Episode 3 // Martin Luther King, Jr.

For me, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was one of the greatest prophetic voices of our time -- a deeply engaging intellectual, rooted in the theological and philosophical traditions, extolling the virtues of disarmament, non-violent resistance, economic equality, civil rights, and social justice. But as Dr. Cornel West would point out, King was but one voice in a wave of many standing up for the rights of their fellow human beings -- and though one may see King as flawed in his tendencies towards notions like patriarchy and homophobia -- his legacy would paradoxically live on, and still does today in the struggles for gender and ecological justice, as many within those movements feel deeply indebted to King's courage and ethos. The image below is King (centre) marching at the Arlington National Cemetery in 1967, with Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (two left of King), and others in CALCAV (Clergy and Laity Concerned About Vietnam), an organization Daniel Berrigan helped found, calling the US government to end its war against Vietnam.










episode download: [coming soon]

00:00:49 - station id: Jack Layton
00:01:00 - promo: Below The Decks (radio show)
00:01:32 - psa: media co-op
00:02:01 - Ethiopian Orthodox Mezmur (Traditional) - 'Teweldenaho'
00:07:41 - speaking: on mezmur, King's dissertation on Tillich and Wieman, and theologian James Cone [1], [2]
00:10:50 - Cocteau Twins - 'Strange Fruit'
00:12:42 - Mavis Staples - 'Eyes On The Prize'
00:16:48 - Jim James - 'God's Love To Deliver'
00:20:25 - Wadada Leo Smith - 'Martin Luther King, Jr.'
'"":21:00 - talking: on the 'letter from a birmingham jail' and the 'march on washington' [3]
00:28:32 - Bob Dylan & Joan Baez - 'When The Ship Comes In'
00:31:55 - Funkadelic - 'Can You Get To That'
00:34:46 - promo: Brother Brian's Bluegrass (radio show)
00:35:33 - psa: vegetarianism
00:35:53 - Robert Hood - 'Blackness'
00:40:18 - John Coltrane - 'Alabama'
'"":40:24 - talking: on detroit, the 1963 birmingham church bombing, and tributes to King [4]
00:45:31 - Pete Seeger - 'We Shall Overcome'
00:51:32 - Otis Spann with Muddy Waters & His Band - 'Tribute to Martin Luther King'
00:56:12 - Nina Simone - 'Sunday In Savannah'

01:02:15 - station id: Amy Goodman
01:02:30 - promo: Alternative Frequency (radio show)
01:03:13 - psa: Noam Chomsky on community radio
01:04:01 - U2 - 'MLK' (prod. by Brian Eno)
01:06:32 - The Fugees - 'A Change Is Gonna Come'
01:09:14 - Times New Viking - 'Martin Luther King Day'
'"":"9:23 - talking: on Rosa Parks, Dr. Julia Yasuda, and the continuing legacy of King [5]
01:11:58 -  Public Enemy - 'By The Time I Get To Arizona'
01:16:47 -  Antony & The Johnsons - 'Free At Last' (featuring Dr. Julia Yasuda)
01:18:24 -  Big K.R.I.T. - '2000 & Beyond'
01:22:41 -  Fannie Lou Hamer - 'Go Tell It On The Mountain'
01:25:47 -  Rev. Gary Davis - 'Lord, I Just Feel Like Goin' On'
01:29:18 -  Rev. C.L. Franklin - 'I Will Trust In The Lord'

"Perhaps it is appropriate at this point to say a word concerning the general philosophical and theological orientation of Wieman and Tillich. For Wieman, God, or “creativity,” or “the creative event,” is the producer, or the production of unexpected, unpredictable good. In specifying the nature of the creative event Wieman is both eloquent and illuminating.

Throughout Wieman’s thought it is very easy to see the influence of Whitehead and Dewey. His naturalism and empiricism are quite reminiscent of Dewey. Like Dewey, he speaks of processes of creation, and also describes the production of good as issuing from a context of events. On the other hand, he goes beyond Dewey by insisting that the emergence of value is the work of God. Wieman sees a great deal of value in Whitehead’s “principle of concretion,’’ but he is generally skeptical of his metaphysical speculations. Disagreeing both with Whiteheadian metaphysics and Dewey’s humanistic naturalism, Wieman’s thought lies between these systems, containing a few features of both, and some few emphases foreign to both.

The immediate background of Tillich’s philosophy is the ontological and historical strains of nineteenth century German speculation. The later, post- Bohme philosophy of Schelling, the various mid-century reactions against the panlogism of Hegel, like Feuerbach and the early Marx, Nietzsche and the “philosophy of life,” and the more recent existentialism, especially of Heidegger- all these have contributed to Tillich’s formulation of philosophic problems.
   
There is also a monistic strain in Tillich’s thinking which is reminiscent of Plotinus, Hegel, Spinoza and Vedanta thought. In his conception of God he seems to be uniting a Spinozistic element, in which God is not a being, but the power of being, with a profound trinitarian interpretation of this, which allows for what is traditionally called transcendence."

- Martin Luther King, Jr. (Dissertation Excerpt)


"Segregation, to use the terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, substitutes an "I it" relationship for an "I thou" relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things. Hence segregation is not only politically, economically and sociologically unsound, it is morally wrong and sinful. Paul Tillich has said that sin is separation. Is not segregation an existential expression of man's tragic separation, his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness? Thus it is that I can urge men to obey the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court, for it is morally right; and I can urge them to disobey segregation ordinances, for they are morally wrong."

- Martin Luther King, Jr. (Letter From a Birmingham Jail)


Further Info:
[1] Martin Luther King, Jr.'s PhD dissertation on the conception of God in the theologies of Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Wieman (PDF)
[2] James Cone's 'The Cross and the Lynching Tree' (Google book)
[3] HarvardX Teaching Staff for 'The Letters of the Apostle Paul' discuss King's 'Letter From a Birmingham Jail' (Video)
[4] Robert Hood interview with The Quietus
[5] James Cone and Taylor Branch on MLK's fight for economic justice (Video)