The Real Robert F. Kennedy (Pt. 3) - Civil Rights
Originally recorded 08/29/24 as the outro for Episode 66 – Jeff Hays: The Real RFK Jr.
Podcast Version: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6
Essay Version: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6
Martin Luther King Jr. & Civil Rights
The American Civil War ended in 1865, after which the reunified South underwent a period known as Reconstruction. In 1868, the 14th Amendment to the Constitution guaranteed black people equal protection under the law, and in 1870, the 15th Amendment granted black men the right to vote.[i]
Many white communities, especially in the South, wanted to marginalize blacks and erase the progress that had been made during Reconstruction. “Jim Crow” laws were established in the South beginning in the late 19th century.[ii] Under Jim Crow, black people couldn’t use the same public facilities as whites, live in the same towns or go to the same schools. Interracial marriage was also illegal. In 1896, the U.S. Supreme Court declared in Plessy v. Ferguson that facilities for blacks and whites could be “separate but equal”.
In 1941, after thousands of black people threatened to march on Washington to demand equal employment rights, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802, which opened national defense jobs and other government jobs to all Americans.[iii] Black men and women served in World War II, but in segregated units. As the Cold War began, President Harry Truman issued Executive Order 9981 to end discrimination in the military.
On December 1, 1955, a 42-year-old black woman named Rosa Parks in Montgomery, Alabama refused to give up her seat on the bus to a white man.[iv] Parks was arrested, an inflection point in American history which led to her later recognition as the “mother of the modern-day civil rights movement”.
Black community leaders formed the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) led by a Baptist minister, Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. The MIA went on to stage a boycott of the Montgomery bus system, which lasted 381 days and led to a 1956 ruling by the Supreme Court that segregated seating was unconstitutional.
MLK Jr. was born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, the second of three children born to Martin Sr. and Alberta King.[v] Martin Jr. studied ministry at Morehouse College, the Crozer Theological Seminary and Boston University. While finishing his PhD, King became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. Martin met his wife, Coretta Scott, while at Boston University, and they went on to have four children. King would become world renowned as the leader of the civil rights movement from the formation of the MIA until his assassination in April 1968, two months and one day before the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy.
In 1954, the Supreme Court overturned Plessy v. Ferguson in Brown v. Board of Education, which made segregation illegal in public schools.[vi] Three years later, Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas asked for volunteers from all-black high schools to attend the formerly segregated school. Nine black students, known as the Little Rock Nine, arrived to begin classes but were met by a screaming mob and the Arkansas National Guard. Republican President, Dwight D. Eisenhower, intervened and ordered federal troops to escort the Little Rock Nine to and from classes.
In September 1957, President Eisenhower signed the Civil Rights Act of 1957 into law, the first major civil rights legislation since Reconstruction.[vii] The law allowed federal prosecution of anyone who tried to prevent someone from voting and created a commission to investigate voter fraud.
Heading into the 1960s, civil rights remained an extremely controversial issue for white politicians. This was especially true for Democrats, as many of the Southern “Dixiecrats”, like Ku Klux Klan member Senator Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, were vehement racists who opposed equal rights for blacks.[viii]
The Kennedy brothers, having grown up in Massachusetts, were less aware of the racial issues in the South until the civil rights movement gained media attention and entered the public consciousness in the ‘50s and ‘60s. Here is Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. describing how his uncle and father came to partner with Martin Luther King Jr. in advancing the civil rights movement:[ix]
RFK Jr.: “My father, when important things happened like when they integrated the University of Alabama, the University of Mississippi, or when they were fighting with the Freedom Riders, my father would write letters to each of his kids and tell them what was happening. He also talked to us every night at the dinner table. And he’d either talk about history, he was an incredible military historian. And he would talk about the battles that changed history. You know, the Demosthenes and whatever. All of these great battles. He would give us very, very vivid descriptions of those battles. But he also would talk about what was happening in the White House. And he, you know, I have a letter at home that says:
‘Dear Bobby, today we nationalized, we federalized the National Guard in Alabama, and we got the six negroes into the University of Alabama. And I hope these troubles are gone when you go to college.’ So, he wanted to keep us updated, which his father had done for him, on current events.
And the story with my father, my dad in the civil rights movement and my uncle. They grew up in Boston. And like, you know, having grown up in New England, they just, civil rights was not an issue there. It wasn’t even on their radar. They didn’t know people who had been, they didn’t know what was happening in the South. They assumed that, you know, the blacks that they met. The very few that were in Boston or Roxbury, that their lives were much like other immigrants. You know?
So, they didn’t - it just wasn’t on their radar. And then, during the 1960 election, they needed to win the South. Nixon and you know, the South was going to be key to the election. That’s why they chose Lyndon Johnson as the Vice President, because that was the way to win Texas. But they were also worried about the other deep south states which traditionally had been always voted for the Democratic party. They called it the Solid South.
But during the Roosevelt era, whites in the South began defecting a little bit to the Republican party. And blacks started voting Democratic. Some blacks, not a majority, but enough to change the elections. The few blacks who were allowed to vote, you know. There was a voting block.
But the whites were more important. And the only way you could hang on to whites in the South was by expressing an antipathy for civil rights. Either indirectly or through dog whistles, whatever.
So, my father, who was the campaign manager, had made deals with three southern governors, powerful governors including Vandiver from Georgia, that they would support JFK. But all of them had said, ‘If you get involved with Martin Luther King, we’re gone. We’re out. Because we can’t stand up, we cannot take that from our own constituents.’
So, my father was kind of avoiding King. And made sure his brother avoided King. Nixon was doing the same thing. And Nixon had been very close to King. They had a strong relationship.
And Republicans had traditionally been on the side of blacks in the South. Since Lincoln and the Civil War. So, in October of 1960, a month before the November election, King gets arrested at a lunch counter sit-in in DeKalb County, Georgia.
And he didn’t even want to do it. He was pressured to do it by some young guys, some radicals – John Lewis and others from SNCC – Southern Non-violent Coordinating Committee, which is another group. And he reluctantly did it, and then he got arrested. And then he’s in the DeKalb County jail at 4:00am in the morning, cops come into his jail cell, drag him out, they don’t tell him anything, they throw him in the back of the police car.
They head south, he’s saying, ‘Where am I going?’ They won’t talk to him. And he said they brought him down to what he called “cracker country”. A place in Georgia where you could easily lynch him, and nobody would complain.
So, and what they were really doing is they were bringing him to a state prison. And they threw him in a state prison. But they didn’t tell Coretta, his wife, where he was, and she was terrified. So, she called Sarge Schriver, my uncle who was always involved in the civil rights issue and she said, ‘I tried to talk to Nixon’, who was then Vice President and could have helped her. ‘He won’t answer my phone calls.’
And that destroyed King’s relationship with Nixon. She calls Sarge Shriver, and she says, ‘Can I talk to the president [sic – presidential candidate]?’ Sarge then goes into my uncle’s office. And his aides are in there, in the Oval Office [sic – JFK was not yet president]. And Sarge says, ‘I want a favor from you. I’ve never asked for one before. Can I talk to you alone?’ Because he knew the aides would not let him make this call. So, the aides all leave the room and Jack then hears the story and says, ‘Yeah, I’ll call her.’ So, he calls Coretta.
My father then, a few minutes later, finds out about it. And he goes to Sarge Shriver angrily, and he says, ‘You just lost us the election’. And my father then goes home, he’s at Hickory Hill changing because he’s getting on an airplane. And he starts thinking about it, you know that they arrested this guy for doing nothing, and how they moved him in the middle of the night, and how they might kill him.
And he didn’t know much about civil rights, but he hated bullies. And in fact, he had played football for Harvard, and they had gone on the road, and he had learned for the first time that a black teammate of his could not stay in a hotel. And he had raised holy hell.
And then at University of Virginia, he had invited a black statesman, Ralph Bunch, to speak there, and he learned about the segregation laws - that he could not address an integrated audience. And he raised such hell at University of Virginia that it was the first integrated audience in the history of the state at a state institution. So, he had sort of a sense of it, he just didn’t have, you know, the whole view.
So, on the way to the airport, he started steaming and thinking about it. He hates bullies. He gets to the airport; he goes to a phone booth. And he gets the DeKalb County Sheriff on the line at home. And he says, ‘This is Robert Kennedy. My brother is going to be president in a month. If anything happens to Dr. King, we will remember who you are. And you will not forget it.’
And then he calls the judge and says, you know, has a similar conversation with him. And he gets Jack to call the governor. And Jack calls Vandiver and says, ‘Can you get him out of jail?’ And then Vandiver says, ‘I don’t think I can.’ And Jack says, ‘Well, listen to what I’m saying. I want you to try, and then I want you to tell me. Call me back and tell me what you have done.’
And the next morning, King was released. So, King never made an endorsement. But his father, Daddy King, spoke, I think, at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church that weekend on Sunday. And he had previously endorsed Nixon, and he changed his endorsement to Kennedy. And that word spread throughout the black community. And my uncle won the black vote, and because of that he won the presidency. Because it was the narrowest margin in the history of our country at that time. So, I think that was one of the things that, kind of, cemented the relationship.
And then they just became partners with King in the civil rights movement. You know, they did the 1963 March on Washington with King. They handled all the arrangements. And that was the famous speech where King says, you know, ‘I have a dream’. You know, the ‘I Have a Dream’ speech.
And then my father had a very close relationship with King after Jack died. And then, you know, when King was killed, my father gave this impromptu speech to the, in the black ghetto in Indianapolis. And that was the only city that didn’t riot that night. And it’s attributed to the speech that my father gave. And before King died, my father and King collaborated on the Poor People’s Campaign. Which summoned all the poor people in our country to Washington D.C.
And when, the day that we, you know, we buried my dad, we drove past these encampments. There were 10,000 men encamped on the mall in Washington D.C. and who, you know, both my father and King, who had died two months before, had summoned there. And now both of them were gone.”
Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. on August 28, 1963, three months before JFK was assassinated:[x]
Martin Luther King Jr.: “I am happy to join with you today in what will go down as the greatest demonstration for freedom in our nation. Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.
But 100 years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself in exile in his own land. And so, we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition. In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check.
When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men — yes, black men as well as white men — would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked insufficient funds.
But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.
We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.
Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quick sands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.
It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. 1963 is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual.
There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.
But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.
We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny.
And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone. And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back.
There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, when will you be satisfied? We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities.
We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating: for whites only.
We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote, and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote.
No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.
I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our Northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.
Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.
So even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day down in Alabama with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, one day right down in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.
This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning: ‘My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrims' pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.’
And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania. Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado. Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California. But not only that, let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia. Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee. Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, Black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: Free at last. Free at last. Thank God almighty, we are free at last.”
In June of 1963, two months before the March on Washington and King’s “I Have a Dream Speech”, President John F. Kennedy had appealed to the American public for equality of opportunity:[xi]
JFK: “Good evening my fellow citizens. This afternoon, following a series of threats and defiant statements, the presence of Alabama National Guardsmen was required on the University of Alabama to carry out the final and unequivocal order of the United States District Court of the Northern District of Alabama. That order called for the admission of two clearly qualified young Alabama residents who happened to have been born Negro.
That they were admitted peacefully on the campus is due in good measure to the conduct of the students of the University of Alabama, who met their responsibilities in a constructive way.
I hope that every American, regardless of where he lives, will stop and examine his conscience about this and other related incidents. This Nation was founded by men of many nations and backgrounds. It was founded on the principle that all men are created equal, and that the rights of every man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened.
Today we are committed to a worldwide struggle to promote and protect the rights of all who wish to be free. And when Americans are sent to Vietnam or West Berlin, we do not ask for whites only. It ought to be possible, therefore, for American students of any color to attend any public institution they select without having to be backed up by troops.
It ought to be possible for American consumers of any color to receive equal service in places of public accommodation, such as hotels and restaurants and theaters and retail stores, without being forced to resort to demonstrations in the street, and it ought to be possible for American citizens of any color to register and to vote in a free election without interference or fear of reprisal.
It ought to be possible, in short, for every American to enjoy the privileges of being American without regard to his race or his color. In short, every American ought to have the right to be treated as he would wish to be treated, as one would wish his children to be treated. But this is not the case.
The Negro baby born in America today, regardless of the section of the state in which he is born, has about one-half as much chance of completing high school as a white baby born in the same place on the same day, one-third as much chance of completing college, one-third as much chance of becoming a professional man, twice as much chance of becoming unemployed, about one-seventh as much chance of earning $10,000 a year, a life expectancy which is 7 years shorter, and the prospects of earning only half as much.
This is not a sectional issue. Difficulties over segregation and discrimination exist in every city, in every state of the union, producing in many cities a rising tide of discontent that threatens the public safety.
Nor is this a partisan issue. In a time of domestic crisis men of good will and generosity should be able to unite regardless of party or politics. This is not even a legal or legislative issue alone. It is better to settle these matters in the courts than on the streets, and new laws are needed at every level, but law alone cannot make men see right.
We are confronted primarily with a moral issue. It is as old as the scriptures and is as clear as the American Constitution.
The heart of the question is whether all Americans are to be afforded equal rights and equal opportunities, whether we are going to treat our fellow Americans as we want to be treated. If an American, because his skin is dark, cannot eat lunch in a restaurant open to the public, if he cannot send his children to the best public school available, if he cannot vote for the public officials who will represent him, if, in short, he cannot enjoy the full and free life which all of us want, then who among us would be content to have the color of his skin changed and stand in his place? Who among us would then be content with the counsels of patience and delay?
One hundred years of delay have passed since President Lincoln freed the slaves, yet their heirs, their grandsons, are not fully free. They are not yet freed from the bonds of injustice. They are not yet freed from social and economic oppression. And this nation, for all its hopes and all its boasts, will not be fully free until all its citizens are free.
We preach freedom around the world, and we mean it, and we cherish our freedom here at home, but are we to say to the world, and much more importantly, to each other, that this is the land of the free except for the Negroes; that we have no second-class citizens except Negroes; that we have no class or caste system, no ghettoes, no master race except with respect to Negroes?
Now the time has come for this Nation to fulfill its promise. The events in Birmingham and elsewhere have so increased the cries for equality that no city or state or legislative body can prudently choose to ignore them.
The fires of frustration and discord are burning in every city, North and South, where legal remedies are not at hand. Redress is sought in the streets, in demonstrations, parades, and protests, which create tensions and threaten violence and threaten lives.
We face, therefore, a moral crisis as a country and as a people. It cannot be met by repressive police action. It cannot be left to increased demonstrations in the streets. It cannot be quieted by token moves or talk. It is time to act in the Congress, in your state and local legislative body and above all, in all of our daily lives.
It is not enough to pin the blame on others, to say this is a problem of one section of the country or another or deplore the facts that we face. A great change is at hand, and our task, our obligation, is to make that revolution, that change, peaceful and constructive for all.
Those who do nothing are inviting shame as well as violence. Those who act boldly are recognizing right as well as reality…
My fellow Americans, this is a problem which faces us all - in every city of the North as well as the South. Today there are Negroes unemployed, two or three times as many compared to whites, inadequate education, moving into the large cities, unable to find work, young people particularly out of work without hope, denied equal rights, denied the opportunity to eat at a restaurant or a lunch counter or go to a movie theater, denied the right to a decent education, denied almost today the right to attend a state university even though qualified. It seems to me that these are matters which concern us all, not merely presidents or Congressmen or governors, but every citizen of the United States.
This is one country. It has become one country because all of us and all the people who came here had an equal chance to develop their talents.
We cannot say to 10 percent of the population that you can't have that right; that your children cannot have the chance to develop whatever talents they have; that the only way that they are going to get their rights is to go into the streets and demonstrate. I think we owe them, and we owe ourselves a better country than that.
Therefore, I am asking for your help in making it easier for us to move ahead and to provide the kind of equality of treatment which we would want ourselves; to give a chance for every child to be educated to the limit of his talents.
As I have said before, not every child has an equal talent or an equal ability or an equal motivation, but they should have the equal right to develop their talent and their ability and their motivation, to make something of themselves.
We have a right to expect that the Negro community will be responsible, will uphold the law, but they have a right to expect that the law will be fair, that the Constitution will be color blind, as Justice Harlan said at the turn of the century.
This is what we are talking about, and this is a matter which concerns this country and what it stands for, and in meeting it I ask the support of all our citizens. Thank you very much.”
President Johnson, in his first address to Congress after JFK’s assassination, advocated for the passage of civil rights legislation in honor of Kennedy’s memory. That landmark bill, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, would be signed into law the following July:[xii]
Lyndon B. Johnson: “Our most immediate tasks are here on this Hill. First, no memorial, oration, or eulogy could more eloquently honor President Kennedy’s memory than the earliest possible passage of the civil rights bill for which he fought so long.
We have talked long enough in this country about equal rights. We have talked for 100 years or more. It is time now to write the next chapter and to write it in the books of law.
I urge you again, as I did in 1957 and again in 1960, to enact a civil rights law so that we can move forward to eliminate from this nation every trace of discrimination and oppression that is based upon race or color. There could be no greater source of strength to this nation, both at home and abroad.”
LBJ claimed to support the Civil Rights Act for altruistic reasons. However, the truth was much more insidious. His biographer, Doris Kearns Goodwin, and a steward on Air Force 1, Robert McMillan, reported LBJ’s rationale as explained to a group of Southern Democrat governors:[xiii]
Lyndon B. Johnson: “These Negroes, they’re getting pretty uppity these days… Now we’ve got to do something about this; we’ve got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference… I’ll have them niggers voting Democrat for the next 200 years.”
Fast forward to the present day, and podcaster Patrick Bet-David interviewed sports journalist Stephen A. Smith about LBJ and the 1964 Civil Rights Act:[xiv]
Patrick Bet-David: “1960, 64% of African Americans would vote Democrat.”
Stephen A. Smith: “Yes sir.”
Bet-David: “The rest was Conservative.”
Smith: “Yes sir.”
Bet-David: “Let’s put Liberal and Conservative, that’s a better way of saying it. Right?”
Smith: “Okay.”
Bet-David: “64 Liberal, 36 Conservative. 1964, four years later, 92% Blacks are voting Democrat.”
Smith: “Yeah. Lyndon B. Johnson Civil Rights legislation.”
Bet-David: “So, what happened there? Maybe give a little bit of the history of Goldwater, you know, Lyndon Johnson – what he did.”
Smith: “JFK is assassinated. Lyndon B. Johnson is in office. Republicans and Democrats, back in the day Dixiecrats, bipartisan, bring a bill to the desk of Lyndon B. Johnson. He signs civil rights legislation into law. According to whatever reports you believe, Lyndon B. Johnson says, ‘We bring this legislation, we sign this legislation into law, we’ll have the Negroes voting for us for the next 50 years.’ Sure enough, that’s what it was. And I think me personally, as I’ve edified myself over the years to see what’s been transpiring in our community. On the one hand, when I look at legislation and I think about affirmative action and other things. And I see how I benefited because opportunities were given to me at a particular time in the 80s that some would say may not have been given to me if I were not an African American or you didn’t have affirmative action in the place and what have you. When you hear those things, you’re trying to lean left, because you’re saying, ‘They’re thinking about us, they’re thinking about us.’
And like you said, those messengers from the Democratic party are very profound. You’ve got Jimmy Carter in office, but the economy was so bad. So, Reagan had to get him out of there. But you got Reagan in office from ‘80-88. You’re looking at what transpired in his administration. Good or bad depending on how you think about it. But if you’re not educated, what are you thinking? Did he care about black people? You’re actually asking those questions if you’re coming from the black community. And you’re not reading all the time, you’re not educating yourself because you’re literally trying to survive.
And when that happens, ultimately, it becomes habit. Your mama voted Democrat, your dad voted Democrat. Big sister, big brother voted Democrat. How could you think about voting any other way? And all of a sudden, those habits kick in, and then you get older and older and you start seeing how it profoundly affects your life as an individual and you’re like wait a minute…
I don’t think it’s right to have any party affiliation with today’s politics. Because I don’t think you can trust either side. I think you’ve got to watch what they do. See what they do, and see what policies work best for you…”
Bet-David: “1964, Rob, you pulled it up. And I’m glad you said it because I went and actually looked at Snopes. Go to Snopes, because I wanted to know, did he actually say that? Right? Because this is what we found. I won’t read it, but the audience can read it. Can you go a little lower where it shows the whole thing? Okay, we can just show that at the top and then we’ll read the whole thing. Okay right here you can do that right there.
‘These, that’s right, they’re getting pretty uppity these days and that’s a problem for us. They’ve got something now they’ve never had before. The political pull to back up their uppitiness. Now we’ve got to do something about this, and we’ve got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down. Not enough to make a difference.’ And then boom, you know that line, you brought it up. ‘I’ll have them voting this way, Democratic, for the next 200 years.’”
Smith: “Yes...”
Bet-David: “Then CNBC writes an article saying Lyndon Johnson was a civil rights hero, but also a racist. And if you look at the stuff about him, how many times he dropped the, you know, “n word” and all this other stuff. This guy was not wanting to do what he did with civil rights.”
Smith: “No.”
Bet-David: “Credit goes to one man and the community that pushed it. There’s a reason why we all have a poster or a painting of him in our offices and our walls. And he’s admired by everybody.”
Smith: “Martin Luther King.”
Bet-David: “It doesn’t matter Left, Right, Center. White, Black, Asian, Hispanic. Everybody loves and admires what this man, one of the greatest movements of all time. He accomplished it in a peaceful way, different than X, he was able to get it done, right? Okay…”
Bet-David: “So you look at some of this data. And you see that we went at the time when kids are being born.”
Smith: “Yeah.”
Bet-David: “Only 4% of kids in America, if you can pull up the stat Rob. 4% of kids in America were born, okay?”
Smith: “Yeah.”
Bet-David: “In single family households. 96% mom & dad.”
Smith: “Yeah.”
Bet-David: “Fast forward, we went from 4% to 41%. And by the way, it’s even higher for African Americans. This is America. This is not African Americans percentage of children born out of wedlock. But African Americans is through the roof. That wasn’t the case. You guys were always united, conservative, it’s a good community. Respectful, bible belt.”
Smith: “Right.”
Bet-david: “When I was in the Army, and my friends in the Army I was hanging out with. When I would go see their families, I was afraid of their mothers. No, no, seriously. Your mother would have talked to me like I’m her son.”
Smith: “Right.”
Bet-David: “And she would put me in my place. It was a different kind of culture, that was what I was accustomed to. So, to me, when they say systemic racism. If you want to give anybody credit, it’s Lyndon Johnson. And he succeeded in actually trying to create that kind of an environment. And the reason why he was very creative on the way he did it. Is he blamed the other side for it, and got them, the blacks, to vote Democratic for God knows how many decades until now where things are slightly changing. And I’ll wrap up the thoughts here and I want to get your-”
Smith: “Well, can I respond to what you just said?”
Bet-David: “Of course. Yeah, absolutely.”
Smith: “I think that when you mention all of those things. First of all, you’ve said nothing that I can dispute. Nothing. Because that’s just factually correct, what you’ve pointed out. And I think that the important thing to bring up when we bring that stuff up is that is exactly the reason why black folks in America have historically over the last 50+ years had that divide with the Republican party. Stay with me.
What happened is – Patrick, you invite me onto this show, and you talk to me. We’re having this conversation. You show me facts. I leave this office; I give you no resistance. And then you turn on the tv, and I’m like, ‘Patrick Bet-David is full of it. Look what he brought up! This some racist blah, blah, blah.’ You’d never want to talk to me again.
It’s disingenuous, it’s not educated, it’s not fair. One of the things that we have to pay attention to is that there is a Republican party that can’t disguise its resentment towards black America because of what you just pointed out. It’s just that we’re looking at it differently. As this black person, when I got to know Republicans, and I hear my parents speaking about Conservatism and stuff like that. I remember asking my mother one day, I said, ‘You know that fact, how would you feel if you know that you contributed to bringing civil rights legislation to the desk of the presidency to sign into law, and that was ignored because the party that he represented. He made sure they got all the credit for what you played a role in bringing to the table that helped the African American community, supposedly. And it was completely ignored.’
You’d lose all respect, because you believe you’re not educated enough. You’re not putting forth your due diligence to know, it wasn’t just him. It was us and his intent wasn’t honorable. Ours was! I think that you have a lot of Republicans who are knowledgeable about that history that you just pointed out, and the distaste that they have had for African Americans for a period of time, at the very least, emanates from that. From folks not knowing what role they played.
When I listen to a Sean Hannity, or Mark Levin and Andrew Wilkow and others, talk about Black America’s history and racism, they never fail to point out, The Democrats played a huge, huge role in this, you all. And the black community lets them off the hook.’
They look at us, and there’s a level of absolute frustration, palpable frustration, that comes from that. I don’t always agree with it, but I understand it. Which made it easy for me to communicate with members of the Republican party when they come to me, and they want to talk about different issues. Cuz I’m like, ‘I want to learn more. I want to hear this.’
Because you’re not going to come to me and engage in demonization, talking about the other side. In this case, the right. You’re not doing that. What are your policies? What are you bringing to the table? Don’t talk to me about them being racist because you know what else? You’re asking me to assume you’re not. How do I know you’re not? I know there were KKK members that were in the Democratic party that were on Capitol Hill. Robert Byrd of West Virginia to name one of them. I know that for a fact, and so why are we to assume that just because you’re a Democrat, you’re on our side? So, I do get where you’re coming from, and I understand.”
We’ll continue to question whether the black community in America has been well served by the Democratic party since LBJ and the 1964 Civil Rights Act. First, we must introduce MLK Jr.’s philosophical rival. A man who did not advocate passive, nonviolence, but who instead promoted social change by any means necessary.
Malcolm X & the Nation of Islam
Malcolm X was born Malcolm Little in Omaha, Nebraska, on May 19, 1925.[xv] Malcolm was the fourth of seven children raised by his father, Baptist speaker Earl Little, and by his mother, Louise Helen Little. Malcolm’s biological grandfather was a white man who had raped his mother’s mother.[xvi] Malcolm X told Playboy Magazine in 1963, “I hate every drop of white blood in me”.
His family later moved to Lansing, Michigan, where his father died when Malcolm was six. The death was officially ruled a streetcar accident, but he and his mother came to believe he was murdered by a group of white racists known as the Black Legion. Earl Little had been a militant preacher of Marcus Garvey’s “Back to Africa” movement and had been threatened to stop preaching Garvey’s black nationalist message.[xvii]
Malcolm later dropped out of high school after a white teacher told him that his aspiration of practicing law was “no realistic goal for a nigger”.[xviii] Malcolm moved to Harlem, New York City in 1943, where he became involved in organized crime, including drug dealing, gambling, racketeering, robbery, and pimping. In February 1946, he was arrested for larceny and breaking and entering, sentenced to eight to ten years imprisonment.
While in prison, Malcolm learned of the Nation of Islam (NOI), a religious movement of Black Muslims led by Elijah Muhammed. Muhammad advised Malcolm to renounce his past, humbly bow in prayer to God and promise never to engage in destructive behavior again.[xix] Malcolm initially struggled with humbling himself on his knees in prayer, but he soon became a member of the Nation of Islam, maintaining a regular correspondence with Muhammad. Muhammad proclaimed himself the Messenger of Allah
Muhammad instructed his followers to leave their family names behind and use X instead. In his autobiography, Malcolm explained that the "X" symbolized the true African family name that he could never know. "For me, my 'X' replaced the white slave master name of 'Little' which some blue-eyed devil named Little had imposed upon my paternal forebears."[xx] By the late 1950s, Malcolm X would also be known by the Islamic name El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, bestowed upon him by the Honorable Elijah Muhammad.
Malcolm X received parole in August 1952, and he rapidly rose in the ranks of the Nation of Islam. Malcolm was instrumental in expanding the NOI’s membership by hundreds of thousands. Malcolm and the Nation of Islam advocated that black people should advance themselves “by any means necessary”.
Elijah Muhammad and his followers in the Nation of Islam proposed adversarial beliefs including:[xxi]
That black people are the original people of the world while white people are “devils”
That the demise of the white race is imminent
That blacks should completely separate from whites. Muhammad proposed that African Americans should return to Africa, and that in the interim, a separate country for black people in America should be created.
Malcolm X denounced Martin Luther King Jr. as a “chump” and referred to the other civil rights leaders as being “stooges” of the white establishment. He referred to the 1963 March on Washington “the Farce on Washington”.[xxii] Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. only met in person once, during the Senate debates over the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
When Malcolm X was interviewed by Playboy in 1963, he was asked his thoughts on MLK. In the conversation, Malcolm X also expanded upon his controversial religious views:[xxiii]
Playboy: Do you admire and respect any other American Negro leaders - Martin Luther King, for example?
Malcolm X: I am a Muslim, sir. Muslims can see only one leader who has the qualifications necessary to unite all elements of black people in America. This is the Honorable Elijah Muhammad.
Playboy: Many white religious leaders have also gone on record against the Black Muslims. Writing in the official NAACP magazine, a Catholic priest described you as "a fascist-minded hate group," and B'nai B'rith has accused you of being not only anti-Christian but anti-Semitic. Do you consider this true?
Malcolm X: Insofar as the Christian world is concerned, dictatorships have existed only in areas or countries where you have Roman Catholicism. Catholicism conditions your mind for dictators. Can you think of a single Protestant country that has ever produced a dictator?
Playboy: Germany was predominantly Protestant when Hitler -
Malcolm X: Another thing to think of - in the 20th Century, the Christian Church has given us two heresies: fascism and communism. Where did fascism start? Where's the second-largest Communist party outside of Russia? The answer to both is Italy. Where is the Vatican? But let's not forget the Jew.
Anybody that gives even a just criticism of the Jew is instantly labeled anti-Semite. The Jew cries louder than anybody else if anybody criticizes him. You can tell the truth about any minority in America, but make a true observation about the Jew, and if it doesn't pat him on the back, then he uses his grip on the news media to label you anti-Semite. Let me say just a word about the Jew and the black man.
The Jew is always anxious to advise the black man. But they never advise him how to solve his problem the way the Jews solved their problem. The Jew never went sitting-in and crawling-in and sliding-in and freedom-riding, like he teaches and helps Negroes to do. The Jews stood up, and stood together, and they used their ultimate power, the economic weapon. That's exactly what the Honorable Elijah Muhammad is trying to teach black men to do. The Jews pooled their money and bought the hotels that barred them. They bought Atlantic City and Miami Beach and anything else they wanted. Who owns Hollywood? Who runs the garment industry, the largest industry in New York City? But the Jew that's advising the Negro joins the NAACP, CORE, the Urban League, and others. With money donations, the Jew gains control, then he sends the black man doing all this wading-in, boring-in, even burying-in - everything but buying-in. Never shows him how to set up factories and hotels. Never advises him how to own what he wants. No, when there's something worth owning, the Jew's got it. Walk up and down in any Negro ghetto in America. Ninety percent of the worthwhile businesses you see are Jew-owned. Every night they take the money out. This helps the black man's community stay a ghetto.
Playboy: Isn't it true that many Gentiles have also labored with dedication to advance integration and economic improvement for the Negro, as volunteer workers for the NAACP, CORE and many other interracial agencies?
Malcolm X: A man who tosses worms in the river isn't necessarily a friend of the fish. All the fish who take him for a friend, who think the worm's got no hook in it, usually end up in the frying pan. All these things dangled before us by the white liberal posing as a friend and benefactor have turned out to be nothing but bait to make us think we're making progress. The Supreme Court decision has never been enforced. Desegregation has never taken place. The promises have never been fulfilled. We have received only tokens, substitutes, trickery and deceit.
Despite their differences, the two men were acutely aware of the other’s positions. For example, here are Malcolm and Martin advancing their respective policies towards any means necessary and nonviolence:[xxiv]
Malcolm X: “The white man pays the Reverend Martin Luther King. Subsidizes Reverend Martin Luther King so that Reverend Martin Luther King can continue to teach the Negroes to be defenseless. That’s what you mean by nonviolence. Be defenseless. Be defenseless in the face of one of the most cruel beasts that has ever taken the people into captivity. That’s this American white man. And they have proved it throughout the country by the police dogs and the police clubs. 100 years ago, they used to put on a white sheet and use a blood hound against negroes. Today, they’ve taken off the white sheet and put on police uniforms. They’ve traded in the blood hounds for police dogs, and they’re still doing the same thing.
And just as Uncle Tom back during slavery used to teach the negroes from resisting the blood hounds or resisting the Ku Klux Klan by teaching them to love their enemy or pray for those who use them spitefully. Today Martin Luther King is just a 20th century, or modern Uncle Tom, or a religious Uncle Tom. Who is doing the same thing today to keep Negroes defenseless in the way that Uncle Tom did on the plantation to keep those Negroes defenseless in the face of the attack of the Klan in that day.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.: “Well, I don’t think of love in this context as emotional botch. I don’t think of it as a weakness. But I think of love as something strong and that organizes itself in powerful, direct action. This is what I’ve tried to teach in the struggle in the South. That we are not engaged in a struggle that means we sit down and do nothing.
There’s a great deal of difference between nonresistance to evil and nonviolent resistance. Nonresistance leaves you in a state of stagnant passivity and deadly complacency. Wherein nonviolent resistance means that you do resist in a very strong and determined manner. And I think some of the criticisms of nonviolence, or some of the critics, fail to realize that we are talking about something very strong, and they confuse nonresistance with nonviolence.”
Six decades after both King and Malcolm X were murdered, the Black Lives Matters (BLM) protests gained momentum. The BLM movement exploded following the deaths of Trayvon Martin, George Floyd, and others. The movement advocated against racism, discrimination, and police brutality towards black people. BLM leadership focuses specifically on police brutality committed by white cops. BLM claims to be a movement based on peaceful, nonviolence, following the philosophy of King. But is it really?[xxv]
Ali Velshi, MSNBC: “I want to be clear in how I characterize this. This is a – mostly a protest. It is not generally speaking ‘unruly’. But fires have been started.”
Omar Jimenez, CNN: “What you’re seeing behind me is one of multiple locations that have been burning in Kenosha, Wisconsin over the course of the night. A second night since Jacob Blake was seen shot in the back seven times by a police officer. And what you’re seeing now, these images, came and come in stark contrast to what we saw over the course of the daytime hours in Kenosha and into the early evening, which were largely peaceful demonstrations in the face of law enforcement.”
BLM’s leadership and their supporters in the media called the protests of the summer of 2020 “mostly peaceful”. Coincidentally, in March 2014, Assistant Secretary of State Toria Nuland was being grilled by Congress about Ukraine’s Maidan protests. The Maidan protests resulted in the overthrow of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, as discussed in part two of this series.
Nuland used very similar language to describe the Maidan protests:[xxvi]
US Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA): “We did have a legitimate election before, and the elected president was removed after we had major street violence. There were pictures that had people running around with these - that we were told were neo-Nazis?”
Toria Nuland: “First of all, the vast majority of those who participated on the Maidan were peaceful protesters. If you had a chance to see the pictures, many of us visited, including many members here. There were mothers, and grandmothers and veterans and every… However, however…”
Rohrabacher: “Let me note that I… wait before you go on. I saw those pictures as well. I also saw a lot of pictures of people throwing firebombs at groups of policemen who were huddled over in a corner while people were shooting into the ranks of police. So yes, there were mothers with flowers, but there were also very dangerous street fighters who were engaged in those demonstrations. The question is: were there neo-Nazi groups involved in that?”
Nuland: “There were, as I said, almost every color of Ukraine was represented. Including some ugly colors.”
Rohrabacher: “So the answer is yes, then.”
Weird how similar the language used to describe the riots of Maidan and the riots of BLM. I wonder if there are other similarities between these events worthy of further investigation?
Back in the 1950s and 60s, Malcolm X spoke out about white politicians who manipulate blacks to suit their political interests:[xxvii]
Malcolm X: “In this crooked game of power politics here in America, the Negro, namely the race problem, integration, civil rights issue, are all nothing but tools used by the whites who call themselves liberals against another group of whites who call themselves conservatives. Either to get into power, or to retain power. Among whites here in America, the political teams are no longer divided into Democrats and Republicans. The whites who are now struggling for control of the American political throne are divided into liberal and conservative camps.
The white liberals from both parties cross party lines to work together towards the same goal. And white conservatives from both parties do likewise. The white liberal differs from the white conservative only in one way. The liberal is more deceitful, more hypocritical than the conservative.
Both want power, but the white liberal is the one who has perfected the art of posing as the Negro’s friend and benefactor. And by winning the friendship and support of the negro, the white liberal is able to use the Negro as a pawn or a weapon in this political football game that is constantly raging between the white liberals and the white conservatives.
The American Negro is nothing but a political football, and the white liberals control this ball through tricks or tokenism. False promises of integration and civil rights. In this game of deceiving and using the American negro, the white liberals have complete cooperation of the Negro civil rights leader who sell our people out for a few crumbs of token recognition, token gains, token progress.
In the New York Tribune, in an editorial dated February the 5th, 1960, they pointed out that out of eleven million qualified Negro voters, only two million, seven-hundred thousand actually take time to vote. This means that roughly speaking, only three million out of the eleven million Negroes who are qualified to vote take an active part. And the remaining eight million remain voluntarily inactive. And yet it is this small minority, the three million Negro voters who help determine who will be the next president. If who will be the next president can be influenced by three million negro voters, it is easy to see why the presidential candidates of both political parties put on such a false show with the Civil Rights Bill and promises of integration. They must impress the three million voting negroes who are the actual integration seekers. And if so much fuss is made over these three million integration seekers, what would the presidential candidates have to do to appease the eight-million non-voting Negroes if they ever decided to become politically active? They hold the balance of power.
Who are the eight million non-voting Negroes? What do they want? And why don’t they vote? The three million Negro voters are the so-called middle-class negroes, or high-class Negroes. Or uppity Negroes. Who are referred to by the late Howard University sociology professor, E. Franklin Frazier, as the black bourgeoisie.
Who have been educated to think as patriotic individualists with no racial pride whatsoever. Who believe in and look forward to the future integrated, intermarried society that is constantly being promised to them by the Negro politician. And therefore, this integration-minded three million minority remain an active part of the White-controlled political parties.
But it must never be overlooked that these three million integration seekers are only a small minority of the eleven million qualified Negro voters. The eight million non-voting Negroes are the majority, the downtrodden black masses. They have refused to vote. They’ve refused to take a part in politics because they reject the Uncle Tom approach of the clergy politician leadership that has been handpicked for the so-called Negroes by the white man himself.
This clergy politician leadership does not speak for the Negro majority. They don’t speak for the black masses. They speak for the black bourgeoisie. The brainwashed, white-minded, middle-class minority. Who because they are ashamed of their race, because they are ashamed of being black. And don’t want to be identified with black. They are seeking to lose this black identity by mixing and mingling and intermarrying and integrating with the white society.
The race problem cannot be solved by listening to the white-minded, brainwashed minority. The white man must try to learn what the black majority want. The president would be wise to try and learn what the black masses want. If the three million middle-class negroes are casting their ballots for integration and intermarriage, what do the non-voting black masses who are in the majority want? Find out what the black masses want, and then perhaps America’s great race problem can be solved.”
Six decades later, Patrick Bet-David asked civil rights activist and community development leader, Bob Woodson, about Malcolm X’s perspective:[xxviii]
Patrick Bet-David: “I want to play this clip to you by Malcolm X. It’s just audio, the video isn’t out there, it’s just purely audio. And I want to get your thoughts on this, go ahead and play this.”
Malcolm X: “The white liberal differs from the white conservative only in one way. The liberal is more deceitful, more hypocritical than the conservative. Both want power, but the white liberal is the one who has perfected the art of posing as the Negro’s friend and benefactor. And by winning the friendship and support of the Negro, the white liberal is able to use the Negro as a pawn or a weapon in this political football game that is constantly raging between the white liberals and the white conservatives. The American Negro is nothing but a political football, and the white liberal control this ball through tricks or tokenism. False promises of integration and civil rights. In this game of deceiving and using the American negro, the white liberals have complete cooperation of the Negro civil rights leader who sell our people out for a few crumbs of token recognition, token gains, token progress.”
Bet-David: “Now, when you hear this, this speech is given in the 60s. Maybe late 50s, and 60s. Cuz he died, I want to say, February of 1965. MLK died, Dr. King died April 4th of ’68. Right? So, this message is being given at a time where it’s like, wait a minute. Were white liberals the same then as they are today? Have they been at it for this long of a time, where even Malcolm X said this? How do you process what Malcolm X, Malcolm X just said in this message?”
Bob Woodson: “I totally agree, and it’s been the foundation of everything that I have done since then. That’s what drove me. I go further by saying that many of the black elected officials and others commit treason. Treason against their own people by using race to deflect attention away from their own failures.
In Baltimore, when Freddy Gray was killed, that’s when – to deflect attention away from. Why are blacks failing in school systems and in cities run by their own people for the past 50 years? If racism were the issue, then tell me, why are they failing? But the answer that they give is, ‘Well, the police are agents of white supremacy.’ There’s always a racial deflection that prevents them from taking responsibility of why they are running their systems.
But many of them are hypocrites because they don’t live by the same rules. Eleanor Holmes Norton, Jesse Jackson Jr., all of them sent their children to private schools in Washington while opposing school choice for poor black people. So, you have this contradiction. But race really is being used as a shield and a sword. A shield to deflect attention away from their failure to address problems that were promised by the Civil Rights Movement.”
Bet-David: “How can you manipulate for this long though? One may ask, you know, how can you? 2012 – 93% of African Americans voted Democrat. 2016 – 89% of African Americans voted Democrat. 2020 - 87%. So, to 93, 89, 87 voted Democrat. You know, Malcolm X said this at the year that he said. This is sixty-something years. How can you manipulate an entire voting bloc, an entire community for this many decades?”
Woodson: “Because race is a very emotional, deeply emotional issue. It’s like the state of Israel is to Jews, it’s an emotional issue. Like abortion is to the right-to-life. And so, it is a deeply – and they know it, and they do manipulate it that long. But also, it’s because Republicans have not been competitive either.”
Bet-David: “I agree.”
Woodson: “When they were, they were successful. Look at Dick Riordan in LA. He was the first Republican mayor in 35 years. How did he do that? Dick Riordan planted charitably two years before he harvested politically. He went to the lower income, Hispanic community and said, ‘What is it that you need to rebuild your community?’ And he brought some of his friends to the table, and they built a state-of-the-art facility. So that those communities could engage in after-school activities to teach English. It was only after he planted charitably that those liberal, Democratic leaders embraced Dick Riordan. And he became the first Republican mayor in 25 years and when he got reelected by 60% of the demographic. DeSantis in 2018 got elected because of the black vote. He ran against Gillum, right?”
Bet-David: “Andrew Gillum.”
Woodson: “Andrew Gillum. But DeSantis only won by 32,000 votes because 100,000 low-income black parents voted because of his position on choice in education. They voted for him even though Barack Obama and Oprah Winfrey was brought in to campaign for Gillum. So, you have 100,000 blacks voting against Obama and voting against Oprah to elect because they made a decision based upon the content of the issue.
And not enough Republicans are, did what DeSantis did. And when they do, I think they will be competitive. But apathy is what’s keeping blacks. Also, if you look in some of those high crime neighborhoods, in the mayor’s race, only 8 to 10% of the people vote. Because there’s such deep apathy in those communities. But low-income blacks are sleeping giants. They’re going to wake up one day soon.”
Bet-David: “Low-income blacks are going to wake up one day.”
Woodson: “Wake up and realize how they’re being pimped. How they’re being used.”
Bet-David: “What’s the tipping point? What needs to happen for them to wake up? Because it’s been sixty years.”
Woodson: “I think the violence. The violence that is, you’re seeing now a lot of unrest. 80% of black Americans polled do not support defund the police. 80%. But you won’t know that by looking at the media. You know? And 60% of blacks do not believe that racial discrimination is the biggest barrier to their flourishing.
And so, the challenge that we have is to, and what we’re doing at the Woodson Center is giving voice to those people. We have about a couple of thousand women who are voices of Black Mothers United. There are women, moms who lost children to urban violence.
They’re coming, the leading cause of death for black kids is homicide. In Silicon Valley, it’s suicide among teenagers. And in Appalachia is prescription drugs. Well, the Woodson Center brought together representatives from those three communities. We called it the mother’s consortium. And it was just common ground there. We were united.
And so, what we must do is we must deracialize race. But it’s not enough to talk about what you’re against. You’ve got to talk about what you’re for. We should be for the saving of our children’s lives. And so, what we’re doing at the Woodson Center is mobilizing mothers from those three communities. To come together and say that we must do everything we can to fill the hole that’s in the hearts of our children that causes them to devalue their life to the point where they’re willing to take their own or take someone else’s. It’s different sides of the same coin.”
Bet-David: “So did you find out what the reasoning was for homicide, for suicide, and for prescription drugs? Like, what’s the reason?”
Woodson: “There’s emptiness.”
Bet-David: “Emptiness, yeah.”
Woodson: “Emptiness when you keep telling, they also, when you keep broadcasting to people that they live in a country that despises them. Particularly the low-income blacks. That you live in a country that despises you. Like the 1619 Project said, that racism defines them. All whites are villains and victimizers. And they’re privileged. That message gets communicated to blacks that perhaps the reason that this is happening is because they are unworthy. So, the message of unworthiness comes from the very people who are supposed to be social justice warriors. And you say to a child, to a white child that you are devalued because you’re privileged, and you are an oppressor.
Those are really dangerous messages that we’re sending to our children. When we keep saying to them that they live in a country that despises them because they’re white and derides them because they’re black. I mean, that’s a very poisonous message. And that’s why at the Woodson Center we’re doing everything we can to mobilize that consensus among the people suffering the problem.”
Malcolm X was no fan of white liberal, President John F. Kennedy, while he was alive. Here’s a clip from the documentary version of his autobiography, Malcolm X:[xxix]
Reporter: “You referred to President Kennedy, I believe you called him a trickster?”
Malcolm X: “He has to be a trickster. Even if he’s the president, that doesn’t stop him from being a trickster if he’s making tricks. Anytime a president, a man running for president tells Negroes what he’s going to do for them when he gets into office. And after he gets into office, he has time to do something for everybody else except the people who put him in office, he tricked the people that put him in office!
He has the time to take a stand against US Steel, against Castro, against Khrushchev, against layoffs, in South Vietnam and all these other places all over the world. But when it comes to time to correcting the injustices that are being inflicted against Negroes in this country, Kennedy sits up there like Nero. He’s fiddling while Birmingham is burning.”
After JFK’s assassination, Malcolm X made statements that landed him in hot water. On December 2, 1963, The New York Times published an article titled “Malcolm X Scores U.S. and Kennedy, Likens Slaying to ‘Chickens Coming Home to Roost’”:[xxx]
Malcolm X, a leader of the Black Muslims, yesterday characterized the assassination of President Kennedy as an instance of “the chickens coming home to roost”.
Accusing Mr. Kennedy of “twiddling his thumbs” at the killing of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, Malcolm X told a Black Muslim rally at the Manhattan Center that he “never foresaw that the chickens would come home to roost so soon.”
He added: “Being an old farm boy myself, chickens coming home to roost never did make me sad; they’ve always made me glad.” His remarks on the Kennedy assassination were made at a point when the auditorium was open to questions and comment from the floor. There was loud applause and laughter.
Newspapers Chided
Malcolm X told the crowd, estimated at about 700, that immediately after Mr. Kennedy’s assassination the Black Muslim leadership had been asked for comments by the newspapers. He charged this was an attempt to trap the organization into a “fanatic, inflexibly dogmatic” statement. He said the press was looking for such a remark as: “Hooray, hooray! I’m glad he got it!”
With this exclamation, there was more laughter and applause.
In further criticism of Mr. Kennedy, the Muslim leader cited the murders of Patrice Lumumba, Congo leader, of Medgar Evers, civil rights leader, and of the Negro girls bombed earlier this year in a Birmingham church. These, he said, were instances of other “chickens coming home to roost.”
“They’ve got to come home some day,” he added.
Throughout his address, which lasted an hour, Malcolm X repeated a previous contention that the Black Muslim movement is based on monotheistic love and tolerance of all men, including white men. However, he said that while his followers were nonviolent, they were encouraged for purposes of self-defense to study judo and karate and “everything else you should learn that will show you how to break a white man’s neck.” Again there was applause and laughter.
Later a member of the audience who declined to be identified told a reporter his enjoyment of this remark was “more for the fact that he had the nerve to say it than that I really approved of it.”
Malcolm X was especially critical of the recent civil rights march on Washington. He charged that the Negro leaders of the march were actually in the employ of a “white liberal” conspiracy that included President Kennedy and that was devoted to “tokenism.” In one reference to the march, which had the Lincoln and Washington memorials as main focal points, Malcolm X said:
“By keeping them marching between two dead Presidents, they never had a chance to reach the then live President.”
The rally was closed to white men, except for members of the press, who were searched thoroughly by some of the scores of Black Muslim cadre stationed throughout the hall as policemen.
The controversy over these statements was also covered in Malcolm X:[xxxi]
News Announcer: “While the nation and the world mourned the death of President John F. Kennedy, Black Muslim extremist, Malcolm X, speaking today in Manhattan Center in New York City, called the President’s assassination a case of chickens coming home to roost.”
Nation of Islam Spokesman: “This statement is from messenger Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the Muslims in America. Mr. Malcom Shabazz, addressing a public meeting at the Manhattan Center in New York City on Sunday, December the 1st, did not speak for the Muslims when he made comments on the death of the president, John F. Kennedy. He was speaking for himself, not Muslims in general. And Minister Malcolm has been suspended from public speaking for the time being.”
Malcolm X: “I lived in silence for the past 90 days because of some statements I made concerning the President of the United States, which were distorted.”
Reporter: “They were distorted?”
Malcolm X: “Yes.”
Reporter: “What did you say?”
Malcolm X: “Well, I said the same thing that everybody said. That his assassination was the result of the climate of hate. Only I said, ‘the chickens came home to roost.’ Which means the same thing.”
Reporter: “You did not say that you were glad that the president was killed?”
Malcolm X: “No, that’s what the press said. What would I look like saying that I’m glad the president was killed?”
Reporter: “Malcolm this is your first public statement in that 90-day period, is it not?”
Malcolm X: “First time I’ve opened up my mouth in 90 days. That’s why I’m talking so fast and so hardy.”
Reporter: “Do you feel, however, that we’re making progress in this country?”
Malcolm X: “No, no, no, no. I will never say progress is being made. If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six inches, there’s no progress. If you pull it out all the way, that’s not progress. The progress is healing the wound that the blow, that the blow made. They won’t even admit that the knife is there.”
Malcolm X: “I did receive word from him that the 90-day suspension that I was under was not to be lifted, that it would remain indefinite. And as I -”
Reporter: “When did this take place?”
Malcolm X: “This past week. And so, I just reached the conclusion that I frankly didn’t think that I would ever be an active member of the Nation of Islam anymore.”
Malcolm X would publicly announce his break from the Nation of Islam on March 8, 1964.[xxxii] After leaving the NOI, Malcom founded the Muslim Mosque, Inc. (MMI) and the Organization of Afro-Unity (OAAU). The MMI was spiritually focused, while the OAAU focused on politics, specifically the unification of African Americans with the people of Africa. He soon converted to the Sunni faith, and in April 1964, made a pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia. This pilgrimage profoundly changed his life and his perspectives on race relations.
Malcolm X’s letter to Muslim Americans, the “Letter from Mecca” read as follows:[xxxiii]
Never have I witnessed such sincere hospitality and overwhelming spirit of true brotherhood as is practiced by people of all colors and races here in this Ancient Holy Land, the home of Abraham, Muhammad and all the other Prophets of the Holy Scriptures. For the past week, I have been utterly speechless and spellbound by the graciousness I see displayed all around me by people of all colors.
I have been blessed to visit the Holy City of Mecca. I have made my seven circuits around the Ka'ba, led by a young Mutawaf named Muhammad. I drank water from the well of the Zam Zam. I ran seven times back and forth between the hills of Mt. Al-Safa and Al-Marwah. I have prayed in the ancient city of Mina, and I have prayed on Mt. Arafat.
There were tens of thousands of pilgrims, from all over the world. They were of all colors, from blue-eyed blonds to black-skinned Africans. But we were all participating in the same ritual, displaying a spirit of unity and brotherhood that my experiences in America had led me to believe never could exist between the white and non-white.
America needs to understand Islam, because this is the one religion that erases from its society the race problem. Throughout my travels in the Muslim world, I have met, talked to, and even eaten with people who in America would have been considered 'white'--but the 'white' attitude was removed from their minds by the religion of Islam. I have never before seen sincere and true brotherhood practiced by all colors together, irrespective of their color.
You may be shocked by these words coming from me. But on this pilgrimage, what I have seen, and experienced, has forced me to re-arrange much of my thought-patterns previously held, and to toss aside some of my previous conclusions. This was not too difficult for me. Despite my firm convictions, I have always been a man who tries to face facts, and to accept the reality of life as new experience and new knowledge unfolds it. I have always kept an open mind, which is necessary to the flexibility that must go hand in hand with every form of intelligent search for truth.
During the past eleven days here in the Muslim world, I have eaten from the same plate, drunk from the same glass, and slept in the same bed (or on the same rug)--while praying to the same God--with fellow Muslims, whose eyes were the bluest of blue, whose hair was the blondest of blond, and whose skin was the whitest of white. And in the words and in the actions in the deeds of the 'white' Muslims, I felt the same sincerity that I felt among the black African Muslims of Nigeria, Sudan, and Ghana.
We were truly all the same (brothers)--because their belief in one God had removed the white from their minds, the white from their behavior, and the white from their attitude.
I could see from this, that perhaps if white Americans could accept the Oneness of God, then perhaps, too, they could accept in reality the Oneness of Man - and cease to measure, and hinder, and harm others in terms of their 'differences' in color.
With racism plaguing America like an incurable cancer, the so-called 'Christian' white American heart should be more receptive to a proven solution to such a destructive problem. Perhaps it could be in time to save America from imminent disaster--the same destruction brought upon Germany by racism that eventually destroyed the Germans themselves.
Each hour here in the Holy Land enables me to have greater spiritual insights into what is happening in America between black and white. The American Negro never can be blamed for his racial animosities--he is only reacting to four hundred years of the conscious racism of the American whites.
But as racism leads America up the suicide path, I do believe, from the experiences that I have had with them, that the whites of the younger generation, in the colleges and universities, will see the handwriting on the walls and many of them will turn to the spiritual path of truth - the only way left to America to ward off the disaster that racism inevitably must lead to.
Never have I been so highly honored. Never have I been made to feel more humble and unworthy. Who would believe the blessings that have been heaped upon an American Negro? A few nights ago, a man who would be called in America a 'white' man, a United Nations diplomat, an ambassador, a companion of kings, gave me his hotel suite, his bed. ... Never would I have even thought of dreaming that I would ever be a recipient of such honors - honors that in America would be bestowed upon a King - not a Negro.
All praise is due to Allah, the Lord of all the Worlds.
Sincerely,
El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz
(Malcolm X)
Malcolm X would speak about his changed perspective after returning from Mecca:[xxxiv]
Malcolm X: “I think you’ll find that if, if Negroes ever have to resort to any kind of physical action to defend themselves, many white people will be on the side of the Negro. Many white people are fed up with what the Negroes suffer. And this is what I had to become aware of on my pilgrimage to Mecca. I could see then that there are many white people in this country who will side with the Negro in whatever he has to do to protect himself.”
Reporter: “But that’s a considerable change of opinion in Malcolm X.”
Malcolm X: “No, today I am speaking for myself. Formerly, I spoke for Elijah Muhammad. And everything I said was, ‘Elijah Muhammad teaches us thus and so’. I am speaking now from what I think, from what I have seen, from what I have analyzed and the conclusions that I have reached.”
Reporter: “Then the white man is no longer the devil? And he is no longer bound to be evil?”
Malcolm X: “I judge a man by his conscious behavior. I am not a racist. I don’t subscribe to any of the tenants of racism.”
Reporter: “Then there are good whites and good blacks? And bad whites and blacks?”
Malcolm X: “It’s not a case of being good or bad blacks and whites. It’s a case of being good and bad human beings.”
Rober F. Kennedy Jr. highlighted Malcolm X’s change of heart in his 2024 presidential campaign. RFK Jr. promised to “Heal the Divide”, an issue as relevant for Americans today as it was in Malcolm’s time:[xxxv]
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.: “Hey everyone, I’m speaking to you from Queens, New York. Behind me is the home of Malcolm X, which was firebombed a week before his assassination on this day, February 21 of 1964. Along with my uncle, my father, and Martin Luther King, it was one of four assassinations of the 1960s that devastated the soul of our nation. Malcolm’s death was especially tragic because it came at a moment where the arc of his life had swung toward viewing all people as part of the brotherhood of humanity.
The central revelation that transformed him was a trip to Mecca, where he saw people of every race, creed and color worshipping in the same places, and praying to the same God. After that, he saw his life’s mission as being a truth teller.”
Malcolm X: “I’m speaking now from what I think, from what I have seen, from what I have analyzed and the conclusions that I have reached. It’s not a case of being good and bad, good or bad blacks and whites. It’s a case of being good or bad human beings.”
Kennedy: “Malcolm came to believe that it was his purpose to unite people across racial lines and challenge the power of oppression and injustice in America. I want to invoke his example today at a time of renewed hatred and polarization and division. It’s been the purpose of my campaign to put aside the divisions and solve the real problems that affect Americans of all skin colors.”
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., like his father, entered the presidential race in the Democratic primaries. RFK Jr., like his father, challenged an unpopular, sitting Democratic president. However, after the Democratic National Committee rigged the primary structure to ensure he couldn’t win, RFK Jr. decided to instead run as an Independent.
If Kennedy’s dark horse campaign had succeeded, he’d have been the first independent to become President of the United States since George Washington. America’s first president had advised in his Farewell Address:[xxxvi]
However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.
You know, Mr. Washington may have been onto something there.
If we could successfully eliminate political parties, perhaps then we could end this political football game between right & left, Conservative & Liberal, Republican & Democrat? Perhaps then we could elect politicians based on their policies, actions, and integrity, rather than on blind party loyalty? Crazy idea, right?
Malcolm X’s relationship with the Nation of Islam severed over his comments on JFK’s assassination and their censorship of him. It deteriorated as he informed the NOI about the reality of white Muslims, and that it’s about being a good human, regardless of race. But after Malcolm X learned Elijah Muhammad had ordered him dead, Malcolm spoke the full truth about the man he’d once considered divine:[xxxvii]
Reporter: “Why are they threatening your life?”
Malcolm X: “Well, primarily because they’re afraid that I will tell the real reason that they’ve been, that I am out of the Black Muslim Movement. Which I never told, I kept to myself. But the real reason is that Elijah Muhammad, the head of the movement, is the father of eight children by six different teenage girls. Six different teenage girls who were his private, personal secretaries.
The one who first made me aware of this was Wallace Muhammad, Mr. Muhammad’s son. And I had stated in a newspaper article about an effort to take my life back in January. And at that time, the Muslims denied it. In fact, they tried to make it appear, through my brother, that I was insane.
But on a program in Chicago called “Hotline”, moderated by Wesley South, Donna Ali, the National Secretary, admitted – I think it was Wednesday or Thursday, one of these days last week – that they absolutely were going to kill me.”
Reporter: “What steps would you take to protect yourself from this threat?”
Malcolm X: “I take no steps. I have a rifle. If anybody comes to my house without a good reason, I intend to try to use it. And that’s all.”
So, we learn the truth about Elijah Muhammad. The founder of the Nation of Islam, the man who declared himself Allah’s divine messenger, the black supremacist who called for separation of the races, was full of shit. This man, a religious and cultural leader who demanded unquestioning obedience by his flock, was actually a creepy, pedophile rapist.
Good thing Elijah Muhammad was the first and only self-proclaimed moral leader to ever fit that description, right? As it says in the book of Ecclesiastes:[xxxviii] “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.”
The threats on Malcolm’s life intensified throughout 1964 and into 1965. Assailants firebombed his home in Queens on February 14, 1965:[xxxix]
Reporter: “A few of these threats - are you concerned about your own life right now?”
Malcolm X: “No, I don’t worry. I tell you. I am a man who believed that I died 20 years ago. And I live like a man who is dead already. I have no fear whatsoever of anybody or anything.”
Malcolm X: “This is Leon Ameer, who was Cassius Clay’s Secretary. Whom they beat unmercifully up in Boston.”
Leon Ameer: “I was attacked by them in Boston on December the 25th. In the lobby, the hotel lobby of the Sherry-Biltmore Hotel. And they’re still after me.”
Malcolm X: “And it was he who heard Elijah Muhammad, Jr. come to New York when Elijah Muhammad was at the armory in June of last year. Junior stood up and told the group, many of whom are here now also, that I should have been killed. That my tongue should have been put in an envelope and sent back to Chicago by now. And then Clarence, the Captain from Boston, and John, the Captain from Springfield, came to New York to assassinate me. And came to him to get a silencer and couldn’t get it. So, the police know this. It’s not something that’s new. They’re just waiting until the job is done, and then they step in.”
Reporter: “You mean that he was going to kill you?”
Malcolm X: “Oh yes, one of them was an attempt that was made to get one of them to wire my car with an explosive. That one is with me right now.”
Reporter: “Are you not perhaps afraid of what might happen to you as a result of making these revelations?”
Malcolm X: “Oh yes, I probably am a dead man already.”
Malcolm X: “I wanted you to know that my house was bombed. It was bombed by the Black Muslim Movement upon the orders of Elijah Muhammad. Now, they had come around – they had planned to do it from the front and the back so that I couldn’t get out. They had - they covered the front completely. The front door.
Then they had come to the back. But, instead of getting in directly in back of the house. And throwing it this way, they stood at a 45-degree angle and tossed it at the window. So, it glanced and went onto the ground.”
Betty Shabazz: “And I don’t know if I woke my husband up or he woke me up. But I remember him pushing me out of the bedroom door. And I, I looked to my right, and I saw all the fire.”
Malcolm X: “And the fire hit the window, and it woke up my second oldest baby. And then it - but the fire burned on the outside of the house. But had that fire, had that one gone through that window it would have fallen on a six-year-old girl, a four-year-old girl, and a two-year-old girl. And I’m going to tell you, if it had done it, I’d have taken my rifle and gone after anybody in sight. I would not wait.”
One week after the firebombing, Malcolm’s enemies finished the job. On February 21, 1965, he was preparing to address the Organization of Afro-American Unity in Manhattan’s Audubon Ballroom.[xl] Someone in the 400-person audience yelled, “Nigger! Get your hand outta my pocket!"
While Malcolm and his bodyguards attempted to quiet the disturbance, a man rushed forward and shot him twice in the chest with a sawed-off shotgun. Two other men charged the stage firing semi-automatic handguns. Malcolm X was pronounced dead at 3:30pm at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, where the autopsy identified 21 gunshot wounds.
Three members of the Nation of Islam, Thomas Hagan, Norman 3X Butler and Thomas 15X Johnson, were convicted of the murder and sentenced to life in prison.[xli] At trial, Hagan confessed, but refused to identify the other assailants except to say that they were not Butler and Johnson. In 1977 and 1978, he signed affidavits reasserting Butler's and Johnson's innocence, naming four other NOI members of Newark's Mosque No. 25 as participants in the murder. These affidavits did not result in the case being reopened.
Both Butler and Johnson, members of Harlem’s Mosque No. 7, maintained their innocence. In 2021, they were exonerated from their murder convictions. This exoneration followed a review that found the FBI and the New York Police Department withheld key evidence during the trials.[xlii] Both men had spent over twenty years imprisoned, wrongfully convicted.
Three weeks after Malcolm X’s assassination, Martin Luther King Jr. published an article in New York Amsterdam News titled “The Nightmare of Violence”:[xliii]
The present ghastly nightmare of violence and counter-violence is one of the most tragic blots to occur on the pages of the Negroes’ history in this country. In many ways, however it is typical of the misplacement of aggression which have occurred throughout the frustrated circumstances of our existence.
How often have the frustrations of second class citizenship and humiliating status led us in to blind outrage against each other and the real cause and source of our dilemma ignored? It is sadly ironic that those who so clearly pointed to the white world as the seed of evil should now spend their energies in their own destruction.
Malcolm X came to the fore as a public figure partially as a result of a TV documentary entitled “The Hate that Hate Produced”. That title points to the nature of Malcolm’s life and death.
Malcolm X was clearly a product of hate and violence invested in the Negro’s blighted existence in this nation.
He, like so many of our number, was a victim of the despair inevitably deriving from the conditions of oppression, poverty, and injustice which engulf the masses of our race.
In his youth, there was no hope, no preaching, teaching or movements of non-violence.
He was too young for the Garvey Movement, too poor to be a Communist – for the Communists geared their work to Negro intellectuals and labor without realizing that the masses of Negroes were unrelated to either – and yet he possessed a native intelligence and drive which demanded an outlet and means of expression.
He turned first to the underworld, but this did not fulfill the quest for meaning which grips young minds.
It is a testimony to Malcolm’s personal depth and integrity that he could not become an underworld Czar, but turned again and again to religion for meaning and destiny. Malcolm was still turning and growing at the time of his brutal and meaningless assassination.
Spoke to Mrs. King
In his recent visit to Selma, he spoke at length to my wife Corretta about his personal struggles and expressed an interest in working more closely with the nonviolent movement, but he was not yet able to renounce violence and overcome the bitterness which life had invested in him.
There were also indications of an interest in politics as a way of dealing with the problems of the Negro. All of these were signs of a man of passion and zeal seeking for a program through which he could channel his talents.
But history would not have it so. A man who lived under the torment of knowledge of the rape of his grandmother and murder of his father under the condition of the present social order, does not readily accept the social order or seek to integrate into it.
And so Malcom was forced to live and die as an outsider, a victim of the violence that spawned him, and with which he courted through his brief but promising life.
The American Negro cannot afford to destroy its leadership any more than the Congo can. Men of talent are too scarce to be destroyed by envy, greed and tribal rivalry before they reach their full maturity.
Like the murder of Lumumba, the murder of Malcolm X deprives the world of a potentially great leader. I could not agree with either of these men, but I could see in them a capacity for leadership which I could respect, and which was only beginning to mature in judgment and statesmanship.
Surely the young men of Harlem and Negro communities throughout the nation ought to be ready to seek another way. Let us learn from this tragic nightmare that violence and hate, only breed violence and hate and that Jesus’ word still goes out to every potential Peter, “Put up thy sword.”
Certainly we will continue to disagree, but we must disagree without becoming violently disagreeable.
We will still suffer the temptation to bitterness, but we must learn that hate is too great a burden for a people moving on toward their date with destiny.
The documentary Malcolm X featured interviews of those closest to Malcolm after his murder:[xliv]
Reporter: “Mrs. Shabazz, do you believe it was the Black Muslims who assassinated your husband?”
Betty Shabazz: (Silence)
Reporter: “Would you say flatly that no Black Muslims were involved in the shooting of Malcom X?”
Elijah Muhammad: “I wasn’t there, but I don’t believe that any of my followers was there, had nothing to do with it at all. Way I see it, Malcolm is the victim of his own preaching. He preached violence and so he become the victim of it.”
Martin Luther King: “The assassination of Malcom X was an unfortunate tragedy, and it reveals that there are still numerous people in our nation who have degenerated to the point of expressing dissent through murder. And we haven’t learned to disagree without being violently disagreeable.”
James Farmer: “I am not convinced, however, that Elijah Muhammad and the Black Muslims had anything to do with his killings. I think that we will find that it runs much deeper than that. Malcolm X, last week, sought to make contact with the State Department to discuss threats against his life. I note that he said in a press interview last week also that he was practically dead, he was going to be killed because he knew too much.
These questions raise in my mind. What did he know that was about to bring about his death? Why did he consider the matter to be a responsibility which should be brought to the attention of the State Department? It seems to me that these questions are serious enough to require a federal investigation into the circumstances surrounding Malcolm X’s murder. We are therefore urging upon the Federal government, upon the President indeed, that there be a federal inquiry launched by the proper federal agency into the circumstances surrounding the assassination.”
Reporter: “Whom do you blame for your brother’s death?”
Ella Little-Collins: “I will quote my brother the day before he died referring to the bombing of his home. He stated that he felt the bombing of his home was much bigger than the Black Muslims. One week later, he was assassinated. If he felt that the bombing was bigger than the Black Muslims, then I feel that possibly his assassination was bigger than the Black Muslims.”
Who was responsible for Malcolm’s murder? Was it bigger than the Black Muslims? What did he know, and why was he contacting the US State Department about threats against his life?
We’ll return to these questions in part five of this series. First, it’s time to discuss the current President of the United States. A white liberal who likes to remind black Americans that if you consider not voting for him,[xlv] “Then you ain’t black!”
Joe Biden & Political Football
How does Joe Biden’s track record on race relations compare to those of Robert F. Kennedy?
First, let’s take a look at the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, also known as the Biden Crime Bill.[xlvi] Biden leveraged his position on the Senate Judiciary Committee to pass the legislation. Biden’s critics claim the bill led to mass incarceration, particularly of black and brown Americans:[xlvii]
Joe Biden Jr.: “Increase the penalties, increase them. I would put the son of a gun in jail. Put them to death. It doesn’t matter whether or not they’re the victims of society. The end result is they’re about to knock my mother on the head with a lead pipe. Shoot my sister, beat up my wife, take on my sons. So, I don’t want to ask what made them do this. They must be taken off the street. Let the FBI agents buy weapons as powerful as the drug cartels had. They’re getting beat up!
Biden Crime Bill. The Biden Crime Bill. The Biden Crime Bill. Hell, we’ve got crime bills coming out of our ears. Every major crime bill since 1976. Every minor crime bill has had the name of the Democratic Senator from the state of Delaware, Joe Biden.
You’ve got a gun; you commit a felony - ten years. We already have it five years. Minimum mandatory. Judge can’t say, you know, you had it in your pocket, you never intended to use it, we’re only going to give you one year. Judge has to say five years. Well, he wants to make it ten or twenty or sixty. We can work that out.”
Voiceover: “He wanted to remove judicial discretion for those who quote, ‘Don’t meet the middle-class criteria of susceptibility to rehabilitation.’
Biden: “They are beyond the pale, many of those people. They literally have not been socialized; they are in jail. Away from my mother, your husband, our families.”
Voiceover: “The Biden-Thurmond Violent Crime Control Act of 1991 would have increased the maximum sentence for 44 crimes to include the death penalty.”
Biden: “A wag in the newspaper recently wrote, ‘Biden has made it a death penalty offense for everything but jaywalking.’ Sixty new death penalties, brand new, sixty. There are seventy different enhancements of penalties, i.e., you go to jail longer.”
Voiceover: “After his disastrous 1987 presidential campaign, Biden had staged his political comeback, in part by becoming a media darling on issues of policing and crime. And he led the fight to pass the landmark 1994 Crime Bill under Bill Clinton.”
Biden: “When I wrote the original bill that started this whole process, the so-called Biden Crime Bill, I didn’t call a Liberal confab and write it. I didn’t call any big society people and write it. I called the cops.
A Democratic president wants 100,000 cops. A Democratic president wants to build 125,000 new prison cells. That’s the secret.
That somehow the Republicans tried to make the Crime Bill tougher, I say poppycock. They didn’t make anything tougher. I wrote that bill.”
Voiceover: “He convinced Republicans to support urban community programs as a way to keep inner city kids away from respectable families.”
Biden: “I started looking at it. Found out that this midnight basketball was getting together a bunch of jive folks who are black, white, and Hispanic. Live in the inner city to do, you know, try to see if they can be Michael Jordan. When they found out they were keeping schools open. So, gangs go off streets instead of out raping my mother, marauding me, robbing the local store. They’re in a gymnasium. My daughter will be safer, my wife will be safer, my mother will be safer, and I will be safer, and I will be happy.”
Voiceover: “When Biden ran for president in 2008, he told The New York Times that he knew more people would be locked up across the board. But that it would drive down crime. In fact, crime rates were already falling when Biden pushed for the passage of the ’94 Crime Bill. And they have continued falling as the prison population has declined in recent years.”
Reporter: “Are you ashamed of that bill?”
Biden: “Not at all. In fact, I drafted that bill. We had enormous success.”
Voiceover: “The mass incarcerations created by Biden’s lock-them-up policies ripped apart vulnerable communities and families for a generation.”
Shortly after Joe declared for the Democratic presidential primary in early 2019, Andrew Cockburn of Harper’s Magazine published an article titled, “No Joe! Joe Biden’s disastrous legislative legacy”. Cockburn detailed the impact of Bidens’ crime bills:[xlviii]
By the 1980s, Biden had begun to see political gold in the harsh antidrug legislation that had been pioneered by drug warriors such as Nelson Rockefeller and Richard Nixon, and would ultimately lead to the age of mass incarceration for black Americans.
One of his Senate staffers at the time recalls him remarking, “Whenever people hear the words ‘drugs’ and ‘crime,’ I want them to think ‘Joe Biden.’” Insisting on anonymity, this former staffer recollected how Biden’s team “had to think up excuses for new hearings on drugs and crime every week—any connection, no matter how remote. He wanted cops at every public meeting—you’d have thought he was running for chief of police.”
The ensuing legislation might also have brought to voters’ minds the name of the venerable Thurmond, Biden’s partner in this effort. Together, the pair sponsored the 1984 Comprehensive Crime Control Act, which, among other repressive measures, abolished parole for federal prisoners and cut the amount of time by which sentences could be reduced for good behavior. The bipartisan duo also joined hands to cheerlead the passage of the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act and its 1988 follow-on, which cumulatively introduced mandatory sentences for drug possession. Biden later took pride in reminding audiences that “through the leadership of Senator Thurmond, and myself, and others,” Congress had passed a law mandating a five-year sentence, with no parole, for anyone caught with a piece of crack cocaine “no bigger than [a] quarter.” That is, they created the infamous disparity in penalties between those caught with powder cocaine (white people) and those carrying crack (black people). Biden also unblushingly cited his and [segregationist Strom] Thurmond’s leading role in enacting laws allowing for the execution of drug dealers convicted of homicide, and expanding the practice of civil asset forfeiture, law enforcement’s plunder of property belonging to people suspected of crimes, even if they are neither charged nor convicted.
Despite pleas from the NAACP and the ACLU, the 1990s brought no relief from Biden’s crime crusade. He vied with the first Bush Administration to introduce ever more draconian laws, including one proposing to expand the number of offenses for which the death penalty would be permitted to fifty-one. Bill Clinton quickly became a reliable ally upon his 1992 election, and Biden encouraged him to “maintain crime as a Democratic initiative” with suitably tough legislation. The ensuing 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, passed with enthusiastic administration pressure, would consign millions of black Americans to a life behind bars.
In subsequent years, as his crime legislation, particularly on mandatory sentences, attracted efforts at reform, Biden began expressing a certain remorse. “I am part of the problem that I have been trying to solve since then, because I think the disparity [between crack and powder cocaine sentences] is way out of line,” he declared at a Senate hearing in 2008. However, there is little indication that his words were matched by actions, especially after he moved to the vice presidency the following year. The executive director of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation, Eric Sterling, who worked on the original legislation in the House as a congressional counsel, told me, “During the eight years he was vice president, I never saw him take a leadership role in the area of drug policy, never saw him get out in front on the issue like he did on same-sex marriage, for example. Biden could have taken a stronger line [with Obama] privately or publicly, and he did not.”
While many black Americans will neither forgive nor forget how they, along with relatives and friends, were accorded the lifetime stigma of a felony conviction, many other Americans are only now beginning to count the costs of these viciously repressive initiatives. As a result, criminal justice reform has emerged as a popular issue across the political spectrum, including among conservatives eager to burnish otherwise illiberal credentials. Ironically, this has led, in theory, to a modest unraveling of a portion of Biden’s bipartisan crime-fighting legacy.
Biden has an awful track record on mass incarceration and its destruction of black families. And we can’t miss the hypocrisy of his stance on drugs given his son Hunter’s addictions, including to both crack and powder cocaine. Yet despite this record, Biden claims to be a champion for black Americans. Here is acting President Joe Biden at MLK’s alma mater, the Historically Black College Morehouse, in May 2024:[xlix]
Joe Biden Jr.: “You missed your high school graduation. You started college just as George Floyd was murdered, and there was a reckoning on race. It’s natural to wonder, [if the] democracy you hear about actually works for you? What is democracy, if a trail of broken promises still leaves black communities behind? What is democracy if you have be ten times better than anyone else to get a fair shot? Most of all, what does it mean, as you heard before, to be a black man who loves his country, even if it doesn’t love him back in equal measure?”
Strange change in tone for Mr. Biden, no? It’s almost like he is using the issue of race relations as some kind of a political football! Here is Vince Everett Ellison, author and former Republican Congressional candidate, discussing these tactics:[l]
Vince Everett Ellison: “You know, the Democratic party is very, very shrewd. They have branded themselves as the party of compassion. It’s the type of compassion where you see a guy beat up his wife and say, ‘I’m doing this cuz I love you!’ You know, that type of compassion. The guy that beats up his children and locks them up, and say he’s doing it because he loves them. No, he’s doing it for control. The way they sell is that they first have to demoralize you. The pain is the point. It’s a trick of the devil, and they’ve been great at it ever since slavery. We keep you here on this plantation to work for us because we care about you. We can’t let you go out there. That’s the Democratic party man. They’re masters at it, and they’ve always done it. And they’re never going to stop until we make them.
Joe Biden, you know, he always say he came from a slave state. So, he sees himself as a plantation owner anyway, right? He sees the inner cities as a cotton filed. And he puts the black caucus up there, and the black preachers, and the black civil rights organizations. The house Negroes. And so, it’s a variation on the thing.”
Joe Biden: “They want to put you all back in chains.”
Ellison: “So, he wants black people to make sure, to understand, that whatever you get comes from the benevolent master. So, he gets a Supreme Court opening. He says, ‘I’m going to give it to a black woman.’ He’s got to be the benevolent white master, and you have to be the one that says, ‘Thank you boss, thank you boss. Thank you boss. Look at what the good boss did. He gave this to me, because I was too stupid to earn it. And he gave it to me.’ No, no, no, no, you don’t give me nothing. I call that low voltage racism.”
Joe Biden likes to remind us that he was the vice president to the first black president, and the president to the first black, female vice president. So, as a champion of identity politics, when he finally recognized the self-evident truth - that he is unfit to run for a second term – he naturally endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as his replacement.
When President Lyndon B. Johnson announced he would not run for a second term, he informed the nation via a 40-minute, televised press conference. When President Joe Biden Jr. announced he would not run for a second term, he did so via Twitter.
Many questions surround this Tweet and the curious way Biden announce his decision. This includes his signature, which is noticeably different than his standard one, and the lack of presidential letterhead or presidential seal. The letter sent in the Tweet read:[li]
This stunning announcement came after months of speculation over whether he would ultimately be the Democratic nominee. Do you think there was any scheming being done by members of the Democratic party elite or the oligarchs who finance them during this time?
Many suspect the nail in the coffin for Biden’s reelection campaign came after his disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump on June 27, 2024, hosted by CNN. In case you missed it, President Trump summarized the event perfectly when he said:[lii]
President Trump: “I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don’t think he knows what he said either.”
And so, on that fateful day in July 2024, the man Chris Kennedy referred to as the RFK of his generation exited the presidential race. With the Tweet of a thumb, and less than twenty-four hours later, the “Democratic” party of the United States had a new nominee.
The party calling itself the defenders of democracy transferred 1,976 pledged delegates[liii] and $95 million in campaign donations[liv] to a woman no one had voted for or donated to. A politician who has met with over 150 world leaders. Presidents, prime ministers, chancellors and kings. Many of them several times.
Kamala Harris & What Can Be
Kamala Harris is the daughter of Donald J. Harris, a Jamaican immigrant, and Shyamala Gopalan, an Indian immigrant.[lv] Harris claims she is therefore obviously the most qualified candidate to represent the interests of African Americans.
Harris was born in Oakland, California where she and her sister Maya grew up. Kamala attended Howard University for her undergraduate degree and University of California, Hastings College of Law for her JD. She began her career in the district attorney’s office of Alameda County before moving to the San Francisco DA’s office, and later the city attorney of San Francisco’s office.
In 2003, she was elected DA of San Francisco.[lvi] From there, she was elected twice as attorney general of California, in 2010 and 2014. Harris was next elected as U.S. Senator from California in 2017.
She sought the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination before dropping out of the race. Harris received praise from the left during that race when she went after Joe Biden for his controversial race policies, saying in the first debate:[lvii]
Kamala Harris: “I'm going to now direct this at Vice President Biden. I do not believe you are a racist. And I agree with you when you commit yourself to the importance of finding common ground. But I also believe, and it’s personally, and it was actually very… It was hurtful to hear you talk about the reputations of two United States Senators who built their reputations and career on the segregation of race in this country.
And it was not only that, but you also worked with them to oppose busing. And you know, there was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools. And she was bused to school every day. And that little girl was me.”
Of course, young Kamala Harris’s pain wasn’t deep enough to stop her from accepting a job on the ticket as Joe Biden’s running mate fourteen months later.[lviii] You don’t think a politician would lie to pander for votes, do you? Oh, and it turns out she also had the exact same position on busing as Biden, which she admitted a few days after the debate.[lix] Whoops.
Many critics argue Harris’s selection as VP was effectively a diversity, equity, & inclusion (DEI) hire done by Biden to appeal to minorities and to women. Supporting evidence for this claim include that Democratic party leaders were openly calling on Joe Biden to pick a black woman for the role in May 2020,[lx] and that Biden publicly stated in March of 2020 that he would only pick a woman as his vice president.[lxi]
Here’s what Biden told Charlamagne the God when pressed on this issue in May 2020:[lxii]
Charlamagne the God: “Black people saved your political life in the primaries this year. They have things they want from you. And one of them is a black woman running mate. What do you say to them?”
Joe Biden: “What I say to them is that I’m not acknowledging anybody who is being considered. But I guarantee, there are multiple black women being considered. Multiple.”
Harris has served as acting Vice President since 2021. Kamala Harris set the record low for vice president net favorability, with 49% negative opinions, not exactly the record for which politicians aspire.[lxiii] Harris suffered frequent staff turnover and has rarely been trusted with high-profile assignments. While her allies claim this is mainly due to sexism & racism and that the White House has not helped her enough, her detractors claim these poor approval ratings are self-inflicted.[lxiv]
For example, investigative journalist and former California gubernatorial candidate Michael Shellenberger has argued,[lxv] “Harris has no substantive vision and has not delivered results for the people. She is best known for her vacuous statements attempting to sound inspiring.”
What are some of those vacuous statements?
Kamala Harris: [lxvi] “What can be, unburdened by what has been.”
Harris: “What can be, unburdened by what has been.”
Harris:[lxvii] “Which brings me to May 30, 2020. Bob and Doug returned to the Kennedy Space Center. They suited up, they waved to their families, and they rode an elevator up nearly twenty stories. They strapped into their seats and waited as the tanks beneath them filled with tens of thousands of gallons of fuel. And then, they launched. Yeah, they did! (Cackles)”
Harris: “What can be, unburdened by what has been.”
Harris: “What we can see, what we believe can be, unburdened by what has been.”
Harris: “What can be, unburdened by what has been.”
Harris:[lxviii] “Good afternoon. I want to welcome these leaders for coming in to have this very important discussion about some of the most pressing issues of our time. I am Kamala Harris; my pronouns are she and her. I am a woman sitting at the table wearing a blue suit.”
Harris: “What can be, unburdened by what has been.”
Harris: “What can be, unburdened by what has been.”
Harris: “What can be, unburdened by what has been.”
Haris:[lxix] “As vice president, I have now met with over 100 world leaders. Presidents, prime ministers, chancellors & kings.”
Harris: “Who we can be, unburdened by who we have been.”
Harris: “What can be, unburdened by what has been.”
Harris:[lxx] “Ukraine is a country in Europe. It exists next to another country called Russia. Russia is a bigger country; Russia is a powerful country. Russia decided to invade a smaller country called Ukraine. So, basically that’s wrong.”
Harris: “Where we can be, unburdened by where we have been and unburdened by where we are right now.”
Harris: “What can be, unburdened by what has been.”
Harris: “What can be, unburdened by what has been.”
Harris: “What can be, unburdened by what has been.”
Harris: “What could be, unburdened by what had been.”
Harris: “What can be, unburdened by what has been.”
Harris:[lxxi] “So the United States shares a very important relationship which is an alliance with the Republic of North Korea. And it is an alliance that is strong and enduring. And today there were several demonstrations of just that point.”
Harris: “What can be, unburdened by what has been.”
Harris: “What can be, unburdened by what has been.”
Harris: “What can be, unburdened by what has been.”
Harris: “What can be, unburdened by what has been.”
Harris: “Unburdened by what has been, believing in what can be.”
Stephen Colbert, CBS Late Night: “As a, as a senator, as a politician, someone who has to respond to constituents. What do these protests mean to the ability to effect change legislatively?”
Senator Kamala Harris: “Yeah, yeah.”
Colbert: “Because the reason I ask is because I woke up this morning, I looked down at the – we do like a news breakdown at night. A news breakdown in the morning, I looked at everything, and I went where’s the report on the protests?
Are they gone, are we not just talking about them anymore? Because it seems to me that it has to be sustained in order to maintain the pressure. And to maintain that commonality of purpose for people of all races in the United States. To bring this kind of justice that’s being called for. How important is it for these protests to continue?”
Harris: “It’s critically important… The only way we’re going to truly achieve change is when there are people in the system who are willing or pushing to do it and when there are those folks who are outside of the system demanding it. I am very clear that some of the success that we have been able to achieve around criminal justice reform would not have happened in recent years were it not for Black Lives Matter.
And the intensity and the brilliance of that movement. That force, at least, that there would be some counterforce to the status quo which is so reluctant for change. If not hostile to change. That’s what these movements do. That, where these systems are so invested and ingrained in what they call tradition. But which is status quo. Often which can be wrong headed. These movements provide a counterforce to get us to where we need to be…”
Colbert: “And I want to make clear that I know that there are protests still happening in major cities across the United States.”
Harris: “Yes.”
Colbert: “I’m just not seeing the reporting on it that I had for the first few weeks.”
Harris: “That’s right. That’s right.”
Colbert: “Now…”
Harris: “But they’re not going to stop. They’re not going to stop. And that’s, they’re not, this is a movement. I’m telling you. They’re not going to stop. And everyone beware. Because they’re not going to stop. It is going to, they’re not going to stop before election day in November.
And they’re not going to stop after election day. And that should be, everyone should take note of that, on both levels. That this isn’t, they’re not going to let up. And they should not. And we should not.”
Harris: “What can be, unburdened by what has been.”
Harris: “What can be, unburdened by what has been.”
Harris: “What can be, unburdened by what has been.”
Harris:[lxxii] “You know, we have to stay woke. Like everybody needs to be woke. (Laughs) And you can talk about if you’re the wokest, or woker. But just stay more woke than less woke. (Laughs) Whatever.”
Harris: “What can be, unburdened by what has been.”
Harris: “What can be, unburdened by what has been.”
Harris: “What can be, unburdened by what has been.”
Harris: “What can be, unburdened by what has been.”
Lester Holt, NBC News:[lxxiii] “Americans don’t see a lot of that on a daily basis. What they do see at their own border - children being lowered over fences. Children coming in with, you known, phone numbers stenciled on their hand.
Kamala Harris: “Yeah.”
Holt: “And so, the question has come up, you heard it here and you’ll hear it again, I’m sure. Why not visit the border? Why not see what Americans are seeing in this crisis?”
Harris: “Well, we are going to the border. We have to deal with what’s happening at the border. There’s no question about that. That’s not a debatable point. But we have to understand that there’s a reason that people are arriving at our border. And ask what is that reason? And then identify that problem so that we can fix it.” …
Holt: “So how quickly does this change, what we see at the border?”
Harris: “There’s not going to be a quick fix. We’re not going to see an immediate return. But we’re going to see progress. The real work is going to take time to manifest itself. Will it be worth it? Yes. Will it take some time? Yes.” …
Holt: “Just to quickly put a button.”
Harris: “Okay.”
Holt: “Do you have any plans to visit the border?”
Harris: “At some point. You know, we are going to the border. We have been to the border. So, this whole, this whole, this whole thing about the border. We have been to the border. We have been to the border.”
Holt: “You haven’t been to the border.”
Harris: “And I haven’t been to Europe. I mean, I don’t, I don’t understand the point that you’re making.”
Harris: “What can be, unburdened by what has been.”
Harris: “What can be, unburdened by what has been.”
[Haris:[lxxiv] “You know, I’ve now, as vice president met over 150 world leaders. Presidents, prime ministers, chancellors & kings. Many of them multiple times.”
Harris: “What can be, unburdened by what has been.”
Harris: “There are those who are unable to see what can be. Um, but there are many more who are able to see what can be, unburdened by what has been.”
As hilarious as it is to poke fun at Kamala Harris’s hollow slogans, her actions in California politics and at the federal level have had real consequences. Here’s what Tulsi Gabbard had to say in the 2020 Democratic primary debate about Harris’s track record, which effectively ended Harris’s presidential campaign on the spot. That segment is followed by RFK Jr.’s commentary on Kamala’s track record.
Tulsi Gabbard:[lxxv] “Now, Senator Harris says she is proud of her record as a prosecutor and that she’ll be a prosecutor president. But I am deeply concerned about this record. There are too many examples to cite. But she put over 1,500 people in jail for marijuana violations and then laughed about it when she was asked if she ever smoked marijuana. She blocked evidence, she blocked evidence that would have freed an innocent man from death row until the courts forced her to do so. She kept people in prison beyond their sentences to use them as cheap labor for the state of California. To keep cash bail system in place that impacts poor people in the worst kind of way.”
RFK Jr.:[lxxvi] “I think, you know, Kamala Harris is the party of war. She is a war hawk. You know, the Democratic party was always the peace party. Kamala Harris is a war hawk on Ukraine. She’s a war hawk on China.
I think that we should be figuring out ways to coexist with the rest of the world as best we can. Of course we need to protect our national security. I think she’s not going to do anything about the national deficit.
I’ve never heard her speak about the chronic disease epidemic. I think she’s a product of the corporate control of our democracy. And she’s one of the authors – in terms of civil rights. She has one of the worst civil rights’ records of any public official.
She’s the author of, one of the primary authors of the school to prison pipeline. She kept 5,000 people, despite a Supreme Court order to release 5,000 prisoners of nonviolent drug crimes who were illegally in California jails. She kept them in there saying that we needed them for firefighting and for other public works services. And that’s just a modern version of indentured servitude, a modern version of slavery.
She was the leading, one of the two leading public officials in California, which now has the worst education system. 49th in education outcomes in the country. 50% of the homeless people in our country are in California. And she was behind those policies. So, I don’t think she has a good - I don’t think in terms of the traditional Democratic principles, I don’t think she has a credible record.”
Some of Kamala’s other career highlights include:
Questions over whether Harris’s romantic relationship with former Mayor of San Francisco, Willie Brown, drove his decision to appoint Harris to two different government jobs while they were dating.[lxxvii] The affair earned her the nickname “Kamel Toe” from her enemies.
A scandal over a San Fracisco crime lab in which an employee had been stealing cocaine and mishandling evidence.[lxxviii] Harris’s District Attorney’s office withheld that information from defense attorneys; the employee’s misconduct eventually led to the dismissal of over 600 cases.
Implementation of a school truancy program, which fined the parents of children for missing school, despite concerns that it would disproportionately affect low-income people of color.[lxxix]
An increase in violent crime across California of 26% from 2011 to 2017, the years Kamala Harris was the Attorney General.[lxxx] Crime today in California is 31% higher than the rest of the United States. One out of four San Franciscans say they were a victim of crime last year.
In 2020, Harris denied that police prevent crime, even though an overwhelming amount of evidence shows that they do.[lxxxi] Harris made this claim in support of defunding the police after the outbreak of Black Lives Matter protests.
Drafting highly biased summaries for two California ballot initiatives, propositions 47 and 57, which caused the increase in crime and homelessness.[lxxxii]
Proposition 47 decriminalized open-air drug dealing, drug use, and shoplifting.
Proposition 57 released many prisoners, including violent ones, without a rehabilitation and societal re-entry system that Harris claimed to have created.
Together the two propositions, along with incentives for homelessness in the form of cash and free housing, caused homelessness in California to rise 50% over the last ten years, from 113,000 in 2014 to 181,399 in 2023. California today has 12% of America’s population and one-third of America’s homeless.
A dramatic increase in annual border crossings of illegal immigrants in her current (though often denied) role as Biden’s cabinet member in charge of dealing with immigration. During her time as Vice President, annual border crossings have grown from 400,000 in 2020 to over two million.[lxxxiii]
Now, some of the criticisms here claim Kamala Harris was excessively punitive in her roles within the Justice Department. Others that she was overly lax and soft on crime. Are we being too critical, launching partisan complaints unfairly? Or is there more to the story here?
Michael Shellenberger explains:[lxxxiv]
The picture that emerges of Harris is one of intense personal ambition alongside indifference toward the human impacts of crime, homelessness, and immigration. This mixture of indifference and ambition is similar to that displayed by Gov. Newsom. Neither Harris nor Newsom are as ideological as some are in the Democratic Party. Rather, they blow with the winds of public opinion, from tougher to softer on crime. They are both as much effects of Democratic Party ideology at the moment as they are causes. They may have things in which they truly believe. Both seem particularly passionate about abortion, for example. But they don’t seem to care much about the things that directly impact the most vulnerable members of society, from migrant children to mentally ill homeless addicts to the victims of crime and violence.
Harris is awkward in ways that betray someone with few strong convictions beyond getting ahead. She lied to the face of NBC News’ Lester Holt when she said, “We’ve been to the border,” and then when he called her out on it, she said, “And I haven’t been to Europe,” and played ignorant about the obvious point Holt was making.
Harris speaks heavily in cliches and is socially awkward in public settings. She lost most of her staff, who described her as abusive. The picture of Harris is of someone constantly seeking the right thing to say to appeal to particular audiences and not of someone with a deep understanding of how the world works and her own vision for how it should change.
As a result, Harris has fallen back onto a safe stock set of Democratic Party arguments and policies, none of which involve reducing crime, homelessness, or the migration crisis. [L]ess than $500 million of the $5.5 billion that Harris announced earlier this year for housing was for addressing homelessness.
Yesterday, we noted that Harris’ role on the migration crisis was actually larger than just the border. Biden had tasked her to deal with the “root causes” of migration, including war, oppression, and poverty. Instead, she dealt with neither the root cause nor border enforcement.
The same has been true of crime and homelessness. She has sought policies that would deal neither with the root causes nor the symptoms. Harris has advocated neither a care-based approach of treating mental illness, addiction, and criminality through rehabilitation nor a law-and-order approach to get people off the street, expand shelters, and restore consequences for committing crimes. Both are needed; Harris has demanded neither as AG, Senator, Vice President, or presidential candidate...
What’s striking about Harris and, to some extent, Biden before her is how little they have said about the crime, homelessness, and migration crisis at all. It is as though they realize that the more they talk about it, the more they must acknowledge that it is a problem of their own making. Earlier this week, we noted that Harris is utterly conformist in her approach to policy. The result is that she is not a leader, she is a follower of public opinion, which the legacy news media have historically shaped.
Now that the media is fragmenting and its power declining, it will be harder for Harris to maintain the story that she is someone who the American people can trust to safeguard democracy, be a tough prosecutor, and act with compassion toward the vulnerable. Her track record shows that her rise to the top was heavily shaped by being selected not by the people but rather by Democratic Party elites, from her boyfriend, San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, to her selection by Biden as vice president and again as presidential candidate.
None of that means she can’t defeat Trump, who has struggled over the last few days to define her. But it does mean that she is highly unlikely to be able to lead the country to deal with its most difficult problems.
The final case to highlight in Harris’s career relates to child sexual abuse victims and the Catholic Church. Harris’s political identity has been built as a fighter for victims of sexual abuse, particularly children, for over three decades.[lxxxv] Harris specialized in prosecuting sex crimes and child exploitation as a young prosecutor just out of law school. But when it came time for her to take on the Catholic Church, survivors of clergy sexual abuse say that Harris turned a blind eye.
When Harris became San Francisco’s district attorney in 2004, her office had been working closely with survivors of sexual abuse to pursue cases against the Catholic Church.[lxxxvi] The prosecution team was in the middle of a legal battle to hold accountable predatory priests from the San Francisco Archdiocese, a battle Harris inherited when she stepped into office. And just like that, the battle was over:[lxxxvii]
“It went from Terence Hallinan going hundred miles an hour, full speed ahead, after the Catholic Church to Kamala Harris doing absolutely nothing and taking it backwards hundred miles an hour,” said Joey Piscitelli, a sexual assault survivor, who a jury found had been molested as a student while attending Salesian College Preparatory, a Catholic high school in Richmond, California.
Here, Piscitelli explains what happened, in a 2019 mini documentary produced by The Intercept and investigative journalist Lee Fang:[lxxxviii]
Kamala Harris: “My career has been based on an understanding. One that as a prosecutor, my duty was to seek and make sure that the most vulnerable and voiceless among us are protected. I have personally prosecuted violent crime that includes rape, child molestation, and homicide. And I have also worked my entire career to reform the criminal justice system.”
Joey Piscitelli: “I was born and raised Catholic. All my relatives were Catholic. I believed in God. That was my life. I was accepted to Salesian High School, which to me was an honor.
Almost immediately after I got to high school, I was befriended by the Vice Principal, Father Steve Whelan. The very first incident I was playing pool, and he masturbated in front of me. And I was scared to death, I stood there frozen. I was just a little, seventy-pound runt. I looked across the room and I thought, ‘Geez I need some help.’ And Brother Sal Billante was watching and enjoying it. And later I found out he was a serial molester rapist himself.
When you got out of PE to go into the showers, he would watch me. He would make comments about me undressing. Then he started calling me into his office and telling me I was bad in class. And what am I going to do for him. And then he would attack me. He would stick his hands down my pants. He would, he would just molest me.
And then he would tell me that if anything happened, nobody would believe my word against the priest. And I believed him.
This escalated. He started getting more violent and more rough. The very last time he attacked me and dragged me into the room, I actually blacked out and floated away while he was molesting and raping me.
I just gave up on Catholicism. I gave up on God. I lost all sense of spirituality.
I went with another victim to Terrence Hallinan’s office. The DA’s office in San Francisco. And we were introduced to Hallinan and another DA’s assistant, who told us they virtually had all of these boxes - like a room full of files. That they had gathered and collected and subpoenaed. From the Archdiocese of San Francisco on all of these priests.
Bishop Levada at that time was the highest-ranking Bishop in the United States, and then he became Cardinal. So, this was the top guy. This was the kingpin in the United States. And we had a champion here that was going to go after him. We thought, this is going to go somewhere. These guys are going to be punished. They’re going to be held accountable. They’re going to be prosecuted.”
Crowd: “Kamala! Kamala! Kamala! Kamala! Kamala! Kamala! Kamala! Kamala! Kamala!”
Reporter: “Thirty-eight-year-old Kamala Harris came out of nowhere and was swept into office as San Francisco’s District Attorney.”
Piscitelli: “In 2004, Kamala Harris was elected. Everything just went down the tubes. I started out by writing a letter asking for some help. For some accessibility to the file. I didn’t get any response.
So, then we made posters and started putting them all over the city. And we got no response. Several media members were also asking for files and stuff, and they were getting nothing.
So, in 2010, there was a big article in San Francsico Weekly. And they were pestering her office, and then what they got was this false statement that they were protecting victims.
It’s just a flat-out insult. She could have redacted the names. Blacked out the names and left them out. Everything he did [Hallinan] to gather information and to try and prosecute and go after them, disappeared and went the other way. She shielded and protected them. And we were just, we were floored at what happened.”
Harris: “We also want to make sure that when a woman is raped or a child is molested, one human being is killed by another human being. We also want to make sure there’s going to be consequence, and serious consequence for those crimes.”
Piscitelli: “Her participation in going after clergy or predators of the Catholic Church, or Bishops who had enabled these people was less than zero. I would like her to produce one clergy abuser or one Bishop that she’s even tried to prosecute. I’d like to hear it.”
Why would any person, much less an elected district attorney, protect child predators? We’ll return to this question later. First, it’s time to return to the events of the 1960s, specifically the tragedy that took place on April 4, 1968.
The Assassination of MLK Jr.
Three years after Malcolm X’s assassination, the nation again faced tragedy. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee.[lxxxix] James Earl Ray, a fugitive from the Missouri State Penitentiary, was arrested that June at London’s Heathrow Airport, extradited to the US, and charged with MLK Jr.’s murder. He initially pled guilty and was sentenced to 99 years imprisonment. He later made many attempts to withdraw his guilty plea and to be tried by a jury, starting three days from his initial confession. Every attempt he made proved unsuccessful, and Ray died in prison in 1998.
MLK’s assassination took place while Robert Kennedy was on the primary campaign trail in Indiana. He spoke in front of a mostly black crowd in Indianapolis that night, delivering them the news:[xc]
Robert F. Kennedy: “Do they know about Martin Luther King? Could you lower those signs please? I have some very sad news for all of you. And that is that Martin Luther King was shot and was killed tonight in Memphis, Tennessee.
Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice between fellow human beings. He died in the cause of that effort. In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it’s perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are, and what direction we want to move in.
For those of you who are black, considering the evidence evidently is that there were white people who were responsible. You can be filled with bitterness, and with hatred, and with a desire for revenge. We can move in that direction as a country, in greater polarization. Black people amongst blacks, and white amongst whites, filled with hatred toward one another. Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand and to comprehend and replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land with an effort to understand. Compassion and love.
For those of you who are black and are tempted to be filled with hatred and mistrust of the injustice of such an act against all white people. I would only say that I can also feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed. But he was killed by a white man.
But we have to make an effort in the United States. We have to make an effort to understand. To get beyond or go beyond these rather difficult times. My favorite poem, my favorite poet was Aeschylus, and he once wrote, ‘Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.’
What we need in the United States is not division, what we need in the United States is not hatred, what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness. But is love, and wisdom, and compassion toward one another. Feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country. Whether they be white or whether they be black.
We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times. We’ve had difficult times in the past, and we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence. It is not the end of lawlessness, and it’s not the end of disorder.
But the vast majority of white people, and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together. Want to improve the quality of our life and want justice for all human beings that abide in our land.
And what, dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago, ‘To tame the savageness of man. And make gentle the life of this world.’ Let us dedicate ourselves to that and say a prayer for our country and for our people. Thank you very much.”
RFK’s speech that night is widely considered one of the greatest in American history. It’s credited with preventing the outbreak of riots in Indianapolis, on a night when such riots broke out in most major cities across the country.
The night before, Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had delivered his final speech, one of his most famous, titled “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop”. The speech addressed concerns of Memphis sanitation workers who were then on strike. In his speech, King called for unity, economic action, boycotts, and nonviolent protest. His conclusion presciently considered the possibility that he would be faced with an untimely death:[xci]
MLK: “Thank you very kindly, my friends. As I listened to Ralph Abernathy and his eloquent and generous introduction and then thought about myself, I wondered who he was talking about. It’s always good to have your closest friend and associate to say something good about you, and Ralph Abernathy is the best friend that I have in the world. I’m delighted to see each of you here tonight in spite of a storm warning. You reveal that you are determined to go on anyhow.
Something is happening in Memphis. Something is happening in our world. And you know, if I were standing at the beginning of time, with the possibility of taking a kind of general and panoramic view of the whole of human history up to now, and the Almighty said to me, “Martin Luther King, which age would you like to live in?” I would take my mental flight by Egypt, and I would watch God’s children in their magnificent trek from the dark dungeons of Egypt through, or rather across the Red Sea, through the wilderness on toward the promised land. And in spite of its magnificence, I wouldn’t stop there.
I would move on by Greece and take my mind to Mount Olympus. And I would see Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Euripides and Aristophanes assembled around the Parthenon. And I would watch them around the Parthenon as they discussed the great and eternal issues of reality. But I wouldn’t stop there.
I would go on, even to the great heyday of the Roman Empire, and I would see developments around there, through various emperors and leaders. But I wouldn’t stop there.
I would even come up to the day of the Renaissance and get a quick picture of all that the Renaissance did for the cultural and aesthetic life of man. But I wouldn’t stop there.
I would even go by the way that the man for whom I am named had his habitat. And I would watch Martin Luther as he tacked his 95 theses on the door at the church of Wittenberg. But I wouldn’t stop there.
I would come on up even to 1863 and watch a vacillating President by the name of Abraham Lincoln finally come to the conclusion that he had to sign the Emancipation Proclamation. But I wouldn’t stop there.
I would even come up to the early thirties and see a man grappling with the problems of the bankruptcy of his nation. And come with an eloquent cry that we have nothing to fear but fear itself. But I wouldn’t stop there.
Strangely enough, I would turn to the Almighty, and say, ‘If you allow me to live just a few years in the second half of the 20th century, I will be happy.’
Now that’s a strange statement to make, because the world is all messed up. The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land. Confusion all around. That’s a strange statement. But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars. And I see God working in this period of the twentieth century in a way that men, in some strange way, are responding.
Something is happening in our world. The masses of people are rising up. And wherever they are assembled today, whether they are in Johannesburg, South Africa; Nairobi, Kenya; Accra, Ghana; New York City; Atlanta, Georgia; Jackson, Mississippi; or Memphis, Tennessee – the cry is always the same: ‘We want to be free.’
Another reason that I’m happy to live in this period is that we have been forced to a point where we are going to have to grapple with the problems that men have been trying to grapple with through history, but the demands didn’t force them to do it. Survival demands that we grapple with them. Men, for years now, have been talking about war and peace. But now, no longer can they just talk about it. It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it’s nonviolence or nonexistence. That is where we are today.
Also in the human rights revolution, if something isn’t done, and done in a hurry, to bring the colored peoples of the world out of their long years of poverty, their long years of hurt and neglect, the whole world is doomed. Now, I’m just happy that God has allowed me to live in this period to see what is unfolding, and I’m happy that He’s allowed me to be in Memphis.
I can remember. I can remember when Negroes were just going around as Ralph has said, so often, scratching where they didn’t itch, and laughing when they were not tickled. But that day is all over. We mean business now, and we are determined to gain our rightful place in God’s world.
And that’s all this whole thing is about. We aren’t engaged in any negative protest, and in any negative arguments with anybody. We are saying that we are determined to be men. We are determined to be people. We are saying, we are saying that we are God’s children. And that we are God’s children, we don’t have to live like we are forced to live…
Now, let me say as I move to my conclusion that we’ve got to give ourselves to this struggle until the end. Nothing would be more tragic than to stop at this point in Memphis. We’ve got to see it through. And when we have our march, you need to be there. If it means leaving work, if it means leaving school, be there. Be concerned about your brother. You may not be on strike. But either we go up together, or we go down together.
Let us develop a kind of dangerous unselfishness. One day a man came to Jesus, and he wanted to raise some questions about some vital matters of life. At points, he wanted to trick Jesus and show him that he knew a little more than Jesus knew and throw him off base. Now that question could have easily ended up in a philosophical and theological debate, but Jesus immediately pulled that question from mid-air and placed it on a dangerous curve between Jerusalem and Jericho.
He talked about a certain man who fell among thieves. You remember that a Levite and a priest passed by on the other side. They didn’t stop to help him. Finally, a man of another race came by. He got down from his beast, decided not to be compassionate by proxy, but he got down with him, administered first aid, and helped the man in need. Jesus ended up saying, this was the good man, this was the great man, because he had the capacity to project the I into the thou, and to be concerned about his brother.
Now you know, we use our imagination a great deal to try to determine why the priest and the Levite didn’t stop. At times, we say they were busy going to a church meeting, an ecclesiastical gathering, and they had to get on down to Jerusalem so they wouldn’t be late for their meeting. At other times we would speculate that there was a religious law that one who was engaged in religious ceremonials was not to touch a human body 24 hours before the ceremony, and every now and then we begin to wonder whether maybe they were not going down to Jerusalem or down to Jericho rather to organize a Jericho Road Improvement Association. That’s a possibility. Maybe they felt that it was better to deal with the problem from the causal root, rather than to get bogged down with an individual effect.
But I’m going to tell you what my imagination tells me. It’s possible that those men were afraid. You see, the Jericho Road is a dangerous road. I remember when Mrs. King and I were first in Jerusalem. We rented a car and drove from Jerusalem down to Jericho. And as soon as we got on that road, I said to my wife, ‘I can see why Jesus used this as the setting for his parable.’ It’s a winding, meandering road.
It’s really conducive for ambushing. You start out in Jerusalem, which is about 1,200 miles, or rather 1,200 feet above sea level, and by the time you get down to Jericho, 15 or 20 minutes later, you’re about 2,200 feet below sea level. That’s a dangerous road. In the days of Jesus, it came to be known as the Bloody Pass.
You know, it’s possible that the priest and the Levite looked over that man on the ground and wondered if the robbers were still around, or it’s possible that they felt that the man on the ground was merely faking and he was acting like he had been robbed and hurt in order to seize them over there, lure them there for quick and easy seizure. So, the first question that the priest asked, the first question that the Levite asked, was, ‘If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?’ But then the Good Samaritan came by, and he reversed the question. ‘If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?’
That’s the question before you tonight. Not, if I stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to my job. Not, if I stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to all of the hours that I usually spend in my office every day and every week as a pastor? The question is not, if I stop to help this man in need, what will happen to me? The question is, if I do not stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to them? That’s the question.
Let us rise up tonight with a greater readiness, let us stand with a greater determination, and let us move on in these powerful days, these days of challenge, to make America what it ought to be. We have an opportunity to make America a better nation, and I want to thank God, once more, for allowing me to be here with you.
You know, several years ago, I was in New York City autographing the first book that I had written. While sitting there autographing books, a demented black woman came up. The only question I heard from her was, ‘Are you Martin Luther King?’
I was looking down writing, and I said, ‘Yes.’ The next minute I felt something beating on my chest. Before I knew it, I had been stabbed by this demented woman. I was rushed to Harlem Hospital. It was a dark Saturday afternoon. That blade had gone through, and the X-rays revealed that the tip of the blade was on the edge of my aorta, the main artery. And once that’s punctured, you’re drowned in your own blood. That’s the end of you.
It came out in the New York Times the next morning that if I had merely sneezed, I would have died. Well, about four days later, they allowed me, after the operation, after my chest had been opened and the blade had been taken out, to move around in the wheelchair in the hospital. They allowed me to read some of the mail that came in, and from all over the states and the world kind letters came in. I read a few, but one of them I will never forget. I had received one from the President and the Vice President. I’ve forgotten what those telegrams said. I’d received a visit and a letter from the Governor of New York, but I’ve forgotten what that letter said. But there was another letter that came from a little girl, a young girl who was a student at the White Plains High School. And I looked at that letter, and I’ll never forget it.
It said simply, ‘Dear Dr. King, I am a ninth-grade student at the White Plains High School.’ She said, ‘While it should not matter, I would like to mention that I’m a white girl. I read in the paper of your misfortune and of your suffering, and I read that if you had sneezed, you would have died. I’m simply writing you to say that I’m so happy that you didn’t sneeze.’
I want to say tonight that I too am happy that I didn’t sneeze. Because if I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have been around here in 1960, when students all over the South started sitting-in at lunch counters. And I knew that as they were sitting in, they were really standing up for the best in the American dream and taking the whole nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the Founding Fathers in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
If I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have been around here in 1961, when we decided to take a ride for freedom and ended segregation in inter-state travel. If I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have been around here in 1962, when Negroes in Albany, Georgia, decided to straighten their backs up, and whenever men and women straighten their backs up, they are going somewhere, because a man can’t ride your back unless it is bent.
If I had sneezed, if I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have been here in 1963. Black people of Birmingham, Alabama, aroused the conscience of this nation and brought into being the Civil Rights Bill.
If I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have had a chance later that year in August to try to tell America about a dream that I had had.
If I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have been down in Selma, Alabama, to see the great movement there.
If I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have been in Memphis to see a community rally around those brothers and sisters who are suffering.
I’m so happy that I didn’t sneeze. They were telling me…
No, it doesn’t matter, now. It really doesn’t matter what happens now. I left Atlanta this morning, and as we got started on the plane there were six of us. The pilot said over the public address system, ‘We are sorry for the delay, but we have Dr. Martin Luther King on the plane, and to be sure that all of the bags were checked and to be sure that nothing would be wrong with on the plane, we had to check out everything carefully. And we’ve had the plane protected and guarded all night.’
And then I got into Memphis, and some began to say the threats, or talk about the threats that were out, of what would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers. Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop, and I don’t mind.
Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will, and He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. I’ve looked over and I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the Promised Land!
So, I’m happy tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!”
Was Martin Luther King Jr. murdered by lone gunman James Earl Ray, or was his assassination part of a larger conspiracy? We’ll return to these questions in part five.
First, it’s time to examine the results of sixty-years of government policy since the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and to ask whether any outside forces have been manipulating black/white race relations for their own benefit.
[i] History.com Editors. “Civil Rights Movement”. History.com. October 27, 2009. Updated May 14, 2024. Accessed June 29, 2024.
[ii] Ibid
[iii] Ibid
[iv] Ibid
[v] “Martin Luther King Jr.”. Wikipedia. Accessed August 9, 2024. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King_Jr.
[vi] History.com Editors. “Civil Rights Movement”. History.com. October 27, 2009. Updated May 14, 2024. Accessed June 29, 2024.
[vii] Ibid
[viii] “Robert Byrd”. Wikipedia. Accessed June 29, 2024. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Byrd
[ix] “Jocko Podcast 431: You'll Get The Political Leadership You Deserve. With Robert F. Kennnedy Jr.”. Jocko Podcast. March 28, 2024. Accessed June 25, 2024.
[x] “Martin Luther King | I Have A Dream Speech | August 28, 1963, Full Speech”. YouTube. August 28, 1963. Accessed June 25, 2024.
[xi] “President John F. Kennedy's Civil Rights Address”. C-Span. YouTube. June 11, 1963. Accessed June 25, 2024.
[xii] “President Lyndon B. Johnson's Address to Congress, November 27, 1963. MP505”. YouTube. November 23, 1963. Accessed June 25, 2024.
[xiii] Ellison, Vince Everett. The Iron Triangle: How Democrats are using race to divide America in their quest for power. And how we can stop them. Outskirts Press Inc., 2020.
[xiv] “"Voting Democrat for 200 Years" - How LBJ Made Black Americans Dependent on the Government”. Valuetainment. YouTube. March 27, 2024. Accessed June 26, 2024.
[xv] “Malcolm X”. Wikipedia. Accessed July 1, 2024. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_X
[xvi] Haley, Alex. “The Playboy Interview – Malcolm X”. Playboy. May 1963. Accessed July 3, 2024. https://www.malcolm-x.org/docs/int_playb.htm
[xvii] Ibid
[xviii] “Malcolm X”. Wikipedia. Accessed July 1, 2024. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_X
[xix] Ibid
[xx] Ibid
[xxi] Ibid
[xxii] Ibid
[xxiii] Haley, Alex. “The Playboy Interview – Malcolm X”. Playboy. May 1963. Accessed July 3, 2024. https://www.malcolm-x.org/docs/int_playb.htm
[xxiv] “Martin Luther King and Malcolm X Debate”. YouTube. Uploaded May 7, 2011. Accessed June 26, 2024.
[xxv] “Remember the 'mostly peaceful' riots of 2020?”. @TheFirstonTV. X. May 5, 2024. Accessed June 26, 2024. https://x.com/TheFirstonTV/status/1787286157644214710/video/1
[xxvi] “Nuland has tough time justifying US involvement in Ukraine”. RT News. May 9, 2014. Accessed January 9, 2024. https://www.rt.com/news/157808-nuland-grilled-ukraine-costs/
[xxvii] “Malcolm X: Blacks are used as a Political Football”. YouTube. Uploaded August 7, 2020. Accessed June 26, 2024.
[xxviii] ““Blacks Commit Treason Against Each Other” - Malcolm X's Warning About the White Liberal”. Valuetainment. YouTube. October 19, 2023. Accessed June 26, 2024.
[xxix] “Malcolm X (1972) (Documentary)”. YouTube Movies. 1972. Accessed July 2, 2024.
[xxx] “Malcolm X Score U.S. And Kennedy, Likens Slaying to ‘Chickens Coming Home to Roost’”. The New York Times. December 3, 1963. Accessed July 2, 2024. https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1963/12/02/89980478.pdf
[xxxi] “Malcolm X (1972) (Documentary)”. YouTube Movies. 1972. Accessed July 2, 2024.
[xxxii] “Malcolm X”. Wikipedia. Accessed July 1, 2024. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_X
[xxxiii] Malcolm X. “Letter from Mecca”. MalcolmX.org. April 1964. Accessed July 2, 2024. https://malcolm-x.org/docs/let_mecca.htm
[xxxiv] “Malcolm X (1972) (Documentary)”. YouTube Movies. 1972. Accessed July 2, 2024.
[xxxv] “RFK Jr.: How Malcolm X Had A Change Of Heart”. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. YouTube. February 23, 2024. Accessed June 27, 2024.
[xxxvi] Washington, George. “Farewell Address, 19 September 1796”. National Archives. September 19, 1796. Accessed July 2, 2024. https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-20-02-0440-0002
[xxxvii] “Malcolm X - Exposes Elijah Muhammad - 1964 (ENGLISH)”. YouTube. 1964. Accessed July 2, 2024.
[xxxviii] “Ecclesiastes 1:9”. Bible Gateway. Accessed July 3, 2024. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=ecclesiastes%201:9&version=NIV
[xxxix] “Malcolm X (1972) (Documentary)”. YouTube Movies. 1972. Accessed July 2, 2024.
[xl] “Malcolm X”. Wikipedia. Accessed July 1, 2024. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_X
[xli] Ibid
[xlii] Southall, Ashley & Jonah Bromwich. “2 Men Convicted of Killing Malcolm X Will Be Exonerated After Decades”. The New York Times. November 17, 2021. Accessed July 3, 2024. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/17/nyregion/malcolm-x-killing-exonerated.html
[xliii] King Jr., Martin Luther. “The Nightmare of Violence”. New York Amsterdam News. March 13, 1965. Accessed July 2, 2024. https://fultonhistory.com/Newspaper%2024/New%20York%20NY%20Amsterdam%20News/New%20York%20NY%20Amsterdam%20News%201965/New%20York%20NY%20Amsterdam%20News%201965%2000216_1.pdf
[xliv] Ibid
[xlv] “Joe Biden tells Black Trump Supporters "You Ain't Black"”. YouTube. Donald J. Trump. May 22, 2020. Accessed August 9, 2024.
[xlvi] Lopez, German. “The controversial 1994 crime law that Joe Biden helped write, explained”. Vox. September 29, 2020. Accessed July 12, 2024. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/6/20/18677998/joe-biden-1994-crime-bill-law-mass-incarceration
[xlvii] “A few years ago ReasonTV did a video on Biden and his 1994 Crime Bill. I cut it down some”. @texan_maga. X. May 25, 2024. Accessed June 27, 2024. https://x.com/texan_maga/status/1794600518196867397
[xlviii] Cockbuun, Andrew. “No Joe! Joe Biden’s disastrous legislative legacy.” Harper’s Magazine. March 2019. Accessed July 12, 2024. https://harpers.org/archive/2019/03/joe-biden-record/
[xlix] “Joe Biden inspires Black graduates at Morehouse College by telling them that they’re victims and America hates them”. @libsoftiktok. X. May 19, 2024. Accessed June 27, 2024. https://x.com/libsoftiktok/status/1792231594801201289/video/1
[l] Ellison, Vince Everett (dir.) Will You Go To Hell For Me? April 26, 2023. Accessed June 27, 2024. https://watch.salemnow.com/series/vaU9xMm4irfg-will-you-go-to-hell-for-me
[li] @JoeBiden “Me Fellow Americans…” X. July 21, 2024. Accessed August 9, 2024. https://x.com/JoeBiden/status/1815080881981190320/photo/1
[lii] @greg_prince11. “Biden rambles.” X. June 27, 2024. Accessed August 9, 2024. https://x.com/greg_price11/status/1806499020598350250
[liii] Cohen, Ethan, Molly English, Matt Holt and Sydney Topf. “Harris secures enough delegate endorsements to win the Democratic presidential nomination.” CNN. July 22, 2024. Accessed August 9, 2024. https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/22/politics/kamala-harris-delegates-democratic-presidential-nomination/index.html
[liv] Piper, Jessica and Hailey Fuchs. “Kamala Harris takes over war chest as Biden campaign becomes Harris for President”. Politico. July 21, 2024. Accessed August 9, 2024. https://www.politico.com/news/2024/07/21/kamala-harris-biden-campaign-funds-00170136
[lv] “Kamala Harris”. Wkipedia. Accessed July 28, 2024. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamala_Harris
[lvi] Ibid
[lvii] @DailyCaller. “Time for another Kamala Harris debate highlight.” X. June 27, 2019. Accessed July 29, 2024. https://x.com/DailyCaller/status/1313968262317846530
[lviii] Edelman, Adam, Deepa Shivaram and Kristen Welker. “Kamala Harris named by Joe Biden as his VP pick”. NBC News. August 11, 2020. Accessed July 29, 2024. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/joe-biden-selects-kamala-harris-his-running-mate-n1235771
[lix] Shellenberger, Michael. “DEI Consultant Caught In Payday Lending Scandal Behind Kamala Harris’ Race-Segregationist Campaign.” Public. July 28, 2024. Accessed July 29, 2024.
[lx] Li, Zhou. “The push for Joe Biden to choose a black woman as his running mate, explained”. Vox. May 1, 2020. Accessed August 9, 2024. https://www.vox.com/2020/5/1/21239006/joe-biden-vice-president
[lxi] Sullivan, Kate. “Biden says he will pick woman to be his vice president”. CNN. March 15, 2020. Accessed August 9, 2024. https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/15/politics/joe-biden-woman-vice-president/index.html
[lxii] “Joe Biden To Charlamagne: “You Ain’t Black” If You Vote For Trump!”. YouTube. HipHollywood. May 22, 2020. Accessed August 10. 2024.
[lxiii] Oshin, Olafimihan. “Poll: Kamala Harris sets record low for vice president net favorability.” The Hill. June 26, 2023. Accessed July 28, 2024. https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/4069023-poll-kamala-harris-sets-record-low-for-vice-president-net-favorability/
[lxiv] Thompson, Alex. “Scoop: Inside Biden's strategy to repair Harris' image”. Axios. April 26, 2023. Accessed July 28, 2024. https://www.axios.com/2023/04/26/biden-harris-2024
[lxv] Shellenberger, Michael. „The Soft Bigotry Of Kamala Harris’ Rise”. Public News. July 22, 2024. Accessed July 28, 2024.
[lxvi] @JessicoBowman. “A full compilation of "What Can Be, Unburdened By What Has Been" by Kamala Harris.”. X. July 22, 2024. Accessed July 28, 2024. https://x.com/JessicoBowman/status/1815333004002099684
[lxvii] @BigFish3000. “Tucker Carlson on Kamala”. X. July 27, 2024. Accessed July 28, 2024. https://x.com/BigFish3000/status/1817193965327675629
[lxviii] @Outspoken_Sam. "I am Kamala Harris, my pronouns are she and her, and I am a woman sitting at the table wearing a blue suit." X. July 21, 2024. Accessed July 28, 2024. https://x.com/Outspoken_Sam/status/1815135449176015176
[lxix] “VP Kamala Harris: “If You Understand The Issues, You Probably Would Not Make Statements Like That””. YouTube. March 16, 2023. Accessed July 31, 2024.
[lxx] @DefiantLs. “Seriously? This is the new nominee?”. X. July 21, 2024. Accessed July 28, 2024. https://x.com/DefiantLs/status/1815159594529808500
[lxxi] @thevivafrei. “Kamala Harris is fucking retarded..” X. July 26, 2024. Accessed July 28, 2024. https://x.com/thevivafrei/status/1816992901265518843
[lxxii] @JoeyMannarinoUS. “This is the only 13 seconds Trump needs to play on repeat for the next 92 days to win the election.”. X. August 5, 2024. Accessed August 5, 2024. https://x.com/JoeyMannarinoUS/status/1820543130682499572
[lxxiii] @AlexThomp. “@LesterHoltNBC pushes Harris on the border including why she hasn’t visited.” X. June 8, 2021. Accessed July 28, 2024. https://x.com/AlexThomp/status/1402235888608944128
[lxxiv] “Vice President Kamala Harris on Protecting Reproductive Rights, Trump’s Guilty Verdict & Health Car”. YouTube. June 4, 2024. Accessed July 31, 2024.
[lxxv] @TRHLofficial. “Let us not forget the last time Kamala tried to be president.”. X. July 21, 2024. Accessed July 28, 2024. https://x.com/TRHLofficial/status/1815097043179938275
[lxxvi] @EndTribalism. “RFK Jr. in 2 minutes just shredded Kamala Harris entire political career.” X. July 21, 2024. Accessed July 28, 2024. https://x.com/EndTribalism/status/1815144842072048077
[lxxvii] Kranish, Michael. “In her first race, Kamala Harris learned how to become a political brawler”. The Washington Post. October 5, 2020. Accessed July 29, 2024. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/kamala-harris-campaign-fighter/2020/10/05/e0ee41d2-dd9d-11ea-b4af-72895e22941d_story.html
[lxxviii] @JoshWalkos. “Kamala while the SF DA.” X. July 25, 2024. Accessed July 29, 2024. https://x.com/JoshWalkos/status/1816666618723782747
[lxxix] Bazelon, Lara. “Kamala Harris Was Not a ‘Progressive Prosecutor’”. The New York Times. January 17, 2019. Accessed July 29, 2024. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/17/opinion/kamala-harris-criminal-justice.html
[lxxx] Shellenberger, Michael. “Yes, Kamala Harris Is Responsible For California’s 31% More Violent Crime And 3x More Homeless”. Public. July 26, 2024. Accessed July 29, 2024.
[lxxxi] Ibid
[lxxxii] Ibid
[lxxxiii] Ibid
[lxxxiv] Shellenberger, Michael. “Indifference And Ambition Behind Kamala Harris Policies That Increase Violence And Trap Children On Street”. Public. July 25, 2024. Accessed July 29, 2024.
[lxxxv] Fang, Lee. “Kamala Harris Refused to Assist Victims of Catholic Church Child Sexual Abuse”. Lee Fang. July 3, 2024. Accessed July 29, 2024.
[lxxxvi] Ibid
[lxxxvii] Ibid
[lxxxviii] “As San Francisco DA, Kamala Harris's Office Stopped Cooperating With Victims of Clergy Abuse”. The Intercept. YouTube. June 9, 2019. Accessed July 29, 2024.
[lxxxix] “Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.”. Wikipedia. Accessed July 13, 2024. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Martin_Luther_King_Jr.
[xc] “RFK Speaks After MLK Killed | Flashback | History”. History. YouTube. April 4, 1968. Accessed June 27, 2024.
[xci] “MLK: I've Been To The Mountaintop!” The Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change. YouTube. April 3, 1968. Accessed June 27, 2024.