Speaking Truth to Power

by Cliopatria

If you live outside the Atlanta area, you probably didn't get wall-to-wall television coverage yesterday of the 6 hour funeral rites for Coretta Scott King at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church. I may have been the only person she knew who wasn't invited to speak! The service began at 12 noon and was supposed to end at 3:00 p.m., but that was only when the President and three former presidents made their exit. The rest of us carried on for another three hours.

Like other funerals for prominent civil rights leaders, the service had some wonderful high points and some low points. Via Eric Muller, I see that it's getting negative coverage from Michelle Malkin and Glenn Reynolds, who take offense at the political remarks by former President Jimmy Carter and former SCLC President Joe Lowery (Drudge features it, as well).

Lawdy Miss Gawdy even takes the occasion of her attack on Carter and Lowery to remind you of the title of the book she's currently pushing. Glenn might have used his title, An Army of Davids, to understand what was going on. Seriously -- funeral or no – would you expect a platform of politicians to address an audience of 10,000 people and a television audience of many tens of thousands more and there be no statements that are, well, political? Moreover, this president is more isolated from hearing public criticism of his policies than any I can recall since Richard Nixon. Glenn Reynolds' David is the young David, a vehicle of G_d's power to protect his people, but when David ascended to and abused his power, G_d sent the prophet Nathan to speak truth to power (II Samuel 7-12)."Thou art the man," saith Jimmy Carter and Joe Lowery.* Amen and amen.

* See also: The post by my virtual son, Chris Richardson,"Forgive me, Father Lowry, for I have sinned" at Outside Report.

comments powered by Disqus

More Comments:

Marc A. Comtois - 2/9/2006

Michael/Ralph: Thanks, that's exactly the type of response I was looking for.

The reason I asked is because sometimes we historians make assumptions about what people--including fellow historians--know about a given topic and thus our baseline of argumentation starts farther along than it should.

As one who has concentrated on Medieval and Early American/Early National history, I'm not well-versed in some of the particulars of later eras, particularly post-WWII (with the exception of from the early 1980's on). Just because I'm a historian, doesn't mean I'm automatically up to speed.

This case is a good example. I was familiar with the fact that the Kennedy's spied on MLK, but was vague on when exactly it started, and didn't know that Hoover was the original instigator.

I suppose the next step would be to talk about the historical arguments of Executive power under Article II versus the congressional oversight to which Ralph referred. (But back to work and studying for comp's for me!)

Thanks again.

Ralph E. Luker - 2/9/2006

Let me elaborate on Michael's remarks a bit: J. Edgar Hoover's FBI had been in the domestic surveillance business for a long time when John Kennedy became President in 1961. Hoover's FBI was already reporting on King, tho not from wiretaps since the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955-56. John and Robert Kennedy were peculiarly unable to control Hoover because the FBI director was well informed about JFK's personal history. They knew that and, thus, would not have wanted to tangle with him. Believing, correctly, that there were former members of the American Communist Party in King's circle, Hoover asked for and received authorization from RFK to conduct wire taps on MLK and a limited number of his associates. That surveillance turned up little evidence that MLK and his associates were real security threats, tho Hoover and the Kennedy/ Johnson administration did eventually force MLK to discharge a senior member of his staff on security grounds. One of the problems with surveillance is that, once allowed, it is a kind of unrestrained authority to surveil. The justification for surveiling MLK originally was national security, where it turned up little, but the tapes did turn up titillating evidence about sexual behavior. Hoover's agents knew he wanted that kind of information; and Hoover fed it to Lyndon Johnson, who loved having it. Eventually, Hoover's FBI tried to use the tapes of its telephone taps to embarrass Dr. King's public reputation in the media, to embarrass him privately with his allies in the movement, and, finally, to humiliate him into committing suicide. There's plenty of evidence from the experience of J. Edgar Hoover's use of the surveillance power to cause us to be ultra-cautious of its use and every reason to insist that it be governed by an independent panel of judges as Congress eventually insisted that it be.

Michael Charles Benson - 2/9/2006

As I understand it, there is a broad connection to be made. The wiretaps during the Cold War were justified under the rubric of protecting America from communist infiltration. It seems to me that the argument could be made that under the guise of fighting communism, surveillance was expanded to include most any movement that had a chance of upsetting the status quo. I think you could even draw a connection all the way to Nixon, to show how the power of domestic surveillance could be abused by the executive.

Marc A. Comtois - 2/9/2006

With trepidation, I wade in...

What do historians think about the validity of the historical parallel that Carter was trying to make between the Kennedy's wiretapping of King and the Bush "wiretapping" (really electronic surveillance) program?

Is there a similarity between the actions--actual or suspected--of those who were/are surveilled (King or those suspected of terrorist ties)?

Given what we know, I don't think that MLK did anything to warrant such surveillance, but I'm not sure of the exact nature of the Kennedy's suspicions about MLK. (Let's be clear: I'm not implying that King was a terrorist!!!) Did they consider him a threat and, if so, what kind of threat? And to what?

Thus, are there parallels between the motivations of the Kennedys and Bush? What did/do each consider to be the threat posed by those surveilled and how legitimate do historians think those concerns were/are?

David H. Noon - 2/8/2006

I'll add here that the thread at Muller's site quickly descended into the ahistorical muck, with passers-by yodeling incoherently about Democratic opposition to the CR Act of 1964. One of the commenters (quite seriously, it seems) referred to the Republicans as the "party of emancipation," which makes about as much sense as referring to the Democrats as the party of "universal manhood suffrage." Just staggeringly dumb.