Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. & the Talented Tenth Misled Blacks

[Saleem Shah]

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. misled black people. At a time in our history when we were focusing on a black do-something-for-self mindset, MLK pulled the people from the independence thinking to integration, dependence, begging thinking.  That is the modern day root as to why we are in the predicament we are in. Poor, ragged, hungry, half naked, and out of doors with no self-employment.  We had two very strong chances to go for self.

 

Let's just take a glimpse back to the Marcus Garvey period.  Garvey's position: "The time has come for the Negro to forget and cast behind him his hero worship and adoration of the other races, and to start out immediately to create and emulate heroes of our own.  We must cannonize our own martyrs, and elevate to positions of fame and honor black men and women who have made their distinct contributions to our racial history."

 

In contrast to Du Bois, who focused on the Talented Tenth, Garvey spoke to the "untalented ninetieth," offering them hope for a better life. The Reverend Adam Clayton Powell, Sr, pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church, was not a follower of Marcus Garvey, but he understood Garvey's importance.

 

"The coming of Marcus Garvey to Harlem in 1916 was more significant to the Negro than the World War, the southern exodus and the fluctuation of property values up-and down-town. Garvey, with his Black United States, Black President and Black Vice President, Black Cabinet, Black Congress, Black Army with Black Generals, Black Cross Nurses, Black Negro World, Black Star Line, and a Black Religion with a Black God, had awakened a race-consciousness that made Harlem felt around the world.  The cotton picker of Alabama, bending over his basket, and the poor ignorant Negro of the Mississippi Delta, crushed beneath a load of prejudice, lifted their heads and said, "Let's go to Harlem to see this Black Moses... '[H]e is the only man that ever made Negroes who are black not ashamed of their color.' " [Source: Harlem Stomp! A Cultural History of the Harlem Renaissanc; Laban Carick Hill]

 

Now, that was before King's time. But during King's time Elijah Muhammad was teaching a Message to the Black Man to Do For Self and Join on to Your Own Kind. Both men taught SEPARATION not SEGREGATION.  Separation is separate but equal. Segregation is separate but unequal.  From the end of WWI to the end of WWII and thereafter, black people were becoming more conscious of the need to separate and do something for self. Mr. Muhammad was teaching in the public since 1933 - a few years after Garvey was deported (at the insistence of the NAACP/DuBois, A. Phillip Randolph, black churches and others of the Talented Tenth) and died in 1940. 

 

I can imagine what the buzz in the atmosphere was like back then among black people, because growing up in Harlem in the 1950s that was still the buzz in the atmosphere on 125th Steet on Lenox and 7th Avenues where the old Garveyites would reminisce of those days and what Garvey taught and how black people responded to him in a very positive way. But it was the 10% professional class of slave minded Negroes who did not want Garvey to succeed in getting black people to be independent.  Garvey taught love your self before others.

 

Both Marcus Garvey and Elijah Muhammad taught of Black economics, independence, separation, a black religion and a black God. From Garvey's time through the 1960s, given the horrific treatment of black people by White America, the idea of Black Do For Self did not lose its appeal to black people. Those principles began to make more sense with each lynching, beating and burning. 

 

Now, here comes Martin Luther King, Jr. teaching the exact opposite! Don't separate - integrate; don't pool your own resources and build your own resturants and hotels - no.... beg white people for theirs; enjoy the food they spit in before serving it to you; don't pool your resources and build your own schools (as Mr. Muhammad did in 41 major cities) force the cracker people to let you into their schools; don't observe Moses' law of an eye for an eye....no, love your enemy....love the ones who kill your family....when they strike you turn the other cheek and let them strike that one too.  This is the foolishness that King taught the people in Jesus' name. Claiming he was patterning after Gandhi. King was a damn punk Fool. If the British had done to the Indian people what the slavemaster and Ku Klux Klan and others did to black people - I can guarantee you that Gandhi would not have been so passive. He would have wanted justice for the Indian people.  There was no comparison between the two occupations of cruelty to a people.

 

King did not teach love your black self. He taught love everybody. All that is saying is to love white people specifically. He could have given less than a hoot if you loved some Asian people....just make sure you love white people....your 400 year old enemy. He misused the teachings of Jesus to convince our people not to do for self but depend on and beg white people for whatever you need in the way of survival. Actually telling the people to love those who have beaten and killed you for 310 straight years.  "I want to be you brother, not your brother in-law"**!!?

 

King knew both programs of Garvey and Muhammad were separation and do for self. King did not teach black unity, black love. He did not teach anything about black progress. He was successful in getting integration as policy , but where has integration gotten black people in 2011? We are really worse off today than we were in the 1950s.  We have no education system or network; no businesses; no industries; no farms; no producing our own food, shelter and clothing; no national transportation lines; 30 million+ people and we don't even own a jet liner.  King was a joke - but a sad one.  He was a lover of white people first and foremost. He would rather let his weak followers get beaten, spat upon, firehosed, attacked by vicious dogs, jailed, and murdered. All this just to be close to white folks and get a pat on the head. He got a Nobel Peace Prize but what peace did black people get with him?

 

Had Martin Luther King kept his mouth shut, we as a people would be way more independent today rather than the pitiful, disgraceful, dishonored beggars that we are . We are so dizzy and in love we still think there is a difference between a Democrat and a Republican and an Independent. It does not take courage to beg someone to do for you that which you can do for your self. That is the zenith of weakness - begging.  King was a deceiver. He should have supported the universal principles taught by to two great men - one before his time and the other right in his midst. Following lying,  fearful Preachers and Politicians has been our down fall as a people.    .......Peace