Why Martin Luther King Jr had to die and will Barack Hussein Obama suffer the same fate

Why Martin Luther King, Jr. Had to Die

and

Will Barack Hussein Obama Suffer the Same Fate?

by

J. Jackson Owensby

Argus Enterprises International, Inc.

New Jersey***North Carolina

Why Martin Luther King, Jr. Had to Die and Is Barack Hussein Obama to Suffer the Same Fate?© 2012. All rights reserved by Argus Enterprises International, Inc.

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Introduction

Throughout all of history there have been only a few iconic, dynamic individuals who have had the power to sway the entire population and create a societal movement; a popular uprising that could—if left unchecked—sweep over the entire world, displacing tyrants, despots and entrenched rulers. This vibrant and forceful select few had the special ability to relate to the people on a personal—even spiritual—level; the charisma to stir interest and inflame passions with eloquent and brilliant oratory, to create a dream that would cause their followers to face death itself, without fear and without hesitation. Prominent among those great leaders were Buddha, Genghis Khan, Mohammad, Washington, Lincoln, Gandhi, Mao, Lenin, Hitler and Kennedy. The strong influence these leaders were able to execute over the populace could and would have changed the dynamics of the world had they been allowed to come to full fruition. This ability to shift the flow and direction of movement of the world citizenry quickly becomes a threat to the very existence of those in power, those behind the scenes who steer the unwary people along their self-serving purposes. That kind of threat could not be allowed to exist; stopping the movements was paramount no matter how. And quickly. Before the titans of power were toppled. These threats had to be removed. And they were removed. Permanently.

From the very beginning of time, those who have held the reins of power were not hesitant to use the mechanics of their power in order to eliminate threats or conceived threats that may well dislodge them from their exalted positions. Even as early as 117 B.C., Hiempsal I, King of Nemidia was seen as a threat by his brother kings to their retaining or gaining power, thus he was assassinated. As these charismatic leaders rose to become a threat to the shadowy forces that controlled nations, they were quickly extinguished. Pompey the Great, Julius Caesar, Cicero, Abraham Lincoln, Che Guevara, Jesus Manuel Lara Rodriguez, Indira Gandhi, Martin Luther King, John F Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy; these are only a sprinkling of the number of dynamic personalities that were seen as threats to the power brokers and were destroyed by those they opposed.

Perhaps the single greatest threat to the hierarchy was a young Jewish upstart from Nazareth. Son of a carpenter, he would rise to heights never attained by Attila the Hun, Julius Cesar or Genghis Kahn. Nor by anyone who preceded him nor any that followed after him. Without the aid of modern day media, without publicity, without public relations promoters or Teleprompters, this man became a threat to all of the seats of power throughout the known world. This simple man, Jesus of Nazareth, used no force, had no army, no weapons; and did not advocate violence—rather the contrary. His method was peace. Peace to all men. Peace that could not be attained through armed conflict. Peace that was not derived of man, but bestowed by a higher power. Even so, without armies, without weapons, Jesus Christ created a movement that has affected hundreds of millions of people for more than two thousand years, and Christianity has spread to virtually every corner of every land throughout the world. And for this movement of peace, of love, of fellowship with all men, of harmony with all races; for this threat to those who would rule, Jesus had to die. And so he did.

Another persuasive and charismatic leader the caliber of these dynamic movers and shakers of humanity emerged in the 1950-1960 era, a leader that understood not only how to generate a massive shift in public opinion but who also understood the use of peaceful resistance combined with economic power to shunt aside obstacles that stood in his way. Born on January 15, 1929, in the southern town of Atlanta, Georgia, at the onset of the world’s Great Depression to a Baptist missionary who was an advocate for equal justice and an early leader in the fight for civil rights, this man—a black man from the South—also became a religious minister and leader of the civil rights movement in the South. A precocious student, he excelled at his studies, which included psychology and human emotions. Among other things, he learned that an eloquent speaker could often sway a person or a crowd. Unsatisfied with the status quo of racial segregation, he chose to assume the mantle of leadership against the dragon of racial bias. Although his rise began in a quiet manner, it wasn’t long until he began to be perceived as a major threat to the power brokers, a threat that had to be removed. It was vital to their very survival that Martin Luther King, Jr. had to die.

There have been books by the hundreds about who killed Martin Luther King. There have been theories by the thousands about the conspiracies that must have caused King’s death. There has been no shortage of words, comments, questions and statements as to who, when, where and what occurred as Dr. King was assassinated. The question is not who, where, what, when nor how. Rather, the over-riding question is why? Why did an iconic leader of a minority segment of the population have to be killed? Why was it necessary that his eloquent voice be stilled? Why was he a threat that had to be erased? A question that has for decades remained unexplored, a question to which no one has offered an answer. But a question that has carefully been ignored and avoided by those in power and those who would be in power. It is time to look at the question and explore the possibilities.

To understand why Dr. King had to die, it is necessary to understand just what kind of a person King was and how his leadership came to be such a threat to those shadowy influences behind the scene that controlled world politics and policies. So, just who—and what—was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a peaceful man, a leader of a peaceful movement, a leader who preached non-violence, but also an individual that was so much a danger to those miscreants that he may well have destroyed their realm of influence?

Part One

The Man

Michael Luther King, Jr. first saw the light of day on January 15, 1929. Confusion over his father’s name (Martin—often called ‘Mike’) caused the attending doctor to record the birth as Michael Luther King, Jr. Although no records exist of a legal name change, Michael soon realized that his father had intended that he had wanted his name to be Martin, thus from his early youth, he introduced himself as Martin Luther King, Jr. and never referred to himself by the name of Michael.

Although born and raised in a religious family—his father was a Baptist missionary and his mother was influential in church affairs alongside her husband—King wasn’t of firm religious belief, giving a dissertation denying the bodily resurrection of Jesus in Sunday School at the age of thirteen. In fact, King had been baptized at the age of ten only because he had followed his older sister, Willie Christine, to the altar as she embraced religion.

A precocious student at the Booker T. Washington High School, King skipped both the ninth and twelfth grade, entering Morehouse College at the age of fifteen. Graduating Morehead College with a degree in Sociology, King continued his education by enrolling in Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania, where he earned a Bachelor of Divinity degree in 1951. A gifted student and an amazingly quick learner, King admittedly used the words of others in many of the papers submitted during his college years. During his later years and in many of his more famous speeches, King was apt to adopt sermons and dissertations of others, amend the passages, and use them as his own. His gift of oratory would cause masses to listen to his voice, embrace the message and ignore the plagiarism.

His actions during his student years were anything other than pure religious seminarian activities. King enjoyed partying, drinking, smoking and the attention of a wide variety of females. Even so, King had decided to become a minister, as his father was and so was his grandfather. He delivered his first sermon at the age of eighteen at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta.

In 1953, King married Coretta Scott of Heiberger, Alabama. Valedictorian of the class of 1945 at Lincoln Normal School, Ms. Scott attended Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, where her sister had been the first black student to enroll in the school. Coretta Scott won a full scholarship to the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. While enrolled in the Conservatory, Ms. Scott met Martin Luther King, Jr.

It is readily apparent that Ms. Scot—after 1953, Mrs. King—was an intellectual match for her husband and likely was the missing piece in this life, having both a calming and a motivating influence on his life. A year after their marriage—which resulted in four children—Martin Luther King, Jr. became the pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. Shortly afterwards, King continued his education by beginning doctorial studies in systematic theology at Boston University, achieving his Doctor of Psychology a year later (1955).

Another major influence on King’s life was Howard Thurman, a classmate at Morehouse College. Thurman was a missionary whose work had taken him abroad, where he met Mahatma Gandhi. Thurman became a believer in Gandhi’s psychology of resistance to tyranny through massive civil disobedience, a psychology based on total non-violence. During King’s time at Boston University, he was a frequent visitor to Thurman, who had become dean of Marsh Chapel. Having become a student of human emotions, it didn’t take King long to understand the potential that such a psychology could develop. And it wasn’t long before events gave King the opportunity to expand and develop the non-violent theory and to put the psychology into practice with devastating effect.

***

On a day in 1943, a black seamstress paid her bus fare only to watch the bus drive off as she attempted to enter through the rear door as she had been told to do so by the bus driver. Her name was Rosa Parks.

On a day in 1949, a black professor absentmindedly sat at the front of a nearly empty bus, only to run off in tears after the bus driver screamed at her for doing so. Her name was Jo Ann Robinson.

On a day in the early 1950s, a black pastor tried to get other blacks to leave a bus in protest after he was forced to give up his seat to a white man, only to be told that he ‘ought to knowed better’. His name was Vernon Johns.

On a day in late March, 1955, fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin was a student at Booker T. Washington High School in Montgomery. She was returning from school on March 2, 1955 when she got on board a Capital Heights bus downtown (at the same place Parks boarded another bus nine months later). Colvin's family owned a car, but she relied on the city's buses to get to school. She sat in the section where, if a white person was standing, the blacks would have to get up and move to the back. When a white woman got on the bus and was standing, the bus driver, Robert W. Cleere, ordered Colvin and two other black passengers to get up and change seats. When Colvin refused, she was removed from the bus and arrested by two police officers.

E.D. Nixon, a black activist within the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NCAAP) had been looking for a case of racial discrimination that he could take into court to force desegregation and felt that with the fifteen-year-old teenager he would have an excellent chance. However, it turned out that the teenager was pregnant and unmarried. Nixon and his confederate, a determined and sympathetic white lawyer, Clifford Durr, decided to defer action, waiting for a better opportunity. They didn’t have to wait long.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was part of the committee of black citizens looking into the case and agreed with the conclusion reached by Nixon and Durr. Nixon later explained his decision, I had to be sure I had someone I could win with.

Enter Rosa Parks.

Rosa Parks is undoubtedly the most romanticized and also the most misunderstood personage in the Montgomery cast of characters. She is quite often portrayed as a simple seamstress who, exhausted after a long day at work, refused to give up her seat to a white person. While this is not untrue, there is much more to the story. Parks was educated; she had attended the laboratory school at Alabama State College because there was no high school for blacks in Montgomery at that time, and had decided to become a seamstress because she could not find a job to suit her skills. She was also a long-time NAACP worker who had taken a special interest in Claudette Colvin's case. When she was arrested in December 1955, she had recently completed a workshop on race relations at the Highlander Folk School in Mont-eagle, Tennessee. And she was a well-respected woman with a spotless record.

On Thursday, December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks boarded a city bus and sat, along with three other blacks in the fifth row, the first row where blacks were permitted to sit. A few stops later, the first four rows were filled with whites, and one white man was left standing. According to law, blacks and whites could not occupy the same row, so the bus driver asked the four blacks to move to the back. Three of the blacks complied; Rosa Parks refused. She was arrested.

When E.D. Nixon heard that Parks had been arrested, he called the police to find out why. He was told that it was none of your damn business. He contacted Durr, who easily found out that Parks had been arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a bus. Nixon went to the jail and posted bond for Parks. Then he told her, Mrs. Parks, with your permission we can break down segregation on the bus with your case. She talked it over with her husband and her mother, then agreed.

***

That night, Jo Ann Robinson put plans for a one-day boycott into action. She mimeographed handouts urging blacks to stay off the city buses on Monday, when Parks' case was due to come up. She and her students distributed the anonymous fliers throughout Montgomery on Friday morning. That evening, a group of ministers and civil rights leaders had a meeting to discuss the boycott. It did not go well. Many ministers were put off by the way Rev. L. Roy Bennett took control of the meeting. Some left and others were about to leave. Those remaining, however, agreed to spread word of the boycott through their sermons on Sunday, then meet again on Monday night if the boycott went well to decide whether or not to continue it.

Martin Luther King, Jr., at the time minister at Dexter Avenue Baptist