The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  was born on January 15, 1929. A national holiday   to honor his memory and accomplishments happens every year near this date. It's this weekend.

I'm an admirer of Dr. King . I remember hearing him on the evening news and the palpable change in consciousness he brought about. Before King, you see, Civil Rights for African Americans  were hard to get, and small gains were so often reversed. Americans were either oblivious or opposed to justice for Blacks. After King began  his work, though, people were suddenly aware of African Americans' struggles, and many who were oblivious became sympathetic.

I remember his murder in 1968, too. School was cancelled, and our neighborhood was absolutely silent. Most people were watching TV, but even birds and dogs were quiet that day. I was a little kid, but I felt the enormity of it. More than war, or Nixon, music, or any other factors that shaped that era, those last couple years of Dr. King's life affected me and the person I have become.

It's those words. And that voice.

King was a magical speaker . Certain arias in opera bring tears to my eyes — some sort of reaction to the emotion in music, I guess. (No wisecracks!) It doesn't happen with any other music. Whenever I listen to Dr. King's speeches, the same darn thing happens — I get all misty and sniffly. I can't watch documentaries on Dr. King or the Movement without becoming a wreck I credit the power of conviction in King's words, as well as the royalty of his voice. He's truly larger than life.

So I was picking through some old LPs in a 2nd hand store last year, and came upon this record. It is the speech Dr. King gave in Detroit in June, 1963 , as he moved toward the historic rally at the Lincoln Memorial   that summer. The speech  he delivered was the first time he used the "I Have a Dream" piece — perhaps the greatest speech of the century.

The record, by the way, was captured and distributed by Gordy Records, a division of Barry Gordy's Motown  label. Gordy Records was the label Motown developed for spoken word albums , a standard genre of the time. "The Great March To Freedom: Rev. Martin Luther King Speaks" was the inaugural disc from Gordy.

So there you have it — my personal MLK Day. It means a lot to me because he means a lot to me. Also, Guided By History will blog about Black History Month  most of February.

Let this be the first post that celebrates Black History! 

Posted by Charles at 11:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Found in Artifacts, Assassinations, Events, First-hand Accounts, Holidays, Misc, Music, Opera, Perspective, Protests, Remember, Wells Fargo Bank

On May 21, 1979 , San Franciscans marched to City Hall to protest the conviction of former Supervisor Dan White. White was found guilty of manslaughter for the assassinations of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk  the previous November. White's defense had successfully argued "diminished capacity": White's crimes were not premeditated, but the result of stress exacerbated by junk food.

Marchers protested the verdict because they felt it did not fit the crime—the assassinations of Moscone and Milk shocked the city and resonated across the nation. The sentiment was strong that the lighter sentence reflected anti-gay and anti-progressive prejudice. Milk  had been the first openly gay city official, and Moscone  had built his political career advocating for minorities and the poor. Moscone strongly supported gay rights.

Progressives had recently won close political races in San Francisco, and the tension between them and opponents was high. Dan White had been a conservative supervisor and had lost a political decision. He resented progressives' rise as his own career failed, and he blamed Moscone, Milk and others. He gunned down Moscone and Milk on Nov. 27, 1978.

Reaching City Hall , many protesters kept it peaceful, chanting, "Remember Harvey Milk!" and "We want Justice!" But some gave free rein to their anger and started wrecking fixtures and breaking glass. They set police cars ablaze. While radicals went wild, the crowd demanded "No more violence!"—but the melee got worse. Police arrived and got control after some time.

The '70s have a rap as being a decade of self-indulgence, of a lackluster political consciousness compared with the crazy '60s. But the "White Night" riots demonstrate that a movement for civil rights  was fully underway, full of energy and with a quick activist response. Politics was still hotly contested between old power and new power. And the death toll of leaders, which had marked the 1960s in Dallas , Memphis  and Los Angeles , was still a specter in public life.

Posted by Charles at 03:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Found in Assassinations, Dan White, George Moscone, Harvey Milk, Perspective, Protests, Remember, San Francisco, Wells Fargo Bank, White Night Riots