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About Portland observer. (Portland, Or.) 1970-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 11, 2006)
M artin L uther K ing 2 0 0 6 s t) e e i a ! January I I , 2006 jR .and R osa P arks e </ / / / o n _____ Page B21 Author Concludes Series on King Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (above) on a recruiting drive in March 1968, m oved by the extrem e hardship o f displaced sharecroppers, pledges to begin a poor people's pilgrimage to Washington, D.C. from Marks, Miss. " A true revolution o f values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast o f poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists o f the West investing huge sums o f money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern fo r the social betterment o f the countries, and say, “This is not just. ” It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry in South America and say, “This is not just. ” The Western arrogance o f feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. Throughout large swaths of dered, but the quest to march citizens. Literally and figura the South and beyond, African- beyond Pettus Bridge will re tively, they still change the face Am ericans have been denied lease waves o f political energy. o f the country we inherit.” p a rtic ip a tio n in d em o cracy The movement will transform Branch traces the ensuing through a savage, century-long politics to win the vote through voting rights drives in Alabama campaign of intim idation, beat the Voting Rights Act of 1965. and M ississippi, the m urder of ings, killings, lynchings and Selma will engage the world’s Jam es M eredith, K ing’s tem Pulitzer Prize-wining and best bureaucratic foot-dragging conscience, strain the embattled p e stu o u s re la tio n s h ip w ith In their first attem pt to cross civil rights coalition, and embroil President Lyndon Johnson, and selling authorTaylor Branch con cludes his magnificent history of his a g o n izin g ru p tu re w ith the civil rights movement and Stokely Carm ichael over black Martin Luther K ing's heroic role power. Torm ent over distant at the center of it in At Canaan’s Vietnam will destroy a historic Edge, America in the King Years, collaboration between King and 1965-68. Johnson at the signal divide of As Branch's dramatic account the 1960s, w hether to pursue demonstrates. King attained a stat dem ocracy by force o f arms. ure akin to that of Lincoln, a Actors on all sides will con com m anding, prophetic, and front persistent blind spots of sanctified figure who not only violence and race. Besides An changed the legal and political drew Young, Ralph Abernathy, structure of the nation and led a John L ew is, Jesse Jack so n , victorious struggle for African- James Forman, and others in the — Martin Luther King Jr. American equality, but lifted the civil rights movement, they in patriotic spirit of the entire United clude FBI D irector J. Edgar States toward our defining na Hoover, Gov. George Wallace of tional purpose — freedom. Alabama, Attorney General Rob The book can be read indepen ert Kennedy, the Ku Klux Kian, dently of its two preceding vol sheriffs, students, journalists, and u m es, but c o n tin u e s the religious leaders, a rich tapestry Shakespearean epic begun in Part of heroes and villains. ing the Waters, and Pillar of Fin Branch charts King’s belea if! both New York Times bestsellers. guered endeavor in 1966 to bring The earlier books followed the struggle for equality into the King from his rise to greatness slums and streets of Chicago, through the M ontgomery bus and his contentious decision in boycott sparked by Rosa Parks 1967 to go public with his long in 1955, the March on W ashing held opposition to the war in ton and the “I have a Dream” Vietnam. In 1968, King’s deter speech of 1963, the Mississippi mination to restore hope for the Freedom Summer and the mur eco n o m ically d isad v an tag ed der of civil rights workers, and through his “Poor People’s Cam Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. with Andrew Young, Joan Baez, Hosea being awarded the Nobel Peace Williams in Septem ber 1 9 6 6 escorting stu d en ts p a st adult m obs paign” prompts his support for Ask us about our Everybody's looking tor a way to make it happen. And with Prize in 1964. the lowly garbage workers of up to ovet 150 careers to choose from in the US Army, yon can that terrorized black children outside the schools o f Grenada, Miss. do just that You’ll become stronger smarter and more At C anaan’s Edge chronicles Memphis, thereby setting the stage $20,000 prepared to face any challenge that comes yonr way find K ing’s efforts to hold his m ove Selm a’s Edmund Pettus Bridge, King in negotiations with all three for his death at the age of 39, the out how you can become An Army Of One at GOARMY COM Enlistment or call 1-800 USA-ARM* ment together in the face of m archers stand on the brink of branches o f the United States day after his fabled "Promised Bonus internal factions that disagreed violent suppression by tear gas government. It will revive the Land” speech. Where US. Army Recruiting Station a, 1317 RE Broadway Street and troopers on horseback, af ab o u t strateg y , ta c tic s, and visionary pragm atism o f the “And I’ve seen the promised When: Monday - Friday 9 00am - 5 00pm w h ether they co uld achieve ter which thousands o f ordi American Revolution. land,” King intoned. “I may not Who: sgt 1st Class Walter Washington their goals solely through non nary A m ericans will answ er Branch w rites, “At their best, get there with you. But I want violence; interm ittent hostility King’s overnight call for a non like the Founders, allies o f the you to know tonight, that we, as from the Johnson adm inistra violent pilgrim age to Selma. nonviolent m ovem ent will turn a people will get to the promised tion; unrelenting harassm ent by Three o f them will be m ur rulers and subjects into fellow land.” To Canaan's edge. the FBI; bitter controversy gen erated by K ing’s stance against the Vietnam War; and his failed attem pt to take the freedom m ovem ent north. Finally we reach M emphis, K ing’s cam paign for econom ic j u s t ic e a n d th e s a n ita tio n w orker’s strike, and the assas sination in the apocalyptic year o f 1968 that made him a m artyr for the ages. As the narrative begins in early 1965, King has willed himself from the pinnacle of acclaim straight to “the valley" of a new drive to seek voting rights for black people in Selma, Ala. He has been beaten and arrested again through two months of ardous demonstrations— highlighted by children marched to jail, with a young black man shot to death in a vigil — but has attracted little notice. A fter the stunning success Your skills, dedication and knowledge. Never have they been so important. A part-time commitment of the Civil Rights Act 1964, which prohibited racial discrim i yields full-time rewards of salary, travel, advanced training, low-cost life insurance, retirement nation in public facilities, gov and college money. Part-time job openings for Construction, LPNs, EMTs, RNs and Paramedics. ernm ent, and em ploym ent, the freedom movem ent has evoked lethal opposition at the color line of political power — the vote — from a nation that long ago enshrined this most funda mental right in the Fifteenth Amendment but essentially for got it. Story of race, violence and democracy THERE’S MORE THAN ONE WAY TO COME UP IN LI FE. SOMEBODY IS MAKING AN IMPACT. 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