Continued…….. The FBI ran an extensive campaign, including surveillance, wiretaps and listening devices in King’s hotel rooms. King accused the FBI of attempting blackmail through an anonymous letter, along with a tape of his alleged infidelities, suggesting he should commit su*cide to avoid public embarrassment. The FBI leaked information about King’s personal life to the media and attempted to turn public opinion against him. However, the press at the time largely refused to publish such details.

The King family and others have argued that James Earl Ray (1928-98) was used as a scapegoat for King’s assassination, which they say involved a broader conspiracy including the US government, the mafia and Memphis police. In 1999, a Memphis jury in a civil trial found local, state and federal governments liable for King’s death.

So are we really supposed to forget all this and just be grateful that the FBI had a change of heart and is now commemorating King?

Let us know in the comments.

Sources
FBI post
https://x.com/FBI/status/1881371223075995958

J Edgar Hoover: Garvey, Malcolm, Hampton
https://moguldom.com/448109/fact-check-before-malcolm-x-was-murdered-j-edgar-hoover-sent-message-do-something-about-malcolm-x/
https://face2faceafrica.com/article/john-edgar-hoover-the-fbi-director-who-destroyed-civil-rights-groups-using-state-sponsored-terrorism1234
https://truthout.org/articles/new-documents-suggest-j-edgar-hoover-was-involved-in-fred-hamptons-murder

FBI vs King
https://www.npr.org/2021/01/18/956741992/documentary-exposes-how-the-fbi-tried-to-destroy-mlk-with-wiretaps-blackmail

James Earl Ray was scapegoat
https://archive.ph/hK1KK#selection-971.253-971.267

REPARATIONS REMAIN JUST A DREAM

US presidents come and go, but true to the nature of the duopoly, that is the Democrat and Republican parties, who swap places in the White House every four to eight years, represent little in terms of policy change. Almost 57 years after his death, and 11 US presidents later, the goals the Rev Dr Martin Luther King, Jr (1929-68), fought to achieve remain elusive. Listen to this speech by the icon, where he points to the government’s reluctance to address racial and historical injustices despite extending favour to European settlers.

Continued……Near the end of the US Civil War, the government promised once-enslaved Africans that they would receive 40 acres of Confederate land (a total of 400,000 acres of indigenous territory along the southeast US coast) and a mule. However, US President Andrew Johnson broke this promise following US President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. While some oppose transferring former plantations to Africans as reparations because it doesn’t take into account that European settlers originally displaced indigenous people, the idea stands that no reparative process is in place.

The experience of Black people in the US highlights the role systemic factors play in subjugating a group across generations, regardless of how hard one pulls on their bootstraps.

The absence of restitution for slavery, the implementation of discriminatory laws known as Jim Crow, and present-day structural racism manifest in the racial wealth gap. White people hold 10 times more cumulative wealth than Black people. A 2021 US Federal Reserve study found that Black households would hold five times more wealth in a world without racial wealth inequality. Jonathan Welburn, a researcher at the think tank RAND, says, ‘Yesterday’s segregation is today’s wealth gap. We like to pretend that we live in a race-neutral, merit-based society now. That this is all in the past, but you can’t erase history. It shows up in our wealth. For many, it shows up in the lack of wealth.’

Sources
40 acres and a mule
https://www.history.com/news/40-acres-mule-promise

Racial wealth gap
https://www.rand.org/pubs/articles/2023/what-would-it-take-to-close-americas-black-white-wealth-gap.html

Speech
https://reparationscomm.org/reparations-news/martin-luther-kings-case-for-reparations-still-rings-true

https://ibw21.org/commentary/kings-poor-peoples-campaign

Colonialism did not just impoverish our beautiful continent economically, it systemically obliterated our institutions and structures - as a way of projecting Western hegemony.

Decades later, any attempt at restoration - at writing our true history or at correcting the falsified tales of the colonialists - is violently resisted, both metaphorically and literally.

It’s clear the West fears Africans becoming empowered with the truth about who we truly are, beyond the lies that have been taught to us about our supposed inferiority.

We must remain committed to the path of emancipation and true independence. As pan-African revolutionary Patrice Lumumba believed, the time will come when the lion speaks for itself.

Source;

https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/primary-documents-global-african-history/patrice-lumumbas-letter-pauline-lumumba-1960/

IS S. AFRICAN POLICE TO BLAME FOR MINER DEATHS?

A months-long operation by South African authorities to end illegal artisanal mining at an abandoned gold mine in the town of Stilfontein, southwest of the commercial capital Johannesburg, came to a tragic end on 16 January, when rescuers pulled out 78 bodies from the two-kilometre-deep mine.

Nine other bodies had already been retrieved in the days and weeks leading up to the four-day operation.

According to survivors and civil-society organisations, the men starved to death after authorities blocked food from reaching them in an attempt to ‘smoke them out,’ as per the words of one South African minister.

Continued……. The survivors have told harrowing tales of eating toilet paper mixed with toothpaste, cockroaches and, in extreme cases, the flesh of dead fellow miners.

High unemployment levels and poverty have, in recent years, driven tens of thousands of men (South Africans and foreign migrants alike) to scavenge for gold in mines abandoned by mining firms that deemed them no longer viable commercially.

SATIRICAL NETANYAHU SPEECH HITS HARD

This AI-generated satirical take on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s 24 July address to the US Congress, where he received 79 rounds of applause, with 58 of those being standing ovations, comes amidst growing criticism regarding escalating casualties in Gaza.

Rashida Tlaib, Michigan’s pro-Palestine representative, was one of the few legislators who did not applaud. Instead, she held up a sign referring to Netanyahu as a war criminal.

By the time of his address, the relentless Israeli bombardment had k*lled approximately 39,000 individuals, predominantly women and children. Yet, by early July, the British medical journal The Lancet had estimated that the death toll was likely more than 186,000.