This morning in 1968 Martin Luther King gave the final Sunday sermon of his life

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tweeted by, Michael Beschloss ‏@BeschlossDC 1h
This morning in 1968 Martin Luther King gave final Sunday sermon of his life at Washington National Cathedral: pic.twitter.com/NUd6IIeNAU



Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. discusses his planned poor people’s demonstration from the pulpit of the Washington National Cathedral, March 31, 1968. (Associated Press)


from BLOGGING-THOMAS:



____ On the Sunday before he was gunned down in Memphis, Dr. King stood in the pulpit of the Cathedral Church of St. Peter and St. Paul, otherwise known as Washington National Cathedral, to preach what no one there could have imagined would be his final Sunday sermon, entitled: “Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution.” The title comes from his opening musings on Washington Irving’s classic American fictional story of Rip Van Winkle, who went to sleep one day in the Catskill Mountains and awoke twenty years later to a completely changed world.

As King said that morning, “When Rip Van Winkle went up into the mountain, he saw a sign that had a picture of King George the Third of England. When he came down twenty years later the sign had a picture of George Washington, the first president of the United States. Rip Van Winkle slept through a revolution. While he was peacefully snoring up in the mountain a revolution was taking place that … would change the course of history—and Rip knew nothing about it. … One of the great liabilities of life is that all too many people find themselves living amid a great period of social change, and yet they fail to develop the new attitudes, the new mental responses, that the new situation demands. They end up sleeping through a revolution.”

In a time when our technological advances have shrunk our world into a neighborhood, King said, “we have not had the ethical commitment to make of it a brotherhood. … But somehow, and in some way, we have got to do this. We must all learn to live together as brothers or we will all perish together as fools. We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. And whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. For some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the way God’s universe is made . . .”


MLK's final Sunday sermon in nation's capital, Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution- read/listen to the sermon: http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/documentsentry/doc_remaining_awake_through_a_great_revolution/

[Faygo Kid]

1. Never forget

Another moment I will never forget, as I was 16 when we lost him. Searing. His message of economic justice is too often forgotten. Thanks for posting this.

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2. such an all-encompassing sermon

. . . such a sad shame to lose him to an assassin's bullet.

I was seven years old that month in D.C. . . . the city block up the street was a heap of smoldering brick and broken glass, in my young mind.

[McCamy Taylor]

3. Now I'm crying. Why do they always kill the best?

[Faygo Kid]

4. I don't know. We can only go on.

My coworkers have had children this year. I don't think they will make it to my age, as global warming and the release of methane is inevtiable. I hope I'm wrong.

[jwirr]

5. Because the best are a REAL threat to their hate filled lives. But what they fail to realize is that

when they kill a hero he/she will always become a stronger symbol for the cause. From Jesus Christ to today that has been a truism. MLK will remain in our hearts for years to come and he is an inspiration.

[awoke_in_2003]

9. Because they are dangerous...

to the PTB.

[Faygo Kid]

11. I was in training to be a baseball ump that evening

In Detroit. I have no answer to your question.

[Omaha Steve]

6. And a great organized labor leader

Great info here: http://www.afscme.org/union/history/mlk




Photo Credit: Richard L. Copley

On April 3, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. traveled to Memphis to support AFSCME sanitation workers. That evening, he delivered his famous “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech to a packed room of supporters. The next day, he was assassinated.


MLK shirts for sale at AFSCME.

https://afscme.imagepointe.com/afscme/default.aspx?p=viewitem&item=AFS214&subno=&showpage=1&subcat=



https://afscme.imagepointe.com/afscme/default.aspx?p=viewitem&item=AFS437&subno=&showpage=1&subcat=

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7. as early as 1961 - Martin Luther King Jr.quoted (from somewhere) on “right to work”

“In our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by false slogans, such as ‘right to work.’ It is a law to rob us of our civil rights and job rights.

Its purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining by which unions have improved wages and working conditions of everyone…Wherever these laws have been passed, wages are lower, job opportunities are fewer and there are no civil rights. We do not intend to let them do this to us. We demand this fraud be stopped. Our weapon is our vote.”

—Martin Luther King, speaking about right-to-work laws in 1961

[awoke_in_2003]

10. and our weapon,...

the vote, has been rendered useless by the wealthy buying Congress.

[YoungDemCA]

8. He was becoming more critical of "the system" in the last months of his life...

From poverty and joblessness to the war in Vietnam, he was connecting many issues to racism and segregation, and expanding his civil rights crusade to the rights of disadvantaged and underprivileged people in general.

I'm not big on conspiracy theories, but in this case, even I often wonder. MLK's murder occurred right when he was becoming more and more "radical", so to speak....

[shenmue]

12. Thanks for posting

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13. .