Before the Media Lionized Martin Luther King Jr., They Denounced Him

Excerpts:

Fifty years ago today, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was gunned down in Memphis.

Every major press outlet in the United States will commemorate his life this week. The Washington Post is running a series of commentaries. The New York Times ran an emotional editorial written by the Reverend Jesse Jackson, who was with King in Memphis that fateful day.

Neither paper will mention that they each denounced Dr. King in his later years.

The condemnation of what became known as King’s “Beyond Vietnam” speech was universal. One hundred and sixty-eight newspapers denounced him in the days that followed. These editorials had a peculiarly vicious flavor. It was clear that King’s main transgression was not knowing his place.

The Washington Post wrote that King had “diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, and his people.”

The New York Times, in “Dr. King’s Error,” reminded King that his proper battlegrounds were “in Chicago and Harlem and Watts.”

They said King, as an individual, was of course free to think about Vietnam, but, as a leader of black people, he had an obligation to stay in his lane, i.e. to “direct [his] movement’s efforts in the most constructive and relevant way.”

Poisonously, and characteristically – for this is a propaganda trick that sadly has survived to this day – the Times also took King to task for his suspicious failure to admonish the Vietnamese enemy. “It is possible to disagree with many aspects of United States policy in Vietnam,” the paper hissed, “without whitewashing Hanoi.” Even back then, domestic criticism was always linked to comforting a foreign enemy.

I'm not really sure what the point of articles like this are, other than to get people angry at each other. Probably to drive clicks, I guess. Can't say I expected much from the magazine that ran the false UVA rape case.