Maybe some of the fine folks who say they are almost ready to pay something for TPM (but not yet, not till you get things exactly right) could put their money down to help out.
I’ve been here forever, and I can attest to the fact that TPM isn’t perfect and I’ve even chimed in a couple of times when it seemed like I had a legitimate gripe. I feel that once I got blamed for something I didn’t even say when you got pissed at our whining about something, but I figure that’s your call – it’s your site and you get to make the rules.
All that said, I am still here and I happily pay for the privilege of access to your stellar staff. Few journalistic endeavors invest so much hard work to bring reports to us that are clearly valuable to readers like me. The fact that once in awhile I don’t agree with something is a small thing when I get both reporting and opinions from some of the best folks doing this job today.
I still hope that someday you make enough to employ a headline writer. That would be a good thing.
In June 1969, I had the pleasure of meeting Mrs. Alberta Williams King and her husband, Rev. Martin Luther King, Sr. . She and her husband “Daddy” King were friends of my family and I remember how warm and gracious she was when I was introduced to them. Since she’s unable to refute some of the comments that have been made about her murder, let me set the record straight: Mrs. King was assassinated.
Her relationship to her husband and son, in addition to her own activities and standing within the African American community made her a target. She was active in the NAACP, National Baptist Convention, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, and the YWCA, among other organizations. Yes, her assailant utilized an insanity defense. However, to enlighten the readers on this thread who did not have the benefit of following the history of this event in real time, here’s a quote from the New York Times and its link:
"Mr. Chenault, the son of a middle-class black family in Dayton, Ohio, had just been welcomed to the church for a morning service when he rose from his seat in the front pew, drew two pistols and started firing.
Alberta King, 70, was fatally struck at the church’s new organ as she was playing “The Lord’s Prayer.” Mr. Boykin was standing nearby when he was shot. One woman among the 400 worshippers was wounded…
At his arraignment, Mr. Chenault told a magistrate that he had come to Atlanta “on a mission,” and said he decided months earlier that black ministers were a menace to black people and must be killed.
He also told the police that his mission was to kill the Rev. Martin Luther King Sr., but he shot Mrs. King instead because she was close to him. Their son Dr. King, the civil rights leader, was assassinated by an escaped convict, James Earl Ray, in Memphis on April 4, 1968."
But for her relationship to her sons and her husband, Mrs. King would not have died while playing the organ during her church service. What Marcus Wayne Chenault did was premeditated. Two weeks before the murders at Ebenezer Baptist Church, he informed friends and coworkers that he would become famous. Evidence against Chenault included a hit list which listed the names of civil rights figures like the Rev. Jesse Jackson and others connected to the King family. Chenault was also considered a person of interest in the murders of two ministers in Dayton that took place prior to the Atlanta shooting. Prior to the murders, he claimed to be a Muslim, a Black Hebrew, gay, straight, and a host of other identities. Some accounts purport that he was coached to commit his crimes.
Considering that the Rev. A.D. Williams King (Martin’s brother) had died under suspicious circumstances not long after his brother was killed and the FBI still had the King family under surveillance, “Daddy” King stated in his wife’s eulogy that he would “keep fighting” and expected to join her “soon”. I understand that many TPM readers may not have had the benefit of reading Ebony, Jet, Sepia or any of the then-numerous African American newspapers from this time period. However, by 1974, many of us had firsthand knowledge of COINTELPRO activities within minority communities and expressed serious doubts about the so-called randomness of Mrs. King’s death. Chenault may or may not have acted alone but Mrs. King was assassinated. It’s time to stop the whitesplaining.
In that case, then there are no murders, only assassinations, because people are murdered for all kinds of reasons, including for money, so they were “assassinated” for it by this standard. The headline gave the false impression that she was killed for political reasons. I, like many here, thought “well, why hadn’t I heard about that?” and then find nothing in the article about it. It was only one of the commenters (harrytruman) that gave the details. Sure, a case can and should be made that the women in these movements deserve more focus, but that case is not helped when conflating unrelated events. I don’t even mind that he’s talking about his own journey, however briefly. A headline describing that would have been more useful, and not undermine the article itself.
I appreciate the history, and in this case it makes more sense to say that she was assassinated, but it looks like his reasoning had more to do with religion than with civil rights, the focus of the article here. It does sound like one could make a case that the FBI helped him, or at least did nothing to stop him, for civil rights reasons, or just plain racism, or who knows what rotten purpose.
The comment about whitesplaining, however, is clearly meant to inflame rather than inform. And I for one am not going to accept an unearned guilt or shame from anyone, which is all that amounts to.
M. W. Chenault did not act alone. He claimed to have been driven to Atlanta from Ohio by four individuals who were aware of his original plan to assassinate Rev. King, Sr. . His behavior was consistent with activities known to be associated with COINTELPRO and MKULTRA and the King family continued being a target of both programs years after the death of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. .The Ebenezer Baptist Church shooting took place shortly before Rev. and Mrs. Kings were expected to provide testimony in an evidentiary hearing for James Earl Ray on Ray’s behalf. The King family continues to maintain that Ray was innocent and that the murder of Mrs. King was not a random act.
I’m glad that you recognize that Mrs. King was assassinated but your comment and those that I referenced previously are still whitesplaining. Downplaying the circumstances of Mrs. King’s death without understanding the context of what else was taking place pertaining to her family during this pivotal period of American history, referring to the article as “click bait”, snarky comments about Aurin Squire and Josh Marshall…it’s interesting that you didn’t challenge those statements but took offense to mine. Then again, the author and I are both black. Based upon your defensive response, you’ve obviously benefited at some point in your life from unearned privilege. You may have the luxury of ignoring casual racism and misogyny. Many of us don’t have that option.
No sh*t. I am just reading this article now, after a long vaca, and I had to read the first few comments twice bc I thought for sure I was misinterpreting those authors intended contributions to the discussion. WTF? Triggered much?
Well, the trolls are certainly out today. “The woman.” How better to erase someone from history than take away her name? It makes it so much easier to dismiss her tragic murder.
Well we certainly have never had a real accounting on the conspiracy to kill Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The most we seem to have seen was the 1979 House Select Committee did conclude it was in fact a conspiracy. And then they sealed all their records (“which had a half-life of a car left overnight in the South Bronx” in the words of Norman Mailer before he turned to the dark(er) side) and everyone was sworn to secrecy. In the end, I suspect, this road will lead to J. Edgar Hoover.
The detailed information you have provided is very helpful, thank you. If it had been summarized in the original article it would have been a better article.
There are definitely better ways out there to examine this event and put it in a legitimate historical context:
At that time, there weren’t political discussions around gun culture/gun violence and mental health the way there are now.
Also, the inherent vulnerability of places of worship (again, that decades later we are now all too familiar with).
The attitude that a mentally deranged Black guy is not newsworthy, and that (being facetious here) he stuck to his own community instead of rudely trespassing into white territory, is what makes news editors and producers merely shrug? Was the lack of historical importance possibly due to a racist assumption that black-on-black crime is expected, and not to be concerned about? Could do some digging on this attitude and make an argument.
Anyway, a quick google to find background on the shooter completely ruins the “assassination” claim. A second victim was also killed-just wrong place, wrong time.
It’d be interesting to hear the opinion of the King family on this.
I am surprised by how many comments here are so focused on the quality of the headline or the lack of stories about the women mentioned in the article. I read the article wondering where the story of Mrs. King was as well, but to me the feature of the article was the trivialization of the contributions of black women to the history of the United States. It is true, that until fairly recently, contributions of any women to history in general has been virtually non-existent.
As I read the article the point is that in our culture, contributions of non-white, non-males is principally ignored. Though some progress has been made in this vein in the past 50 years, it is still telling that history is mostly about the achievements of men. This is particularly true about black women because they are black and women.
While the article did not give you the stories of the women noted in the article, perhaps it should be read to encourage the reader to look up those stories and others as well. As a 75 year old retired white male, I learned many years ago that when a women had successfully achieved to my level (financial services executive), they had work harder and were more talented than most of there peers. Think about the struggles of women striving to change history carrying the added burden of being their own Sisyphus walking up that hill bearing their gender, their color and their sexual orientation as a de facto weights adding to their trials.
Point taken, but the article reads a little better 7 years later, IMHO. A comprehensive treatment of African American history might include this murder, though the race and mental issues of the perpetrator lead to a more complex narrative.
I happen to be reading a book on Japanese history now. I agree that US popular conceptions of both history and heck international relations have stadium sized blind spots. I try at least to master my ignorance - to identify what areas I know little or nothing about.
The author’s ignorance of history is nobody’s fault but his own. King’s mother’s murder was not a political assassination; so dishonest to imply that it was. It was just another black-on-black crime. This article is beneath TPM standards.
I see. So, if Jacqueline Kennedy had been shot to death a few years after JFK, it wouldn’t be “history”, because she, as a woman, had “no historical significance”? The news media would have listed it on the Obit page, or not at all? (It would definitely have gone unremarked by the NYT…)
You are purposefully misinterpreting his words to make your point. It would be history, just as Jackueline Kennedy’s death was history when it occurred after a long life and a second, happier, marriage. But it wouldn’t be historical, in the sense that JFK’s assassination was a pivotal moment in America’s history, not just his own or his family’s history. Princess Diana’s death was no, more or less history than jacqueline, but it was more historically significant in Britain due to her long mistreatment by the British press and that institutions willingness to pay for photo’s of her at obvious risk to her own safety. It was revealing of 2 important institutions, the press and the monarchy.
If she had died in a random traffic accident, it would have been less of a historical event, though no less tragic for her children, and other loved ones, as well as many Britians. No less that MLK’s mother’s death was probably a well known tragedy at the time in many black families (and probably some white families as well) but did not have the historical resonance that would lead us to teach it in school’s today.
The author’s overall point about women often being missing from history is completely accurate, but his primary example was was deeply misleading, and frankly partially derailed a discussion on an important subject. But heck, he got more clicks.
