Hunter Motto’s Weblog: Light, Sound, Color



I was born the day after Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday.

I recommend this video. 

I recommend this article.

http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-119441734.html

I may be restating a fabricated story or perpetuating a blatant untruth, but the parabolic story of the meeting of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X provokes in me such an invigorating response that my need for it to be true, makes it so. The only evidence I have is the semi-biographic memoir of MLK Jr. as told by Vincent Harding, his long time friend, called The Inconvenient Hero. In February 1965, Martin Luther King found himself a hero eclipsed by authority. The cold winter of his imprisonment was not without merit for in this time he was visited by a longtime friend, a friend with heavy arms. They embraced and relished in the time spent in this most private of domains. Their conversation could be dramatized to seem like a struggle of ideologies, but it was more precisely a gesture of consolation in a maddening world. Malcolm spoke solemnly of the promised life of his Muslim faith. He was no martyr, he was not

He was also no longer militant. His mind had strayed from the wilds of youth that catch you and forever brands you. Black Activists would forever possess guns and sling slang. They would not be remembered for their efforts to create community activism and self-sustenance which focused on feeding inter-urban youth. It is much easier to starve a mind of ideas than beat those ideas out. Both men sat facing each other smiling. They were starving. Both men were tired and frail. One was brow-beaten by society; the other only weeks away from death. King remarked of Malcolm that he had already become “much more than there was time to be”. The sweet spirited Malcolm X was distancing himself from the racism, which had typecast him before. Meanwhile, Martin King was expressing heated concerns over Vietnam, despite the unease others had that such sentiments would detract from issues of civil liberties. The two were crossing ideological paths and at that junction there was only compassion. Malcolm told Coretta King later that he was really an ally.

This story epitomizes the story of Hunter and Nathan, for men of peace are always at war. Between the high and lows of our shared experience, there are moments of serenity and cooperation.


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