Call Him Reverend King

[Geee]

American Thinker:

You probably don't know who Reverend Michael King, Jr was.

That's because Reverend Michael King, Jr is the only private citizen to have a national holiday in his honor, and is Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

King's father changed his and his son's names to Martin Luther in honor of the German reformer, Martin Luther.

 

Martin Luther, of course, was a German monk, a professor theology and iconic figure of the 16th century reform movement of Christianity, also called the Protestant Reformation. He argued that you could not buy your way into Heaven, or avoid God's wrath, but instead must rely on God's grace. Martin Luther was ostracized by both the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, when he refused to retract all his writings at the Diet of Worms in 1521. For this he was excommunicated by the Pope and condemned as an outlaw by the Emperor.

Like his namesake, Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr fought against the systems of his day. King used religion and God as his tools. And as a good friend and fellow black Conservative said to me recently, "God will free people who believe from slavery." And that's exactly what happened. Black people escaped bondage once again, as racist Democrats led by a racist government were forced to bend to the will of God.

So why is Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr, now referred to as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr?

[Valin]

The prophetic voice

Scott Johnson

1/20/14

 

When Martin Luther King, Jr., brought his nonviolent campaign against segregation to Bull Connors Birmingham, he laid siege to the bastion of Jim Crow. In Birmingham between 1957 and 1962, black homes and churches had been subjected to a series of horrific bombings intended to terrorize the community. In April 1963 King answered the call to bring his campaign to Birmingham. When King landed in jail on Good Friday for violating an injunction prohibiting demonstrations, he took the opportunity to meditate on the counsel of prudence with which Birminghams white ministers had greeted his campaign.

 

Kings Letter from Birmingham Jail was the result. Reading the Letter fifty years later is a humbling experience. Perhaps most striking is Kings seething anger over the indignities of segregation:

 

 

 

I guess it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, Wait. But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick, brutalize and even kill your black brothers and sisters with impunity; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she cant go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see the depressing clouds of inferiority begin to form in her little mental sky, and see her begin to distort her little personality by unconsciously developing a bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son asking in agonizing pathos: Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?; when you take a cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading white and colored; when your first name becomes nigger, your middle name becomes boy (however old you are) and your last name becomes John, and your wife and mother are never given the respected title Mrs.; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tip-toe stance never quite knowing what to expect next, and plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of nobodiness; then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into an abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.

 

Snip)