Then again, we have a primary source (Abernathy) telling us about King’s last night… pretty sordid, and I think that makes the other story at least plausible. And while I see your point, there’s also another journalist corroborating Rowan’s story.
Wait, so now anytime someone mentions dreaming about the future, they’re automatically copying King?
Irishman, read the two passages in question. There’s no doubt that there’s plagiarism going on.
Speech given by Archibald Carey at the 1952 Republican Convention:
We, Negro Americans, sing with all loyal Americans:
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!
That’s exactly what we mean–
from every mountain side,
let freedom ring.
Not only from the Green Mountains and White Mountains of Vermont and New Hampshire;
not only from the Catskills of New York;
but from the Ozarks in Arkansas,
from the Stone Mountain in Georgia,
from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia
–let it ring not only for the minorities
of the United States, but for the disinherited
of all the earth–may the Republican
Party, under God, from every mountainside,
LET FREEDOM RING!
MLK, from the March on Washington, 1963:
"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 Pilgrim’s pride,
From every mountainside
Let freedom ring!
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 Stone Mountain of Georgia.
Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.
Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill in Mississippi.
From every mountainside,
let freedom ring!"
Perhaps it would help to see King’s “I have a dream” speech.
The above is from “I Have a Dream.” The second one is King’s version.
First off, I admit I am a huge MLK fan, and that the realities of his failings are painful to accept. But I think we should consider:
-
Plagiarism, thesis: Folks have been tarred with the plagiarism brush for everything from outright theft to sloppy or inadequate citations. We may be quibbling over whether King put (Expert, 1951) at the end of enough sentences. Let’s get more info before throughing out the baby with the bathwater.
-
Plagiarism, speeches: Read enough of King’s speeches, and you see that he used phrases over and over again, from the Bible, from patriotic songs, from poetry, just as we do. I suppose it’s part of the Baptist tradition. IMHO, accusing someone of plagiarizing the Bible because you didn’t say, “As the Bible says,…” or any other reasonably well-known work is just ridiculous. I can’t speak for Marchers from 1963, but it could be they knew exactly where King was getting his “from Stone Mountain of Georgia…” riff. For pity’s sake, do some folks claim he should say, “As the Battle Hymn of the Republic, written by Venerable Authority says, 'Mine eyes have seen the Glory of the Coming of the Lord!”
-
King, Communist: Which is worse, a Gay King or a Red King? Neither I hope, and I don’t care if he was either. King eventually saw that denial of basic civil rights was just the beginning of the racial problems of this country. After the Civil Rights Acts were passed, he realized that basic economic changes (including something other than Capitalism) would have to occur to end the blight of poverty and educational inequality. Does that make him a Communist? That I don’t care about, but it certainly made him unpopular - we tend to celebrate the King of 1955-65, not the King who was fighting for striking Memphis sanitation workers when he was murdered.
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King, sex machine: Bearing the Cross, the Pulitizer-prize winning biography of King handles this issue delicately. The FBI was trying to wound King’s reputation by suggesting they would out his alleged Communism and his sexual activities. That is why a tape of an orgy could exist; because King was wiretapped, informed upon, and followed. There seems no historical dispute that King cheated on Coretta - did she know or care? I don’t know, but someone has noted that none of King’s children has had children of their own (although I have not verified this).
-
King, young leader: If I took one strong sense of King out of Bearing the Cross, it was that King had charisma or some other quality that made people turn to him, without him seeking a leadership position. The Montgomery Bus Boycott was not conceived by King. He had just arrived as a young minister, and attended a meeting of the Boycott’s movement on a whim. But in that meeting, and not by his initiative, he was selected to lead the Boycott.
In his brief life, it seemed that this happened again and again. When King was present, he became the leader because others thrust that role upon him. And once he took on a task, he became morally bound to do what he could to accomplish that goal.
I believe that this charisma, and his eloquence, and his ability to see what was wrong, and what he personally could do to right it, and his creative use of nonviolence, make him a great American.
The other stuff, I’m still processing. But consider this, after reading I Have a Dream: He could give the same speech today, almost all of the problems he outlines exist today.
Katpol
Sorry to drone on and on, but he is my hero…
“I refuse to believe the Bank of Justice is bankrupt.”
I’ve seen it estimated in several places that a third of the dissertation was copied, often word-for-word in long swathes. The thesis of Jack Boozer, who graduated from BU three years ahead of MLK, is said to have been plagiarized extensively.
From one of the better sites I’ve found on the subject:
In September 1991, “A Boston University committee reports that while 45% of the first half and 21% of the second half of King’s thesis was plagiarized.” Those numbers would seem to be where Cecil got the one-third figure he mentions.
Check over here. This site at least provides a comparison. http://chem-gharbison.unl.edu/mlk/thesis.html
Well, I’d ask “have YOU heard of him before?” but I admit it’s a little silly. Carey was a correspondent of King’s. And if MLK was just making a reference, there’s no reason for the changes in the quotes…
The main problem I’m finding here is that I wouldn’t trust nearly any of the sites that relate to this issue either. Many make a big issue out of the (false) Communist thing, and the (probably false) homosexual thing, and the fact that he was born Michael King, like that matters somehow. It comes from a very biased perspective. Cecil’s analysis is the most unbiased thing I’ve seen about it. The above site, which I’ve linked to twice in this thread, takes some shots at the “PC” crowd but it otherwise pretty okay.
Hi all,
Hmmm. I suppose I’m guilty for some of this. I know nothing about the straightdope.com other than a friend of mine emailed me saying that my webpage was mentioned in it.
You see I had written the one MLK essay over on treykorte.com about a year ago. A while back, I had taken it down because it had caused offense and people had missed the point I was trying to make.
I had first heard about the plagiarism, the sexual stuff, and so on back in college and it was the subject of a college radio call-in talk show. The topic was whether or not these revelations negated King’s accomplishments. I called in with a resounding “no” because I do greatly admire Dr. King and what he said and achieved.
At the same time, there was a big trend in history to revisit a lot of purported heroes and really highlight their dubious sides. This would be the sort of PC stuff about Christopher Columbus being bad, Thomas Jefferson impregnating Sally Hemmings, the Founding Fathers just being a bunch of dead white guys, etc. etc. As a white guy, it sort of bothered me that white historical heroes were being subject to all sorts of character assassination. It smacked of reverse racism. Recalling the show about MLK, I trawled the web looking for info about King’s plagiarism, shady connections, sex life, etc. It seemed from a variety of sources, that there was a lot of truth about it. So I wrote an essay about it.
It was a bit provocative and I had gotten some hate mail. Despite me asserting several times that I admired King in the essay, I got accusations of being a racist, etc. Then, later on, when I realized that some truly racist groups were using the same sort of information about Dr. King, I took down the essay from my website because I do not want to be associated with that sentiment. I also felt that people simply weren’t getting the point I was tryign to make: that there seems to be a double standard regarding which heroes from history we choose to revisit and besmirch.
On one hand, I feel very humbled that Cecil had used my site as a springboard for an article. I’m just a guy who likes to write little rants and stuff, and I guess the article got some attention. On the other hand, as Cecil’s answer goes, some of the information in my article relied on dubious sources, so I’m not too sorry to see it go.
I feel really bad if the article in question had offended people or sent the wrong message. However, I am heartened that it has helped lead to an interesting discussion and debate. I don’t intend to spend much time posting here, but as the author of one of the quoted articles, I felt I ought to say something.
Peace and love,
Trey
Martin Luther King was a psychopath, not a communist, but anyone who doubts that he was a communist puppet need only read “Beyond Vietnam” at MLK Online, under speeches. And anyone who doubts that King’s career was entirely a creation of the Communist Party should check out “Martin Luther King” communist on the internet
And as if to illustrate the problem with this stuff… it’s incompetent rambling like that that drives people away. Had Cecil not actually provided some unbiased coverage of the stuff, I wouldn’t even consider thinking it was true. Bunch of stupid propaganda… not like it’s illegal to be a Communist either… sometimes I wish computers came with punching bags attached.
Just to add my $.02, I spoke with my history professor about this a few days ago. She confirmed everything in the article (which I expected) but what surprised me was that she acted like it was fairly common knowledge in historic circles.
Marley23, my comment was not whether King was plaigerizing with the “I Have A Dream” speech, but about Robert Kennedy plaigerizing from the “I Have A Dream” speech. Can I see the two relevant parts of speeches together?
Irishman, the claim was not that Robert Kennedy was plagiarizing from the “I Have a Dream” speech. The claim is that the quote:
> Some men see things as they are and say “why.” I dream
> things that never were and say “why not?”
which is usually attributed to Robert Kennedy was not first said by him. (It’s well known enough that there was once a popular poster of it, attributing it to Kennedy.) But it’s not original with Kennedy. It’s a close paraphrase of something that George Bernard Shaw wrote. Kennedy knew that it was from Shaw and frequently attributed it to him in his speeches.
Who’s the saint of civil rights
Who’s a sex machine to all the chicks?
King!
Right on!
(that’s all I’ve got, feel free to add more lyrics as the spirit moves you)
Thank Wendell for filling me in. I was confused by the previous statements that did not indicate who said what, only that Robert Kennedy said something not original to him. Nobody listed the source, and the context made it sound like the source was King (after all, that’s who this thread is about).
I don’t mean to take issue with Cecil for tackling such a controversial issue. Nothing is too sacred for the Straight Dope and all that. But I do wonder whether the gushy congratulations for his “thorough” investigative journalism are deserved. I read all this dirt on MLKJ in several published (and much publicized) accounts over the last few years, so I doubt that it took THAT much elbow grease for Cecil to dig it up again.
When I read the earlier accounts, I had to wonder if some of the writers were somewhat motivated to publicize King’s secret kinky, dishonest life in order to minimize or trivialize his real achievements and accomplishments in life. Certain non-fans of the Civil Rights movement had a real field day with this stuff. I’m sure that wasn’t Cecil’s motivation, but still.
I also wonder how Cecil - or worse, his family after his death - would feel if some of his possible secret “flaws” or kinks were aired in public repeatedly by books, articles and columnists. I wonder how that might affect others’ memory of him and what he’s achieved in his lifetime.
Not saying the column shouldn’t have been written. I’m just sayin’.
Who is MartL and why don’t I see his/her response here? I saw it listed on the thread list…
(replying to self)
Ah, never mind. I see it was a spammer.
That’s true of a lot of Straight Dope articles. It’s still a well-written and well-researched piece in my opinion.
This is true. That’s one reason I liked the piece so much: he actually displayed some balance. Most of the other writers on the topic rail about how King is a bad man propped up by the liberal, PC, Democratic (you get the idea) crowd and shouldn’t be a hero and never did anything because he was a good-fer-nothin-Commie fruit. Cecil tackled the truth and didn’t whitewash either side, which I think is commendable.
None of those flaws were uncovered by Cecil, so I don’t think it’s necessary to worry about it… it’s unfortunate that people sling dirt around, but it’s part and parcel of being a public figure these days, I guess.