white, northern, Irish-Catholic FBI agents dubbed “The Boys of Birmingham.”

According to Ryan’s account, the “Boys” were many of the brightest and best of the Bureau in the 1960s, having intriguing nicknames such as “The Dallas Duplicator,” “The Sailor” and “Tampa Fats.” Each one had his own success stories as an agent, with “Dallas” being the man who arrested President Kennedy’s convicted killer; but their shining moment would really come in the summer of 1968.

Saucier’s team is the one credited with identifying, discovering and performing the main actions leading to the arrest of James Earl Ray, King’s assassin.

“It was Dad’s idea, how to identify (and find) the assassin. Once identified, (Ray) was arrested in London’s Heathrow Airport – two months and four days after the assassination,” Ryan said.

According to Ryan, the book took five years to write and was done as a joint project with her father.

“There were some who thought the subject matter was ‘old news’ but I felt it was important to show that not all white FBI agents working in the South were racists. My dad and his associates endured their own forms of prejudice, being called ‘Yankees’ and ‘outsiders.’ I wish that my father had lived long enough to see the finished product. Unfortunately, Dad died three years into the process,” Ryan said.

Ryan has also written an historical novel and some children’s books.

The Boys of Birmingham is now available at Barnes & Noble and on Amazon, in both soft cover and ebook formats. For more information about “The Boys of Birmingham” and their investigation into the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., please visit www.theboysofbirmingham.com .

"King Kennedy" Film Release‏

2010-02-25T12:58:00.000-08:00

We recently received this letter:

Dear Karen,

I hope you are well. I am a researcher with Casablanca Productions in London, and I am writing to tell you about our most recent film, concerning the lives and assassinations of JFK, Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King.

"King Kennedy" is a feature documentary about events surrounding the assassinations of RFK, JFK and MLK, and it uses only archive footage - told without narration, ‘talking heads’ or text. The real cast exposes what a combined threat they and their truths were to all who opposed freedom and choice.

We are trying to create a buzz around the film and to get people talking about it online. I thought your readers may find the film interesting, and I was hoping you could post up a link to the "King Kennedy" blog and some information. Any advice from you about other places I could try to engage Martin Luther King-interested audiences would be very much appreciated.

http://kingkennedy.com/ - the trailer is available here and I have attached the press release. Please do let me know if you would like any other information.

Best Wishes,
Bridie -- MUCHA MARCHA

bridie@muchamarcha.co.uk
+44 (0) 7961 399 016

The Village Underground
55 Holywell Lane
Shoreditch
London
EC2A

www.muchamarcha.co.uk

PRESS RELEASE

“King Kennedy” tells the stories of the lives of three of the most charismatic and influential leaders of the western world in the 20th century: John F Kennedy, Robert F Kennedy, and Martin Luther King.

Original, historic and authentic. A documentary feature film of universal truths and passions. Told without narration, ‘talking heads’ or text. The real cast exposes what a combined threat they and their truths were to all who opposed freedom and choice.

Never before have these three idealistic men been specifically linked together to tell the story of this volatile time of turmoil and change. “King Kennedy” links the assassinations of the three men and reveals the intrigue and deception that clouds the truth of the critical era.

From the moment in 1961 when John F Kennedy in his inauguration address said: “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country,” a new wave of hope to change a corrupt and archaic system swept through America and the rest of the world. The torch was lit and carried forward by these men and could not be extinguished, even though all three had been assassinated by the end of the story in 1968.

A unique theatrical experience, compiled from over 680 hours of footage gathered from across the world. The real cast members are allowed to speak in their own voices to tell their story, allowing the audience to make up its own mind about the truth behind these three murders.

“King Kennedy” needs to generate friends through sign-ups on the website. This is essential to proving that there is a huge audience for this film, as well as allowing friends to become part of the “King Kennedy”’ journey and ensure release of this historic piece of cinema.

For more information, to watch the trailer and to become a friend of "King Kennedy" - please visit www.kingkennedy.com

Support Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial by Searching the Internet

2010-02-05T21:27:00.000-08:00

Discovery News
By Jennifer Viegas | Sun Jan 17, 2010

Construction recently began on the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial, according to The Atlanta Journal Constitution.

If all goes as planned, the memorial—slated for placement at the National Mall in D.C.— should be finished in 19 months. It will stand in between the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials on the Tidal Basin.

You can help to support the project by searching the Internet. Fundraising doesn't get much easier. Searches must go through the MLK toolbar, which can be downloaded here. For each search that you do using the toolbar, $.05 will be donated to the Washington, DC, Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial Project Foundation.

The non-profit group backing the project, and who created the toolbar, assures that the toolbar is virus, spyware and ad banner free. They additionally say it's free of charge to users. You can also invite friends to use it once the toolbar is on your computer.

While the toolbar is a relatively new idea, the memorial itself has been decades in the making.

"This is the culmination of 30 years of work and the family is very, very excited about it," Isaac Farris, King's nephew and president and CEO of Atlanta's King Center, told the AJC.

King was assassinated 41 years ago, but his work and teachings have never been forgotten by Americans still shattered by his death. Although so many years have passed, Farris is hopeful that many of King's contemporaries will be able to celebrate the monument's completion.

The timing of this project has actually been fast when compared to that of the other D.C. monuments. The Washington Monument's construction began 55 years after the first U.S. president's death, while the Jefferson Memorial project got underway in 1925, about 100 years after Thomas Jefferson's death. It wasn't dedicated until 1943.

Much of the credit for the MLK project goes to Alphi Phi Alphi, the fraternity to which King belonged. It's overseeing the plans, now estimated to have a $120 million price tag. An impressive $108 million has already been raised, however, according to Ed Jackson, the executive architect. Organizers are hoping that the public, including Internet users like you, can help out.

To learn more, please take this virtual video tour.

For additional ways to honor Martin Luther King Jr., please visit this eHow page.

Letter: Martin Luther King and Malcolm X gave their all for justice

2010-02-05T21:21:00.000-08:00

TC Palm
By reader submitted
Posted February 5, 2010

Martin Luther King gave so much for the cause of freedom. He risked his dignity, pride and self-respect for the cause of freedom. Dr. King sacrificed his life for you and for me.

This man was like Jesus — willing to die for you and for me. Wherever he was called, he went. Wherever he was needed, he was there. Dr. King had a love so strong for his black people until he risked the ultimate pride, his life. If only black people today would stop acting so foolish and start living out their dream and his dream, which was for every black and white person to get the best education, to have total equality, justice, liberty and their pursuit of sharing the American dream.

Dr. King was our black president. To my opinion, there will be no other man greater than him but Malcolm X. They both wanted the same thing for their people — justice and total equality. They had the same philosophy and idea.

Those two black heroes will go down in history as the two greatest black men there are. This is because they died for you and for me to exist upon this Earth as human beings with all the God-given rights a human being can be given.

David L. Cook

Fort Pierce

IMHOTEP: A dream of Martin Luther King

2010-02-01T12:02:00.000-08:00

By Obadiah Mailafia
NEXT
Feb 1 2010

As a young man growing up in Kaduna, I spent many a summer vacation foraging through the American Consulate library. That was before the city became like Beirut. I must have devoured almost everything ever written on the American civil rights movement.

I followed its every twist and turn - its triumphs and tragedies. All the heroes and martyrs of the movement where ghosts with whom I held intellectual conversations. Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, George Washington Carver, Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Dubois, Medgar Evers, Thurgood Marshall, Mary McLeod Bethune, Soledad Brother George Jackson and Malcolm X.

By far the greatest obsession of my youth was the life and work of Martin Luther King Jr., one of the makers of the twentieth century, alongside Churchill, Gandhi, Lenin, Mao and Albert Einstein. Barack Obama, who recently celebrated one year of his Presidency, was a child of King’s prophetic mission.

By an uncanny coincidence of fate, Obama won the ticket of the Democratic Party forty years to the very day when King made his famous speech in the shadows of the Lincoln Memorial. Martin Luther King Jr. cherished life and adored his wife Coretta and their children. But he was always haunted by the prospects of an early death.

He was once stabbed by a deranged woman and was left for dead. The FBI under Edgar Hoover was constantly at his back with blackmail and threats. He had been in and out of prison -- endured police dogs, beatings and death threats. His was the loneliness of the long-distance runner. Like his Lord and Master, he experienced the blood and sweat and tears of the Garden of Gethsemane.

Most people do not realise that MLK was a mere twenty-five year-old when he took up the leadership of the civil rights movement; that he won the Nobel Peace Prize when he was only thirty-six; and that he was only thirty-nine when his life’s work was cruelly ended by an assassin’s bullet in that unholy summer of 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee.

These thoughts have come to me as I recall a most unusual experience some years ago, when I was woken up at dawn by a strange visitation. In that dream state between waking and sleep, I was conscious, though immobile. A man came and stood by my bedside. He was of medium height and clothed in tattered apparel, with wounds all over him. He looked dirt-poor; head bowed, tears silently cascading down his cheeks. There was telepathic communion between us, but no words: he is Martin Luther King Jr., I am told, and the work he lived and died for remains unfinished.

And then he vanishes in the twinkling of an eye. It is a most sacred experience, which I do not share lightly. As I think of it today, Martin Luther King’s work remains unfinished in America, in Africa and throughout the world where children go hungry; where widows have no one to support them; where the sick, the powerless and the infirm have no succour and no hope.

In the month of January, when Americans celebrated Martin Luther King Day, countless people approached me for one form of help or the other: orphans without school fees, a young woman whose two legs were chopped off in an okada accident; widows who are unable to feed their children; an old man who went blind because he could not afford the eighteen thousand naira operation that would have removed his cataract; countless graduate youths desperate to find a job.

During the recent carnage in Jos, several Muslim and Christian friends cried to me for help, in grave fear for their lives. It was heartbreaking. Our country, Nigeria, faces a momentous crisis of leadership. We are a land of sorrows -- a people acquainted with grief. A young pastor recently told me that ethno-religious conflicts are fomented by cultic leaders whose demons must refill their blood banks from time to time.

It is these so-called leaders, according to him, that buy sophisticated arms and give them to jobless youths to go and kill innocent people so as to fill up the blood banks. He painted a frightening picture of live burials of teenage virgins and the ritual eating of pounded human foetuses for power, money and earthly glory. For the first time, I understood what the philosophers meant by ‘the problem of evil’.

I fear that this evil will soon take us into the abyss unless we resolve to live like the children of Abraham that we all are. We must love one another or die. MLK abhorred the idiom of retaliation, believing with Mahatma Gandhi, that, “an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind”. Contrary to the nonsense spoken by Ambassador Princeton Lyman, I am persuaded that our country is destined to play a leading role in the world.

The sufferings of the moment are not to be compared with the glory that is to come. We must move beyond the politics of blood and circuses and reinvent our country as a land of hope. Martin Luther King loved our continent immensely and he desired that we would become a city on a hill, a light unto the nations. His work must also be ours.

Filmmaker Lee Daniels vows biopic will not show Martin Luther King Jr. in bed with prostitute

2010-01-23T16:19:00.000-08:00

Rush & Molloy
Sunday, January 17th 2010
NY Daily News

The director of a forthcoming movie about Martin Luther King Jr. has vowed he won't show him in bed with a prostitute.

For months now, King's family has been nervous about "Selma." Produced by Brad Pitt and "Slumdog Millionaire" Oscar-winner Christian Colson, the project's script portrays King (r.) as the tireless martyr of America's civil rights movement. But Paul Webb's screenplay also shows him to be a flesh-and-blood man who had, as his colleague Ralph Abernathy wrote, a "weakness for women."

In one scene, President Lyndon Johnson tells FBI director J. Edgar Hoover that he doesn't know or care "whether [King] has a gargantuan appetite for p- or whether he just sometimes needs a woman's touch when he's away from home ..."

In another scene at a Washington hotel, King meets a flirtatious woman who tells him, "You look like you need some tender loving care, honey."

"You're way out of my price bracket," says King.

"I'll donate part of my fee to the cause," she says.

Soon thereafter, Hoover's agents are seen recording King's lovemaking with the woman, as well as their postcoital conversation. King's wife, Coretta, receives a copy of the tape, with an anonymous blackmail letter.

The Nobel Prize winner actually received such a tape and letter. According to King biographer David Garrow, King explained his numerous extramarital affairs as "a form of anxiety reduction." In 1968, according to historian Taylor Branch, he admitted to Coretta that he'd carried on a five-year romance with a married woman.

Still, King's heirs are trying to keep his dalliances out of "Selma." Last week, a rep for Martin Luther King 3rd told us, "Our attorneys are reviewing the script."

But now, "Selma" director Lee Daniels tells us the Kings can relax. "The script they have is not my script," says Daniels, whose last movie, "Precious," has sparked major Oscar buzz.

Daniels is still "evaluating" the draft by Webb (who has written a script on Abraham Lincoln for Steven Spielberg). But Daniels says he doesn't believe the hooker scene is necessary.

"This project is still in an embryonic stage," he says. "But I can tell you my story focuses on the civil rights marches. It's not about tapes and prostitutes. It's about the African-American man who changed history."

Team Edwards honors Martin Luther King with march, speech

2010-01-21T16:43:00.000-08:00

Edwards Air Force Base website
By Airman 1st Class William O'Brien
95th Air Base Wing Public Affairs

1/21/2010 - EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. -- Team Edwards honored the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. with a walk from 95th Air Base Wing Headquarters to Chapel 1, where a ceremony was held in honor of Dr. King Dec 14.

Maj. Gen. David Eichhorn, Air Force Flight Test Center commander and Col. Jerry Gandy, 95th Air Base Wing commander, led the participants from various base organizations on the march.

"I think Martin Luther King Day is one of those events that really touches a lot of people because he had such a big impact on our country and on freedom and so many people's lives," said 2nd Lt. Julia Pusel, 95th Communications Group project manager."

As the event coordinator, Lieutenant Pusel, said she believes the events were a major success and had a great turnout. She said she was pleased with how many people were so eager to help with putting the event together.

"There were easily 250 people, because the chapel holds 250 people and it was full" she said. "There were even people sitting up stairs. It was a great turnout I was so surprised and so pleased. I had people from several organizations around base sending me e-mails and trying to find out how they could help out."

Lieutenant Pusel said to make this event happen it took the efforts of many people from across the base.

"It took a lot of coordination," she said. "From Public Affairs to the (95th) Security Forces (Squadron), we also had medics out here as well as Transportation. Everybody played a huge part in participating in this event and it was a really great success and I'm happy that I could be a part of this."

During the ceremony at Chapel 1, the keynote speaker was Lt. Col. Susie Lewis, 95th Force Support Squadron commander, she spoke about her life experiences and her concept of exposure, access and opportunity for all.

"Look to help someone by providing exposure, access and opportunity," said Colonel Lewis. "That's something I've been saying for a long time. It's something that's real to me because I know, coming from where I came from, without those things a lot of people are going to be stuck where they are. It is just something that's a part of me, a part of my life and a part of my reality."

Colonel Lewis said she was pleased with how many people told her that her speech touched them and they planned on sharing her message with other who weren't able to attend the ceremony.

"The most memorable part of today was the out pouring of support from people after my speech saying that what I had to say reignited with them and it meant something to them and they were going to share that message with other people," she said.

A member of the AFFTC Equal Opportunity Office, 1st Lt. Carsten Stahr, said as he listened to what Colonel Lewis said, he thought about what the Air Force would be like without Dr. Martin Luther King's impact on history.

"I was just thinking about it today as Colonel Lewis was speaking, and if it wasn't for what Dr. Martin Luther King did, and it wasn't for the actions he took -- the stand that he took -- we wouldn't be here today," said Lieutenant Stahr. "Because we would've lost so many Airmen, so many professionals that we need to be in this Air Force to make us a well rounded and well oiled machine."

Lieutenant Stahr said he's been to numerous events such as this one but said that he hasn't seen a more diversified crowd.

"I love to see the support. There have been so many events on this base and the one thing that I keep seeing event after event is, only Airmen of that race or background attend," he said. "That was weighing on me today as I thought about this (beforehand) I was wondering what kind of turnout would we get today. As I was standing up front holding that sign today, I turned around and looked at the whole throng of people behind us I saw every race, every ethnic group behind us supporting the cause Dr. Martin Luther King started 40 to 50 years ago and that warmed my heart like I can't explain."

San Jacinto Methodist Hospital to commemorate the life of Martin Luther King, Jr.

2010-01-14T21:45:00.000-08:00

The Liberty Vindicator
Jan 14 2010

To celebrate the life and contribution of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., San Jacinto Methodist Hospital would like to invite the community to attend a service of commemoration Mon., Jan. 18, 2010. The service will be held at both the Garth campus location. The program will begin at 11 a.m. in the hospital’s classrooms.

San Jacinto Methodist Hospital Chaplains will provide the opening prayer. In addition there will be inspirational readings provided by hospital employees. There will also be a documentary shown covering Martin Luther King’s life. A variety of refreshments will be served.

Martin Luther King Jr. was born on Jan. 15, 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia. Early in his career, while training to be a minister, Dr. King became a civil rights activist. During this time he led the Montgomery Bus Boycott and was one of the founding members of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. In 1963 Dr. King participated in the March on Washington where he delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech; one of the most widely recognized orations in American history.

A year later, for his work in civil rights, he became the youngest person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Dr. King was assassinated on April 4, 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee. Martin Luther King Jr. Day was established as a national holiday in 1986. The holiday celebrates the birthday of Dr. King and is observed on the third Monday in January each year. Posthumously, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977 and the Congressional Medal of Honor in 2004.

Note from the Hospital website:

Martin Luther King, Jr. Multi-Service Ambulatory Care Center (MLK-MACC) is part of the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services' Southwest Network, which includes Hubert H. Humphrey and Dollarhide Comprehensive Health Centers , which is part of the MetroCare Network.

MLK-MACC proudly serves the South Los Angeles community as the facility is located in the unincorporated area of Willowbrook, at 12021 South Wilmington Ave. , Los Angeles , CA 90059 . The cross streets are Wilmington Avenue and 120 th Street .

Currently, MLK functions as a Multi-Service Ambulatory Care Center which is comprised of an Urgent Care Center and approximately 70 specialty Outpatient Clinics. The Urgent Care Center is open from 8 a.m. to 12 a.m. midnight daily. The Urgent Care Center treats non-life threatening medical problems such as fevers, colds, and sprains. Outpatient Clinics operate Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. The Outpatient Clinics provide general medical care ranging from general medicine to HIV/AIDS, cardiology, dermatology, dentistry, geriatrics, neurology, orthopedic and physical therapy.

To schedule an appointment please call the Appointment Center at (310) 668-5011 or for general information please call (310) 668-4321.

Supervisors Vote to Reopen Martin Luther King Hospital

2009-12-17T16:35:00.000-08:00

By FRED MAMOUN
Updated Tue Dec 1 2009
NBC Los Angeles

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors unanimously voted Tuesday to approve a pact with the University of California Board of Regents to reopen Martin Luther King Jr. Medical Center.

MLK Jr. Hospital was closed in 2007 after a failing a series of federal inspections. The hospital and staff was severely criticized after a series of patient deaths due to negligence.

The hospital will be staffed with UC doctors and will be run by an independent nonprofit organization and a board of directors.

A new 120-bed facility will be built on the site of the old hospital, which is predicted to re-open in late 2012. An emergency department would be opened in 2013, followed by an ambulatory care center to be opened in 2014.

Martin Luther King Jr. Medical Center mainly serves the low-income communities of South Los Angeles.

The Boys of Birmingham - BUY THIS BOOK HERE!

2009-11-24T00:44:00.000-08:00

This book covers the FBI exploits of the crack team investigating the assassination of one of the most important political leaders of the 20th century - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The Boys of Birmingham caught James Earl Ray in just two months after Dr. King's brutal shooting at the Lorraine Motel, and this book tells the story for the first time ever of how exactly the killer was located and arrested. Taught, gripping, humorous at times and sad at others, this book also details new stories and info concerning FBI Lifetime Director J. Edgar Hoover, President Kennedy's assassination and the infamous "Blond Man" of Dealey Plaza. A page turner, a "must read," this book adds the latest news to the growing body of literature about Dr. King and the Civil Rights Movement, as well as telling scintillating FBI stories full of Deep South local color and flavor. You can buy this book in soft cover at Amazon or Barnes & Noble online, and in eBook form at Amazon Kindle, Sony EBooks, MobiPocket or SmashWords!

martin luther king murder, martin luther king assassination, dr king death, dr king murder, fbi stories, fbi most wanted, j edgar hoover stories, mlk investigation, mlk murder, mlk assassination, martin luther king investigation, jfk, jfk murder, jfk assassination, dr king death, jfk death, mlk death, hoover fbi, fbi hoover, fbi case files, fbi case histories, martin luther king, mlk, dr king, dr martin luther king jr

Investigators renew search at Cleveland home of suspected serial killer Anthony Sowell

2009-11-19T13:06:00.001-08:00

November 18
Chicago Crime Examiner
By Deborah O'Malley

After several days of quiet, the Cleveland home of suspected serial killer Anthony Sowell was a hive of police activity today.

Last Friday and Saturday, FBI agents used thermal imaging equipment to search for any remains or evidence buried on and near Sowell's property, according to FBI Special Agent Scott Wilson.

Today, investigators, prosecutors and coroner office personnel were on the scene. New areas were dug out and evidence was removed, according to the Associated Press.

In recent weeks, the remains of 11 women have been found in Sowell's home. All but one of those women has been identified.

Sowell is in jail and is currently charged with five homicides and various sex crimes. Prosecutors say more charges will likely be filed once the investigation is complete.

Martin Luther King by Godfrey Hodgson

2009-11-14T14:18:00.000-08:00

TimesOnline.co.uk
From The Sunday Times
The Sunday Times review by Stephen Robinson
November 15, 2009

It might be true, as Godfrey Hodgson argues in explaining why this book is timely, that without Martin Luther King there would have been no Barack Obama, although by that same logic, it might be argued that had George Washington not crossed the Delaware, there would have been no Thomas Jefferson.

One senses Hodgson wanted to laud a man who was incontrovertibly a huge figure of his time: a rebel who displayed considerable personal courage and political cunning as he confronted the forces of entrenched American racism, a charismatic orator without peer. What is peculiar, then, about this slim, occasionally interesting book is how it reveals that hagiography can ultimately diminish the subject.

The details that do catch the eye of this British biographer of an American liberal hero are revealing. As a young man, King was known as “Tweed” on account of the preppy look he cultivated. He wore the finest tailored suits and polished his shoes until they shone, all to banish the stereotype — particularly for the sake of what he called the “chicks” — of the impoverished southern Negro. And boy did he love the chicks. He was only 5ft 6in, but never short of options. “He wasn’t running after the girls,” said one contemporary, “the girls were running after him.”

We should not be sanctimonious about politicians who turn out to be sexual athletes, but King did set himself up as a man of God, and the contrast between his scripturally based call to equality and the tawdriness of his private life is rather shocking. “I’m away from home 25 to 27 days a month,” Hodgson quotes King telling a friend, “f***ing’s a form of anxiety reduction.” Hours before his martyrdom on the balcony of a Memphis hotel, on April 4, 1968, King had disappeared into his room with one of his numerous mistresses for an energetic strategy session to dissipate that anxiety.

Related Internet Links:
Buy the book here

Perhaps sexual drive is as much the accompaniment of fear as of political ambition. When he rang his wife, Coretta, after JFK’s assassination in 1963, King told her with solemn resignation: “This is what is going to happen to me. This is such a sick society.”

He was right about that, but in the end the story of his life is not depressing, despite the terrible inevitability of his death. For America has transformed itself since 1968, partly because of King’s confrontations with Bull Connor, the Alabama police commissioner, et al, and partly because of the manner of his and Jack and Robert Kennedy’s deaths. Yet King has almost nothing in common with the current American president, who, as a half-Kenyan, Harvard-educated, Hawaii-born lawyer from Chicago, is about as distant from the southern spiritual tradition as you can get.

King’s oratory had its uses in the 1960s, but by the time of his assassination the fissures in the civil-rights movement were gapingly apparent and his Baptist rhetoric was beginning to seem old hat. Jesse Jackson, a rival of King’s who had reason to keep the flame alive to support his own subsequent presidential runs, is now as remote a figure to Americans as Alec Douglas-Home or Harold Wilson seem to Britons.

Hodgson “met Martin Luther King on a number of occasions between 1956 and 1967,” states the publisher, but in truth there is scant evidence of personal insight, never mind intimacy, and he is over-reliant on secondary sources. To say, though, that King is now strictly a historical figure, and to point out how assassination inevitably flatters the most flawed of public figures, is not to diminish the achievements of his life, however told.

Martin Luther King by Godfrey Hodgson
Quercus £20 pp249

Families of DC sniper victims celebrate John Allen Muhammad's execution

2009-11-12T14:06:00.000-08:00

BY Brian Kates
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Wednesday, November 11th 2009

A van (carried) the body of John Allen Muhammed from the Greenville Correctional Center in Virginia after the DC sniper's execution Tuesday night.

He was happy to watch the sniper die.

"I feel better. I think I can breathe better," Nelson Rivera said as he watched the execution of convicted killer John Allen Muhammad. "I'm glad he's gone because he's not going to hurt anyone else."

Rivera's wife Lori Ann Lewis-Rivera, was one of Muhammad's 10 victims in a three-week killing spree in the Washington, D.C., area in October 2002. She was gunned down as she vacuumed her van at a Maryland gas station in 2002.

Muhammad taunted police with written messages and phoned-in threats and demands.

He was put to death at the Greenville Correctional Center in Virginia Tuesday night as the victims' families sat behind glass while watching, separated from the rest of the 27 witnesses.

The execution came hours after Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine denied a last-minute clemency request and a day after the
Supreme Court declined to intervene in the case.

Muhammad was declared dead at 9:11 p.m.

After the execution, Steven Moore, whose sister, FBI analyst Linda Franklin, was one of the victims, said he thought Muhammad's accomplice, Lee Boyd Malvo, should also have been executed.

"Well, myself, I wish Malvo was right there beside Muhammad," Moore said. "They both committed the same crimes. No, I don't feel any closure. I mean, it's ... it ... nothing changes."

Victim after victim in the shooting spree was shot down while doing everyday chores - shopping, pumping gas, mowing the lawn. One child was shot while walking into his middle school.

The terror ended on Oct. 24, 2002, when police captured Muhammad and Malvo, then 17, while they slept at a Maryland rest stop in a car they had outfitted for a shooter to perch in its trunk without being detected.

Malvo was not executed because he was a minor. He is serving a life sentence without parole.

Moore was angered by what he said were sympathetic media reports about Muhammad's children.

"They're talking about Muhammad's children, but Linda left children behind, too," Moore said. "She's got a daughter, Katie, and a son, Thomas, that -- Tommy just got back from his second tour in Iraq in the Army.
They're not going to see their mom. So I don't have any sympathy for his family or for his children."

Muhammad was executed for killing Dean Harold Meyers, 53, who was shot in the head at a Manassas gas station during the spree across Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C.

Bob Meyers, the victim's brother, said he had forgiven Muhammad.

"God calls for me to do that in the Bible and the second thing is related to that." Meyers said on CNN's 'Larry King Live.' "If I don't, it rots me from the inside out. It doesn't really hurt John Muhammad or anybody that I have bitterness against."

"There were no complications," Virginia prison spokesman Larry Traylor said of the execution.

"Mr. Muhammad was asked if he wished to make a last statement. He did not acknowledge this or make a last statement whatsoever."

The 48-year-old Muhammad looked calm but twitched, blinked and tapped his left foot as the injections began, witnesses said.

He remained defiantly silent. But in a statement read by one of his attorneys, Muhammad maintained his innocence.

"He is not remorseful, although he does extend his condolences to the families,"said attorney J. Wyndal Gordon who assisted Muhammad who represented himself at trial.

Muhammad and Malvo also were suspected of fatal shootings in Louisiana, Alabama and Arizona. Their motive remains murky. Malvo said Muhammad wanted to extort $10 million from the government to set up a camp in Canada where homeless children would be trained as terrorists.

Serial Killers Gary Lewingdon and Thaddeus Lewingdon

2009-11-11T11:53:00.000-08:00

(NOTE FROM BLOG AUTHOR KAREN: the frequency of murders in Ohio, bloody, horrifying and slow death from torture type murders in Ohio during the late 70s, are the reason I started this blog. I was a young girl living in Ohio in 1977-78, when gory murder was just an everyday occurrence - no matter how brutal or morbid - to the point where I fully expected it would happen to me. There was even a victim called Eight Month Sally - the killer took some 8 months to kill her.)

.22 Caliber Killers

By Charles Montaldo, About.com

Gary and Thaddeus Lewingdon spent most of 1978 committing a series of home invasions and brutal murders throughout Columbus, Ohio and surrounding areas. Police were stumped until Gary was caught using one of the victim's credit cards at a local department store. Once in police custody, Gary soon confessed to his role and confessed to his and his brother's roles in the crimes.

The Victims
December 10, 1977

Joyce Vermilion, 37, and Karen Dodrill, 33, were gunned down outside Forkers Cafe in Newark, Ohio. Their frozen bodies were discovered outside the rear door of the cafe. Police recovered several shell casings from a .22-caliber gun, scattered around on the snow.

Later, for unknown reasons, 26-year-old Claudia Yasko confessed to police that she witnessed the murders and implicated her boyfriend and a friend of his as the shooters. All three were arrested and charged with the murders, but eventually let go after the Lewingdon brothers confessed to the crime.

February 12, 1978
Robert "Mickey" McCann, 52, his mother, Dorothy Marie McCann, 77, and McCann's girlfriend, Christine Herdman, 26, were found brutally murdered in Robert McCann's home in Franklin County. Each victim had been shot multiple times, mostly around the face and head area. Shell casings from a 22-caliber gun were found scattered around the bodies.

April 8, 1978
Jenkin T. Jones, 77, from Granville Ohio was found dead from multiple gun shot wounds to his head and other parts of his body. Also shot were his four dogs. Police again recovered shell casings from a 22-caliber gun.

April 30, 1978
Part-time security guard, Rev. Gerald Fields, was murdered while at work in Fairfield County. Balistic tests showed that the shell casings found at the Field's crime scene matched those found at the other crime scenes.

May 21, 1978
Jerry and Martha Martin were found shot to death in their home located in Franklin County. Martha was to turn 51 the day her body was discovered. Both Jerry and Martha had been shot multiple times in the head. Again, shell casings from a .22-caliber gun were found in the home.

December 4, 1978
Joseph Annick, 56, was shot and killed in his garage. The scene was familiar to the police, but this time a different .22-caliber gun was used in the shooting.
On December 14, 1978, almost a year after the first known murders, Gary and Thaddeus Lewingdon were charged with murder. Thaddeus received three life terms after being found guilty of murdering Vermillion, Dodrill and Jones. Gary was found guilty of killing eight of the ten victims and received eight life terms.
Thaddeus remained in prison until he died from lung cancer in April, 1989.

Gary was later transferred to a state hospital for the criminally insane, but later returned to Southern Ohio Correctional Facility at Lucasville after he attempted to escape from the hospital. He died of heart failure in October, 2004.

After the two confessed, neither spoke much about their crimes or what motivated them to commit the brutal murders.

More Serial Killer Profiles

•Profile of Serial Killer Richard Angelo
•Richard Speck - Born to Raise Hell
•Jeremy Bryan Jones

When the Killing of Martin Luther King Shook the World

2009-11-10T13:34:00.000-08:00

While many of the more spectacular 20th century crimes make great movies and make exciting headlines and stories, not all acts done by criminals have any social importance. But the killing of Martin Luther King is far more than just a senseless gunning down of a Baptist minister. It is safe to say that along with the assignation of John F. Kennedy and perhaps a few other incidents, King's murder may be one of the most influential events of the century.

It is impossible to understand how or why the killing of Dr. King happened without putting it in context. Of course, the position of leadership Martin Luther King took in the civil rights movement is well known. Beginning with the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Dr. King took on greater and greater degrees of leadership in the rapidly expanding movement for equal rights for African Americans. It is worth noting that Martin Luther King was a devout follower of Gandhi's concepts of nonviolent means to achieve social change.

But despite King's teachings and desire to see the goals of the civil rights movement achieved nonviolently, the movement itself became more and more violent each year. King and other leaders of the movement were doing all they could to hold back the violence but decades of pent of rage resulted in riots and other acts of violence throughout the country. This made every civil rights event Dr. King attended a potential powder keg that could blow up into a violent demonstration and even overwhelm the leadership of Dr. King himself.

The event that resulting the tragic death of the great leader started with a strike of the sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee. After stopping in Memphis on March 18, 1968, he returned to lead a march in support of the strike ten days later. King always taught his followers passive resistance and nonviolence but like so many civil rights events, this march turned violent eventually leading to rock and bottle throwing and looting.

Discouraged and troubled by the violence, Dr. King returned to Memphis on April 3 to deliver a speech and try to preserve the energy of the movement there but discourage its violent elements. He gave one of his historic speeches often referred to as the "I've been to the mountaintop" speech. That night he retired to a humble motel to rest, the Lorraine Motel in downtown Memphis. On the evening of April 4, 1968, as Dr. King was preparing for dinner with Billy Kyles, a Memphis minister, Dr. King stepped out onto the balcony of room 306.

That is when history changed at the hands of an assassin. Friends nearby heard the single shot of a .30-06 caliber rifle ring out. The bullet entered Dr. King at the jaw, went through his neck, which cut his spinal cord and lodged in his shoulder. Ralph Abernathy and other close associates did all they could as Dr. King lay dying on the balcony floor but even after surgery that night, Martin Luther King died at 7:05 on April 4, 1968.

The impact of this great man continues to impact society to this day. Despite his tragic death, his hopes and dreams for equality for all people continued to move forward. While racism still is a force in America, we now see African Americans succeeding at all levels of leadership and even at the highest office of the land, the presidency. The anniversary of Dr. King's death is an inspiration to us all to keep striving to see that dream that he had become a reality.

Analytical Review of Malcolm X Movie

2009-11-03T16:33:00.000-08:00

(NOTE FROM THIS BLOG'S OWNER: I am still waiting for Spike Lee or someone Black of major importance, such as Wil Smith or Eddie Murphy, etc., to make a full length feature movie, three or four hours as needed, out of the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose real name was Michael King.)

June 24, 2009 by Edward Raver
Associated Content

In 1992, director Spike Lee combined his artistic vision with historical events to create the film Malcolm X, a biographical-historical account of the slain civil rights leader. As controversial as the flesh and blood Malcolm X was in life, so too was the film version of his life as depicted by Lee. In retrospect, it would seem that Malcolm X represented the antithesis of the peaceful protests advocated by his contemporary, Martin Luther King, Jr. (Iannone, 1992).

This research will focus on various aspects of Spike Lee's 1992 film in an effort to not only better understand this work, but also to better understand aspects of filmmaking itself, independent film, narrative within films, and the like.

The Third Cinema Model and Malcolm X
Because of the politically charged, socially relevant and very real nature not only of what the real-life Malcolm X lived and died for, when a film is made based on his life and achievements, as Lee did in 1992, the very film itself could not simply be created as a work of entertainment or something that would simply be viewed and then relegated to the archives, much like other more superficial works have in the past. Rather, Malcolm X, the film, must be evaluated in terms of the Third Cinema Model for a variety of reasons.

First, by its very nature, Third Cinema is an oppositional genre in terms of its defiance of conventional methods of film making and presentation (Guneratne, et al, 2003). Few would dispute that this film fits that classification very well. In viewing the film, one can see that Spike Lee, from the outset, was not going to take the safe route in the direction of this motion picture. This can be seen from the opening credits, featuring an American flag eventually being consumed by flames, symbolic not only of the nation in turmoil which Malcolm X preached the idea of racial equality, but also as a symbol of a place where people in the wrong position, such as African-Americans faced with prejudice, hatred and worse, could literally and socially be charred beyond recognition (Lee, 1992).

Second, in the true tradition of Third Cinema, Lee confronts reality head on in his film. What is depicted in Malcolm X is a story within a story: we see the actions and progress of Malcolm X as a social advocate, but as the sub-context of his controversial crusade, we also learn as the film unfolds that Malcolm X's mother, father, uncles, and countless other relatives were in fact direct victims of the hatred and violence of the white majority in America, during a time when the nation was in fact supposed to be free and equal for all (Iannone, 1992).

Lastly, Third Cinema is the medium through which modern film makers have been able to depict dissent in their characters; one would be hard pressed to find a character whose transformation was made possible through dissent more so than Malcolm X himself. He was able to gain his national podium, audiences of thousands, and sociopolitical power by dissenting against the normally fearful ways that his fellow African-Americans endured prejudice, rather than trying to overcome and defeat it. If nothing else, Malcolm X, the man was a dissenter of the highest order, and in the final analysis it is not a stretch to say that his dissent is what infuriated others so much that they eventually killed him.

In short, what we see in regard to Third Cinema and the transformation of Malcolm X, both the film and the individual, is the confrontation of an ugly reality, the abandonment of fear and apprehension and the embracing of opposition and dissent to effect meaningful social change. In regard to the making of the film, there is a solid argument to be made for the necessity of such a project to be independent in nature.

The Need for Malcolm X to be an Independent Film
Malcolm X, the film, is an independent film by classification, but not purely independent- a point that needs to be clarified before this research moves forward. It is a fact that Spike Lee was rejected by many potential investors once they truly grasped the fact that Lee was aiming to make a brutally honest and controversial film, with the intended effect of effecting modern social change by evoking stories from the past, and ultimately had to borrow funds from prominent African-Americans to finish the film. However, there are likewise allegations that Lee watered down his message to a certain extent in order to achieve widespread distribution for his film (Guneratne, et al, 2003). This can be interpreted in two ways: either one can see Lee's compromise as the price to be paid for the larger message to reach as wide an audience as possible, or one can say that Lee pushed the limits as far as he could to tell his version of the truth, based on historical fact. In fairness, one should realize that no historical account is 100% accurate. With this in mind, Lee can be seen as someone who made a film which was as accurate as possible. At any rate, the film had to have as much independence as possible, for in the hands of many of the mainstream film companies, the hard, cold truth of discrimination would never have emerged.

Narrative Form, Technique and Structure
In Spike Lee's Malcolm X, one can see a combination of narrative forms, skillfully woven together to advance the equality ideology. As the film unfolds, a non-linear structure is used, as Malcolm X's dual life as an oppressed African-American and emerging civil rights pioneer is depicted through reflections on his childhood, flashing forward to his adulthood, and various points in-between. Additionally, voice overs, in Malcolm X's own voice, make it seem like he is telling a tale about someone else when in reality it is he himself who is the subject. Lastly, documentary footage is used to depict various historical events, but skillfully, Lee weaves that footage into the plot of his film, so that art imitates life, and vice versa, with one important twist- all of the plot action is driven by a combination of political ideology and historical record. These varied techniques are effective in telling the story, as one can empathize with Malcolm X and his fellow African-Americans while still understanding the historical importance of what he did, while realizing that the battle for racial equality is still far from over.

Conclusion
In conclusion, what is seen in Spike Lee's Malcolm X is a break from the traditional cinema of the 1990s- a film of historical fact, biography and political commentary-with the intended effect of raising social consciousness. As one opinion, Lee did this very well, and opened the door for others who come after him to do the same.

Bibliography

Guneratne, A. R. & Dissanayake, W. (Eds.). (2003). Rethinking Third Cinema. New York: Routledge.
Iannone, C. (1992, December 14). Bad Rap for Malcolm X. National Review, 44, 47+.
Lee, S. (1992). Malcolm X. Los Angeles: Warner Brothers Picture Corporation.

Woman serial killer was just a phantom, German police admit

2009-11-03T16:31:00.000-08:00

A 16-year hunt for a female serial killer has collapsed after German police admitted they had been misled by a DNA mix-up.

Telegraph.co.uk
By Allan Hall in Berlin
Published: 11:04PM GMT 26 Mar 2009

After spending millions of pounds and hundreds of thousands of police man hours searching for "The Woman Without a Face" - who reportedly struck across Europe and had been linked to six murders - German police have revealed that they have probably been following the DNA of a factory worker who handled the sterile cotton swabs used by police forces across Europe.

The woman's DNA had been linked to 40 crime scenes in Germany, Austria and France, including two brutal stranglings and the murder of a 22-year-old German policewoman in April, 2007.

The rogue DNA was also found at the scene of the execution-style killings of three Georgian car dealers in Germany.

But now the case has collapsed after police admitted that the samples had all been contaminated.

Suspicions arose after the suspect's DNA turned up during an investigation into the identity of a male body, believed to be an asylum seeker who had disappeared in 2002.

The man had had his fingerprints taken for his asylum application and police found, to their surprise, that DNA from the fingerprints matched up with the phantom serial killer's DNA.

"Obviously that was impossible, as the asylum seeker was a man and the Phantom's DNA belonged to a woman," said Ernst Meiners, a spokesman for the Saarbruecken public prosecutor's office.

A second check did not find the Phantom's DNA in the fingerprints.

"That aroused suspicions that the materials were contaminated."

Investigators now suspect that certain batches of cotton swabs were contaminated before delivery, which could have happened during the production process or when the cotton was picked.

Although cotton swabs are sterilised before being used in investigations, human cells from skin or sweat can survive that process, according to experts.

Police find four more bodies at home of suspected serial killer

2009-11-03T16:28:00.000-08:00

At least 10 decomposed bodies have been found at the home of a suspected serial killer.

By Nick Allen in Los Angeles
Published: 11:41PM GMT 03 Nov 2009

Police said they discovered the remains of four more people at the house of Anthony Sowell, a convicted rapist, in Cleveland Ohio, after the bodies of six women were unearthed there last week.

Detectives said the latest four bodies were found in the back yard which is still being excavated. A skull was also found wrapped in a paper bag in a bucket in the basement.

Related Articles
Russian inventor 'murdered five in home-made electric chair'
'Journalist murderer' drowns himself in bucket of water
US serial killer who was shot dead was on parole
US 'serial killer suspect' shot dead by police
Woman serial killer was just a phantom, German police admitSowell, 50, has already been charged with five counts of aggravated murder, along with charges of rape, felonious assault and kidnapping.

The local fire department is now being brought in to search the walls, ceilings and beneath the floors for potential additional victims.

Police are also searching vacant and abandoned properties within a quarter mile of the house.

The initial six victims were all women and five of them had been strangled.

Police believe some of the women disappeared at least six months ago and Sowell had been living with their corpses in the house.

For the past few years his neighbours assumed a foul smell enveloping the street was coming from a nearby sausage business.

Sowell is a registered sex offender and required to check in regularly at the sheriff's office. Officers visited his home as recently as September 22.

His home was only searched after a woman reported being raped by him.

Reviving Civil Rights

2009-09-07T17:01:00.000-07:00

Published: September 1, 2009
The New York Times

Few parts of the federal government veered more radically off course in the Bush years than the Justice Department, including its vital civil rights division. Attorney General Eric Holder has made clear that he intends to put the division back on track. That will not be easy, but restoring the nation’s commitment to fairness in voting, employment, housing and other areas is one of the new administration’s most important challenges.

The Bush administration declared war on the whole idea of civil rights, in a way that no administration of either party had since the passage of the nation’s civil rights laws in the 1960s. It put a far-right ideologue in a top position at the civil rights division and, as the department’s inspector general said in a scathing report, he screened out job applicants with civil rights sympathies.

The division abandoned its “historic mission,” notes John Payton, director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund — enforcing civil rights laws, in areas from housing to employment. In some cases, like voting rights, it aggressively fought on the anti-civil-rights side.

It is heartening that the Obama administration has proposed substantially increasing the number of lawyers in the division. They will have plenty of work.

On voting, the division needs to drop the Bush-era obsession with the overblown problem of vote fraud and put the emphasis back where it should be — making sure protected groups are not denied the right to vote. It has to ensure that the voter rolls are not being illegally purged, and that political operatives are not engaging in dirty tricks to suppress the minority vote. It also needs to make state and local governments comply with the “motor voter” law, which requires registration to be available at motor vehicle bureaus and welfare offices.

On employment discrimination, the division should once again start bringing the sort of high-impact cases that the Bush administration abandoned.

On discrimination in education, it has to navigate the bad decisions the Supreme Court has handed down recently and provide concrete guidance for school districts on how to legally promote integration.

Perhaps no group was more abandoned for the last eight years than prisoners. The division should challenge the dangerously crowded and inhumane conditions that are increasingly becoming the norm in the nation’s prisons and jails. As Wade Henderson of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights notes, a few strong lawsuits of this kind could prod many institutions to reform voluntarily.

The division should also tackle predatory lending and other financial bias against minorities. With millions of Americans facing foreclosure, this sort of discrimination looms especially large.

The Justice Department has enormous power under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to combat discrimination in any institution or program that receives federal funds. This authority is more important than ever with federal stimulus money flowing. The division should use it to ensure that public schools, hospitals, transportation systems and other institutions do not discriminate.

Gay men and lesbians still largely stand outside the division’s protection. If a hate crime law covering them is passed soon, as appears likely, the division should use it aggressively. Mr. Holder should also press Congress to pass the first federal law against job discrimination based on sexual orientation.

This agenda would be difficult in the best of circumstances, but the civil rights division is working under the enormous handicap of being leaderless. Senate Republicans have put a hold on the nomination of Thomas Perez to head it. The reasons offered are spurious. Their real agenda seems to be impeding the division from doing its work. When Congress returns, Majority Leader Harry Reid should make sure Mr. Perez is quickly confirmed.

A version of this article appeared in print on September 2, 2009, on page A22 of the New York edition.

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to Headline 46th Anniversary of March on Washington and ''Kids for King'' Event on Martin Luther King, Jr. Nat

2009-08-28T17:18:00.000-07:00

Published: August 13, 2009
News Blaze
Breaking News: Taking Concrete Steps Toward Peace

WASHINGTON - (BUSINESS WIRE) - The leadership of the Washington, DC Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial Project Foundation, Inc. announced today that U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan will speak at an August 25th event on the National Mall on West Basin Drive near Independence Avenue. Beginning at 10:30 a.m., the live press conference will commemorate the 46th anniversary of the March on Washington and Dr. King's famous 'I Have a Dream' speech. The Memorial Foundation will also launch its nationwide Kids for King Education Initiative.

Earlier this year, The Travelers Companies, Inc. announced a $1.25 million donation to the Memorial Foundation to support the building of the Memorial and spearhead the Memorial Foundation's Kids for King Education Initiative. The initiative will inspire youth from grades 3-12 to write an essay, create a piece of art or produce a short video about the lasting legacy of Dr. King and his ideals of democracy, justice, hope and love. The program also contains a lesson plan for teachers and parents to educate the youth about Dr. King. The program details and incentives will be announced during the press conference. The National Parent Teacher Association (PTA), the National Education Association (NEA), YRC Worldwide, Inc., and The LEAGUE will also support the "Kids for King" initiative. The year-long program will culminate in the fall of 2010. To learn more about the program visit www.kidsforking.org.

"Travelers is proud to support the creation of the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial and Kids for King Education Initiative," said Brian W. MacLean, President and Chief Operating Officer of Travelers. "As a company we are committed to investing in education and we believe in the importance of teaching Dr. King's legacy and message of equality to students across the country and to visitors to our nation's capital."

In addition to Secretary Duncan, the August 25th speaking line-up will include: Harry E. Johnson, Sr., President and CEO, Memorial Foundation; Brian W. MacLean, President and COO, Travelers; Byron V. Garrett, CEO, National PTA; and Dennis Van Roekel, President, NEA.

"We challenge every teacher, parent and youth leader to make Dr. King's legacy relevant to this generation and to explain the importance of building a lasting memorial to honor this legacy. I call on the youth of America to express your ideas about Dr. King by sharing an essay, a piece of art work, or a video about why Dr. King is important to you," said Johnson.

The Memorial Foundation has raised $104 million out of the needed $120 million to build the Memorial. Travelers joins the following major donors to the Memorial: General Motors, Tommy Hilfiger Corporate Foundation, NBA/WNBA, Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc., W.K. Kellogg Foundation, The Walt Disney Company Foundation, The Coca-Cola Foundation, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, The Ford Motor Fund, Toyota, AARP, AFLAC, BP America, Inc., CIGNA, Credit Unions of the United States, DuPont, ExxonMobil Foundation, Fannie Mae Corporation, FedEx Corporation, GE, Ann and Joel Horowitz Family Foundation, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Sheila C. Johnson-Newman, Lehman Brothers, George Lucas, MacFarlane Partners, The J. Willard and Alice S. Marriott Foundation, McDonald's Corporation, MetLife Foundation, National Association of Realtors (NAR), National Education Association (NEA), Nationwide Foundation, PepsiCo Foundation, The Pew Charitable Trusts, Pfizer Foundation, Prudential Financial, Inc., Shell Oil Company, State Farm Insurance, Verizon Foundation, Viacom, Wal-Mart and Morehouse College, among others.

About the Washington, DC Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial Project Foundation, Inc.:

A memorial honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. will be built on the National Mall, situated adjacent to the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial and in a direct line between the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials. Congress passed Joint Resolutions in 1996 authorizing Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. to establish a Memorial honoring Dr. King to be built in Washington, D.C. The ceremonial groundbreaking took place on November 13, 2006, and the Memorial will be completed in 2011. McKissack & McKissack / Turner Construction Company/ Gilford Corporation / Tompkins Builders, Inc. Joint Venture will serve as the Design-Build Team. McKissack & McKissack is the oldest minority-owned architectural firm in the United States. For more information or to make a donation, please visit www.buildthedream.org.

About Travelers:

Travelers is a leading provider of property casualty insurance for auto, home and business. A Fortune 100 company, Travelers has 33,000 employees and 2008 revenues of approximately $24 billion. Travelers stock is traded on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: TRV) and is a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The company provides support for charitable organizations in the community through the Travelers Foundation and with corporate funding and in-kind services. The company's community giving is focused on education, community development and the arts. Travelers employees are consistently active in community initiatives and perform thousands of hours in volunteer time each year. For more information, visit www.travelers.com.

Photos/Multimedia Gallery Available: http://www.businesswire.com/cgi-bin/mmg.cgi?eid=6028434&lang=en

Washington, DC Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial Project Foundation, Inc.
Rica Orszag, 202-253-8974
rorszag@mlkmemorial.org
or
The Travelers Companies, Inc.
Erin Haberman, 860-277-3617
ehaberma@travelers.com

Does serial killer hold key to 23-year-old murder mystery in Summerfield?

2009-08-18T13:40:00.000-07:00

From the online desk
Monday, Aug. 17, 2009
bnd.com

Body was found near Summerfield.

BY GEORGE PAWLACZYK - and Beth Hundsdorfer

Her final resting place is not a grave in Palo Alto, Calif., where she grew up, nor a cemetery in Summerfield, where her strangled and mutilated body was found in a cornfield almost 23 years ago.

The remains of 27-year-old Eulalia Mylia Chavez, or "Lolly" as her friends knew her, are not actually buried. Instead, they are stored in archival box 07-14 at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where her skeleton is kept for anthropological study. No one was ever charged with her murder.

But Chavez, who was found on Sept. 6, 1986, but not identified until an FBI fingerprint match in January 2008, has not been forgotten.

Gary Hall of Wabash, Ind., believes his twin-brother Larry D. Hall, a suspected serial killer doing life in a Butner, N.C., federal psychiatric prison, has been questioned recently by investigators about Chavez and several other young women from the Midwest who disappeared or were murdered in the late 1980s to early 1990s.

Gary Hall said that in July he traveled to the Federal Correctional Complex at Butner where police investigators from Indianapolis met with his brother. Gary Hall said he was not present during the questioning but was "pretty sure" that Chavez came up during the interview. It was at least the second time this year that Larry Hall, 46, a former janitor, has been questioned by police.

Capt. Steve Johnson of the St. Clair County Sheriff's Department, said, "Investigator Pat Walters is in close contact with a detective from an Indiana homicide squad who has been in the process of interviewing a suspect. This suspect has given some information regarding the Summerfield murder."

Johnson said he could not discuss what was said by the suspect, who he declined to name.

Police attention was refocused on Larry Hall after a Playboy magazine article last year about a convicted drug dealer who agreed in 1998 to be placed in a maximum security prison for the purpose of befriending Larry Hall and enticing him to reveal where he buried Tricia Reitler of Olmstead Township, a community in Northeast Ohio. The 19-year-old disappeared in 1993 from the campus of Indiana Wesleyan University near Marion, Ind., when she took a break from writing a term paper to walk to a store for a can of root beer. Her clothes were found near the market.

According to a Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper article, Larry Hall was arrested a year later at Indiana Wesleyan, where Reitler had been a student. In his van, police found rope, a mask and several newspaper articles about Reitler. The story about his arrest stated that he confessed to killing Reitler, but his confession was not believed and he was released by local police.

In November 1994, he was charged with kidnapping 15-year-old Jessica Roach as she was riding her bicycle in a rural area near Georgetown, Ill., close to the Indiana border. Her decomposed remains were found in an Indiana cornfield, and Hall was arrested a few months after Roach disappeared when police near her hometown received complaints from other young girls that Larry Hall had been stalking them.

Larry Hall was convicted in federal court of kidnapping that resulted in death and was given life in prison. He killed Roach by sitting her against a tree and placing two belts linked together against her throat and then stepping behind the tree and pulling on both ends. A police report states he strangled her in this manner so he would not have to look at her face as she died.

At this time, according to news articles, Larry Hall was suspected of killing at least seven other young women and was the target of state and federal investigators. His confession in the Roach case contained admissions in the Reitler murder. But he was never charged and interest in him cooled until last year when the Playboy article brought national attention to the Reitler murder. However, he still has not been charged in her death.

Evidence during Larry Hall's 1995 trial for kidnapping Roach showed connections to Illinois. A check of the evidence file inventory revealed that a large map of Illinois was found in the van he was driving when he was arrested in the Roach case. Interviews with her family members following the identification of Chavez revealed that she was a chronic runaway who often hitchhiked across the country.

Hall left Roach's remains in a cornfield, which is the same type of field Chavez's body was found.

Also like Chavez, Roach was ligature strangled. Unlike Chavez, whose pelvic area was brutally mutilated, no such mutilation could be determined in the Roach case because her remains were skeletonized and had been broken up by a farm combine.

The remains of Chavez were exhumed in June 2007 after a News-Democrat reporter suggested to St. Clair County Coroner Rick Stone that new methods in sculpting a likeness in clay from a skull might lead to an identification.

As part of the exhumation process, police resubmitted her fingerprints and, with newer technology, Chavez was identified. Her family donated her remains to the anthropology department at the University of Tennessee. Evidence in his trial showed that Larry Hall traveled widely to attend Civil War and other military re-enactments, but not until 1989, three years after Chavez was murdered. However, beginning in the early 1980s he dressed like a "greaser" and traveled widely in the Midwest including Illinois to attend car shows, Gary Hall said.

"He wandered all over the Midwest, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio. There were many times when he took off and we had no idea where he was," Gary Hall said.

Given a description of Chavez, who was about 5 feet, 4 inches, 100-110 pounds with black hair, Gary Hall said, "I'll just say it fits the profile of a lot of his victims. ... He preferred darker hair with a small, athletic build. That's what I've been told since clear back when he first got arrested."

"He would go to these Civil War re-enactments and women around there started popping up dead," said former U.S. attorney Lawrence Beaumont, who prosecuted Larry Hall in U.S. District Court in Urbana for the kidnapping of Roach in Georgetown, a day after a Revolutionary War re-enactment in a nearby state park.

"He could be connected to a number of cases in the Midwest," Beaumont said.

Gary Hall said he has cooperated with police and wants the murder cases solved for the sake of the victims' families.

"Every one of them breaks my heart," he said, "All we can do is get closure for the families and try to find the answers that could bring the victims home. It's not so much to impose any more punishment on Larry. He's already doing life without parole."

Contact reporter George Pawlaczyk at gpawlaczyk@bnd.com or 239-2625. Contact reporter Beth Hundsdorfer at bhundsdorfer@bnd.com or 239-2570.

Billboard Claiming Martin Luther King Was Republican Angers Black Activists in Houston

2009-08-06T17:57:00.000-07:00

A jumbo-sized road sign claiming that civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was a Republican has stirred a religious and political fight in Houston, where a church leader is trying to draw black voters into the GOP.

By Joseph Abrams
FOXNews.com
Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Who knew?

A billboard proclaiming that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a Republican has stirred a religious and political hornets' nest in Houston, where a church leader is trying to draw black voters into the Republican Party.

The jumbo-sized roadside ad made its contentious claim for about a week -- until a local black activist charged that the sign unjustly politicized King's legacy and was hurting his community by telling a "blatant lie."

"Martin Luther King may have very well believed in some of the Christian principles of the Republican Party, but Dr. Martin Luther King was not a Republican or a Democrat," said Quanell X, who heads the New Black Panther Party in Houston.

"Dr. King was bigger than a political party -- he was a humanitarian, and so to attach him exclusively to any party is to devalue his humanitarian global status," he said. "We were insulted ... by the billboard because it was a blatant lie."

King held great sway over black voters and carefully courted both Republicans and Democrats. He never officially endorsed a party or candidate.

But the founder of RagingElephants.org, the black conservative group that sponsored the sign, told FOXNews.com that the sign was designed to get blacks to rethink their political affiliation -- about 95 percent of blacks voted for Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential elections -- and that this is just the beginning. He said a radio campaign that focuses on "the destructive nature of liberalism" is forthcoming.

"We think it's imperative that [the GOP] try and attract more people from the communities of color to vote their values -- to vote conservative," said Claver Kamau-Imani, who heads the Corinthian Christian Empowerment Church, a small house church in Houston.

What's more, he said, the sign is accurate.

Kimau-Imani told FOXNews.com that King's niece, the Rev. Alveda King, has long argued that her uncle was a Republican, though he acknowledged there was no documentation or voting record to prove it.

Those claims enraged Quanell X, who held a press conference late last week to rally against the sign and ended up in a shouting match over the legacy of the murdered civil rights icon.

The billboard, which Kamau-Imani says cost $3,000 to display for a month, came down shortly after Friday's press conference -- about 20 days ahead of schedule, a move Kamau-Imani attributed to the "spineless" response of the billboard company, SignAd.

"The simple fact is that the leader of the Black Panther Party here in Houston called a news conference and they spooked," he said.

Representatives for SignAd did not return requests for comment.

Quanell X told FOXNews.com he was pleased that he had succeeded in getting the billboard removed. He added that King would never have embraced the present-day GOP, which he said had "racist elements."

"Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would not be with the party of Newt Gingrich, he would not be with the party of Sarah Palin, he would not be with the party of Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage or Sean Hannity," he said.

Representatives for the King family did not return requests for comment.

What went little noticed in the fray was the subtext on the billboard, which said that the Raging Elephants are committed to "leading America's 2nd emancipation."

Kamau-Imani told FOXNews.com that black voters feel that "your blackness, your street cred is tied up with whether you are a Democrat or not" -- a notion he said amounted to a kind of mental slavery that keeps blacks from speaking freely.

The president of the Houston branch of the NAACP said that the civil rights group does not wade into partisan politics, but seemed pleased that the sign had come down.

"The community has prevailed," said Carol Galloway, president of the organization's Houston branch.

Despite losing some of his investment in the billboard, Kimau-Imani told FOXNews.com he was happy with the effect of the sign.

"The billboard was simply something to get a conversation started, to make people think about their political affiliations," he said. "It appears we have achieved our goal."

Click here for more on this story from MyFOXHouston.

Truly Weird and Shocking Serial Killers!

2009-07-16T13:58:00.000-07:00

What Makes Serial Killers Tick?

"It was an urge. ... A strong urge, and the longer I let it go the stronger it got, to where I was taking risks to go out and kill people risks that normally, according to my little rules of operation, I wouldn't take because they could lead to arrest." —Edmund Kemper.

Where does this urge come from, and why is so powerful? If we all experienced this urge, would we be able to resist? Is it genetic, hormonal, biological, or cultural conditioning? Do serial killers have any control over their desires?

We all experience rage and inappropriate sexual instincts, yet we have some sort of internal cage that keeps our inner monsters locked up. Call it morality or social programming, these internal blockades have long since been trampled down in the psychopathic killer. Not only have they let loose the monster within, they are virtual slaves to its beastly appetites. What sets them apart? Robert Ackermann
Once a seemingly normal boy, he was overcome by a morbid curiosity, and is now known as the Cannibal of Vienna. Adelaide

Laid-back Adelaide, the capital of South Australia, is rich in culture and beauty, Adelaide and its surrounding districts are responsible for some of the finest wines in Australia. Seemingly on every corner are houses of worship of all denominations. For this reason Adelaide is referred to as the City of Churches.

But there is an inexplicable dark side to Adelaide. Some are now choosing to call it the "City of Corpses." And it is not hard to understand why. Per capita Adelaide and environs has recorded more of Australia's most notorious crimes than any other Australian capital city. In the annals of Australia's most horrific crimes, laid-back Adelaide's sinister past (and present) makes other cities look like Camelot.

Beverley Allitt

Attentive pediatric nurse, suffering from bizarre Munchausen by Proxy syndrome, maims and murders many babies before the hospital understands the problem.

Angels of Death -- The Doctors

Why do doctors kill? New chapter on Linda Hazzard who became rich off the deaths of her patients.

Angels of Death -- The Female Nurses

Nurses continue to murder their patients. Dr. Katherine Ramsland examines the motives and some high-profile and recent cases. Angels of Death -- The Male Nurses
Evidence of nurses who murder their patients has reached epidemic proportions globally. Dr. Ramsland examines the motives and major cases.

Review of new book on Donald Harvey, The Axeman of New Orleans

The still unsolved mystery of the phantom who for many years stalked the people of the Big Easy, killing them in their sleep without any consistent pattern or motive.

Joe Ball

Did this legendary serial killer, the inspiration for the cult thriller Eaten Alive, really feed his girlfriends to his pet alligators? Berrima Axe Murderer
Irish convict shipped to Australia went around the countryside murdering people with an axe, sometimes just for amusement, sometimes because they stood in the way of his criminal enterprises. What makes him unusual is that he believed that God was protecting him while he robbed, raped and murdered. He figured that since he had killed at least eight people and had not been caught, he had somehow earned divine favor.

BTK -- Dennis Rader

For three decades, the terrifying serial killer who called himself BTK ("Bind, Torture, Kill") was uncaught. First he would cut the phone lines, and then he would get into the house somehow, waiting for his victim to come home. The killings drove Wichita's women into a frenzy, but then the murders unexplicably stopped. Police theorized that BTK could have died or have been incarcerated for some other crime or mental disease, or maybe even moved away.

Then in March, 2004, BTK sent a very convincing letter to the local newspaper, taking responsibility for the September, 1986, unsolved death of Vicki Wegerle. Included with the letter were a photocopy of Wegerle's driver's license and three photos of her body that BTK took after he killed her.

In May, BTK sent a copy of the chapter titles of David Lohr's Crime Library story on the case to a local TV station. Lohr's feature story was the only BTK case history on the Net at that time. However, BTK had changed several of the chapter titles, including one that he changed to "Will There Be More?"

And so, it began again, with BTK impatiently pointing out to police the murders of his that they missed. Finally, BTK made the mistake that culminated in his capture.

Here is the most detailed story of this case as it unfolded in 1974 and then again in 2004.

William Burke & William Hare

Enterprising Irishmen & their lovely wives "manufacture" cadavers from prostitutes for the local medical schools. Cannibalism

This ancient ritualistic practice has disappeared from most cultures, but increasingly survives as a bizarre and poorly understood criminal behavior. Psychologist Rachael Bell looks at the explanations. Richard Trenton Chase
Known as the Vampire of Sacramento, he killed puppies and people, took their blood and brains home to his blender. He believed his blood was turning to powder and that he needed the blood of other creatures to replenish it. Hadden Clark
A study in true evil. Author Adrian Havill takes some highlights from his recent book on Clark for this chilling feature story. A Washington, D.C. area psychologist took pity on this homeless man and hired him as a gardener. Her kindness cost the life of her beautiful, brilliant daughter who was home on vacation from Harvard. But this was just one of his many serial murders, beginning with a six-year-old girl whom he murdered to get revenge on his young niece for calling him a name.

Adolfo Constanzo

This handsome Mexican-American serial killer practiced African magic with a brutality that surpasses imagination, selling supernatural protection to Mexican drug lords. Dean Corll

Did this closet homosexual really kill 27 boys or was he the victim of drugged up young men who took advantage of his generosity? This is the true story of treachery, torture, mutilation and murder.

Jeffrey Dahmer

Young man from a normal family, as far as any family under a microscope can be designated "normal," reaches puberty and starts to fantasize about sex with dead men. As these fantasies begin to take over his conscious mind, his link with the real word begin to disintegrate. He becomes more and more alienated with his family, who cannot fathom what is going on and are powerless to help him.

He moves away, takes a low-level job far beneath his abilities, and starts to lure young minority men to his apartment where he conducts bizarre experiments on them, brutalizes and finally kills them. As if this were not enough, he then mutilates and decapitates them, has sex with their corpses and cannibalizes them.

Inevitably, he is brought to justice, and like many men who go to prison for life, he professes to find God and embrace religion before he was killed by a fellow prisoner. But does he really or is this just one more prisoner sham? Roy DeMeo
Alleged executioner of some 200 people, his complex life is described very differently by law enforcement, the criminals that were his associates and the people in his family.

Ricky Davis & Dena Riley

Career criminal and meth-addicted mommy link up to fulfill Ricky's lifetime ambition torturing, raping and killing women on video. Just as police got an important tip, this depraved couple escaped, abducted a young girl and planned their suicide.

Albert Fish

This gentle-looking, benevolent grandfather cleverly lured children to their death, then devised recipes to eat them. This cannibal model for Hannibal Lecter is a study in criminal psychology and a true enigma. His wife thought him to be a wonderful husband and his children believed him to be a model father. What inner torments caused him to drive many spikes into his pelvis and tell people that he looked forward to his execution?

John Borowski's film about the demented child killer is an engaging piece of visual art that has raised the bar on this type of subject. Dr. Larry C. Ford
Brilliant and outwardly respectable doctor is discovered to be involved in South African bioterrorism, the attempted murder of his colleague and poisoning of his mistresses with mysterious toxins.

The Gallaudet Murders

Washington, D.C. university for deaf and hearing-impaired students is terrorized by a serial killer. Two students have been killed, but an incompetent police investigation points the finger at the wrong person. Had the investigation been done properly, Gallaudet student Joseph Mesa Jr. would have arrested and one of the students would not have been his victim.

Eddie Gein

Considered to be a mild-mannered bachelor whose emotional development had been stunted by his domineering mother, he shocked the world when police found his vest of human skin and a cache of body parts. Gein is the model for The Silence of the Lambs' Buffalo Bill and Psycho's Norman Bates.

The Girl in the Box

It started out as a simple trip from her home in Oregon to see her friend in California, but she never got there. As she hitchhiked, she was picked up by Cameron & Janice Hooker. Instead she spent the next seven years chained, blindfolded and living in a ventilated box, wearing a slave collar.

Eventually she was allowed to do household chores such as cooking, washing dishes, and cleaning up for the couple and their two children. Yet whenever Cameron yelled "Attention!" she was to strip off her clothes, stand on her tiptoes, and reach her hands to the top of the doorway between the living room and dining room.

Then one day the whole nightmare ended as quickly as it had begun.

John Wayne Glover

This Australian serial killer was completely obsessed with attacking elderly women, first with a hammer to their heads and then strangling them with their own undergarments. Oddly, the first attack happened when this husband and father was in his late 50s.

Dana Sue Gray

Former surgical nurse with a need for money and an obsession for extravagant shopping sprees kills several women and uses their assets to get her hair done and buy hundreds of dollars of goods.

John George Haigh

The Acid Bath Murderer.

The Handcuffman

Troubled Atlanta lawyer stalks the patrons of gay bars, handcuffs and drugs his victims and then sets them on fire.

Robert Hansen

Alaskan serial killer lured women to his cabin, brutalized them and then released them in the wilderness to attempt their escapes. But then, he sadistically went after them and hunted them down like wild animals.

Famed former FBI profiler John Douglas had been asked by police to look into Hansen as a suspect. He took note of the fact that Hansen was of small stature, heavily pockmarked and suffered from a severe speech impediment. Due to Hansen's unsightly looks, Douglas surmised that he suffered from severe skin problems as an adolescent and was probably teased by his peers. In turn, he would have low self-esteem, which would have prompted him to live in an isolated area. Douglas considered the abuse of prostitutes a way for perpetrators to get back at women.

Donald Harvey

Likable, friendly young man evolves into a murdering nurse's aide who loses control of his inner demons, taking the lives of 30 to 70 patients. Review of new book on Donald Harvey.

Gary Heidnik

He said his plan was to abduct young women, impregnate them and raise a family, but he became a torturer and killer as he descended into madness. Hunting Humans
Alaskan serial killer lured women to his cabin, brutalized them and then released them in the wilderness. Then he hunted them down like wild animals. Genene Jones
Texas pediatric nurse takes over the care of babies and murders them by injecting one after another. Almost as criminal is how the hospitals and staff ignored the problem until Genene's shift became known as the Death Shift.

The mother of the first victim saw Jones kneeling at the foot of her daughters grave, sobbing and wailing the child's name over and over. She rocked back and forth, apparently in deep anguish, as if Chelsea had been her own daughter.

Joseph Kallinger

Middle-aged shoe maker begins a spree of murder, robbery and rape. Special photo gallery.

Kids Who Kill, Part 1

Shooting up their classmates -- school violence is the epidemic of our time. What turns kids into killers? Experts take a look at Kip Kinkel, the killer at Thurston High, in a new chapter.

Kids Who Kill, Part 2

Child serial killers and thrill killers. Katherine Ramsland takes a look at the most famous cases and what forces can turn youthful aggression into murder.

The "Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run"

Kingsbury Run cuts across the east side of Cleveland like a jagged wound, ripped into the rugged terrain as if God himself had tried to disembowel the city. At some points it is nearly sixty feet deep, a barren wasteland covered with patches of wild grass, yellowed newspapers, weeds, empty tin cans and the occasional battered hull of an old car left to rust beneath the sun. Perched upon the brink of the ravine, narrow frame houses huddle close together and keep a silent watch on the area.

Into this bleak industrial graveyard, walked the well-dressed, handsome and highly educated Eliot Ness, fresh from victories over Al Capone, playing a cat-and-mouse game with a most brilliant and diabolical serial killer.

Katherine Knight

Katherine Mary Knight, though not the first person to skin and eat her lover, was arguably the most depraved monster in Australia's grizzly homicidal history.

Once a loving little girl, she grew up around and, from a young age, worked in slaughterhouses. Her most cherished possession was a set of razor sharp boning knives, which she kept in pride of place above her bed. Given her future violence, is fair to say that this period in her life played a major role in the molding of the monster that she would become.

But even today, the many visitors to Aberdeen's murder house still ponder how a middle-aged housewife, mother and grandmother could perpetrate such evil.

Joachim Kroll

Likable, but not very intelligent, he was called "Uncle" by the neighborhood children, until he killed and ate one. Later he unfolded a shocking series of murders that sickened the people of Germany.

Hannibal Lecter

What real-life models did author Thomas Harris use to create this unique serial killer? Is he purely a literary invention, or could someone like him actually be walking the streets right now?

Bruce George Peter Lee

Troubled 19-year-old arsonist sets fire to the home of the Hasties in Hull, England. Called a one-family crime wave, the Hastie family murders suggested revenge by some criminal associates. Attention focused on Lee who surprised police by confessing to 23 murders by arson, including the killing of a baby.

William MacDonald

The city of Sydney was under siege. A serial killer was on the loose. A homicidal maniac was luring his victims into dark places, violently stabbing them dozens of times about the head with a long-bladed knife and then mutilating their bodies in the most unimaginable ways.

Archibald "Mad Dog" McCafferty

Delusional Australian criminal set out to commit the "Kill Seven" Murders, along with his teenage gang, to bring his dead son back to life. This bizarre mission caused the death of three innocent people before he was captured.

When McCafferty, called the Australian Charles Manson, was set to be released in 1997 after being imprisoned 23 years, the people of Australia were outraged. Since McCafferty was not an Australian citizen was exported back to his native Scotland, where he continued to be a problem.

Herb Mullin

Killing to save California from earthquakes -- a new motive for serial murder?

Necrophiles

On December 30, 2006, the complete and partial skulls of nineteen people four women, eleven girls and four boys - were discovered on the property of an upscale home in Nithari, a suburb of New Delhi, precipitating a search for more remains. It was obvious at once that the police were dealing with a serial killer, but investigators would soon learn that they in fact had two suspects, possibly three. Jesse Pomeroy
Barely a teenager, this warped boy got sexual gratification from torturing and murdering other children. Because of his tender years, he was not executed, but spent the rest of his 58 years in jail, mostly in solitary confinement. Carl Panzram
A remorseless, vicious killer, a child rapist, a man with no soul who was the essence of evil. The shocking two-part story of this monster who hated the human race, one of Americas most ferocious, unrepentant serial killers. Father James Porter
Well-known crime author Michael Newton examines the amazing case of the priest who was accused of molesting over 200 children.

Profile of the Zodiac Killer

Former FBI profiler Gregg McCrary analyzes the behavior, personality, and motives of the notorious Zodiac serial killer who has remained unidentified for decades. The man who called himself the Zodiac was organized, intelligent and meticulous. He constantly changed his method of operating and openly admitted that murder was sport for him. Clearly, the killer wanted credit for them.

Larry and Danny Ranes

One Kalamazoo, Michigan family produces two brothers who become serial killers at different times and under different circumstances.

The Red Spider

Also known as Red Ripper, he stalked teenage girls, raped, strangled and mutilated them until some excellent detective work crushed the Spider for good. Rostov Ripper
After they linked three murders, Major Fetisov organized a task force of 10 men to start an aggressive full-time investigation. He intended to get to the heart of this and stop this maniac from preying on any more female citizens. Among those he recruited was Viktor Burakov, 37. He was the best man they had for the analysis of physical evidence like fingerprints, footprints, and other manifestations at a crime scene, and he was an expert in both police science and the martial arts. Known for his diligence, he was invited aboard the Division of Especially Serious crimes in January 1983. Little did anyone realize then just how diligent he would prove to be and would have to be.

Burakov then embarked on a cat-and-mouse game with Russia's worst serial killer. Once he suspected Andrei Chikatilo, a former teacher, he placed him in a cell with a gifted informant, hoping that Chikatilo would slip up. By law, he could only hold him for 10 days. On the 9th day, he tried something daring: he brought in a brilliant psychiatrist.

Issei Sagawa

While studying in Paris, this brilliant Japanese student spotted Renee Hartevelt, a beautiful Nordic-looking woman. He fell instantly in love and could not stop thinking about the white skin of her arms. She was the perfect woman for what he wanted to do, but he had to be careful. He had to be ready.

Renee was 25, blonde, and independent. She spoke three languages and had a bright future, with the aim of getting a Ph.D. in French literature. Sagawa asked her to teach him German, and since his father was quite wealthy he could pay her well. She accepted.

He found these Nordic women overpowering, and even as he claimed he loved them, he wanted to posses and destroy them and so he did. He lured her to his home to murder and eat her to satisfy his long-held sexual fantasy. Avoiding prison for his crime, the cannibal is now a celebrity in Japan.

Efren Saldivar

Angel of Death in the garb of a respiratory therapist he murdered 40-50 patients. There was talk around the hospital about the night shift and the "magic syringe." A few workers had their suspicions. When staff members are alone with patients and no one else is around, they're free to do as they please. Were these mercy killings trying to painlessly end the lives of dying patients? No, this was a man who liked to play God and decide when someone should die.

Heriberto "Eddie" Seda

At 3 a.m. on March 9, 1990, forty-nine-year-old Mario Orozco limped homeward through the streets of East New York, a section of Brooklyn known for drugs, violent crime and poverty. Unbeknownst to Orozco, a young man in a maroon beret stalked him from the shadows of a nearby cemetery...

Dr. Harold Shipman

The pleasant British family doctor who is believe to have murdered up to 260 of his patients, making him perhaps the most prolific serial killer in history. Shipman mocked his victims and used derogatory codes for them, such as WOW - Whining Old Woman---and FTPBI - Failed To Put Brain In. He also viewed himself as the "star" of his trial.

The Snowtown Murders

A bank vault's deadly math — 6 vats, 3 months, 15 human feet. What is the mystery behind this grisly find?

To understand the horrific saga of Australias worst serial killing case, one must first go back in time. Back to a foreboding 1994 prequel: a grisly find at rural Lower Light, about 50 kilometres north of Adelaide, the South Australian capital.

Robert Spangler

In this unusual "black widower" case spanning 23 years, the attractive and outgoing man kills his wife and children and his father. He then remarries three more times, killing two of the wives before police caught him.

Michael Swango

His intercontinental murder spree lasted from 1983 to 1987. Good looking, blonde, blue eyed and affable, openly supportive of his authorities, he was often well liked and appreciated by fellow professionals. He was aware of his charisma and used it to cover his suspicious maneuvers and his chronic lies. The nurses knew he was up to no good dangerous even, but the other doctors paid no attention until the suspicious deaths started piling up. When the FBI finally caught him, he explained how he loved the "sweet, husky, close smell of indoor homicide[these murders were] the only way I have of reminding myself that Im still alive."

Texas Eyeball Killer

He did not fit the profile of a serial killer. He had a master's degree, knew several languages, was a former science teacher, was charming, was in a seemingly satisfying relationship, and seemed completely at ease with having his home searched and his gun tested. He did not abuse substances. Associates who were questioned about him remained loyal, certain the police had the wrong man. He had coached football, helped with Cub Scouts, and was kind to children. He was both articulate and artistic, a cultivated man accomplished in many things from piano to bullfighting, who seemed anything but a murderer. He was generous, friendly, and helpful to people in need.

Marybeth Tinning

Marybeth Tinning was a familiar sight in Schenectady's trauma centers. She usually came running into one of the city's emergency rooms, confused and hysterical, typically with one of her babies cradled in her arms, either dead or near dead. The medical staff knew Marybeth well. Some hated her. Others felt great sorrow and pity for her. That's because from January 3, 1972, the day her daughter Jennifer died, until December 20, 1985, when Tami Lynne was found dead in her home, all nine of Marybeth Tinning's children died suddenly and usually without any rational explanation.

And no one knew why.

Sweeney Todd

Often resurrected in musicals and plays, the infamous London barber Sweeney Todd and his bloodthirsty girlfriend live again in a new BBC movie. Often thought to be an urban myth, evidence is plentiful that Sweeney Todd was a real murderer who went on trial for his crimes.

Long before Freddie Krueger or Jack the Ripper, theater-goers have been thrilled with the legendary exploits of Sweeney Todd, the murderous barber who dispatched his customers with a flick of the razor and then had his lover serve up the remains in a tasty meat pie.

The Vampire Killers

Throughout the ages, some human killers have been fascinated and obsessed by the blood of their victims. Here are some of history's most notorious vampire killers and some of the most recent cases, some of which are very recent — and very weird.

Victim to Victimizer

Young man becomes obsessed with torture and murder, idolizes Charles Manson and seeks to become a "murder machine." Dr. Ramsland presents the interesting case forensics and emotional pathology.

Werewolf Killers

Traces the long history of the belief that men could become wolves and rip apart their victims. Shocking recent cases are profiled as well as classics like Vacher the Ripper and the Monster of Florence. Psychologists debate the nature of the mental disorder responsible for werewolf killers.

Fred & Rose West

They were the typical family next door, or at least they appeared to be. But 1994 witnessed the slow peeling away of the layers of secrets hidden in the ordinary house at 25 Cromwell Street, now known as the Gloucester House of Horrors. Rose was running a thriving prostitution business, bearing illegitimate, mixed race children one after another, while Fred lured young women to stay at the house. While that may have provoked scandal, police discovered that Fred & Rose turned their children and guests into sex slaves and murdered them when they tried to escape. Graham Young
Young psychopath obsessed with poisons grows up to be the expert St. Albans Poisoner, assisted by negligent authorities.

Yoo Young-cheol

When he got out of a South Korean prison in 2003, his first goal was to capture a lot of stray dogs so that he could beat them to death and perfect his killing technique. That done, he planned to murder 100 wealthy people and steal their money.

The Zodiac Killer

Mysterious serial killer who has confounded investigators for over 30 years.

Support The Alliance of Guardian Angels

2009-07-04T16:46:00.000-07:00

Dearest Friends:

The Guardian Angels look back on 30 remarkable years of accomplishment and growth, and ahead to new and exciting opportunities! We are evolving in size and strength, having established new and powerful partnerships with community groups, educational providers, and loyal supporters who share our vision of a safer world. With chapters in 100 US cities and towns and 13 nations and an unflinching commitment to increasing safety through education and empowerment of everyday citizens, we are well-positioned to move our vision forward in 2009.

As a non-profit organization, we cannot accomplish great things alone. Thank you to all of our loyal supporters; together, we are making a difference in the lives of individuals, families, and children. Your gift - large or small - can help The Guardian Angels continue to "Keep it Safe" by sending a donation using the PayPal button below, or sending a contribution directly to:

The Alliance of Guardian Angels
982 East 89th St
Brooklyn, NY 11236

DONATE

With warmest regards,
Mary and Curtis Sliwa

In Defense of Martin Luther King III

2009-07-04T16:24:00.000-07:00

by Larry Elder (January 1, 2000)

"What's he really done in life?"

A Montgomery civil rights worker posed this question about Martin Luther King III -- the eldest son of legendary civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. Pretty heavy thing, being named King III, and now he stands accused of lacking his father's vision, passion and drive.

King III leads the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the legendary organization founded by his father some 44 years ago. The board briefly suspended King III for inattentiveness, for possessing an unfocused agenda that allowed the organization to "drift."

Of the 41-year-old bachelor's persona, the Los Angeles Times says, "He doesn't inspire people, his detractors say, he doesn't have his father's oratorical gifts (though few do) ... " and "somewhat shy, he lives with his mother in the same house where he grew up." To many SCLC members, King III lacks fire. "'We got to get back to the streets,' said Richard Turner, a 72-year-old carpenter in rural Georgia. 'Talk ain't worth a damn if you don't do something.'" Poor King III.

"What's he really done in life?" Let's first place the focus on what King III has not done.

Unlike black "civil rights leader" Al Sharpton, King III never falsely accused a man of rape, with a jury later finding him liable in a defamation suit. He never referred to Jews as "diamond merchants," or Caucasians as "white interlopers."

Unlike Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, he never called Judaism a "gutter religion," or called Adolph Hitler a "very great man." He never publicly ridiculed Desiree Washington, the young black woman a jury convicted Mike Tyson of raping.

Unlike the former head of the Black Congressional Caucus, Congresswoman Maxine Waters, D-Calif., he never justified the 1992 Los Angeles riots by calling them a "civil uprising," while bellowing, "No justice, no peace." Nor does he insultingly refer to the Republican Party as "the enemy." Nor did he ever send a letter to Fidel Castro urging him to refuse extradition of a black woman who killed a New Jersey State trooper and fled to Cuba. In her letter, Waters called this murderer a "persecuted ... political activist" and likened her to Martin Luther King Jr.

Unlike NAACP President Kweisi Mfume, King III never fathered any children out of wedlock. According to the "Almanac of American Politics," "Mfume's original name was Frizzell Gray; he was 16 when his mother died, at which point he dropped out of school, held low-paying jobs, and fathered five children out of wedlock."

Unlike NAACP Chairman Julian Bond, no one ever credibly accused King III of cocaine use. In 1987, Bond's wife told police that he used cocaine daily, that he consorted with a woman who had prior convictions -- a felon later convicted for possession and intent to distribute -- and that this woman had assaulted her. Although charges were never filed against Bond, after the allegations hit, writer/commentator Juan Williams wrote, "A number of (Bond's) friends and political allies ... say they think Julian Bond uses cocaine. ... He has not lived at home with his wife and family for six months. Relations with his five children are strained. He has had to give up credit cards because the bills got too big. He owes $150,000 in campaign debts. He has had a lien put on his house by the Internal Revenue Service."

Unlike Rainbow/PUSH leader Jesse Jackson, who hypocritically ministered to a troubled, philandering President Clinton, no one ever filed a lawsuit against King III seeking child support payments for an out-of-wedlock baby fathered by a married man.

Should King III champion affirmative action? The Detroit News says that in seven Michigan universities, blacks (in part because of affirmative action) after six years, graduate at a rate of only 40 percent, compared to 61 percent of whites and 74 percent of Asians.

Should King III push for reparations for slavery? So the son of the man who urged judgments based on "content of character" should seek money from today's white non-slaveowners to pay today's black non-slaves? Please.

The success of the majority black middle class renders a "civil rights organization" nearly obsolete. For the black "underclass" -- nearly 30 percent of black Americans -- "solutions" require an attack on the victicrat mentality. Emphasize personal responsibility; eliminate the dependency-inducing welfare state; privatize Social Security; end the war on drugs; inject competition in public schools; remove the government from healthcare; reduce taxes and regulations -- the kind of stuff that could get King III called an "Uncle Tom."

The '60s civil rights movement demanded equal rights for all. For the most part, mission accomplished. The landscape King III faces looks entirely different. Or, as an elderly black man once explained why he refused to vote for then-presidential candidate Jesse Jackson, "He's in the 'we shall overcome' business. And we done overcome."

Radio talk show host Larry Elder is author of Showdown: Confronting Bias, Lies and the Special Interests that Divide America, a call to arms for a truly free society. Elder's daily radio program is nationally syndicated, and now airs in about thirty markets, including Chicago, Portland Phoenix, Tampa, Houston, Dearborn/Detroit, Seattle and several others.

Rag Doll Man – Short Version

2009-06-10T13:23:00.000-07:00

Rag Doll Man – Short Version

Fan fiction about Malcolm X

By Karen Cole
Word Count: 9,000

Did you know that in the sixties, the men of X were Malcolm X’s, trying to remake the country for Black America? And did you ever think that the X-Men from Marvel Comics might be a hidden derivative life form from them, probably one inspired by their heroic feats and nobler natures?

The Marvel comic book company’s X-Men, as created by Stan Lee, claim to be super mutants; I think they are almost total derivatives from Malcolm X’s Black Nationalist movement. But some think such a derivative evolution is simply a “sport,” which can go off in any direction it pleases, finding new natural zones in which to perform its adaptations. And some other beings say that man always has an eternal soul, meant to go places, do new things, and become and create wholly new people.

Lastly, some say that if you are alone, heroic and isolated, you are Satanic and meant to die in a particularly horrific way…

…howsoever, I’ve changed the names in this story to protect the innocent - namely, me and everyone else - from libel or slander charges. The last thing I wanted to do was to make light of an amazing man’s political assassination, or to make fun of such a tragic occurrence. The death of Malcolm X was dramatic, however, in its own way; he even ended up dying in his loyal wife’s loving arms. But this story isn’t about his actual assassination – it’s also not an attempt to exploit it, either.

Instead, I wanted to emphasize the heroic nature of Malcolm X’s death, along the lines of what would be the Marvel Comics X-Men and their sometimes overly heroic exploits. I wanted to bring said mostly white and obviously derivative superheroes back to their roots – as the original Men of X, true militants who existed in real life, and from which the X-Men to me seem to be clearly purloined, being they constantly complain about the world “misunderstanding” them and their mutant origins.

This story is an attempt to avenge the original Mr. X, and to keep to a respectful distance from any attempts to discredit, malign or otherwise badmouth him and his policies of Black Nationalism and self defense against racism. In short: it’s fan fiction about Malcolm X.

The story itself proceeds as follows:

In a time of vast opportunities and no splendor but the eternal ongoing murder of one’s family and friends by each other, the authorities, petty circumstances, poverty, guilt and unknown hideous romances, an overburdened tall man once tried to halt the violent spread of social injustice. His way was rife with political questions that were never truly answered. Due to many frustrating circumstances such as these, that young man was stabbed four times in the chest; touching his heart oh so deeply before he went home. His home was a nice, normal house at the time, not far away from the black section of Harlem in New York City. That area is still poverty stricken to this day.

He looked in the mirror, saw a tall, skinny but thick cheated bull looking exactly like Satan, and he reflected. He had turned in some other people to the authorities, and now he had to pay the price for his actions. This largely involved suicide by firing squad. He had wanted not to be killed, and to be murdered meant its own diabolical implications.

“I’m black finally,” he thought to himself, “and they still don’t love me. Gee, why is that?” Mur knew he was only having a hangover for half a split second. “I have spent year after unadulterated year trying to become black for them, after moving around enough to have run away from nearly everyone. I am the utmost coward that I have ever met, and I only want to kill all of you. I don’t even know who you are as yet, strangely enough. It is because we are forever at war with each other. I am standing here with four gaping open wounds slowly closing and unclosing, and I have no desire left to go hit up a hospital anymore for my dough. I have pulled stickups, heists and burglaries.

“What gives with that, Mur? What happened to you? Ah shit, all my old family is dead, every last relative, and I am the man in the middle. I now have a family through Bette and the kids, and they’re waiting for me to give the last speech. I have to go mount that podium, don’t I? And I’m unlikely to make it there before I fall down dead.”

He knew Bette cared about him, as she loved him deeply. She had only had children with him, but he also had a feeling she was always afraid for them. She didn’t look around at other guys, and she seemed to be very proud of him. But he wondered what she really thought.

He felt like such a miserable failure at life, sometimes. Who was going to provide for his family? And what if the people who killed him killed them as well? It wasn’t that unlikely. And so far as he knew, Bette was pregnant again, due to give birth in a few months.

He watched himself ooze, shooting his cuffs. Assuredly, he thought it would be best to change these clothes, but considering the lack of anyone caring about me at all, he decided, it would be better to mount that podium as my own red self. Red, red, nothing but red. I would say a green light would be a better chance for him, the devil in the mirror, he sighed. And altogether, I am a Moslem no longer tonight.

As he gazed upon himself in the mirror, he gasped. He pulled his rag doll self deep inside to him, for he really had to “be a man” now. He had to still be his old, familiar self to his own eyes - but everyone he met had seemed to see a good man in Satan. He was the biggest, tallest, most strapping Lucifer that he had ever seen, as a yellow man. He didn’t feel half as unique as he looked, being surrounded often by other black men. Scots, he dreamed, must lead the most arrogant existence as white males that the world had usually told of. Old Nordic civilizations ruled his universe, but he liked the Islamic ones.

He drew himself up in full pose, reflecting upon how much a mirror can bleed. The pain that tore through his right chest enormously suited this new perspective. He smoothed back his simple haircut, a fifties crew that felt easier to take care of - but pathetic.

“At last, at last. Well, I’ve told Bette off for the final time. Bad cat.” He smoothed down the walls of his contained within a roughly six foot four body thick chest. It throbbed. It was interesting to feel such a noise coming from deep within him. “Help me, Allah. No, don’t. Actually,” he chuckled, “As you must kill me at the theatre, I suppose you would not like to be me any further, would you? I think I should make a cutting fellow for a few bullet wounds that could insist on. Dad, would you mind if I f----d up your speech?”

No, the chap in the mirror reflected as he frowned in supple manners. Black people, we don’t seem to go away, even when we’re ninety percent white. It is the heat of an African sun that lends us any such thing as mere superiority. A strong man who was laid in front of a moving street car with a bashed head should never have woken up. How could he - but if the streetcar had jarred as it cut into him, he could’ve felt it. Murdock was tired and getting dried out now. His Dad should’ve had his human rights somehow, and not simply been a human gravesite for good ideas.

I should be a Scot, as named “Sir Murdock,” he shyly whispered, smoothing down his newly bleeding white lapels. Africa suits me better, though, and I’m handling this death of mine well enough. He thought they would wince as inwardly as he did, chuckling. It felt good to be dying oh so slowly. Still, if he kept them waiting at the better theatre for his choice appearance…he raised his hand up to his mouth, lightly licking blood off his steak like fingers. They tasted awfully good. He drew his long tongue over each one in turn, relishing the taste of it.

Huh, he thought. I shall never impress my lady, but at least I already have her set up with her new husband. It shall not be more than a pain than (wince) to die slowly on stage, but my heart is stabbed through. As it opened, Murdock knew momentarily that he must die right now. The pain was telling him so, although the ache in his actual heart of a black and lonely selfless but fatherly soul began to override it. It pulled through him as it ripped wider within him. Needing to be saved from himself, he grabbed at his dresser drawer, staring above it at the vanity’s surface, which was slick and nut brown like him.

In the mirror of his awful features lurked a witless presence, peering through centuries of time and insane persecution. “Wander down to that Catholic Church on the street corner, and see what you saw before in the sidewalk, written in the anti Semitic letters of sand. Yourself, super stud, wanting to save the whole entire world through Satan. That is not the way, the truth or the guiding light. Who is an individual must reap the benefits of all human misery, and as a Black Scot, don’t you think? Would you rather be torn apart with knives - or with more bullets? What is the best performance?”

“Myself,” he freaked casually at the mirror, lips curling into a fair snarl. “Too much to take into infinity, and yet I have seen you before, whoever you are, and here I am as you. I am not your white, am I? I have never been allowed to be white under this set of circumstances which I think now I freely chose. Chuckle.” He decided he’d better set to straightening out his clothes and going, so he laid out a pair of shoes on his bed and began to shine them well. As he worked, which took all of five minutes, he thought about the audacity of a man who had been mostly shining shoes for white men. But having children in poverty meant to better their circumstances.

And he seemed to have a reflective crowd of black statues who pulled a fine spooky figure - for cowards. Actually, so many of them had helped him out so often, and had died bravely to serve the Cause. But were they his real friends? Or did they have nothing further to give him, now?

Completing the act of fixing his personal appearance, he combed his scrubby hair as his newly dying body throbbed. “How long I have is beyond me. Falling down on the way to the theater suits, but I must walk there now without panting. Hold on, bud, I really have to do this. It’s the last mile. I have murdered so many people through proxy, I must be akin to Hitler and surest will meet him where we all must go. I suppose I shall end up shining his shoes by making him eat them. Well, let’s be off.”

As his bloody hand pulled at the doorknob of his small bedroom, he looked back through time at the wall. He remembered when a chunk of it had flown over to him and landed at his feet, which were clad in bedroom slippers at the time. The noise of guns had been deafening, and he had reached for his, but once more, it had been spectacularly missing. “A cracker, a cracker, a kingdom for such sustenance from you, shadow weirdoes. I know I am hallucinating all this. Still, Bette’s safe, and so are the kids, so far. It must be the new family. I shall buy them tonight as my own personal future. It is best that way.”

A “cracker” was once an alliterative slur about white people in America. It has to do with them being shot full of little holes. However, such a being is improper sustenance.

Meanwhile, as he was dying, Mur began to wonder about the audacity of guns that were always placed conveniently out of his handsome reach. He also thought that Allah must be kind on one hand, as all his life he had never really wanted to shoot one. Too many people had been shooting at him personally for him to really want to kill them. On the other hand, he would have deeply relished the chance to slaughter them all back.

As a shadow slipped over the horizon, Murdock little peered around Harlem. Others waved at him, then flinched slowly as they moved away. Oh, I smell of iron, thought Mur to himself. Red blood is so full of lovely dark protein. Sustenance I suppose, but as the evening shades enveloped the wan smells of stores and people milling throughout the grey streets, he casually strolled towards his reckoning premise. On the way, he passed the filthy doors of that same Catholic Church, the small one for blacks that had inhabited Harlem since some time immemorial. It was never the same regal church twice, being frequently updated by its invisible black hierarchy. He turned right to brutally sigh, letting all the air out his huge chest, as the four wounds gainfully poured forth their fullest measure. How touching. It promised peace in heaven for the spiritual, such as his wife and children. They somehow seemed whiter than white to him.

“Well, this is as good a time for it as any, I would guess?” he stated aloud. The filthy door taunted him with its message of green paint peeling back the layers of the necessity of the thing called Death, which had been chasing him forever his short life, as he had noticed from when he was in crib and his mom had spilled talcum powder right into his mouth. The sound of multiple guns firing had come right through the door. This had over time put his mind into a useful state of grace, which he used to get around in traffic.

If I could quite recollect, I need to go down Cherry, take a right on oh here we go there’s the stoplight. Right, stay right there. Oh heart that is not made out of candy - be good. It is good. Yes, there’s the light. Murdock the Red walked against the light and then saw the theater and realized it was not where it ought to be. It had definitely been located between Alder and Bourbon with a little white people flower shop situated across from it. I believe that if I ever sliced into those white people I would see red blood, but I have never seen them at all in that form. My mother was whiter than I, and she ended up in many mental asylums over my dad. Meanwhile, I have never really killed anyone, he supposed.

For one second, he clutched his failing heart, feeling it thud…once.

He briefly harrumphed, pulling at his collar, which was quite wet with perspiration. As the finality of the thing called Death began to travel through his entire body, he jerked himself awake. He had a fantasy about having killed a hooker and also being a gay prostitute who pimped. It promised him a summer sun, deep in the heart of equatorial Africa. He loved this strange continent, which was merely a giant world in his mind. But it was full of communist countries. Mecca had been fun to contemplate, as long as he didn’t really want to go to heaven. As he frowned, he realized he was being told that a total fix of heroin like before was on the horizon, and all he had to do was not walk into the theater. If he simply went over to the Busted Denizens coffee shop across the street, he could avoid falling down. It was a sweet little coffee shop, one where he’d almost had a good time. It beckoned to him like a way out of dying now.

A voice in his head said if he called it off, life would be normal again. He had been busted so many times, it was a wonder his military crew cut was yet in place. To be busted means to be under arrest for impersonating a large, scary animal, he reflected. He coughed into his reddened hand, gazing upon it with undying affection for himself. He was martial and military without feeling it. Having a tiny military of his own was entirely out of the question now, and he had to keep aware that many people didn’t like him or his new family anymore. These people would be gunning for them in mysterious ways, all of which promoted supernatural feelings. He wanted to kill the supernatural and stop.

The voice in his head, so very like his own, told him it is easy to kill it. All you need to do is face it down fearlessly, and then you can tell it what to do. But if you do that, you will have to suffer the immediate consequences of your dire and violent actions.

He looked over at the theater door. There was the usual bright red neon glowing sign, reading Apollo Theater. It winked on and off up high in the air, floating above the stacks of the chimney factory area down the block away from the street. Murdock sighed. This was going to be tricky, because he suddenly felt like his wife and children were not there in a theatre he was about to enter. As pain wrenched his body, he mumbled, “Enough. I am a radio program but not a television one. I don’t carry this forward anymore.”

The theater had been the one thing he could count on to be normal. It was not. As he searched out the front of it, he knew it was not at all the same theater he knew.

As the undying pains of possibilities racked that young amateur lawyer who had determined that merely attempting to save his people was enough for his soul, he pulled himself into place. His whole body coldly told him to fall down and die. As his knees buckled, he pulled a buck and wing and stood sharply erect into place. It had been a good idea, to wage war with the United States, and then die fighting. It had been appropriate.

There. That was enough. Feeling cold all through him, he realized the wounds had quit oozing momentarily, perhaps for the next twenty-five seconds or so. Ah yeah, I can reach for that door - push - and there we go, now it’s time to enter the theater and meet Death or not. Say, the thought occurs that I am already Death myself. It is like being made half of hot summer air, like usual. Right now though, I wish I could rend another wound most deeply into my lonely immortal soul. My last female cousin whom I can remember fell to a house burglary recently, but at least I still have one or two relatives left alive. There is something wrong with leaving my entire older, almost dead family completely behind. Yet I have now to save a father headed family - of mine.

I read somewhere that I am only two percent solid matter, and the rest must be winging its way around in there like crazy. If I push through this door, what could happen? Bette and the kids - and those murderous assholes - might be waiting in there for me, but come to think of it, I’m going to have to follow my elaborate plan. I have a speech prepared, but I have no idea when the bullets are going to begin through the air at me. Or us. And she and the kids are right there in the audience. “Whoops, there goes my heart again,” he told himself, nearly falling down on his knees. He finally tried, and got back up again.

As he went through the open door and gently let it slide shut behind him, he walked down the steps. Each concrete bar shot through him, but he was trying to guide it back behind him. Ouch, he thought, now I have to do something other than stepping forward, I think. So he bounded down the last five steps and landed, going: now I do feel I’m a nightmare marine. Odds bodkins, I’m definitely service personnel here, aren’t I? I’m going to have to lure them away from Bette and her kids. I wonder how. They are not out to kill only me - so far as I am aware, although I have done my best to attract them like a dust magnet. If I am truly Satan here, the racially mixed Jewish black man, they should be out to kill only me, under Islamic rules. However, they view Bette and the kids as pagans and are equally out to kill them. If they want to get at me. Satan should be enough to get their attention, but is it? Am I real enough a performer to pull this off?

Roger. I’m a big strapping Black American. So patriotic. If I needed to be patriotic to get out of this one, that ended a long time ago. I can’t stand the attitudes of the country which I am born into, as it is full of shit. Still, I am good at blaming our and their womankind for my problems. Yeah, blame mom, which will get me out of this one. She’s long gone in my mind, he thought smiling to himself - as he approached the stage door back. He peered silently around it, whipping off his narrow black glasses to quickly wipe and put them back on. They were now obscure, relatively difficult to see through. Shrug. I’ve handled that before, he thought. But no, there was something wrong this time. Still, I have about five minutes to get on stage. Umm, no, these go off. So Mur took off the glasses, carefully placing them in a side pocket. Then he shook with laughter at himself. Why keep the glasses, when he was not going to go on living?

He took his prescription frames, which he had worn since a boy, back out of the pocket, saying, “L’chaim.” Now I’m summarily Jewish, he smiled to himself, crushing them under his left shoe succinctly. This will make a stronger Satan for them, but I do not like this. I fear much for my true family. Stomping them once, they were a clear mess in the shadows under the floor, seeming to disappear as they so blended in. At least it will be a life without glasses for five minutes, he wheezed, patting his chest down again. Something was strange, for it seemed to be rising and falling in an unusual rhythm for a change. Well, he figured, this is not it. The floor is weird and flesh colored. I had a deep cut on my hand after a knife fight that I let to go, and it healed all right. These cuts can never heal again under any circumstances, and I would relish their claiming me.

Why, this is not it, again. Walk through door. There they are. Walk forward, stand in front of - no - behind podium. There is the white podium, off in the near distance. It is a few meager steps away to my simple death. The lighting is great tonight here at the Apollo. I see a huge crowd of the vultures, gathering to feed on the upper sky lighting. Not on me, I suppose, but on Negroes. None of them seem to know there are Negroes - and I believe they have now all become demons, white or black.

They seem to be gabbling away at each other, a hubbub. I wonder what a hubbub is going to turn out to be in the next realm. Surely, something pitiful, circling the skies over my head as I pitch up my lunch. Nah, I’m walking toward this. There is the gravesite podium, two steps away.

So Brother Murdock Shabazz leapt up the final steps to the podium and grabbed it with one fine thin brown paw. He was standing on a wooden platform behind it, one of those short stepstool ones, and needed to get rid of it. So he jumped back, kicking it away to the right side with one foot. He had done this solely because it had seemed “right.”

Something again clicked in his head. As he did so, the upper lights all flew on. He was looking over the podium, the top of which hit about chest level under his stomach, and he felt a little too tall and moist for the podium. So he grabbed it bodily, shaking it back and forth as it swayed, letting it settle down, and began his final speech.

It had been supposed to be about the Marcus Garvey return to Africa movement, but in fact Murdock had finally decided that movement was the one the white men had kidded his father into believing was possible. It might be, he thought, in an actual world. This is however not the real world so far as I can tell, he reasoned out, and I am leaving it. So he had to begin his “speech” now, while unable to read off the paperwork.

“Ladies and gentleman, welcome. I am now the Wizard of Oz. Oh, and I have no such announcements to make. As the Mafia is now situated in the audience, can I see a show of hands? What, no hands? Hey, looka here. Hi there, how ya doing? Wait a minute, this podium is getting a little juicier than me.” Mur tipped his head to one side, thinking this was surely the Jesus Christ moment of reckoning. It could slip away there, but as he had to protect Bette and only Bette surely, the best way to do it was to crash the podium. So he grabbed it and pulled it away to the right, where it neatly bounced off the side wall of the entry area he had come through, landing within a curtain and pulling if off stage to one side. It nestled there, after having made a lot of loud noise, crashing resoundingly.

The distant echoes of this shut up the entire audience momentarily. As he grabbed the mike, he looked down and noticed the speech someone had prepared for him was held within his left hand. He frowned at it summarily, and ripped it into several bunches of white pieces of paper, the lofty ripping of which filled the entire anteroom. These then dribbled down, as he pitched forward a little. Then the strangest feeling enveloped him. Bette and the kids were over on the right wing side of the auditorium, and she was giving his oldest girl a sandwich, but she wasn’t looking at him. Checks, that’s Bette. She remains calm in these difficult situations, but tonight I have to show her something, he decided, involving what she should do to leave immediately. She’s the best…

My wife, he brutally cried to himself inside, spent a lot of time in her life noticing me, my accomplishments, and many of the things we did together; she helped me all along. She isn’t selfish; she’s oppressed, and that is what I always wanted to believe, thought Murdock X. But I have this all set up for her if I can ever survive this theater, which I cannot do. Meanwhile, I have to keep the audience as distracted as humanly possible. She has got to handle the kids in a few moments.

Frowning summarily, while clenching his teeth against the pain, he decided to make his final announcement anyway. He had been listened to before in the early days of his movement, but now he was apparently getting old and slow. “Okay, I always have been completely one with “Stan” - the Devil White Man. I sold my immortal soul to all of your white Christian enemies millennia ago. I am Satan, and it is time for my public execution, which should be in keeping within the heavy rules of Koran order. I hereby commit the unforgivable sin of evil pride and renounce all ties to Islam whatsoever. I am obviously supposed to go straight to H--- itself for you. Wonderful, because that’s exactly what I’m going to do here tonight for all of you wonderful…Godly folks.”

In the original version of this, the event was supposed to hit the newspapers and cause political changes to happen, several of which may or may not occur in anyone’s real lifetime. Some people think they may, and some people think it may never happen. But in this instance, something had to go in an entirely other direction.

“Unfortunately, the entire Jewish race is not dead in a major forest fire yet. That is what the H--- in the Koran is about, up in the frozen north. That’s what is in the book in the portion preceding my death. That is supposed to happen before the Devil here can hit such a town as H---. I have an associate who has slipped me this impertinent information. Would one of you guys in the audience like to tell me who it is?” He crossed his mostly African feeling business suited arms across his massive chest, which was heaving inwardly with the sighs of a lost paradise that he’d never truly obtained. Everyone in the audience seemed to be having a lot of a good time at his expense - as true universal cold enveloped his entire body. It felt excruciatingly good. Still, as he looked the thing over, he could not see anything out there that looked ripe for a kill. He needed about ten men with guns, he figured, to show up. Ten, twenty, four, whatever was there.

“Hey, friends, where are you? Please show up, now. I’ve come to give you milk and honey and all the images and all that. You know, guys with the guns. You must have about ten of you ready now, like a Roman numeral ‘X,’ c’mon, lemma see those major firearms. I’ve been waiting for rifles all of my life - and you’ve all been keeping them out of reach. Please, pretty please, I beg you on the mercy of being a Negro, come show me your guns so I can see how pretty they are. There you go!”

As the paced out group of men in the middle section pulled out their handguns one at a time, they pointed summarily at his closed off chest, telling him to open up so they could begin the firing squad action they were set to do. He had already turned himself in for the petty crimes he had committed, and now it was time to be blasted away. He had fought with something like meager thousands of these before, and had suffered through some skirmishes, but as the coalescing group began to murmur about how long it was taking, the solution materialized in his own mind like an Egyptian pyramid.

Maybe it was time to unleash brute force upon you people, but you can’t dive into an audience like they’re a swimming pool. How do I keep these guys busy, when my family is not going to leave the theater without me? Bette is the least realistic person I have ever met in my life, though she guides me to paradise in her own lost fashion. Still, this must be done. Perhaps keeping these children of mine distracted enough to ascertain their own political purposes and not bring in the other beings with weapons would help. I can keep both groups at bay until something right comes of this situation - or something wrong.

“You know,” said Murdock as he unbuttoned his shirt collar, “It is getting so bloody hot in here, muggier than the deep south, and oh pardon me is that your ugly Mommy in the audience? Say, I am going now to open up my chest and front and get some air. It’s stuffy here at this Asshole Theater. You know, how about if I rip myself wide open, to make it easier for you? Maybe I can show you the right methodology of dying.”

He daydreamed about an earlier obscene group of white men, easier to keep track of, called the Ku Klux Klan, which had faded away into obscurity and become several black groups, all of which wanted the honor of disposing of his body in improper fashion. The Klan had been big on killing blacks, and so were all his present groups of people.

Brother Murdock then slowly pulled apart the sticky remains of his reddened shirt and undershirt, ripping it all open as he went, baring his black and hairy muscular chest ever so carefully until he pulled it all away as far as he could get it open. He exposed himself as much as possible to the wall of guns that were steadily pointed at around his chest walls and stomach, peeling himself like he was a kind of overripe tomato. As he peeled, a mysterious change started to overcome him. He had to pick off parts of his brown skin and white shirt, tearing a goodly shred of it over one of the stab wounds. Then he finally grabbed everything he could scratch at with large hands, and pulled it all away. Now he felt his reddened and raw chest expand appreciably. It felt so lousy to take in lots of stale cigarette smoke laden air, so he wrenched his dying chest outwards, inwardly cursing out loud. Heaving back a single sob, he thrust out what he could feel moving.

“Here am I, crowd of strange African wonders. I love you all with my entire being, with all of my heart and soul. Here - I am a strange voodoo object of merriment and good times remembered, in the last fifteen seconds anyway.” He bent his head back and said, “I wish you could all be here instead of me. It’s such an enjoyable experience.” Wilting inwardly, he began to realize he could croak before any of his persecutors bothered to fire. He thought: I must tell them exactly where to end this altogether, for it looks like the weather outside could tend to rain shortly, and there are those on foot who must leave this our major theater and walk home in the pounding rain. Therefore, I am going to have to sacrifice my family and friends. There is no other way out of the theater and into this movie. I honestly don’t know who is making a major production number out of this, but it’s for the media so far as I can tell. Perhaps the Mafia is here also. The cameras are steadily rolling over there, and every flash bulb is ready to be popped.

“Hey Rubes, would you believe I have a speech all prepared in your shaggy heads? It’s about how you need to shoot me right here, and aim at it really well. See the chest? It’s deep brown - for no apparent reason. It doesn’t light up that well, I guess. Please, lighting, go ahead and train the spotlights on it. Whoomph! There, that’s good. Now you can all see exactly where to aim. Wouldn’t want anyone in the audience to get hurt.”

Heaving harder, Mur stuck his manly breast out much further. The lights at the Apollo seemed to flicker momentarily, as though they would go out as he pushed himself open. “I’m crowing, world, I’ve done this before - and it is finally the time. Hey guys, how come none of you are human beings yet? I woke up and didn’t become one either. Here’s the blood, the meat and the wine and all that, here’s this strapping black animal and all, here’s what you have been coming to this theater to collect on an artificial altar and pray over and feast upon for hours. Where are the billions of gunshots? I’ve been waiting for this moment all of my life. Shoot Bette!” He had said this last thing to indicate to her she had better get her act in gear and soon. But he didn’t mean it; he was hoping they’d shoot only him. He shouted, “If you shoot my wife first, shoot me next!”

As the hubbub died down, one large portly lady in the audience said, “What, boy?” There was a loud crashing sound in the back of the auditorium. No one however was coming through the doors in back. It seemed to be a distraction of some kind. As Mur overlooked the crowd, he could finally see the faces of some of the unusual beings with the guns as they began looking over to their right at his wife, who seemed to be putting her hand over her face. No, this is not the right way to have done this. I should have simply read my prepared speech, been shot in the middle of it and my chest, and died.

“No, actually,” he cried, “I didn’t mean that. Say, look over here, why don’t you? I am here already. I just wanted to let you know that Satan makes a great shoot. Look, I’m ready to take down and all, meat on the table for you and everything. The cameras are sitting all around this beautiful godd--- auditorium training on my gorgeous existence and you all are here for the ride. Look, suckers, calm down. I’m ready for H--- here.”

Every move a serious politico makes is always questioned in great detail by the authorities, the petty ones or otherwise. Would this one work better for the cameras? Every cut hurts, every trait any man has is magnified if one is a bull well boy or something like that, every drop of blood screams for high pressure, every taunt is a welt, and every time someone must come up with something new, the question occurs.

He raised one eyebrow as the men with guns pulled away their attention from Bette, slowly spreading the guns out in a wave at the entire audience, as though they would begin to fire if there was so much as even another mild crashing sound. Then there were several little streaks of light filtering in from outside, cluttering up the windows. Murdock X knew there was an odd chance of other groups occurring on the premises, ones which also wanted to kill him. Still, it felt as though something was controlling the premises. Maybe the sixteen other groups with rifles, machine guns and bombs were busy.

Still, Murdock reflected, the “people” in this audience don’t seem to be getting any of my outer space messages. That’s pretty normal for them. I’m the leader of “us all” and that must be an influence on life, I guess. “So it would,” he roared at the top of his bull stomach, “be most kind of all you shits in the audience,” he smoothly squelched through his dying outthrust lungs, “to continue to point all them guns in my general direction, no, put them together a bit more, there you go. Are you almost there?” The fetching group of silver automatics, each with one or more potential rounds, waved like tentacles from the octopus like group of faces behind them. “Do you think you can tell us what to do, when you’ve condemned us?” said one of them, not materializing from the crowd at all. “We were hired to blast traitors who don’t believe in the Nation of Islam - to death.”

“Yes, I told them all about Black Nationalist Supremacy, but the problem is that I am now a Black Nationalist. So I decided to die at them, so sue me. No, don’t. Put the guns back in place and point them straight at me, here’s the target and everything, right here. I love you. I love you all. I am a huge undying wall of blue meat here, I am going to die incredibly slowly - and I am waiting to be slaughtered, fools! Seriously, fire right into these major holes, or I’ll kill you. I’m Satan, I’m burnt ready, and here I am. C’mon, what took you so long?” Murdock looked down at the unmoving guns and flinched inwardly. Now was the time of reckoning. All of this could go any way, or another.

If they would shoot him, he would not be there to make sure his family got safe home. Meanwhile, the theater ushers were starting to open the back doors as if to give him some air. This alone caused a great unutterable disappointment to rack his very being. He had tried, he figured, and now that he was about to faint dead on the floor he oh pardon Satan that’s it he decided - summarily pitched forward and pointed at the open doors.

“Those who stay in their seats get an expensive prize for inadequacy if they move at all. I have six open guns trained on all of you behind the stage doors on either side of this auditorium. If you so much as move, I will have them all fire at you. Say, bunnies with the guns, is you ready? I am determined to not be the only cuss to die in this theater tonight. When I give the signal, all of those guns are going to open fire.”

As the entire audience froze motionless, and the ushers alone rushed to shut the back doors, Murdock sagged down. This was getting to be a dismal meeting for a night at the good old Apollo, one where he had summarily enjoyed nights out with friends on rare occasions. He’d even circulated a depraved underground flyer claiming he needed someone to kill someone else for him, for once, maybe a blond kid. Circumstances had forbid it ever being anyone else but him. What was with Black America?

“Well, can you get back here with the guns? There you go.” Murdock now had a clear field to see them get ready. He asked them inwardly if they were really subhuman enough to fire at nearly the one exact spot that was hurting the most. Then he asked them repeatedly if they were really subhuman. The guns bobbed up and down with a kind of silent laughter, then pointed steadily at various parts of his anatomy.

“That’s more like it, blind fools. Can you listen to the sound of my voice? It’s a mighty timorous majesty now, one which you’ve seldom encountered. Listen, you need to take aim right all over my body, or even my head. It’s there, just don’t be nervous. I see you’re not nervous. There you go. All over myself. You’re my children at last.” Murdock waved over at Bette, trusting she was looking, and smiled. “Please plug this sucking crow right now, as soon as I give you the order to fire. We’re not going back to Africa except on vacation from now on, and for the entire consecutive future.” I wonder how these folks will afford such vacations, he had to realize. We could, or at least Bette could, as her family has some money.

Murdock heaved a sigh, knowing he was only himself and not Satan. He never had much thought as that stereotype, but it came together in a blinding flash that he would have to be one of the most Satanic caricatures for whites ever if he kept this up. He tightened himself, breathing slightly, and realized he was far, far away from his own dying process.

Coldly, he stood erect and eased back on the execution stage. He briefly recalled himself as a young man, but knew that everywhere he’d been, he had seen something unfamiliar at every turn. The supernatural could kick butt, he figured, but only if it was under my own particular command. I don’t want to do this, he suddenly decided.

He froze in a summary surprised gape. The guns were still trained on him, as though the beings behind him did not exist. And the beings in front of him began to pull him back to his human status. “I know I’ve been a bad daddy for all of you pukes who have been following me for so many years, for to have to live with this haunting imagery is the most pathetic attempt at a buck god of raw meat the world has usually seen. We have them on the run at last, I believe, those frozen stones of the north. Do we not? And now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. There. All of your guns are now aimed right at the center of my immortal soul.” He appreciated the fact. Here we go.

They still weren’t doing anything in his direction. Not just yet. Somebody switched on the music from “Carmen” and it began playing sweetly and softly in the background. “Red is for blood, black is for death, white is for all right, and pure yellow is for me. Meanwhile, are you ready? I doubt it. But you must take aim and fire. Point the guns now. Straight at me in perfect little lines. There. You are now ready.”

I must now keep this up, he figured out, to the last me. He also prayed that Bette and all of his real children would shortly vacate the theater, as they were getting nervous. He heard the doors of H--- open and close, and knew his wife was perhaps locked in there with him, but waited. Suddenly, the voice said they left summarily and were gone home. He breathed a sigh of relief - for awhile.

Still, the rag doll witlessly danced on the stage, absorbing each bullet and pushing it out his burst open back.

He spread his demonic white boned winged shoulders back as if he was one plunging black crow, a hunk of exploding feathers that were opening up to the center of his virile but exploding chest. A deep blue and black fissure was swiftly forming, exploding ever outward into an enormous blossom, the only flower of truest Scottish manhood. How erotic, smiled the once incredibly handsome black man - to only himself.

As he fell over backwards, on his knees forever at last, all the scarlet sap of a true Harlem sucker was oozing out of his sunken in chest - and it felt so weirdly cool. A round of applause came cascading over the rafters.

Could be the best draw for tickets the Apollo will never get again. And this one time, I got to tell off the crowd the right way, although I cannot do it ever again…I’m slipping away. Funny; this doesn’t feel like death. It seems like my body’s whisking through time and space, to somewhere else, a place that I was somehow always destined to be.

But why is it raining on me? I thought that was blood at first; but there’s a lashing wind and rain falling all around. I’m on a slippery, sloping hill, in the middle of a rainstorm. I’ll look around, but this is not pretty. In fact, I’m out of doors, in the middle of a hundred men racing around me.

As someone who’d always looked like a U.S. Marine, with a square head shape and a liberal’s outlook on life, Murdock had to take a quick appraisal of his new surroundings as he cocked his handsome head to one side. He had shown too good of form to live. He stood up. Everything was wavy, nauseating, and increasingly painful, only set to go further along. He also had to tell them where to shoot him. Or for a change, he had to tell them where to shoot them, as he had to tell them that every time.

They were on a jaggedly, verdantly green hill. It was in Scotland, where they had to defend the overhanging mountain pass while the enemy was coming. As several of them charged up the hill, most of the clan had to hold positions downwards. Using swords, bows and arrows, and shillelaghs, they swarmed fiercely. Guns weren’t involved and shields were too heavy to carry, except for the lighter cowskin ones.

T’was the Battle of Dunkeld in 1689. It involved the Jacobite army. Dunkeld was the last battle in Scotland in the 17th century to restore the Stewarts to the throne. The men were all cowards, so slow and stupid - no, they were but worn out from battle, which had raged many days.

Murdoch’s army was made of a tattered, almost wretched horde of men in both animal skins and Roman cloth and garb; but they were of no one skin color, some being quite dark and some very pale and white. They staunchly wielded their bloody weapons and archery equipment slung over their broad shoulders, which pumped up and down with the rage of battle. And as Murdoch wheeled around, he saw the enemy’s fatal charge.
Out of nowhere, an impenetrable wall of sticks began arcing through the clear sky like straight skinny dark birds. For one long moment, they eclipsed the sun itself.

Mur heard them whistling as they raced down, sinking deeply into his side’s exposed chests, limbs and faces. But many of them raised their cowhide shields, determined to survive, as Murdoch’s side whipped out their own bows and arrows - to bravely fight back.

They wouldn’t go down without trying, and it could easily go either way. But Murdoch’s men would all surely die, if he didn’t move. Shocked into the utmost living horror, he gave them his screamingly loud eternal orders:

“READY...AIM...FIRE!”

THE END

The end of this story was based on the fact that after the death of James Graham, Viscount Dundee at Killiecrankie, the Jacobite army was said to have “no leader of quality.” So I gave them one, although how the battle went largely depends upon your point of view.

Executive Director and President of Rainbow Writing, Inc., Karen Cole writes. RWI at http://www.rainbowriting.com is an affordable online professional freelance writing agency working for everyone from low end to celebrity clients, and specializing in the ghost writing, editing, promotions and marketing of books and screenplays.

Martin Luther King Son Focuses on Role of Bosnia Youth

2009-05-17T15:01:00.000-07:00

BalkanInsight.com
By Srecko Latal

Sarajevo | 12 May 2009 |

The eldest son of the American legendary civil rights activist, Martin Luther King III, is visiting Bosnia and Herzegovina in the hope of inspiring the electorate, and especially the youth, to become engaged in the country's political process.

The visit of the celebrated human rights activist, as well as the upcoming visit of the US Vice President Joseph Biden scheduled for May 18, are broadly seen in Bosnia as signs that the US’s attention is once again zeroing into Bosnia and the rest of the Balkans.

“The White House pays attention to Bosnia and Herzegovina again,” read the front page headline in the Mostar daily Dnevni List on Tuesday.

US ambassador to Bosnia, Charles English, said that the visit of Martin Luther King III has been organised by the US embassy to mark the 55th anniversary of the legal decision that canceled racial segregation in US schools.

The purpose of the trip, during which Martin Luther King III will visit Sarajevo, Tuzla, Banja Luka, Mostar and Stolac, is to promote tolerance, equal rights and justice for all. These are crucial issues for Bosnia which is currently facing its worst political crisis since the end of the 1992-5 war.

“I do not have solutions for problems in Bosnia and Herzegovina. I believe that this country has a future and everything we do today, we should do for the benefit of the young generations that are coming,” Martin Luther King III told journalists during his media event in Sarajevo on Monday afternoon.

His father, Martin Luther King, Jr, was a Baptist minister, activist and prominent leader in the African-American civil rights movement. He led the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott and helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957. His efforts led to the 1963 March on Washington, where King delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech. There, he raised public consciousness of the civil rights movement and established himself as one of the greatest orators in U.S. history.

In 1964, King became the youngest person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his work to end racial segregation and racial discrimination through civil disobedience and other non-violent means. King was assassinated on April 4, 1968, at the age of 39, in Memphis, Tennessee. He was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977 and Congressional Gold Medal in 2004.

Martin Luther King III, who was ten-years old when his father was assassinated, followed in his father’s steps and became a human rights advocate and community activist himself. He served as the head of his father’s civic organisation the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, from 1997 to 2001.
Later he founded an organisation called Realising the Dream, which he still runs.

During the meeting with journalists, Martin Luther King III stressed the important role youth play in Bosnia and other countries, and added that he wanted to inspire them to engage in political life and bring about needed changes.

He also emphasised the need to resolve disputes through non-violent means.

Martin Luther King III sees MLK memorial in Bosnia

2009-05-17T15:00:00.000-07:00

April 14, 2009
Google News

TUZLA, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) — Martin Luther King III is visiting the northwest Bosnian town of Tuzla, where authorities erected a monument last year to his father, U.S. civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr.

King laid a wreath at the monument Wednesday and met with city authorities. He is in Bosnia for a week to promote tolerance.

Bosnia has been ethnically divided since a brutal 1992-95 war. The elder King's work is admired in parts of the country while in others Bosniak, Croat and Serb children attend separate classes and learn different versions of history.

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Martin Luther King III visits Bosnia

2009-05-17T14:56:00.000-07:00

April 12, 2009
Google News
By AIDA CERKEZ-ROBINSON

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) — Martin Luther King III told young people in Bosnia on Tuesday that the country's ethnic and religious diversity can be converted from a weakness to a strength.

Speaking in Sarajevo to students and civil rights activists, the son of U.S. civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. acknowledged that Bosnia has gone through difficult times but said its youth could join together to promote tolerance and unity.

Like his own country, Bosnia is home to an extremely diverse people, he said

"Such diversity can unfortunately be a source of great conflict. However, when people are willing to work hard enough, it can be a source of great strength as well," he said.

Since the 1992-95 war, Bosnia remains ethnically divided and its school system is one of the worst examples of segregation in Europe where Bosniak, Croat and Serb children attend separate classes and are taught different versions of history.

King described his country's difficult path from racial segregation to the election of Barrack Obama as America's first black president. He urged Bosnia's youth to take the initiative and promote unity and equal rights.

"I would have not come all this way if I didn't believe that 50 years from now other countries around the world will be looking to Bosnia as a model for what people can do," he said.

U.S. Ambassador Charles English said the embassy hopes the message of King's father will resonate among students and teachers.

King will visit several Bosnian cities during is weeklong stay.

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Dream And Uncover Your Own Leadership Qualities

2009-05-10T17:11:00.000-07:00

Author: lingil

Last summer I had the pleasure of taking a trip which included a drive through 19 states in 10 days. It was a considerable amount of driving but a wonderful encounter with history and nostalgia. Each city and town seemed to boast a special person or event that helped shape our country. One thing that really impressed me was the how many times I found myself on Martin Luther King Jr Blvd in so many different cities and towns.

There are Martin Luther King Jr Blvds in Dallas, Chicago and Chapel Hill. There were other streets and highways named after him in other cities, I wish I had counted them all. At one point on the trip, I recall seeing another sign for Martin Luther King Jr Blvd and I briefly could not remember what city or state I was driving through at the time.

Just what qualities did this man possess that made so many considered him great? Even if a person didn't believe in what he was preaching, there was no denying his great influence. Why? To get the answer I did not have to look far. Martin Luther King Jr himself knew the answer - just have a dream or a new direction and funnel all your energy to getting that dream. With a dream or a vision anyone can learn to be a leader.

"All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible."
(T. E. Lawrence, "The Seven Pillars of Wisdom")

Everyone can learn to lead by discovering the power that lies within each one of us. We can make a difference by being prepared when the call to lead comes. Becoming a leader starts with acknowledging and learning about five qualities we all possess to some extent. Once we take a deep inventory about ourselves and get to know ourselves, the key is practicing and growing these five qualities.

A leader always has a vision. He cannot exist without a vision and a new direction. The vision is always in the mind of the leader no matter where he goes. Nelson Mandela was still a leader even though he spent years in a prison. He never went a day without dreaming and sharing his vision.

A leader knows what his strengths and weaknesses are. He takes advantage of his strengths and avoids the areas of his weaknesses. He prefers to hire others for the kinds of jobs that would take his energy from the things he is really good at. Do some honest self analysis to gain insight about your own strengths and weaknesses.

A leader can delegate and choose the right man for the job. He should be able to differentiate between the groups of candidates for a particular duty. A leader can only get required support from his group of members only when he has made right decision to select his group members. The key is selecting people to do the jobs that correspond to their own strengths.

A good leader is one who has high targets and makes consistent efforts to achieve those targets. With body he gets tired but by mind he is never tired and his mind is always striving to achieve better; growth is his very first objective.

A good leader is one who is commitment bounded. He always fulfills his promises. He never lets his goodwill go down and always works to strive for perfection and to achieve goals for the satisfaction of others. In other words, he takes care for the rights and interests of his group members.

Leadership can be situational and is achieved by life experiences. Every leader has their unique style and you can find your own utilizing, practicing and growing these 5 qualities. When you can step up into a leadership position you will find others looking up to you for that new direction. You can be a spearhead for a new direction.

Source: Free Articles

Family of Dr. King Charged Group Building His Monument

2009-05-10T14:47:00.001-07:00

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: April 17, 2009

WASHINGTON (AP) — The family of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. has charged the foundation building a monument to him on the Mall about $800,000 for the use of his words and image, an arrangement one leading scholar said Dr. King would have found offensive.

The memorial, including a 28-foot sculpture depicting Dr. King, is being paid for almost entirely with private money in a fund-raising campaign led by the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial Project Foundation. The monument will be turned over to the National Park Service.

The foundation has been paying the King family for the use of Dr. King’s words and image in its fund-raising materials. The family has not charged for the use of his likeness in the monument.

David J. Garrow, a Cambridge University historian who won a Pulitzer Prize for his biography of Dr. King, said he did not know of any other descendants that had been paid such a fee.

“One would think any family would be so thrilled to have their forefather celebrated and memorialized in D.C. that it would never dawn on them to ask for a penny,” Mr. Garrow said, adding that Dr. King would have been “absolutely scandalized by the profiteering behavior of his children.”

According to financial documents reviewed by The Associated Press, the foundation paid $761,160 in 2007 to Intellectual Properties Management Inc., an entity run by Dr. King’s family. Documents also show a “management” fee of $71,700 was paid to the family estate in 2003.

In a statement to The A.P., Intellectual Properties said that the proceeds it receives go to the King Center in Atlanta and that the arrangement was made out of concern that fund-raising for the monument would undercut donations to the center.

Dr. King’s son Dexter is the center’s chairman, and his cousin Isaac Farris Jr. is president. Dr. King’s two other surviving children, Martin Luther King III and Bernice King, are lifetime members of the board of directors.

A Challenge to Voting Rights

2009-04-29T13:22:00.000-07:00

Editorial, The New York Times
April 28, 2009

The United States has changed a great deal since the Voting Rights Act was first passed in 1965, but minorities still face significant obstacles in registering to vote and casting ballots. It would be outrageous overreaching — the sort of thing Republicans deride as judicial activism — if the Supreme Court takes away the power of Congress to protect minority voters from harassment and disenfranchisement...(read the rest of this story by clicking on the link in the title above.)

Tree honors King, Tumwater pioneer Bush

2009-04-26T16:08:00.000-07:00

JOHN DODGE; The Olympian | • Published April 25, 2009

OLYMPIA – A butternut tree from the former homestead of Tumwater black pioneer George Bush was used to link Bush and United States civil-rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. in a National Arbor Day celebration Friday on the Capitol Campus.

South Sound historians at the noon dedication worked for years to recognize the legacy of Bush, an African American who came to Tumwater by wagon train on the Oregon Trail from Missouri in 1845, by adding a scion from a tree he brought added to the Capitol Campus landscape.

The original tree still stands south of Tumwater as one of the largest butternut trees in the nation.

State Sen. Rosa Franklin, D-Tacoma, and other leaders of the Seattle-Tacoma black community worked for years to have a tree planted on the Capitol Campus in King’s honor.

The state Department of General Administration attempted to meet the desires of both groups in a project that state agency officials conceded they mismanaged.

Problems began nearly a month ago when a General Administration crew transplanted the sapling from the home of Tony and Marilyn Sexton, owners of a home and a 5-acre parcel that is all that remains of the Bush homestead. The Sextons donated the tree, assuming it would be dedicated to Bush. They were not aware of plans to use it to honor King, too, Tony Sexton said.

“I still kind of feel like the George Bush tree was hijacked up there on the campus,” Sexton, a former Thurston County undersheriff, said Friday after boycotting the ceremony. “This is nothing against Martin Luther King; I’m as big a fan of his as anybody.”

Emotions ran strong in the South Sound historical community in the weeks leading up to Friday’s event. Eventually, Franklin, state agency officials and local historians agreed on a ceremony to honor both men’s lives.

“I regret that more discussion hadn’t occurred earlier, and with more people,” General Administration’s Sharon Case said.

Both black leaders were well-represented at the ceremony.

Rev. Samuel B. McKinney, a friend and college classmate of King’s and a longtime Seattle civil-rights activist, recalled King’s only visit to the state in 1961 to speak.

“At that time, King was considered crazy, bad and violent,” McKinney said. “While Dr. King was a man of peace, he was not afraid to confront violence. He was the right person in the right place at the right time to do the right thing.”

South Sound historian Winnifred Olsen noted that Bush’s father arrived in the U.S. on a slave ship, and Bush brought his family west from Missouri in 1845, in part because Missouri was a slave state.

“He figured there would be more freedom and opportunity for his sons in the Pacific Northwest,” Olsen said.

It took an act of Congress for Bush to claim his land under the 1850 Donation Land Claim Law. In 1983, Congress approved a federal holiday in honor of King, who was assassinated in 1968.

“Centuries apart, here we are, in memory of two great men,” McKinney said.

The Jack the Ripper Story - The Primary Suspect

2009-04-18T13:29:00.000-07:00

By Georgi Dagnall

Surgeon George Chapman arrived in London in 1887, one year before the Ripper's murder spree. The records show that he worked as a hairdresser's assistant in the East End. Are you confused as to why a surgeon would end up working as a hairdresser's assistant? In those days, the barber's trade and surgery were considered related professions. In ancient times, before anesthesia was used regularly, the best qualification for a surgeon was to be quick with a blade and have a strong stomach. If a man could shave a beard, he was qualified to perform surgery. This barber-surgeon combination began to fall apart as medicine advanced. In 1745, a British act of parliament officially separated the barbers and surgeons into different guilds.

Chapman did study to become a junior surgeon, but there are no records to say that he became one. While Chapman may or may not have been a surgeon, he was a good enough barber that he eventually ran a barber shop in the basement of the White Hart Pub in 1889, which was located just a few steps from the site of what may have been the first of Jack the Ripper's murders.. He was also something of a ladies' man, but he did not keep them long. His wandering eye lost him one woman who he got pregnant and then abandoned. Thanks to another woman named Annie Chapman, he did change his name from Severin Klosowski to George Chapman to match hers around 1895, seven years after the Ripper murders. This new name helped him to hide from his former wives, girlfriends and miscellaneous children.

Chapman entered into sham marriages with several new lovers. However, he treated all his wives the same way. When he was tired of beating one woman and found a new one that interested him, he would slowly poison his wife with antimony, bringing on a slow death with horrible stomach pains. There was no reason why Chapman would have been compelled to poison these women to get rid of them. Since he was not married to any of them, he could simply have told one to move out and had his new woman move in. Instead, he murdered two wives and was well on his way to killing a third when his wife-of-the-time's family demanded that a new doctor examine her. He panicked and increased the dose of poison, which killed his wife almost immediately. This suspicious death led to an autopsy. After poison was found in the body of his third wife, the other two wives were dug up. All three were found to have been slowly poisoned. On March 20, 1903, a jury took only 11 minutes to find Chapman guilty of murder. Two and a half weeks later, Chapman was hanged. To his last breath, he claimed that he was innocent, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

Some have considered Chapman an excellent possibility for Jack the Ripper since he was a convicted multiple murderer and was skilled in wielding a knife thanks to his studies in surgery and his work as a barber. His cold, violent treatment of women combined with his sexual appetite and constantly roaming eye seem consistent with the sociopathic profile of Jack the Ripper. Even Chapman's visits in London and the United States correspond with the times of these violent murders. The Ripper murders started soon after he arrived in London and stopped soon after he left London for the United States.

There are two problems with definitively naming Chapman as the Ripper, besides the lack of actual proof. The first is that the witnesses who may have seen Jack the Ripper described him as being in his 30s. At the time of the Ripper murders, Chapman was only 23. It's possible that he was never seen or that the witnesses may have incorrectly guessed his age. The second problem is that Chapman was actually found guilty of slowing poisoning his wife over a period of months. This type of slow methodical killing does not fit with the violent, bloody killing methods favored by Jack the Ripper. If Chapman was Jack the Ripper, it is possible that he changed his method of killing to better suit his victims, but going from viciously ripping apart unknown women with a knife to slowly poisoning his own wives and watching them waste away over weeks seems like it would be very anticlimactic for a killer like Jack the Ripper.

To learn more about the primary suspect, please visit Geogad.com.

This content was written and provided by Geogad Inc. For further information, please visit Geogad.com.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Georgi_Dagnall

The Unknown Martin Luther King, Jr.

2009-04-13T13:37:00.000-07:00

Benjamin J. Ryan, American Renaissance, January 2009

Forty years after his death, the popularity of Martin Luther King remains extraordinary. He is perhaps the single most praised person in American history, and millions adore him as a hero and almost a saint. The federal government has made space available on the Mall in Washington for a national monument for King, not far from Lincoln’s. Only four men in American history have national monuments: Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt; and now King will make five...(to read the rest of this article, click on the link in the title above.)

THE INCREDIBLE TRANSITION OF DR. KING

2009-03-28T14:17:00.000-07:00

The Incredible Transition of Dr. King

(One long short story - or perhaps a novelette)

By Karen Cole
Word Count: 12,000

Having to contemplate the meanings of the word “colored” and “black” was once a social issue for certain famous American people, who promoted civil rights as their primary political cause. Colorful and lively is what they were often forced to become, in order to help their kind of people become more welcome in American society as they sojourned away from black and white racial segregation.

The arts, music and theater gained from the addition of remarkable talent from these hallmarks of American and world society, who felt they had to prove themselves in a world which was capable of killing or incarcerating people solely due to their skin color. Racial segregation was definitely the road to extreme enforced injustice as the only alternative for not granting people their full civil, legal and human rights, so these people wanted to make sure their attainments were not in vain, and that they taught people racial equality.

“The Movement” is an umbrella term for all kinds of people gaining and exercising all kinds of human rights. This is sort of their partial and jumbled story, as told by me. It covers some of racism, sexism, disability rights, gay rights, and God knows what else. It’s set in a cross between “the sixties” and modern times. The pitfalls of cigarette smoking also figure in.

The one uniting factor is the Civil Rights Movement. I came along much later - when it comes to the major problem with this story, namely lots to write about, I had to “fictionalize” everything. I spent years as a personal care attendant for the disabled, working for black, brown and white people, in dozens of peculiar and challenging situations. It was difficult but rewarding. However, this story mainly concerns a pair of civil rights workers you may have heard of before: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his wife Coretta Scott King.

Dr. King has to be Dr. Queen, etc., in case somehow I’m accidentally “racist,” to make me be more “controversial,” and also because of “libel and slander” laws. It’s a serious matter. I don’t believe I’m entitled to ever use those two real people, who are both now deceased, as fictional characters. Instead, I’m going to use fictional “people” loosely based on them, and thank them profusely for being “my purple godparents.” I know it’s okay to write factual accounts using real people, and a lot of what I mention in this story are facts about Dr. King and his wife, but this is highly fictionalized. Not everything I say herein holds true about them. I’m breaking or bending a few rules to write this, so please bear with me.

You are the judge, gentle reader. You will see what you think of the below. But first, grab yourself a tall glass of lemonade, as this is definitely going to be somewhat a long winded - short term adventure in reading.

THE INCREDIBLE TRANSITION OF MICHAEL KING

That was the real name of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. His black dad may have tried to rescue mankind by bestowing a title on his son, and on himself as well. He named them both after Martin Luther, the white founder of Protestantism, who wanted to rescue people several centuries ago. Such a rescue may or may not be an option nowadays, in the time of Global Warming and worldwide uncertainties about race and religion.

Believe it or not, this is all excusable background for the main story below, which is largely about racism and the supernatural. But this digression is over for now. I have to now talk about my purple African "godparents.” I have to thank them, trust me.

They are mysteriously appearing in an extravagantly well appointed, but “seedy” and “cheap” hotel room somewhere. They are from the past, and currently no longer exist. They both died, spaced centuries apart, at least to one of them. “Dr. Queen” was shot and killed, and his widow had to go on without him. But in my story, they get to play a little “catch up” with each other, for a change.

It had to do with certain circumstances. How does one thank such people? How does one even attempt to know them? My ignorance, and your innocence, dictates this. What can I say to people to whom I may owe my life?

May we enter their life story somehow, and be right there with them?

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

One night, a celebrated chocolate man decided something had gone wrong with his entire set of circumstances, and his wife did, too. Out of nowhere, they had melted into an extremely hot scenario -- like unearthly large horizontal giants on a hotel bed.

One of them, not being altogether fat, having the build of a boxer, was strikingly virile and handsome with his little mustache to the point where one's mind would be boggled. He was relaxing on “never his own bed” looking at a black and white hotel television, lying down prone and relaxed after a hard day of walking and terse interviews. He was sprawled but composed on top of the pilled and soiled covers, which had seen lots of use and wear, but were still elegantly shiny and soft to the touch.

For some reason, a disgruntled look slowly crossed his dark, plump, beautiful - manly, perhaps not at all lovely to some – Negroid facial features. A quizzical, bemused grin crinkled the corner of one sleepy but slanted dark, large brown eye. And then a look of raw, unadulterated joy melded through all of his deeply brown facial features.

For you see, the black Negro man on the bed had ended up with what was once the most precious and prized ownership problem of our proto-nuclear age -- the TV remote control. He cradled it, firmly enclosed in his massive brown hand. He intelligently scanned the television screen, squinting with a gimlet eye at what he saw on it. None of it was familiar.

The man knew one of his black eyes looked eerily Asiatic, especially his right one. The staleness of the surrounding air permeated his brain as the cig smoke seeped away from his fingertips. He knew the room, one of many in which he had practically been living, was smoke-filled. Over the years, ash had seeped into the walls, permeating and blackening the wrinkled fabric of the room's wallpaper. He had guarded himself from the awful effects for millennia, perhaps.

He often wondered why people smoked, being the victim of second-hand dust since before he was born. Both the sandy plains of equatorial Africa and the non-pleasurable smoke of industrial America had clotted his darkening, sighing pink lungs. “Rod Sterling” appears briefly and says: For you see before you a man going almost completely and quietly insane, both with and without his quite desirable woman.

She’s not around him as much as he’d like her to be. Normally, he lets his stress out at the camera. His wife does not have much to tell people ordinarily, at least not what he wants to say. She's right there beside him, but could be killed at any given time. She’d rather, seemingly, pour his coffee and serve him his food. Or would she? To wonder about this is not unusual for her. She took classes at her school so many long years ago on how diseases were the main reason they were in this predicament, stuck whiling their time away in hotel rooms. The classes had informed her of why their lives were a color coded obscenity. The “better people” had to be kept healthy. It was “natural law.”

While he’s watching TV, you also see this elegant man studying an “Eventide Zone” episode, realizing meanwhile that he must die shortly. He’s "known" by the FBI - who may have doctored all of the tapes on him - to have one of the world’s most wanton sex lives, asking both men and women to be “his” for a brief period of time. This is perhaps because he’s destined to die young, and wants to live it up. Or it's because audio tapes are easy to change, especially those run by your enemies.

He also wants to not bend over backwards to make himself look unapproachable – like “colored wouldn’t dare do that.” He’s a Negro. He thinks in his darker moments that he's only headed nowhere, or at least somewhere not so wonderful.

He gets stressed out about that sometimes, to the point of appearing paranoid. He fears intensively that most people see his four ghostlike “kids” as giant African animals that need slaughtered. To try to prove the naysayers and bigots wrong, our hero is in full dress, a business suit as it were, sometimes called a monkey suit, and is beginning to deeply indent the scratchy, prickly box spring mattress of many an ancient lost love. He has actually spent time with both boys and girls in his prime, not having sex but somewhat getting them into obtuse trouble due to the violent events at his political protests.

The political protests were to get those children their full legal and civil rights back, stolen from them when they were hauled away from Africa to America. But this usually gentle man likes life and living, to the fullest when he can, to do everything a black man can do. A lot of white people would rather that he shut up and die, but he's not very game for that. He doesn't like being told what to do.

His university self is watching a show on TV that he secretly liked, as it involved his special underground buddy, Rod Sterling. He could relate to the short, dark, intense white man on it, who was artful and clever and told him a good, moral story most of the time. It was fun for a change back there, when he gritted his teeth and turned away, to watch. Well, Freddie Hitchcock was good for an in-joke as well. Both Rod and Fred promoted white male death interests enough to morbidly fascinate Dr. Queen, who generally liked the news and sports far more than any TV fiction story.

Yet the man we see before us also had a good story to tell. He had formed up the Montchapel Bus Boycott, to make sure Negro people didn’t have to ride solely in the far back of a city bus. Alabama was - however - not the only place with such problems. In the Seattle Metropolitan area, the buses clearly indicated where “colored” should sit with brown trim around the back windows. What could this be but an unspoken BM reference, even that far north? What being shuffled off to Buffalo would that mean, if it kept up forever, with black people being told they were made of s--t?

Why spend life as a chute joke? It made no sense to him. Maybe gay sex was okay, but not being “lost,” out in public as the world’s foremost representative of human manure. Nothing was Christian about that – nada.

Sideways slides the black and white camera - Rod Sterling, with his usual slouching class, slips upright in with the following words: For you see, the man on the bed is electronically color coded to die in advance by history itself, and he doesn’t know why. It’s his fate, written in the stars and planned by many others, although his final destination remains unknown. Some onlookers, noticing his name, have rather Inquisitional plans for him. He keeps surrounded by an entourage, rather like the President, to protect him from being snatched away and burned alive at the stake.

He knows his name is coincidentally Martin, and that he’s destined to die a martyr. He knows he is the king of a most peculiar kingdom, not unlike “The King.” Elvis was his own brand of a soul singer, but thought of as a white man. Michael, otherwise named Martin, disgruntledly accepts the fact of his own "niggerization" by nearly everyone who must continue their strange color coded way of life.

Almost everyone seems to be a believer in Jesus, God and the Afterlife. Michael believes he’d like his kids to go on living, even if they eventually become white someday. Dr. Queen is there to ensure that they will grow up, even if he himself does not “make it to the Promised Land.” Who needs it?

He shares in a wonderful African American subculture, but his own version of it is studiously religious and arrogantly bombastic in its peculiar style. He is his own behemoth of paranoia. In a jovial way, he knows that, but doesn’t laugh at himself. Even if he grew large as the planet Jupiter, he wouldn’t break so much as a smile on certain occasions. He had to go down in history as an angry young man, not one who “got the joke.”

That would be to give into a belief with which he has no accord. And that is why he must now enter The Eventide Zone. For indeed, without a jester, a king, and a kingdom…is there even truly a jest? - The camera then zooms away from Sterling, focusing on a black night of sparkling white stars.

THE INCREDIBLE TRANSITION OF DR. QUEEN

No man is truly a queen until he puts on a woman’s dress. Martin Queen, on the other hand, never notably did so. The head of the FBI was a noted transvestite, but no, not our hero. J. Edward Hoover once tried to get Dr. Queen to suicide by “telling” on him to his wife, who got quite a chuckle out of that. As Dr. Queen lay on his hotel bed, he bemusedly wonders what the attraction is to women’s clothing, but decides he likes it better on Coletta, who was quite a voluptuous pinup girl in her day.

Instead, he thinks to himself how the color coded nonsense where his people have to sit or eat or live in seedy, cheap places has to do with how things are organic or inorganic, as he’s been involved deeply with his college of supposed choice. He was fourteen when he began attending it. His whole life was laid out before him, in spite of the hard work, and he had to go to that particular accredited and acclaimed Negro oriented school.

At fifteen, he breezed through his white oriented paperwork. His graduate thesis in college was a work of artifice, not art, as he had plagiarized it - he could have done his own work, but was in a great hurry. His speeches, lowest common denominator to reach the masses, were written largely by his fellow ministers. He is however a fully accredited minister in the Baptist Church, able to marry people legally, or lecture them about the twin devilries of racism and classism, either.

But he’s not really able to attain the Presidency, as many people want him to; the separation of church and state precludes this. Being kept from other high social positions by white people caused this problem, where a Christian minister must “pine” for death and not for life. And he knows the hotels he’s staying at are no longer cheap. Racial segregation had led to an impasse, where many “colored” commodities were getting to be as good as or better than their “white” counterparts – such as jazz music.

But as he lies there on the bed, his life is running through his head, as a kind of demolished motion picture show. He'd had to fake his own resume to prove he wasn't scared of going to Hell when he died, as white people liked to accuse them of that by literally putting them there. He had to face it down as a civilized white man, by being unafraid in the face of certain death, and worse yet, he enjoys doing it that way for others. Sometimes. Mostly, he figures his end will come from gunshot wounds.

Everywhere he’d been at his brief college, a tacky red carpet was splayed out for him. Most of his friends seemed to be other Baptist ministers. And he did attend to the great place's more esoteric science classes, where they’d taught him racism was part of human nature. He really liked to think he had written a good thesis proclaiming loudly against those “Natural Laws” where he wasn’t allowed to marry the wife he’d chosen. According to racial supremacists, his fair-skinned Coletta wasn’t allowed to so much as exist. A beautiful young lady, she'd done more for the Civil Rights Movement than most people knew about, while still remaining faithfully wed to her dark-hued gentleman.

But he is wearing velvety black skin, he was my “knight in shining armor” you see, and he is feeling sleepy, large and queasy because he hears his wife preparing him dinner in the kitchen suppinette. They had hiked around town by themselves for a lark, without their entourage, and picked up some lovely casual food at an Asian grocery store. This hotel room at least had a cooker and a fridge, not to mention a cigarette machine. An extremely prominent grayish one - it stood in the hallway outside their room and had a silvery top - which was always cleaned off. The colored/black lady maid had also visited their room that morning, and all was in tip top shape for them.

But the black Negro man, not being an animal, doesn’t feel like he has to work hard for a living. He’s been plugging away at words all his life. He feels a bit lazy at the present moment. Maybe even sleazy. How had he done a damn fool thing right? He was stuck thinking this to himself earlier as he punched the cigarette machine with one plump index finger, receiving a pack of Marlboros. Usually he doesn’t smoke.

He appears slightly guilt ridden as he slinks down the hallway. He knows I don't know if he even smoked. He knows my parents smoked. And he knows, while lying there, all about me. He had seen the black and white episode on TV in his hotel room, on Sterling's show. Twice, now. Why? And far more familiar to him was the look of the people on the show, in ways that none of them should have been familiar to him. Why, he muses to himself, do I know about this stranger who is haunting my head? The drug certainly works; he gags, as he balls up one fist. But the childish cough he was going to withstand filters away. He is stalking slowly, slowly back to the bed, while carrying the cigs he bought.

In the prior Eventide Zone episode, the one Martin viewed originally, he had seen my father cruelly teasing me into running into my bedroom. I was white, and so was my father. But I was not entirely white. My father had run after me screaming what he was “gonna” do to me. I had ended up under my bed - scrunched up against the wall. My father obviously tried to not lift up the bed to tear me to pieces. He scrabbled under the bed with one arm. He then finally left. Later - I found a little black hole in the wall - and had disappeared into it momentarily. I stayed in the hole to escape my violent father, in case he came back. I emerged unscathed after a long, long while.

He was someone whom I dearly loved. Maybe I had been a bad girl, to get fat and all. And I had wished someone could find me in the tiny hole and save me. No one seemed to have done so. And my father was harmed psychologically by the misery of having lost me forever. That is because, in the episode as seen by Dr. Queen, I’d permanently vanished. It wasn’t so much “the poor girl” got through it: I’d disappeared away completely. When my father came back in the first episode, I was gone forever.

Funny thing was, in the newer episode Dr. Queen was watching, the ending had changed. The little girl was not lost, and had ended up elsewhere. And the entire episode was now in color, very realistic color at that. Dr. Queen wondered when the hotel had managed to install color TV in their room. He pinched himself and felt a slight “pang,” and so knew he wasn’t dreaming. He had thrown the open packet of cigs down on the night stand near him.

The black man, lounging around on the well appointed soft bed, sighs to himself about the episode. It’d reminded him about something stupid in his own upbringing, which he had both liked and disliked. His father was a yeller, and had been an occasional “curser.” It wasn’t such a nightmarish upbringing as the little girl’s had been. No one had been around his small but sophisticated home, jotting all down on a reporter’s notepad. Instead he recalled family and friends, almost a worthy life that implied greater living to be, if he could get the others moving in time.

But cameras have been around him frequently lately, and the black Negro man feels like he has become pretty much only a personal media circus. Would anything he has done mean anything real to someone, his own human history? Would it matter if he died in public, or in private? He didn’t want to die, or make it look like he liked dying. He’d rather work – hard.

He honestly doesn’t even know what the Godlike reason is why he’s stuck working for a living, so often away from his family, giving odd speeches here and there. He has a doctorate in the religious sciences, and wishes he was able to answer all of those theosophical questions. He knows the whole thing is a political setup for men to use to manipulate others’ minds. But he’s a phantom stranger who uses big words indeed - such as philanthropist and egalitarian - and perhaps lethargic toad. But at least, he muses to himself, I use that about weirdos and not myself.

The phrase “hopeless romantic” also comes to mind. He is stuck forever trying to write a perfect speech, as he must “dumb” them all down. Stuff like the “I Have Dreams” speech was written by an obscure third party, most of it taken from a speech by a fellow minister. And all of his actions, including the wiser ones, are questioned by everybody.

He is trying to get some well deserved rest while lodging around, a sniper gun sight could spy his bulky figure through the dirt streaked window one foot away from his bed, and he hears noises outside that don’t belong to him. He’s very anti the Viet Nam War. He knows communist Africa could attack the United States through the atom bomb. One of the colored motels he was going to stay at was recently bombed, probably by the Ku Klux Klan. He is a pacifist, but gets angry enough to kill people sometimes.

Whether or not he ever "punched out" white women is not known. Some people said he used church money to buy "loose" girls, and then beat on them. It was the infamous “Marquis de Sade” claim. Lonely on the road, he had seen black hookers, according to his minister friends. They said he was nothing but absolutely gracious with them. Now Coletta was with him - at his side for a change, but so what?

I have a dream, he thinks to himself. Good line for a great speech, by an absolutely phony white man. I’ll never be one, he muses. He has his own self doubt all nailed. He drifts off for a few moments and subsequently has the strangest actual dream as he snores profoundly on the bed: a decade after a gigantic herd of colored Africans and other myriad minority groups have defended humanity through the leading philosophy of being peaceful warriors, a small passel of white wheelchair people, all disabled, learn how to get Seattle’s Metro buses reequipped with proper wheelchair lifts. They are thus able to get their civil rights that way – mainly, the right to spontaneously ride the bus, without it being a “planned trip.”

As some of them must go out, or perhaps die along the way, they need to get on the bus. Every other transit option is a hard to arrange trip. No spontaneity. The disabled people have to fill an independent living need, even if it involves white women deliberately falling off the first misguided attempts at wheelchair lifts. One of them did go ahead with that, and she managed to live through the hospital stay later. If she were here, she would say that being alive is the best way to go – but one must risk death for a good reason. It’s better than waiting to die of a head cold.

How do they do that, in Michael’s dream? The original “folding camel” lifts on the buses are lousy. Wheelchair people might get hurt on them, especially little old ladies. So the younger disabled radicals boldly risk their lives purposefully pointing out how faulty the lifts are by riding them the wrong way. One, John Tyler, is my 350 pound weighing radical black haired white Indian hero man. He successfully breaks one of the faulty lifts. The guy has polio and is seriously disabled, and dropping like that is extremely hard on him – and anyone else, if it happened accidentally.

The new lift company then puts the right lifts on the buses. Those “jobbers” hold up to 1000 pounds and have solid metal flaps on the rims of the lifts to ensure your personal safety. And disabled women were involved in the attempt to make sure the lifts didn’t support “worthless” life forms. One of the ladies apparently deliberately fell off the folding camel lift, once. Basically, when you gotta go, you gotta go. But fortunately, she lived through it. Gee, I wish I was that kind of brave.

Anyway, I come along. I'm the girl as the personal care attendant for one of these brave wheelchair people, a male handsome Jew who is the son of two Austrians who fled the Holocaust, and I help ensure the buses are properly ridden once the wheelchair person is strapped in. I have to do battle during this time with white male bus drivers who want to strap in the wheelchair people improperly.

I was the little girl who disappeared through the hole in the wall to avoid her white male father. I manage later to not disappear and hide. I calmly end up accepting having to strap people in while being “bugged” by those drivers, until they learn how to do it right. Their argument is that disabled folks “can go ride in the vans.” Some of them drove vans for the disabled, and I made friends with one such driver, so in general they weren't actually that discourteous.

Nonetheless, I make sure my Jewish fiancée is strapped into a slot on the bus, with what used to be airplane cargo straps from Boeing. It works. Later on, we get married in Golden Gardens Park in Seattle, near Ballard Locks, through a hippie wedding. Both sets of our parents and all our living relatives and friends are there. It’s quite a mixed rainbow crowd of different skin colors and religions, white men and disabled folk alike. Our catering is Matzo Mamas’ cold cuts and cheeses combined with my family’s hot dogs and hamburgers -- plus potato salad. It’s a virtual smorgasbord. Ron and I are wearing Hawaiian shirts, and it’s a lot like a luau too.

Dr. Queen, feeling relaxed, hungry and happy, finds he’s applauding away at a great distance of deep, sleepy space and time. Largely, he's trying to fight the image off. The wedding looks mostly like white people. As he turns to Coletta, he wakes up, as the dream ends with many black disabled people not being able to ride the bus. These are guys like him with no lives of their own. No women to marry, no way to make children. No real job they’ll be allowed to work, no real place to go. They’re stuck living at United Cerebral Palsy Residential Center, working for Boeing, putting together machine parts and not being able to work for an honest living.

And yet, they all need to ride the bus. It would get them out - help them look through a window. The whole entire situation robs them of anything like true dignity, and what they need is to learn to read - mainly. They’re stuck in a strange existence until something gets done. They need to help themselves. Unfortunately, none know if they can. What is the meaning in such a life, you might ponder? I have been away from those black men for so long, maybe somebody has done it, and they are at least riding the buses at long last.

The black man on the bed can barely think. Deep sleeplessness...it will be affecting her again. She was always lovely, but he had noticed her looking extra bedraggled today. She needed something real. Something good in her life, some way better she could feel.

“Coletta, are you ready for this? Something is coming across on the TV that didn’t belong to Sterling. I remember the previous episode -- and this is not the same one in any way, shape or format. Some such is way wrong, and it’s happening, my dear mother goddess. Do you suppose we can do anything about it? HMMMMM!?!?!” He stormily threw an unusually level gaze at her, but glanced away. He was always afraid of his own arrogance with her. But she looked back at him without any fear in her face. All that ran through both their minds was: we could use a vacation, not more utter nonsense in our lives. Instead, now we have to hear from the supernatural.

“Well,” she said dryly, her throat parched with smoking the cigs and the surrounding arid atmosphere, “I suppose we can die at it, handsome, but is that all we’re going to do -- given this?” Is that all there is, she meant. She regained her composure, stretching out on the bed in a luxurious business suit of sorts, one that cannot be described herein but as very lovely in the dark, and yet quite wretched. It was relatively expensive and grey, but rumpled somewhat.

For you see, she had been about town, and her feathers, as her man knew, were completely ruffled. She relaxed assiduously on the bed, and reclined. “Yes, you’re right.” She snuggled next to him. She knew something weird was set for the premises. A sudden heat wave had been drying everyone up, even black people. She is staying the day with him in the middle of a dreadful summer, somewhere in Mississippi, where the summers are usually heat drenched. It is her time with him, found on the run, when they could get together and be.

Something is certainly melting in their mutual intellectual heavens, and as the two spontaneous detectives are learning, there was nothing right on television. Doctor Queen is flipping through several channels at once. He keeps punching the remote with his thumb, wondering why they had what appears to be cable television. He knows that in 1967 or 1968, although the exact year they’re in was weirdly escaping him, all they have is the ability to manually change the channels. The TV is set up for manual, not automatic transmission. He suddenly recalls it was supposed to be 1968, and he has an eerie feeling something monumental has already happened.

Dr. Queen doesn’t know what they are watching, but he and Coletta had certainly come across something new. What was going on, really, that didn’t involve bombings, dead people and having a color coded name? It's a little hot outside, the weather. Steamy, sultry, Mississippi mysterious. The television is full of the war coverage, and local news, sports and weather, but it’s not right. It is all from the future, which is getting to be pretty obvious. The war is being held in Iraq and the Middle East, not Viet Nam and South East Asia. They both wonder if cig smoking, rare for them, has anything to do with this particular mystery switch.

Much earlier, back when everything was still normal, they had seen an unusual sight. Two perfectly white cigarettes had been laid out by someone on the small and dingy plastic table next to their hotel room bed. They had obviously been set up by and for someone else, who had roomed there and left. Yet they’d seemed briefly inviting. Both Dr. Queen and his Coletta had broken down briefly, had decided to enjoy life, and had lit up.

They felt themselves drifting back and forth in time, between the past and the present, with a feeling that the future cannot be far behind . . .the not so fat man gets uncomfortable, and breaks the silence. “Hey, Mommy Dearest there, what do you think? How about exploring outer space without all those Chinese veggies between our teeth?” He neatly flicked away the leftover part of his burnt down cigarette. “Did you unpack our toothbrushes? What do you say? Let’s go exploring. The last thing we were ever responsible for was Viet Nam. Or these bed bunks, sweet as they almost are. I honestly think the war is the reason they want to kill us. Some of us are even Moslems, you know, their old enemies. Did white people do this? It’s like something out of "Ray Radbury" – all of a sudden, we’re in the future. Something tells me we have to go somewhere else.”

He smiles at her. Is there any other soul out there who thinks Africa was maybe the original pits? Heavy duty heat. Dr. Queen thinks, I don’t always like being me, but I’m all we’ve got. I don’t want to go back there, never. “What is going on? They expect someone listening to them as they rant and rave about Heaven and Hell. Africa was Hell, but this USA is the Heaven, you know...?"

Coletta is silent. She likes silence, but has a degree in something else. “You know there’s no God, we are their God, and we did leave the planet earlier. Whoops, lack of sleep.” She brushes her hair back with one long light brown finger, which is perfectly polished. She glares at the finger, realizing it wasn’t all that red and gorgeously shiny previously.

She tiredly spurts, “Yes, something is wrong with one who signifies nothing. Perhaps it is me, perhaps it is you, Mr. Flirt, and perhaps it is the weather…” A hole in the wall diner appears in both of their minds. One of her “other kids” had agreed to meet them there. Their Johnny was like a son to them, but was also someone else’s child. The media of late had made a fuss out of how he had children out of wedlock. How quaint, Coletta sighed, considering that any unwed reporter could be so picky.

Coletta is sighing as she is lying there, sweating mildly. It is so hot. Love with her man is stolen on the fly. Why, this room doesn’t have a fan, she thinks. She slowly drags her hand down his sizeable business suited chest, thinking things don’t change in a thousand years. “Yes, they are into watching us. Why do we in particular attract all of that attention from the European Inquisition? That’s all the KKK ever will be. It is the most curious ideal I’ve ever heard of – that YOU PEOPLE can go to Hell.”

She smiles, meaning why does the Klan attack colored people: blacks, Indians, Jews, Chinese, and whoever? She had and hadn’t studied the history of it. Race wars tended to escape her as to having any realistic meaning to them.

“We’re willing to be at peace with them. Why don’t they leave us alone? Why do they insist on f-----g us over, when they have f-----g themselves to blame?” Ladylike, Coletta coughs delicately into her curved hand. Everything they do they do for the FBI, which is constantly taping them back there in the 1960s, where they belong. A record is being made of their every other action, in an attempt to arrest them for breathing.

“Yes, Coletta, you simply overuse their words. We are not even creatures of cussing, really. Some days I feel like a closet imitation white man. We able bodied Africans will simply never get it…cannibalism. I suppose it freaks out their mental abilities. They simply MUST cannibalize us, because they have figured out that we are cannibalistic electronic color coded parts, lost in the mechanisms and machineries of time, don’t you think? And we do have sex…?

He gently and sweetly strokes her thick, luxuriantly pomaded black hair. They had four children, in a way, maybe more out there somewhere, but enough was enough. Coletta frowns at him summarily. “No, we don’t. Not in front of them. We are going to look for that hole in the wall, starting now. Get up, you old dog, don’t go for the liquor as you never do that, you know, and we don’t have any in here. I am dragging you to that wall if you don’t get out of bed,” she snarled, the angry words jerking out of her melting self.

Sometimes she felt inwardly peeved, when she thought her husband was doing all the damned work. She did help out from time to time, and was on several important committees. But now this: a strange little almost white girl wanted rescued from death at the hands of her overlord white father, whom Coletta could see screaming at her. She is hot, tired and doesn’t want to respond to any such rescue requests. She instead glances down at the cigs pulling their own suck on the bedside table. Smoke curls and wafts up inches from where they lay. Something seems mildly different about the nature of the smoke. Is it only tobacco? It hadn’t tasted quite right.

Coletta finally figures out that it was, well, probably weed. She slowly perceives that the almighty suction device of babyhood has something to do with it. For some reason, a person has “just got” to smoke, even though it causes lung cancer, whether it’s weed or tobacco. She had tried to avoid smoking, but we all have oral fixations. Yes, that was it. Then a certain disgruntled look slips across her silent face as everything goes black. Time sneaks away from the present as it fell back into the past. Falling, she reeled slightly from all of the hard work she had done before, giving one of her own public speeches - and she fainted, her head racing down to the very hard wooden floor.

Dr. Queen's muscular arms stoutly caught her. They were both standing upright, with Coletta’s supple heels clicking on the well polished hardwood floorboards and Dr. Queen’s large men’s shoes firmly planted on his feet. For the first time ever, they realized how odd was the perfect fit of them, how silent the stranger who seemed to be guiding them.

Their gold wedding rings had also been a perfect fit when they got married years ago, and their previously raw, uncomfortable feet were now encompassed in snug, patent leather shoes. This was a bit of a problem. Earlier, they both knew they had kicked off all four of their tight, expensive thick soled shoes. What were they doing still there, with their feet still encased in previously peeled off stockings? First their television set, and now this. It had been easy enough to change the channel, but it was a color TV set.

Had they been smoking an illegal substance…was that stuff Mary Jane? Coletta knew her shoes had been grey soft toed walkers. Now they were black stiletto high heels, quite fashionable, but not what she’d been wearing a few minutes ago. This had something to do with the little girl, and the presumed hole in the wall from the TV show.

Earlier, they had been to a lovely old Chinese hole in the wall restaurant. Johnny had picked up the dinner for them. They’d eaten together and enjoyed it without cameras around everywhere, for a change. Now they were hungry again, for what reason their churning minds fathomed, must have something to do with the cigs being more powerful than they looked. But it had seemed so harmless to take a moment off. Dr. Queen's face shifted into an wide, exotic African smile, the Black Cat.

“I know…perhaps not enough, my darling, as I am an accredited genius, but I’ve the feeling we’re needed somewhere. It has to do with this mysteriously hot onset of weather. We are experiencing a Field Effect of sorts. I wonder if it’s at all because we are dark. Let us look for that hole in the wall now, before it closes up completely. We are definitely needed by something in there. Somebody else is facing death completely, and we are needed…someone,” he spurted out with a dry chuckle, “needs us off of cigarettes. We’re supposed to not smoke them anymore. We were the university PhD crowd, nah, and she never understood us that profoundly. We are going there now, sugar, so come with me to the wall and let’s see if that hole is there. Courage? She says she has not her own life,” Dr. Queen smiled down at Coletta.

He ended this speech with a gentle note as he stared at his reflection looking back at him through a woman, a real and light black woman. A lady of color - a colored lady. He gripped her hand tightly, swept one arm around her small waist, and practically dragged her through the wall. But they made it down the brief unlit hallway to the little black hole in the wall - and were staring it over, as if waiting for it to speak. As they stood there, beads of salty sweat dropped from both their intent faces.

One of them, with the guts and panache of a lion in what he thought of as the hollow, shabby body of a man, was caught trying to grimace the hole away. Surely it was only another death threat for his woman. One of the reasons his wife was not a “limelight” person was so she could live to take care of their children. Coletta looked surprised, felt hungry, and yet neither one of them could eat the small hole -- nor did both know they could not.

They were brutally overwhelmed by the simple fact they were starving. Yet life itself hinting around about food and drugs was not the answer. The cigs were way back there, and they were someone else entirely as they stared at the little black hole in the wall. Whatever was in the cigs not only clouded their brains, it made them think mainly of food alone. What that meant about how their universe had come unraveled was unknown.

They felt the divine lift “cigs” could give them, and hated it. Yet at the same time - as the brief high dribbled away - they felt like someone was trying to thank them for something, and show them some gratitude. Someone, perhaps the little girl, was trying to give them as much assistance as she could. The drug high was to get them over it, and talk them permanently out of smoking. Dr. Queen filled his hefty chest with a clean breath of air, feeling grateful for that - but growing angrier by the second.

“Your move,” he muttered with exceeding impatience. Coletta knew she wasn’t talking to him, and then something dawned on them both. Cigarettes and tobacco smoking had been invented by Native Americans, and that had something to do with what was now happening. Was it the Indians trying to tell them something through tobacco? A thank you for existing, for helping them too? They did not want to leave from their assigned task, or be poisoned by natives...as they were originally displaced Africans.

Coletta had studied at her school how all humans had originally come from Africa. We had spread out, summarily becoming other racial groups. There was, however, another school of thought where humanity was separated into several species, meeting up again later.

Were the Indians, or Native Americans, somehow an enemy of theirs whom they had discounted? Did this mean Cherokee or whatever tribal vengeance against them, where they had unknown victims due to hypocrisy? The black people marches for their civil rights – was it a mistake to base them on The Trail of Tears? Coletta gulped, recalling that for the Indians, the enforced long marches were much more like The Trail of Blood. Blown away Native American heads, bodies dropping by the roadside as the whites made them walk for hundreds of miles - was this some strange form of vengeance against them?

“No,” she sighed decisively. “We Negroes didn’t make them do that. Long marches have occurred throughout human history. This is all due to inhalation of that idiotic drug. It must be pot. I've never been this hungry in my entire life, and we already ate.”

The dark couple had accidentally broken down and smoked those two leftover perfect cigs, after they had a couple from the pack Dr. Queen had bought. Were they poisoned? What an idiotic assassination that would be. No cameras as they pitched to the floor in their final throes of restless death agonies. Dr. Queen harrumphed, as Coletta deeply bowed her head to such an obnoxious fate. She performed her own feminine glare.

After a short pause, Dr. Queen spoke. “I know she’s needed, somehow, and only wants to thank us for being her alternating purple godparents, yet I do know that racism is a field effect that I studied back at that college in one of my science classes," said Dr. Queen.

The Right Reverend and all. Perhaps the nearest thing to God on the face of the planet was one proud and virtuously arrogant black man. "We must go vanish through that hole for a second and leave. Yet I know we will back out on this empty promise and broken dream that way. Shall we do either, or both? I assume we will risk not coming back. Yet our reality has been so disrupted, I don’t see how we have any kind of a choice.”

“Colored, white, white, colored?" coughed Coletta. “How they must keep us apart for fear of diseases, African and European, except when we exist at their sexual whimsy for the sake of the almighty dollar. What an empty place we must leave momentarily, my darling. Shall we do it, and show them we were Africans? Where does that obvious portal lead us to? Death?” She smiled at him, and he thought he saw the little girl he knew from her family photographs. “Perhaps the Klan has finally mastered further magic powers than wearing those sheets while riding horses - and appearing mysteriously at night.”

“Should we take such a quaint leap in time, go through a purple hole or not, and see into such a future? They will never let us approach the arousing majesty of such an arresting moment, you know," she sighed decisively. "They want to see us groping about sexually in public. We are too conservative for that...the Cotton Club and our entire culture aside. We were practically created to be left to our own devices.”

Coletta’s thoughts faded away. It felt like someone was doing her thinking for her, but she realized she had her own private self intact. She chuckled to herself inwardly. “This is not anything like ladies’ bridge night. I thought you said the worst thing that happened when you were alone was on the spot interviews about your views on the Viet Nam War and communism, and your strange position on . . . ”

“Well, Coletta, as long as YOU feel brave,” cut off Martin, “We can play a game of detective work. What am I but the Batman’s Fatman? My growing fat is merely to survive the bullets, to speed the power of my elocution to help others, and because I already have you. We have been out in the open for quite a long time. The African veldt was stuffed with animals against us. Anything at all could come through that window over there,” stated the portly black gentleman as he stuffed a strange pocket watch out and put it back in.

“I have a feeling we have to travel forward in time, and I do not know why, except to rescue that little girl. Surely you’re feeling particularly courageous?” As his wife was endangered, Dr. Queen did not feel much that way, so he thought to himself, posing a simple question to God. He was quite certain someone else was listening.

Something next told him to examine himself from the outside in. As Dr. Queen looked down, he was puzzled. He could see his waistline, and he really didn’t feel as overweight as he had before. It was as if he was slowly shrinking back to his previously lean self.

Coletta looked at him without that lost little girl look, and then sighed. “Those cigs are indeed a drug from Hell. I suppose we shall simply have to go back to where we belong, back to the future, back to the past, back to…where we must have come from.”

“Hush up, Coletta, and let’s jump hoodoo the damn hole, now, lady.” He looked at her with a terrific smile on his lips. “We are simply needed elsewhere. So what’s wrong with taking a chance once in a while? We are the deadest ducks in all of human history. We’re Daffy Duck, we’re this, we’re that, LET’S SEE IF IT’S REALLY THERE!!!”

Even Coletta lurched back at the power and timbre of his mighty voice. But she was so used to him, she smiled as she did her favorite joke, waving in front of her face to make the breeze there go away. She was now Baptist too, like her husband, and forever elegantly so. Baptist means, let’s face hellfire, and brimstone, and actually get in a fight occasionally. The girl they were planning on rescuing was also Baptist - through her father's East German side of the family.

The woman outside the hole paused briefly and dreamed of lighting up another smoke. She had smoked before, and it had never given her so much trouble. Lung cancer, said a voice coming from somewhere. "I can handle a cigarette or two," she told the air.

Coletta fell silent. She realized deeply that making fun of racism was no fun, and felt mildly peeved at herself. The little girl, when grown up, had been misused by blacks, browns, and whites, and also well treated by them all. She had also miraculously saved the lives of a black woman and her two probable rapists by simply interfering with a house burglary, later when she had grown up. She had not only escaped the hole, she had become someone who was at least helpful to others.

A feeling in Coletta’s head stated this, but said they were still needed somewhere – if they wanted to go. “Why not?" interrupted her proud husband's stentorous growl of a voice. "Don’t ever get that way, lady of mine, but I’m opening up this mystery hole with my barest hands. I’m going to jump into it alone. Unless you change your summarily untitled mind. I can't stand being this curious any longer. Can you wait for me?”

Coletta sneakily looked up at him. “God is but a boy, and I am only your girl,” she sweetly breathed. “I’ll jump too, because your real name is Mike King - my "Mikey." I love you and always will, but you’re not leaving me behind, not this time."

It was malicious. Very malicious of her. She untwisted her face into a pretty grin. “Do go jump first.” Ladies only of the evening do not do specific things. They are different – they get to be “hah yallow” and say stuff apparently, mused Dr. Queen. “No, and although I may be going first, we are jumping together,” sighed the large and portly Negro gentleman. He was now rather thin and attractive, and starting to feel both afraid and angry at himself. He also had a feeling they were being watched by strange people. Surely this new trickery could not end well for either of them.

He hoped whoever it was would die more horribly than she would. He had loaded his letters to fellow ministers and certain public speeches with every word he could find that featured anything like the French term “Negro” in it. His speeches seethed with word bullets, right back at ‘em for enslaving and subsequently killing his kind, and robbing them of their freedom. Everyone in town was gunning for him - for fear of a terrible woman. My wife will always be my queen, he thought, no matter what happens. Melting, melting, is the Queen, melting, melting, so obscene.

He bowed his head in seeming prayer, disguising his dark face. The hole was emanating a mysterious power of light that was screaming white people, weird spacey noises, and the scrambling of brains.

It was so, even though he had always tried to temper his oratory with the depth and wisdom of human understanding. Even though watering down his speeches was needed, for the sake of masses who did not attend college, he had tried to include something which would not be so lowly in them. Children were what he had leaned on in his most famous speech. Airy fairy . . . children.

All children everywhere are subject to the adult laws of chance. They don’t hold hands on a playground, and can’t ever be that way. “I knew that,” said the black Negro gentleman. “I was using Christian allegory.”

Sterling cuts in sideways with: Is that enough digression for you? Dr. Queen finally pulled the wretched hole wide open with a jerk - and saw a suctioning dark vortex where it had been. It looked mysteriously like they’d get pulled into something unspeakable. He ground his capped white teeth slightly, didn’t feel like himself at all, and wilted at it.

How could he protect his wife now, by being the one who died? They were both too proud to turn down entering the thing, and it might mean being lost somewhere forever, or worse. There had to be Hell to pay.

The heat was building way up outside, and he seemed to be sweating too profusely. This was getting altogether worrisome. “I suppose I should smoke a cigarette at it and see if it does go away. Oh, it shall my darling, as I am an electronic component part of amazing humanity of the astonishing Eventide Zone that we are already in, so..?” With an arch smile, he cocked his large head at her quizzically. “Your move.” He realized even he couldn’t get the significance of this dreadful moment.

What was on the other side of that infinite . . . hell hole? “So what?” was dragged out of Coletta, as she had obviously gotten nothing that she wanted out of life but him, who was her man, and a degree, and a fabulous party of some sort had been deeply appreciated. She was suddenly aware that it was fit for a queen, to be held some thirty-five years in the future. A jubilee. Her own Irish wake. And her children were all alive.

Any such children were lost to the obscurity of the thing called history. She had graduated valedictorian from high school. She had breezed through college without much trouble. She had aced all of those classes. But she was extremely tired, and felt like she was gonna drop dead any second. And she had children. Oh, so many children to capture and shoot, like they were indeed foreign wildlife of sorts. White, black and brown children to strut before the camera in extremely disheveled nervousness.

“Perhaps we are the very partiers, my king?” was what she finally said. “I am a Scott, you know, and it is obvious something is odd around these parts….” If what one needed was a true Scot of any sort. What was that? And what’s really the nature of the God Queen had studied? It or He made people suffer, not like a good God would, and then hideously canned the entire human race.

Canned, as in forever, the human race? They both turned to stones of dour attention as they contemplated the infinite lack of meritritiousness of potential Hell. Bad feelings washed over them, breaking like painful waves on the shores of their worst doubts about life. Maybe they no longer had any reason to go on living. Life as they knew it was over.

Hell itself, right before them, as if on the horizon of their own doubt. There was something new in the world called Global Warming. The phrase came to both of them in a blinding split second. Calling them forth had happened again. Baptism by fire was happening again. They were being asked to do something straightaway about it, when nothing could be done, at least not by the studious pair of them. Who would do this?

A future icon, they simultaneous realized - an ode to the future - called a disease free white person. That was the nature of the so-called God. Which Coletta knew was technically impossible. One has to digest one's food. The little “white” girl was freckly - and not disease free, either.

“Oh yes, the Klu Klux Klan. They are the ones who leave them scattered through the woods like so many lost limbs of brown trees . . . it must be her, on the other side,” Coletta finally stated decisively. “Let’s enter the hole, but I don’t want to at all. It would be so lesbian, so very thespian and I simply don’t do anything like that. I’m nervous, my dear! I thought of lesbianism. A voice told me Johnny would have problems with that. He wanted to not have a separate but equal marriage license for them.” In real life, “Coletta” supported gay rights, as well as other left wing rights.

“Are we physically disabled or not? Do we ask questions or not? What is life, after all, my dear Coletta? We are obviously nowhere near it at the moment - and I’m tired as you are. It is a drag knowing we are both African enough to tolerate this and unable to do it permanently. Something now thinks we need life amongst the joyful stars and … ”

They stopped. They realized they were human, and afraid, not of evil, but of something good for them. They were highly selfless, unselfish types, generally speaking. They had almost stalked away from the potential obtuse field effect that Queen had been studying. It had to do with major flocculation between joy and sorrow. It had to do with a baby’s cry at night, and how it taught you not to need sleep anymore. Lack of sleep can make people into strange bedfellows, in the racially segregated hotels they are forced to sleep in at night. And to be watched can make certain African wonders - oh so angry. While breathing. Hard, deep and with a mounting angry curiosity at the immense hole. It seemed to beckon them inside, with a suctioning fearsome blackness.

What little girl?

But they kept it themselves in the quiet of a restful sleep they had once altogether shared, the sleep of those who had never done a specious drug, and also of those “done gave away” no sleep. They remembered a certain "son" of theirs, Johnny, who seemed to have accomplished nothing. In short, he may have accomplished something. He may have helped there be brief peace, the only kind possible, in the Middle East. He had at least won awards for helping others, and cared about poverty stricken black people, even at his own expense. Dr. Queen broke a noble grin as he peered across the small distance at his wife, whose ample, redly bow rimmed mouth stretched into a sort of petulant grimace.

Call it churchy experimentation, screw the afterlife, and eat some socks. Did either of those two want to go to Hell for other people?

“One moment, my sweet, and do take my hand. We must leap through time and space, but must leave our world behind to do it. We must take this…jump…indeed,” he mused as their two fairly slim black bodies in business suits scrunched through the symbolic cervix that was finally dilated enough for them both, albeit it being several feet wide instead of several centimeters. They were smiling a secret African smile, and needed to “go back to where they once belonged,” swiftly moving up the stairs of a large and silver hued machine.

One of them was outracing the other and practically leaping up the stairs, for you know, at least then, they could truly be African at last. But the other one was heading up the stairs with mounting terror. Yes, it was Coletta. She grabbed the coattails of Dr. Queen, who was sprinting upward as "superior man," and she decided this must be a prettier way to die. He always had been the impatient type. She was slowly inching her way up the stairs at lightening speed, while wearing stiletto heels yet, and while tightly holding his hand. She had to assume her place behind him with a casual reluctance. It seemed mostly like home to her.

She was escaping the KKK’s Inquisition, and taking her man with her - all the way. She and he were leaving the most major commitment of their lives behind, to help a little white girl who now had a brown daughter, to save her from the same thing that had gone for them -- that which notices any vulnerability and always ruthlessly exploits it.

As the former little girl - and then grownup personal care attendant - had lost my job, I was feeling like too much of my life had been devoted to the disabled. It had hurt me a lot to lose my disabled husband to death. I’d been rescued by someone much older than me – a man from the Philippines. He was a degreed doctor who was an osteopath. He’d been a helicopter medic like on TV’s MASH series, but during the Viet Nam War.

He appeared to me after my disabled Jewish husband had died. He sat behind me in a certified nursing class, and kicked my chair hard to get my attention. We ended up having one child – a girl. It turned out that Pinoy Remmie is a bar mitzvah Jew, which is rare in the almost entirely Catholic Philippines. His Dad gave him the coming of age party.

Meanwhile, the pomade in Coletta’s hair had loosened, and what was left was strikingly gorgeous in the light filtering through the filthy silver windowpanes. Surely, mused Dr. Queen, we are still in a cheap hotel, but it’s mutating into something like NASA Headquarters. Slowing down, they filed up the stairs, thinking that whatever it was it was -- and it was -- and it WAS -- up there, and they must seek it out, kill it possibly, or simply withstand it. One of them got humorously adventurous. Yes, it was Dr. Queen.

He looked handsome to her, and she winked back at him - oh so tiredly. She smoothed her own ruffled feathers of a lady’s rumpled grey clothing. “Somehow,” she sighed in an awesomely dry and sophisticated way. “To the stars, as we all ooze into a giant grilled and ham patty cheese melt . . .”

“Somehow,” agreed Dr. Queen, panting as he moved up the stairs. “We should hate to tell her, but we already know what’s going on in everyone else’s heat heightened mind. We go where we head, but I know precisely where I wanted to be. Shall we? Compassion was made for this life, and you are surely the next one. I shall send for all of our children.”

He reached down, helping Coletta up the final steps. But as they silently approached the stair top, they both realized they were destined to go back to The Movement. Breathing sighs of relief between them, they made a final advance up the stairs. Other phrases were whispered in their ears.

“You shall have to wait for me after all, my dear Coletta,” smiled Dr. Queen. “I will be leaving the planet first, as we all figured, when we return. For a moment, I had hoped to keep you with me.”

“I’ll wait for you until I die. And I never wanted to desert all those people for one little girl,” said Coletta. “But we had to answer this supernatural challenge. I didn’t mind rescuing her, even if she was white, but I’m relieved we’re definitely returning. Now, what is up there?”

For what are mere words? – With this, Rod Sterling cuts in again and then leaves. He exits to the left, and I enter from the right. I say this: Gratitude came to me when John Tyler had rescued me from my father. John had wheeled up to me on the street in Seattle and hired me for a job working for the disabled, which happened before I went home that day to tell my Dad in Bremerton that I wanted my parents to fund my school in California. I was going to tell them that community colleges in CA were pretty cheap. If my volatile dad had found something wrong with that – who knows? Maybe he would have succeeded at killing me off – directly or indirectly.

It is that “Who knows?” that drives all unsoiled machinery. Would colored and white parts on the bus have worked out? I doubt it. All those people knew in their own heads what that meant. As I knew that it might work out working for the disabled, as it allowed me plenty of time for writing.

Once NASA keyed in on our couple, they’d entered the small area within the octagonal white spacecraft. They felt like they were vacationing in the Florida Keys, where the National Aeronautics and Space Administration used to be located. It was dingy white on the outside, incredibly complicated in its divine machinery all around, and high tech wonderfulness on the inside. And outside, the scenery was spectacularly lovely to their swiftly filling up senses.

They were in something like the Space Shuttle combined with an immense rocket of a futuristic stripe. They strapped themselves into the lounge like capsule seats. Somehow, they now knew what the Hell they were doing as they worked the controls. The past has again fully become the future, at least for the moment.

There is a little girl standing near the launch pad, watching them. The girl - mine and my husband’s - some grown and with nut brown skin and freckles - is waving at them from a short distance of space and time. Unlike my auburn red hair, she has long, shiny black hair. “Welcome to your trip to Jupiter,” she says as the spaceship begins its ascent. And I am putting it all down for posterity, or possibly for my posterior, which is beginning to smart. I’m sure yours must be starting to feel much the same way.

But as the immense moon-sized red spot on the surface of the gaseous giant named Jupiter hovers into view for them, the Queens peacefully fall asleep. They’re still holding tawny and brown Negro hands as we watch the white spaceship disappear into the warm summer sun. As it vanishes, it seems to melt throughout the far-flung distance.

Jupiter has a long history of waiting for someone really cool to settle on it. It's too big of a planet to go entirely without any intelligent life forms forever. The Movement will have to wait, or perhaps was finished a brief while ago. Some folks think it is over with, anyway.

We now switch to the vast depth of nighttime space, bejeweled with myriad glowing stars, as Sterling comes back on stage. “You know who the Queens were,” he enchanted sighs. Rod finishes the episode: Such is life itself, moody, mysterious and altogether Mississippi charming. You never know which twists and turns it may take, even though you might be able to guess. Such as when you are a pair of relatively unpaid civil rights workers. Or something more than a mere pair of them.

Such is life when you yourself happen to be the key component of The Eventide Zone. Oh, and by the way – drink some more lemonade. It’s good for you.

THE END

Executive Director and President of Rainbow Writing, Inc., Karen Cole writes. RWI at http://www.rainbowriting.com is an affordable online professional freelance writing agency working for everyone from low end to celebrity clients, and specializing in the ghost writing, editing, promotions and marketing of books and screenplays.

Obama Brings Flush Times for Black News Media

2009-03-28T13:21:00.000-07:00

By RACHEL L. SWARNS
Published: March 27, 2009

WASHINGTON — For the nation’s black magazines, newspapers, and television and radio stations, the arrival of the Obama administration has ushered in an era of unprecedented access to the White House.

President Obama gave Black Enterprise magazine his first print interview and gave a black talk show host one of his first radio interviews. This month, he invited 50 black newspaper publishers to meet with him at the White House. And at his news conference Tuesday, he skipped over several prominent newspapers and newsmagazines to call on Kevin Chappell, a senior editor at Ebony magazine...(for the rest of this article, click on the link in the title above.)

John Hope Franklin

2009-03-27T14:37:00.000-07:00

By BRENT STAPLES
Published: March 26, 2009
The New York Times

Every death leaves a conversation unfinished. The one I regret not finishing with the historian John Hope Franklin, who died Wednesday at the age of 94, focused on what it was like to be a rising black intellectual in the Jim Crow South. In particular, I wanted to hear more about Dec. 7, 1941, the day he and his wife, Aurelia, drove from Charleston, S.C., to Raleigh, N.C. — covering the better part of two states — before they reached home and learned that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor...(read the whole article by clicking on the link in the headline above.)

Review of Martin Luther King Jr's, "Letter From Birmingham Jail"

2009-03-23T16:58:00.000-07:00

By Gregory Akerman

In "Letter from Birmingham Jail" Martin Luther King strives to justify the need for nonviolent direct action in order to end all forms of segregation and helping the civil rights movement. He wrote there are unjust laws and just laws. He believes segregation laws were unjust because it damages the personality and makes African American lives below the standards given to them by the Constitution. He believes just laws to be laws that are for everybody and it positively affects the group.

He wrote this in response to his fellow clergyman's assertion that breaking the law is not how to achieve equality. King countered that one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. King had hoped that the white moderates would accept the equality of African American people with white society. King writes this letter to persuade his clergymen to remain strong and keep fighting to end racism and prejudice.

Martin Luther King was sent to prison for having a direct action parade and protest in order to advance the Civil Rights Movement. He wrote this letter to his clergymen in order to make them understand that they were breaking unjust laws that needed to be changed, especially after the Supreme Court decision that ended segregation. He wanted everybody to understand that this decision had to be upheld. I believe Luther's actions truly reflect his belief that all people should be equal. His actions also shows his commitment to the movement and the fact that this man was a leader.

For Discounted Land For Sale, Visit Silver Discount Properties. You can buy land for huge discounts, and even sell your own land!

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Gregory_Akerman

The Jack the Ripper Story - The First Victim Martha Tabram

2009-03-19T12:23:00.000-07:00

By Georgi Dagnall

A woman's survival in the East End was almost totally dependent on a man sharing his wages and home with her. Without a provider or a job of her own, she would likely become a prostitute to survive. An East End prostitute would sell herself for the price of a drink or a few crusts of stale bread. She would have sex on any dark street corner. Her clients were often drunk and could be violent. Her danger increased after she received her few pennies of payment. Gangs of thugs regularly beat prostitutes for their meager earnings, sometimes killing them in the process. Many prostitutes ended their days as unidentified murder victims. Most of these women were quickly forgotten.

A handful of these women have been given a strange dose of fame and immortality thanks to the blade of Jack the Ripper. The first of these unlucky women that we shall meet is Martha Tabram. She was murdered here in the early morning hours of Tuesday, August 7, 1888.

The story begins with the evening's accounts from Mary Ann Connelly, better known on the streets as Pearly Poll. Mary Ann Connelly and Martha Tabram had been drinking late on Monday with two soldiers, a corporal and a private. Poll and her soldier went off on their own shortly before midnight while Martha and her soldier walked in the direction of the George Yard Buildings. About 30 minutes later, Poll and her soldier separated with the soldier heading in the direction of the George Yard Buildings. This is the last time Mary Connelly would see Martha Tabram.

Later in the night, two residents would walk past Martha's body on the landing of the George Yard Buildings. The second resident, John Reeves would take notice of the pool of blood surrounding Martha, and reported the murder to the Police Constable, PC Barret.

When PC Barrett examined the body, he saw the remains of a plump middle-aged woman, 5 feet 3 inches or 1.6 meters tall with dark hair and complexion. She wore a black bonnet, a brown petticoat covered by a dark green skirt and a long dark jacket and boots. Her old and ragged clothes were torn open at the front, and she had been stabbed. She was lying on her back with her legs open and her skirts pulled up. The condition of her skirts and legs led Barrett to believe that she had recently had sexual intercourse.

There was no blood outside the immediate area where the body was found, suggesting that the woman had been murdered in this location. Her clenched hands suggested that she tried to fight back, but the lack of blood around her mouth indicated that she had died quickly from the stab wounds. Neighbors in this crowded building heard no sounds of a struggle mere steps away from their flats.

PC Barrett followed procedure and sent for a doctor to examine the body. Dr. Timothy Killeen examined the body around 5:30 AM and estimated that the woman had died about 3 hours earlier, around 2:30 AM. The body was moved to the mortuary where Killeen performed an autopsy. With the clothes removed from the body, he could see that the woman had been stabbed, not once or twice, but 39 times. Altogether there were 22 stab wounds to the woman's trunk, 5 punctures to the left lung, 2 punctures to the right lung, 1 to the heart, 5 to the liver, 2 to the spleen, and 6 to the stomach. He also found blood between the skull and the scalp, which suggests that the woman's head had been impacted shortly before her death. Contradicting Police Constable Barrett, the doctor did not see any evidence of sexual intercourse.

Perhaps Martha was murdered by one of the soldiers three hours after she and Pearly Poll separated. Or maybe she split off from the soldier and picked up another client in the same area, and this new client murdered her. Or maybe she was murdered by Jack the Ripper.

The overkill of 39 stab wounds suggests the murderer felt a great deal of passion, perhaps even anger. Could Martha have teased her client with a joking remark that drove him into a fit of rage? Or was this the first murder of a serial killer who was excited by thrusting his knife into a body over and over again?

To learn more about Jack's first victim, visit http://www.Geogad.com

This content was written and provided by Georgi Dagnall. For further information, please visit http://www.Geogad.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Georgi_Dagnall

Narrowing the Voting Rights Act

2009-03-11T14:09:00.000-07:00

Editorial, The New York Times
Published: March 10, 2009

The Supreme Court narrowed the scope of the Voting Rights Act this week when it ruled that it does not require states to create so-called crossover districts. The regrettable 5-to-4 ruling overturns two of the act’s central goals: protecting minority voting rights and moving the nation toward a more colorblind future...(to read the whole article, click on the link above.)

Just Have Faith

2009-03-02T19:26:00.000-08:00

“…what is seen was not made out of what is visible.” Hebrews 11:3b

I’ve been setting intentions, naming it and claiming it, visualizing and speaking positive things into my life, but one thing I truly lacked was an understanding of faith. I’ve always seen faith as a muscle – one that needed to be exercised in order to be effective. Superstitiously believing that I should be careful what I asked for because…I just might get it. Ask for more patience – get more trouble; ask for more strength – get more adversity; ask for more power – get more work. I already had enough on my plate. So you can understand how even though I wanted to have more faith, something inside resisted it. After all, who wants more challenges, pain and difficulties in their lives? We’re living through an era where we can’t afford to hear any more bad news. Job losses are at an all time high. Businesses that have been around for decades are closing their doors. The divorce rate is high, the cost of education is skyrocketing, and the cost of living is out of control. Good, honest, hard working people are loosing their homes. People every where are wondering what happened to the American dream. So, I definitely wasn’t going to ask for any more trouble.

So my thinking was, ask for more faith – get more tests. And God knows that I’ve already had plenty of that. So here’s a challenge - instead of asking for more faith, why not use the little faith you have? You don’t need much faith to move mountains. It only takes a little to do the trick. It struck me all of sudden that I’ve been thinking about this thing all wrong. Having faith isn’t some mystical thing that only those with superior spirituality have. It’s not complicated at all. That is why the people with the most faith are children. They don’t complicate matters – they just believe. Using your faith isn’t difficult at all - especially when you understand what faith really is. Instead of asking for more faith, try exercising the faith you already have - so that it will grow. What is faith?

It is the substance of the very things you hoped for.

The things that you are hoping for, setting intentions about, dreaming and wishing for; the things that you are writing vision statements about and setting goals to achieve all have substance. This substance already exists. Otherwise, your mind couldn’t have conceived it. Our creative minds have locked into a vision of what we will be or what we will have because it already exists. I believe that everything you need was placed inside of you on the day you were born. Through the course of our lives, we grow from experiences and challenges; we come in contact with others that help to make us who we are. However, we have everything we will ever need to accomplish our God-given vision. So your goal to own your own business has substance that is already inside of you. Your dream of becoming a great artist, activist, chef, doctor, lawyer, business person, minister or great leader, has substance that is already inside of you. Once you have a burning desire in your heart, you already have the substance required to manifest your dreams. What is faith?

It is the evidence of things that you don’t see.

The challenge we face on a daily basis is that we just can’t see the things that we are hoping for with human eyes. Prior to the 17th century, when Anthony Leeuwenhoek improved the microscope, no one had ever seen bacteria and tiny animals swimming around in a droplet of water. Obviously, just because we can’t see microscopic germs doesn’t mean they are not there. Just because our dream hasn’t manifested, doesn’t mean they are not real. It takes everything we have to stay focused. It’s so easy to give up hope, get lax in our pursuit of the dream or to get side tracked because the thing we desire isn’t yet visible.

Don’t get discouraged. Even though you don’t see it - it’s there. Just because we don’t yet have the evidence, doesn’t negate its existence. Just because we don’t see it, doesn’t mean it’s not real. But if we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it exists in spite of what we see; then we can diligently pursue it. If we look for the evidence, we are likely to find exactly what we’re looking for. If we look for the evidence, we will have more and more opportunities to discover clues that lead us to its manifestation. If we pursue the evidence, we will spend more time seeing the things that are in alignment with that evidence. If we become investigators, we will follow the trail that leads directly to the evidence and the manifestation of our dream. What is faith?

It is belief in the invisible.

What is seen was not made out of what is visible. What a powerful statement. Let me say it this way: what we SEE now was made from something INVISIBLE. So, if you think about it, everything that we see today began with an invisible thought in someone’s mind. God created the world from a thought. Man invented trains, planes and automobiles from a thought. Martin Luther King had a dream that manifested itself in the likes of Barak Obama. Jim Carey wrote out and carried around a ten million dollar check because he had a dream of being compensated for acting services rendered – the ten million dollars came to pass in the form of compensation for a movie entitled “Dumb and Dumber.”

All the amazing accomplishments and wonderful things that we see today were made out of something that was once invisible. The fact that your dream has not yet manifested doesn’t mean it isn’t possible. It just means that it is invisible to the naked eye. You need the microscope of faith in order to see your dreams for what they are. You have got to understand that your future is made out of things you can’t see right now.

There are many reasons why some things can’t be seen. Maybe it’s not the right time or place. Maybe you’re not ready. Maybe the people who are to be served by what you have to offer are not ready. Maybe like Martin Luther King, it’s waiting on the beneficiary of the dream to come. Who knows why your dream hasn’t manifested yet? But the fact that you have the burning desire, tells me that the dream has substance, has a trail of evidence and will be made visible when the time is right.

Everything we see today was once invisible. Your dream, though invisible today will be manifested. Just have faith!

Andrea Richards Scott is a Certified Professional Coach and the Executive Director of ARS Professional Development. To find out more about her coaching, consulting and communications services, visit www.thedynamicactioncoach.com

This article is free for republishing
Source: http://www.articlealley.com/article_759617_24.html

Herbie Hancock, Zakir Hussain relive Dr King's dream

2009-02-21T17:11:00.000-08:00

February 17, 2009

New Delhi (PTI): Jazz legend Herbie Hancock weaved his magic at "The Living Dream " concert here to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first visit of American civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr to India.

As vocalists Chaka Khan and Dee Dee Bridgewater's powerful voices reverberated with "We shall Overcome," the high point of the evening was a jugalbandi by recent Grammy-winner Ustad Zakir Hussain on the tabla while Hancock and multi-Grammy winner George Duke glided over the piano here late Monday evening.

Martin Luther King III, the son of Martin Luther King Jr, who was present on the occasion said, "Music brings people together. In our tradition, the freedom tradition, if Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Junior were with us today they might not have told us that we shall overcome but may be in some degrees we have overcome."

"My father used to tell me that while he visits other countries as a tourist, when it comes to India, he visits the land as a pilgrimage. We share the tradition of freedom," he said.

Hancock is part of the official US delegation led by Martin Luther King III, which is retracing the steps of his parents - Martin Luther King, Jr and his wife Coretta Scott King in India, the land of the Mahatma Gandhi.

The jazz pianist, who is visiting India for the third time, said "It is a great pleasure to be in India again after 2006. And more so when we are celebrating the meeting of two great visionaries whose vision resulted in the first black President to America."

George Duke and Zakir Hussain got a resounding applause for the "Brazilian Love Affair" and Rythym and Blues Singer Chaka Khan, who has won the Grammy 10 times performed a special composition, "A night in New Delhi."

While the concert was inaugurated with Dr King's famous "I have a Dream" speech playing in the background it concluded with an attempt at a jazz version of "Raghupati Raghav" which went offkey and had Zakir Hussain singing along to help the musicians hit the right note for the 'bhajan,' which was considered to be the Mahatma's favourite.

Grammy winner jazz vocalist and UN Goodwill Ambassador Bridgewater dedicated the "Amazing Grace," a gospel number that she said "spanned many decades" to the "memory of Martin Luther King, Jr and Gandhi," a celebration of two of the most important men in the 20th century who were responsible for changing the cultures.

The select audience comprised among others Pandit Ravi Shankar whose Institute of the Performing Arts students would exchange lessons with musicians from the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz, one of the co-organisers of the concert.

The concert featuring Hancock and others presented by the ICCR would also perform in Chennai.