J. Edgars gift to the civil rights movement

[Crockett]

Clarence B. Jones, an important guiding force in the 1963 March on Washington wrote a terrific book about the experience. FBI memos and transcripts were a great resource. Information collected in J. Egar's paranoia about the "negro problem" provided Jones with verbatim transcripts of telephone calls of which he had only fuzzy recollections.
The Link

 

[Third Coast]

This made me think of the black teacher in NY that was fired a few months ago for using the word "negro" in her Spanish class. She has subsequently sued, claiming she was using it in the Spanish context meaning "black".

 

[Crockett]

I remember a white public housing executive being fired over his use of the word "niggardly" which, alas, was an appropriate, perfect, non-racial word for the point he was trying to make.

 

[NEWDOC2002]

Coincidentally, today is the 50th anniversary of MLK's "I Have a Dream" speech. IMO, one of the most iconic speeches in American history. If we only had such eloquence and rightward passion in today's society.

 

[DFWAg]

Good thing J Edgar did not behave in a a niggardly fashion with his surveillance budget!

Wait, did I just say that?

 

[DFWAg]

Ah, Crockett beat me to it.

 

[DFWAg]

My favorite was Virginia Senator George Allen calling a guy in the audience "Macaca", which he claimed was just a gibberish reference as he did not know the guys name. The guy worked for his opponent and was following Allen from event to event.

Opponents cried racism because:

In reply to:

---

---

 

[Clean]

Why blame it all on J. Edgar? JFK was the President and Bobby was AG, don't you think they probably had something to do with bugging MLK too?

 

[Crockett]

Clean: I guess I view J Edgar as more powerful and sinister than Bobby Kennedy and figure (perhaps incorrectly) that it was pressure from Hoover that caused Kennedy to sign off on the wiretaps. If you have a different take, I'd be interested in what you believe. I'd always seen the Kennedy's as favorable to the civil rights movement while I though Hoover hostile or suspicious.

 

[Crockett]

Sorry for the double post.

 

[Clean]

All I know is that Robert Kennedy personally authorized the wiretaps and wanted to be notified if they found anything. Did he do that because J. Edgar had pictures of JFK or Bobby himself in compromising situations, who knows?

Speaking of compromising situations, I read the wire taps caught King with strange women a couple of times.

I thought the contents of the wiretaps were sealed. Wonder how this guy got a hold of them?

 

[majorwhiteapples]

Don't forget that MLK was a Republican.

 

[huisache]

If you read the insider acounts, Nixon and Johnson were a lot more pro civil rights than the Kennedy brothers, who considered the civil rights movement a nuisance and, with their strong anti commie stances and friendship with Joseph McCarthy, whom Bobby worked for, were suspicious that MLK was a red.

An interesting book on the subject is Of Kennedys and Kings, by a guy who worked for both and became a US Senator from Pennsylvania, Harris Wofford

Hoover was a scumbag longer than the Kennedys but Bobby could match him in ruthlessness

 

[Crockett]

In reply to;
________________________________________________________________________________________
Don't forget that MLK was a Republican.
_________________________________________________________________________________________

If I had ever known that, I had forgotten. That is interesting.

 

[Crockett]

Looks like on MLK being a Republican, there is a "rest of the story" needed:The Link

Were MLK a modern Republican he would no doubt earn the RINO label, with his compassion for the poor and his view that true non-violence is the response to gun violence, not escalation of weapons ownership.

 

[mop]

it is ridiculous to suggest that "compassion for the poor" is not a Republican value when studies show that Conservatives give more money, more time, more blood and more of just about every single appropriate metric to the poor than do liberals. conservatives just believe that government doing this is a very ineffectual way to address poverty.

 

[Crockett]

I guess perhaps compassion for the poor is a conservative value mop, but on public policy issues like CHIP, delivery of women's health services, etc. it's pretty hard for me to imagine MLK moving in lockstep with the conservative dominated Texas government or the national efforts targeting food stamps. I think Rick Perry has certainly expressed concern for the poor and willingness to pray for them, but on public policy issues, he's not an ally to those concerned about those who are hungry or lacking access to medical care.