Kenneth C. Davis's Blog, page 97

Don’t Know Much About® Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

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Born January 15, 1929
Courtesy of the National Archives.

 

Thinking about Martin Luther King, Jr. –born Michael Luther King, Jr. on his actual birthday on January 15, 1929– I came across the presentation speech given when he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. In it, Gunnar Jahn, Chairman of the Nobel Committee, said of Dr, King:

He is the first person in the Western world to have shown us that a struggle can be waged without violence. He is the first to make the message of brotherly love a reality in the course of his struggle, and he has brought this message to all men, to all nations and races.

Today we pay tribute to Martin Luther King, the man who has never abandoned his faith in the unarmed struggle he is waging, who has suffered for his faith, who has been imprisoned on many occasions, whose home has been subject to bomb attacks, whose life and the lives of his family have been threatened, and who nevertheless has never faltered.

On Monday January 21, 2013, Dr. King’s life will be marked by a federal holiday (3d Monday in January) celebrating his life and achievements. It is now a day that many try and set aside as a Day of Service in honor of Dr. King’s memory. That day will also see the public inauguration of Barack Obama for his second term. The Obama White House announced that the President would use Bibles belonging to Abraham Lincoln and Dr. King to take the oath of office.

As the nation marks the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation and a new monument on the Mall in Washington honors Dr. King, the symbolism of America’s first black president using these Bibles is extraordinary.

Much attention will be paid on Monday to Dr. King’s most famous speech, the “I Have a Dream” oration given in Washington on August 23, 1963. Less familiar is his Nobel Peace Prize lecture which also deserves a reading. These words come from his Nobel lecture:

Nonviolence has also meant that my people in the agonizing struggles of recent years have taken suffering upon themselves instead of inflicting it on others. It has meant, as I said, that we are no longer afraid and cowed. But in some substantial degree it has meant that we do not want to instill fear in others or into the society of which we are a part. The movement does not seek to liberate Negroes at the expense of the humiliation and enslavement of whites. It seeks no victory over anyone. It seeks to liberate American society and to share in the self-liberation of all the people.

Citation: “Martin Luther King Jr. – Nobel Lecture: The Quest for Peace and Justice”. Nobelprize.org. 15 Jan 2013 http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prize...

This  New York Times obituary appeared  a day after his death on April 4, 1968.

The National Endowment for the Humanities offers a wide range of resources on Dr. King’s life and legacy. Stanford University also maintains an extensive collection of material on Martin Luther King, Jr. at the King Institute.

The history of slavery, the Civil War and the civil rights movement are covered at length in  Don’t Know Much About History, Don’t Know Much About the American Presidents and Don’t Know Much About the Civil War.

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Who Said It 1/4

President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s “Farewell Speech” (January 17, 1961). In this brief speech, Eisenhower famously warned about the “military-industrial complex.”

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence-economic, political, even spiritual-is felt in every city, every state house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

 

Down the long lane of the history yet to be written America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.

The complete Eisenhower speech can be viewed at C-Span

Don’t Know Much About Benedict Arnold

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“Arnold’s Boot” (Source PBS. org)

Why is there a statue of Benedict Arnold’s boot?

Years ago, I was asked that question on a radio call-in show and honestly did not know the answer. Nor was I even aware at the time there was such a statue. But there it is — part of the Saratoga National Historical Park in Saratoga, New York. The “boot” is actually anonymous, citing the “most brilliant soldier in the Continental Army.” But there is no question it honors American history’s greatest villain, born this day in 1741.

History books like to make people into heroes or villains. And Benedict Arnold was easily characterized as a villain, the most notorious traitor in American History for his attempt to betray the patriot cause when he was in command of the strategic post at West Point, overlooking the Hudson River. But he might have been one of the nation’s greatest heroes. And that is what makes history so compelling. Not the black and white of dates and “facts,” but the more subtle gray complexities of ego, ambition and human frailty.

Born on January 14, 1741 in colonial Norwich, Connecticut, Arnold had a biography that reads like that of a character out of Dickens. The son of a wealthy, successful ship’s captain and merchant, young Benedict Arnold was born with the proverbial silver spoon in his mouth. He was sent off to the best boarding school by his father, owner of the finest home in town. Then it fell apart. Yellow fever took his sisters while he was at school. Alcoholism then took his father. The fall was stunning as the elder Arnold became the town drunk and lost his fortune. At 14, young Benedict Arnold became an indentured servant. As a teenager, he ran away on several occasions to try and join the British-American forces then fighting France in the French and Indian War. Through pluck and generous relatives, Arnold eventually became a wealthy young merchant himself and was soon immersed in patriot politics, even traveling to Philadelphia to observe the First Continental Congress.

When the fighting began in 1775, he led Connecticut’s militia to Boston to join the rebel army gathering there. Arnold soon won honors for his role in the capture of Fort Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain. With George Washington’s approval, he led a daring but disastrous march through Maine to unsuccessfully attack Quebec. Later, he built a small navy to battle the British on Lake Champlain, helping save the patriot cause. But it was at Saratoga in October 1777 that he made his greatest contribution, leading a charge that turned the tide in what would become the most important American victory of the Revolution to that point.

Admired by Washington, Arnold also made a great many enemies. Seeing others promoted and advanced before him made him bitter and ultimately led to his fateful decision to join the British side.

After his plot was uncovered, Arnold did join the British side, fighting against his onetime countrymen. He later moved to Canada and eventually to London where he died and was buried in June 1801 at the age of 60. His remains were accidentally –and fittingly?– moved to an unmarked grave.

New York Times Bestseller-America’s Hidden History

You can read more about Arnold and his exploits in the chapter called “Arnold’s Boot” in America’s Hidden History

Don’t Know Much About® Richard Nixon

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Richard M. Nixon (Courtesy of National Archives)

When the President does it, that means it’s not illegal –Richard M. Nixon to interviewer David Frost (1974)

Born one hundred years ago on January 9, 1913  in Yorba Linda, California – Richard M. Nixon –37th President

From Cold Warrior to vice president under Eisenhower, defeated candidate in the 1960 race with John F. Kennedy to his narrow 1968 election and 1972 landslide, Richard Nixon dominated the American scene as few other politicians have. Then came Watergate and his resignation in August 1974.

I have never been a quitter. To leave office before my term is completed is abhorrent to every instinct in my body. But as President, I must put the interests of America first…. Therefore, I shall resign the Presidency effective at noon tomorrow.

—Richard M. Nixon, August 8, 1974

Son of a struggling storeowner in California, Nixon was raised a Quaker (the only other Quaker president was Herbert Hoover). He attended Whittier College and studied law at Duke. Nixon returned to California to practice, and served in the Navy during World War II. He was elected to the House of Representatives, making his name as a Communist fighter.  He became Senator and then Eisenhower’s vice president, serving eight years (1953-1961). After his loss to Kennedy to 1960, he returned to California, lost a governor’s race and seemed finished in politics. But in 1968, Nixon mounted a comeback and won a close race over Hubert Humphrey.

There have arguably been better presidents and worse presidents. But there is probably no more complex president than Richard M. Nixon. For three decades Richard Nixon made decisions, especially in the arena of  the war in Southeast Asia, relations with the Soviet Union, and by reaching out to Communist China as only a committed Cold Warrior could do, that altered the arc of history. His extraordinary career flamed out in the Watergate scandals that overshadowed all else that Richard Nixon did— or didn’t do.

 

Nixon died in New York City, aged eighty-one, on April 22, 1994. (Richard Nixon’s New York Times obituary.)

Read more about Nixon’s life and administration in Don’t Know Much About the American Presidents

Don’t Know Much About® the American Presidents-now available in hardcover and eBook and audiobook

 

Don’t Know Much About® the “State of the Union”

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George Washington by Gilbert Stuart

On January 8, 1790, President George Washington delivered the first annual “Message to Congress,” now better known as the State of the Union Address. Washington’s message was delivered in person to Congress, then meeting in New York City, in accordance with the Constitutional requirement in Article II: Section 3:

He shall from from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient;…

In his address, Washington raised questions of the basics of a functioning federal government and uniformity in both naturalizing foreign citizens and a system of weights and measures. But as the nation continues to debate gun control measures, it is worth noting that Washington called for “a uniform and well-digested plan” to arm and discipline a “free people.” At the same time, he also recognized the need for a standing army with “comfortable support.”

Washington spent a considerable amount of time addressing the importance of knowledge:

Nor am I less persuaded that you will agree with me in opinion that there is nothing which can better deserve your patronage than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness. In one in which the measures of government receive their impressions so immediately from the sense of the community as in ours it is proportionably essential.

…by teaching the people themselves to know and to value their own rights; to discern and provide against invasions of them; to distinguish between oppression and the necessary exercise of lawful authority; between burthens proceeding from a disregard to their convenience and those resulting from the inevitable exigencies of society; to discriminate the spirit of liberty from that of licentiousness – cherishing the first, avoiding the last – and uniting a speedy but temperate vigilance against encroachments, with an inviolable respect to the laws.*

Maybe Washington was the first “Education President.”

Whether the issue is gun control, immigration, or support for public education, it is fascinating to see how these issues have been fundamental to the nation’s leadership from its very beginnings.

As President, Thomas Jefferson ended the practice of delivering the Message to Congress in person; you could say he “mailed it in.”  Woodrow Wilson was the first President after Jefferson to return to the tradition begun by Washington. Today., of course, the State of the Union Address is  a familiar part of Washington, D.C.’s annual ritual, compete with invited guests sitting beside the First Lady. It is the speech in which a President lays out his vision for the country and announce any new major initiatives or perhaps contribute a signal phrase to the American lexicon. in 2002, George W. Bush used the speech to  highlight the threat posed by an “axis of evil:– Iran, Iraq and North Korea.

*George Washington: “First Annual Message to Congress on the State of the Union” January 8, 1790. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project. University of California at Santa Barbara

Who said it 1-6-13

Franklin D. Roosevelt: “Four Freedoms Speech” (State of the Union: January 6, 1941)

The first is freedom of speech and expression–everywhere in the world.

The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way–everywhere in the world.

The third is freedom from want–which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants-everywhere in the world.

The fourth is freedom from fear–which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor–anywhere in the world.

Source: FDR Library

Who Said It 12/19

“These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands now, deserve the love and thanks of man and woman.”

 

Thomas Paine, American Crisis, No., 1, published December 19, 1776 and read to Washington’s troops on December 23, 1776, before the Battle of Trenton. (Source: Library of Congress. Printed broadside version showing December 19, 1776 date.

 

The New Abolition of the “Execrable Commerce”

 

Slaughter of the Innocents

“When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under….” (Matthew 1: 16-New Revised Standard Version)

 

December 15 –this past Saturday—marked the 221st anniversary of ratification of the Bill of Rights.  I had planned to use the occasion to write about the history of the Bill of Rights and the general public ignorance of what these 10 Amendments are and why they were created by the Founding Generation.

That plan was cut off by the events in Connecticut on Friday, December 14 when, like millions of others, I was caught up in the maelstrom of media reports –so many of them initially mistaken—coming out of a small community not far from New York City.

In the days since, the issue of controlling America’s epidemic of gun violence has been thrust to the center of attention in a way it has not before—even in the wake of other recent shootings whose names are now well-known: Columbine, Virginia Tech, Aurora. The list is old and way too long.

On Sunday evening, following the slaughter of the innocents, the President made that reality perfectly clear at a prayer vigil after the terrible shootings in a bucolic small town in Connecticut.  He said, “Because what choice do we have? We can’t accept events like this as routine. Are we really prepared to say that we’re powerless in the face of such carnage? That the politics are too hard? Are we prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom?”

As of today, it seems as though this horrific event has become what is called a ”tipping point.” Congress has begun to move itself. And the New York Times editorial page devoted its columns to the issue of Second Amendment rights and what it calls “the gun epidemic.”

I do not wish to use this space for yet another scholarly and historical debate about the origins and intent of the Second Amendment. Instead I urge people to read each of the related pieces. I especially want to encourage teachers – who have been thrust into the true front lines of this gun madness—to use this as a teaching moment, particularly with age-appropriate classes. This is a time for real “current events” in the Social Studies classroom. The following essays from the Times will provide some excellent talking points for classroom and community discussion.

•”Personal Guns and the Second Amendment”

•”In Other Countries, Laws Are Strict and Work”

•”Let’s Get M.A.D.D. About Guns” by columnist Joe Nocera

•”The Bullet’s Legacy” by columnist Frank Bruni

In thinking about this issue, I was reminded of Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln” and the centuries of legal and political arguments over what Jefferson called “this execrable commerce” in his draft of the Declaration (deleted by Congress).

I believe that guns are our “execrable commerce.” And gun control is ultimately a moral issue, not a political one, just as the abolition of slavery was. It took far too many lives to get Abraham Lincoln to the point that he finally reached in calling for the abolition of slavery.

In the time of slavery, the voices calling for emancipation were drowned out by powerful political and economic forces. Men like Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison were dismissed as fanatics, with discussion of slavery even prohibited in Congress under its “gag rule.”

It is time to end America’s “gag rule” on serious discussion of rational, meaningful gun control. As William Lloyd Garrison wrote 30 years before the Civil War,

“On this subject I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation. No! No! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; but urge me not to use moderation.” (The Liberator, No. 1 January 1, 1831)

Enough is enough.

 

© 2012 Kenneth C. Davis

 

Who Said It 12-10-12

 

 

President George Washington in his “Farewell Address,” originally published in September 1796 in a letter addressed to “The People of the United States” (Source: Avalon Project-Yale Law School)

George Washington died on December 14, 1799.

Who Said It 12-1-12

Abraham Lincoln  “Second Annual Message to Congress” (December 1, 1862) Source: Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pi....

Having announced the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation in September 1862, Lincoln followed with this message to Congress, or State of the Union message, a long document in which he called for compensated emancipation of slaves and the use of “colonization” to return freed slaves to Africa.

From the closing paragraph of Lincoln’s Second Annual Message to Congress (“State of the Union”)

Fellow-citizens, we can not escape history. We of this Congress and this Administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance or insignificance can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation. We say we are for the Union. The world will not forget that we say this. We know how to save the Union. The world knows we do know how to save it. We, even we here, hold the power and bear the responsibility. In giving freedom to the slave we assure freedom to the free–honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save or meanly lose the last best hope of earth. Other means may succeed; this could not fail. The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just–a way which if followed the world will forever applaud and God must forever bless.