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| Source:WEWS-TV News- Dr. Martin L. King, in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1967. |
“Dr Martin Luther King Jr. in Cleveland 1967 WEWS TV
The first sound bite is King speaking about what it will take to stop the rioting in America’s cities.
Carl Stokes was running for mayor of Cleveland and King was in town to get Clevelanders to register to vote.
Stokes would beat Mayor Ralph S. Locher in the primary and beat Republican Seth Taft in the November election to make Stokes the first African American mayor of a major U.S city.
King met with Taft as Taft spoke for opportunity and equality for all citizens.
King talks about Cleveland’s election following Carl Stokes primary victory. You’ll also hear him speak on racial problems in the U.S, as well as how the boycott of Sealtest dairy products in the city is progressing.
The boycott was part of Operation Breadbasket which was used to helped inner city African American residents use their buying/boycotting powers to change hiring and business practices.
Accompanying King at one speech is legendary Clevelander the Reverend E. T. Caviness of Greater Abyssinia Baptist Church.
5:49 King speaking in a discount store parking lot at East 105th Street and St. Clair Avenue, July 28, 1967: I want to say to everybody under the sound of my voice this afternoon that you are somebody. Don’t let anybody make you feel that you are nobody. You are somebody. You have dignity. You have worth. Don’t be ashamed of yourself and don’t be ashamed of your heritage. Don’t be ashamed of your color. Don’t be ashamed of your hair. I am black and beautiful and not ashamed to say it.”
“Every politician respects votes, and we have enough potential voting power here to change anything that needs to be changed. And so let us set out to do it and to do it in no uncertain terms. And finally, I want to say to you that if we will organize like this, we have a power that can change this city.”
King’s last appearance in Cleveland in our archives is from late November 1967. A few months later, King would be dead, killed by assassin James Earl Ray, April 4, 1968.”
“Cleveland and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. were no strangers to each other, just from the number of film clips in our vault that’s easily said.
My description of the individual appearances and speeches can in no way match the man himself, so please take some time to listen to his powerful words.
Some of the non-speech clips are silent.
King in Cleveland 1963-1965
The earliest film I was able to find of King in Cleveland is dated May 14, 1963.”
I wanted to write a blog about Dr. Martin Luther King’s Poor People’s Campaign that he launched in 1967-68, a few years after the Civil and Voting Rights Acts of 1964 and 65 respectfully were passed by Congress and signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson. But I couldn’t find footage of that campaign that was more than a couple of minutes long. But the video I did find is still pretty good. Dr. King, understood as a freedom fighter, that he was someone who fights for freedom, not the other way around.
Dr. King understood that of course it was important that all Americans be treated equally under law for all of us to live in freedom, but for America to be a real liberal democracy, we had to do something about poverty in America.
At the time of the late 1960s, was around 25%, perhaps twice that much for African-Americans. And that these people no matter their race to truly to live in freedom, they had to have economic freedom as well, the ability to support themselves and not forced to live off of public assistance and be forced to live in rundown ghettos, or be forced to live in rundown shacks in rural America. But be able to have a quality of life-like the rest of the country and be able to live in security.
The Poor People’s Campaign, or as I would call it the Campaign Against Poverty, was the next phase of the civil rights movement. They already established the Civil Rights Act, that no American would be allowed to be discriminated against based on their race, ethnicity, or gender.
The Voting Rights Act, establishing that no American would be allowed to be denied the right to vote based on race, ethnicity, or gender. But after that was a movement to fight poverty in America. To first bring awareness to the problem: :”This what we face as a country” and then hopefully come up with steps to address the issues of poverty.
They didn’t get to this part, MLK died in April, 1968, but this would’ve been the next phase of the civil rights movement, to go along with furthering non-violence, taking on the Vietnam War and perhaps fighting for human rights worldwide.
This is just one example of why the assassination of Martin King was so tragic, especially at the age of 39. An early middle-age man if that. Because there was so much left for him to accomplish and work on and he simply just ran out of time because of an ignorant escaped prison inmate, who should’ve been rotting in a Missouri prison instead.
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