In These Troubled Times We Really Need to Remember Martin Luther King-Now More Than Ever

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 This weekend we celebrate what would’ve been Martin Luther King‘s 81st  birthday. In doing this we take time out to reflect on his life and the words he delivered on the issues of peace and social justice.

This year I wanted to put forth one of my favorite speeches by Dr King called ‘Entrance into the Civil Rights Movement.. It’s an important speech in the sense that it highlights what was at the core of King’s essence-his relationship to God and his ability to call upon the Holy Spirit.  It’s a very moving speech where he outlines the challenges he was facing as a leader and how he to look deep inside himself in order to move forward…
 
you can peep the speech here:

http://bit.ly/5t17Ns

 
As we celebrate, I am also including a YouTube video I put together called MLK vs the Radio.. This is contains portions of speech that King gave in August 1967 to a group of Black radio broadcasters. It’s an incredible piece where he talks about the responsibility and important role Black radio played in furthering the Civil Rights Movement. I wanted to reintroduce this speech because many of us are still reeling from the verbal assaults that have been occuring on radio shows like the one hosted by blowhards like Rush Limbaugh who recently made disparaging remarks about  50 thousand Haitans who dies in this weeks earthquake.. I want people to peep this video and ask yourself if media is doing right by you.. This piece also includes the voices of activist Rosa Clemente, Minister Farrakhan, H Rap Brown and Chuck D of Public Enemy…

-Davey D-

 Below is a quick bio  from Wikipedia…

 Martin Luther King, Jr. (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American clergyman, activist and prominent leader in the African-American civil rights movement. His main legacy was to secure progress on civil rights in the United States, and he has become a human rights icon: King is recognized as a martyr by two Christian churches.[1] A Baptist minister,[2] King became a civil rights activist early in his career. He led the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott and helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957, serving as its first president. King’s 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.

MLK vs the Radio-Historic 1967 Speech about the Importance of Black Radio

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MLK vs the Radio
(Historic 1967 Speech to National Association of Radio Announcers )

by Davey D

MLK-brown-leanAs we talk about the plight of Black Radio and the bill proposed by Congressman John Conyers HR 848.. We thought we’d take a walk down memory lane and listen to what Dr Martin Luther King had to say about the role BLACK RADIO played in furthering the Civil Rights struggle..It was a speech given in August of 1967 in Atlanta, Ga.

We included in this video, remarks made by freedom fighter H Rap Brown who talks about the role of entertainers and how they are often manipulated and used against the community by the White Power structure.

We also have excerpts from Minister Farrakhan talking about BLACK RADIO in his historic 1980 speech given to radio deejays at the Jack the Rapper Convention in Atlanta. He talked about how Black Radio deejays are used as agents to dumb down our thinking. What’s interesting to note is that Farrakhan’s speech came 13 years after King in the same month and to a similar body of attendess. The time between King’s speech and Farrkhan’s speech we saw so much of Black radio dismantled and so many of the disc jockeys silences and depoliticized. Farrakhan talks about how station owners went out of their way to hire deejays who would talk jive to the people and do very little to upfift them. Its a trend that many say still exist today.

We round it out with remarks on radio by Hip Hop activists Rosa Clemente made during the historic protest against Hot 97 in spring 2005 and Chuck D during 2Pac‘s Birthday celebration in June of 2005 also in Atlanta. Rosa notes how the people who control NY’s number one Hip Hop station are 7 executives all over 40 who are white men. She accusses them and their deejays of peddling a type of mind drug to the community.

Chuck’s remarks are telling as he notes how elders who are heading up these stations are afarid to grow up and be adults and how they’ve become frightened to speak to their own offspring.

Enjoy.. all these people drop some serious jewels.

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