Did Hillary Really Diss Martin Luther King Jr.?
By Eric L. Hinton
January 14, 2008
It's getting ugly.
Sen. Hillary Clinton, whose hopes of capturing the Democratic presidential nomination may well ride with how well she captures Black voters in the South Carolina primary on Jan. 26, stepped onto a political landmine last week when some say she marginalized the contributions of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the civil-rights movement.
"Martin Luther King delivered one of the most profoundly important speeches ever delivered in America … the 'I Have a Dream' speech. And then he worked with President Johnson to get the civil-rights laws passed because the dream couldn't be realized until finally it was legally permissible for people of all colors and backgrounds, races and ethnicities to be accepted as citizens," Clinton said.
To see a video of Clinton's comments on CNN, click here.
Sensing she was on political quicksand when some critics, including Sen. Barack Obama, said her comments were "ill-advised," Clinton soon revised her statement, calling King "one of the people I admire most in the world" on NBC's Meet the Press.
But was it too little too late? Critics of Clinton say her comments illustrate she has little awareness or appreciation for the contributions Dr. King and other Black activists had in the civil-rights movement.
"In bringing in Lyndon Baines Johnson, whose record was not that stellar in terms of civil rights and racial justice, it seems to me that was out of place and she perhaps indirectly minimized the impact of the activists who create the climate and environment that enables politicians and power brokers to enact legislation that they themselves had not initiated," says Rev. Gil Caldwell, a New Jersey civil-rights activist who marched with Dr. King. "One should never discount the bold initiative of Martin Luther King in terms of helping to initiate a change in the legalities and the culture of this nation in terms of race. I would not compare him to or put him in harness with anyone. He stands alone."
Clinton's remarks about King were just the first salvo in a war of words between Clinton and Obama. Clinton's camp accused the Obama campaign of igniting the issue. Then the Clinton campaign found itself dealing with statements made by BET founder and Clinton supporter Robert Johnson, who attacked Obama because of his prior admission of drug use.
"As an African American, I'm frankly insulted that the Obama campaign would imply that we are so stupid that we would think Bill and Hillary Clinton, who have been deeply and emotionally involved in Black issues when Barack Obama was doing something in the neighborhood that I won't say what he was doing, but he said it in his book," Johnson said at a Black church in Columbia, S.C., according to CNN.com. Johnson was referring to remarks Obama made in his 1995 book, Dreams of My Father, where he admitted to recreational drug use as a youth.
Rev. Caldwell said Clinton's recent remarks about Dr. King should be a wakeup call for Black supporters like Johnson that perhaps their faith has been misplaced.
"It's an illustration that both she and her husband have overestimated their relationships and their awareness of the sensitivities of the African-American community," he said. "You get back to this idea of Bill Clinton being the first Black president and that has distorted their understanding of their relationship with the Black community and there are those in the Black community that have allowed an emotional response to the Clintons and have them on a pedestal much higher than they should be."
The next primary fight is in Michigan and will occur tomorrow.
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