21. Monday, 21 January. Martin Luther King day

admin / January 21, 2019 / Leave a comment / Letters to Byron

My beautiful Byron,

This Monday letter comes on a public holiday. Martin Luther King day. It is also by numeric coincidence, the 21st letter, falling on the 21st day of the Month.

Last night I had dinner with my friend Dayne Marshall, in this picture. Dayne and I have been friends since we were fifteen. He lives in South Africa and stops by to see me every year in January when he visits a trade show in Los Angeles. I took him for dinner in Fashion Island and we caught up on events of the past year since our last such meeting.

So, Martin Luther King day? I bet your wondering what that is?

Its an American national Holiday remembering Martin Luther King who was a religious Black man in America in the 60’s.
At a time when most American’s liked religion, but did not like Black men. He would make remarks from the Bible that people liked.
For example:

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

Then he gave a famous speech called ‘I have a dream‘ in 1963. That made him famous and it brought him to the attention of the White Supremacists. His dream was that racism would come to an end and Black people would be treated the same as white people. Equal opportunity for all.

Unfortunately for Mr King, he lived in a time not long after Blacks were still sold as slaves to be owned by white men and many Americans still believed Blacks were inferior to whites. The issue of race and racial discrimination was important to many Americans. They believed in White-Supremacy. Typified by many racists in political office, like Governor George Wallace who supported the policies of another awful racist “Jim Crow” during the Civil Rights Movement, (Which is when educated Americans tried to uplift Black peoples rights) declaring in his 1963 Inaugural Address that he stood for “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever”

………………..The letter is no longer archived here. The entire content of Letters to Byron is a book, available in Paperback or Kindle.

Oliver at the 4 Seasons

PS: Some more stuff about Martin Luther King and his mum and dad.

Martin Luther King had a Mother and a Father. Here are two things you should know about Mrs. Alberta King and one about Mr. Martin King and the career of Samuel L. Jackson.

Alberta King remained behind the scenes as her son rose to prominence as an international figure in the fight against segregation.

One of her few public statements came as her son accepted the Nobel Peace Prize, she recounted a time when she told her young Martin he’d have to prepare himself for a lifetime of disappointment after he was passed over in favor of a white child during a high school debate. She later said she regretted the comment.

“Black mothers,” she said, “we make our sons less.”

As was the case with all the King family, Jesus was her priority. Jesus was their savior and King. Alberta played the organ in the Church where her son and husband were both ordained ministers, authorised to testify about Jesus and the kingdom of heaven for the meek.

Working mysteriously, Jesus not only sent James Earl Ray to pop a cap in Martins ass, less well reported is what Jesus ordained six years later, in that same church.

On June 30, 1974, Alberta King had just finished playing “The Lord’s Prayer” on the organ at Ebenezer Baptist when another Christian similar to James Earl Ray, but Black, one Marcus Wayne Chenault, 21, leapt from a pew ranting “We must stop this!” and “You are serving a false god!” He fired a handgun, killing Mrs. King, 69 on her final day.

The Christian execution occurred less than 100 yards from where her son Martin was buried.

Chenault was wrestled to the ground by bystanders while attempting to reload, yelling incessantly about “the war.”

Chenault believed he had been ordained by Almighty God to follow his instruction. He was told by God that African-American Christian leaders were misleading Black America.

As he was a Christian acting on the word of an invisible but almighty God, his lawyers predictably pled insanity.

In the subsequent trial, Chenault was sentenced to death, even though two psychiatrists testified that Chenault suffered from schizophrenia and was insane at the time of the murders, claiming that he heard the voice of an invisible man who told him what to do and demanded he obey his every word, or else he would be tortured in a place called ‘hell’, indefinitely, leaving him no option other than to obey the word of his God.

After some 15 years on death row, A judge commuted Chenault’s sentence to life in prison in 1995, whereupon he promptly had a fatal stroke, aged 44, Marcus ascended to heaven, where he currently resides, 26 years into an eternity sentence in Paradise at Jesus right hand.

In 1969, about a year after MLK Jr.’s assassination, Martin Luther King Sr., a Trustee at the Afro American University, the All-Male Morehouse, was the target of a group of radicalized Black students, including a tall chap, Samuel L. Jackson, who would go on to international celebrity by stamping his actors signature on enunciating “Motherfucker”.

Before young Sam Jackson learned to love theater, he was becoming politically aware as a student attending the traditionally African-American, Morehouse College.

The previous year Samuel L. Jackson was even an usher at the funeral of Martin Luther King jr.; himself a Morehouse alum.

Like many black Americans at the time it was, (ironically) the murder of King that led him to abandon King’s own “turn the other check” doctrine, and support more extreme measures.

Jackson and other students kidnapped MLK Sr. and others on the Morehouse board of Trustees. They locked them a room for 2 days at gunpoint, while demands were made for more black trustees and revisions to the insufficiently afro-centric curriculum.

The plan mostly worked; the demands were met, and the college changed its policies.

But Jackson was convicted of unlawful confinement and expelled.

He returned home to Atlanta where his black power interest continued to grow more extreme.

“I was in that radical faction,” Jackson explained to Parade Magazine a few years ago.

“We were buying guns, getting ready for armed struggle.”

But Samuel L. J. did not become Samuel X. He did not take up the gun to change America.

Instead, Jackson re-enrolled in a forgiving Morehouse, this time in the theater department deciding;

“theater would now be my politics. It could engage people and affect the way they think. It might even change some minds.”

“Call me the N word one more time Motherfucker. I dare you.”

We can reflect that Mr. King Snr could very easily have pushed for a prison sentence for aggravated kidnapping, and illegal use of a firearm, denying the world the joy that is Samuel L. Jackson, whose activism is now legendary.

Instead of starting life as an ex con for that kidnapping, Sam’s WIKI page says “Films in which he has appeared have collectively grossed over $27 billion worldwide, making him the highest-grossing actor of all time.”

At 72, he remains married to his girlfriend from Morehouse. The actress LaTanya Richardson Jackson, who met him shortly after his arrest and expulsion. In 1970. She and Jackson married in 1980. They have one child, freelance film and TV producer Zoe Jackson, born in 1982. After her daughter’s birth, Richardson stopped working regularly, because, she said: “We’d vowed to be an intact revolutionary black family. But it was very, very hard.”

Mr. King senior, the preacher, died of a heart attack at the Crawford W. Long Hospital in Atlanta on November 11, 1984, at age 84. His body remains interred next to his wife Alberta at the South-View Cemetery in Atlanta, while in heaven, God has another angel. (For eternity.)

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Here is the indexed link to the Original Blog pages from which the Book LETTERS TO BYRON is extracted. The book has 25% more content and pictures.
LETTERS TO BYRON in chronological order. The original live blog pages subject to same Terms and conditions:

The first of the LETTERS TO BYRON: The PILOT
2nd GRAHAM COY
3rd: TOM AMLOT
4th: Thanksgiving day
5th: MICHELE O’LEARY. The switch Judge
6th : Raining in California
7th: Music
8th: December Rain
9th: Brexit and Greek war
10th: Winnie the Poo
11th: December kayaking
12th: Family law and Mark Zetin
13th: Xmas day 2018
14th: Maria and Anna
15th: New years eve 2018
16th: Your first smile
17th: Your Uncle GEORGE
18th: The Mighty PACIFIC
19th: WEBSTER and Summer HOLIDAY 2019
20th: Breach of Privacy offense
21st: MARTIN LUTHER KING DAY
22nd: Philotimia
23rd: A short note
24th: MUSIC and KINDNESS
25th: Robin Hood
26th: SRA ethical code
27th: NINE YEARS LATER
28th: Valentines day
29th: EVZONES
30th: Rushing
31st: Quick Note
32nd: Johannesburg 2019
33rd: Still in Johannesburg
34th: More Johannesburg
35th: Last Johannesburg for now
36th: Traveling. Upgrade
37th: Spring
38th: Whales
39th: MEXICO
40th: CABO ST LUCAS
41st: 1 April. Wallace’s Birthday
42nd: SANTA BARBARA
43rd: Short letter
44th: PINEAPPLE EXPRESS
45th: KIRA visits
46th: Goodbye uncle Lazaros
47th: Easter Monday
48th: OJAI Tennis
49th: Short letter
50th: PARENTAL ALIENATION FACTS
51st: Cartagena memory
52nd: NEW RECORD
53rd: Last letter to 9 yo
54th: First letter to 10 yo
55th: D Day – 75 years
56th: LA QUINTA
57th: MASON GRADUATES
58th: DESIDERATA
59th: EARTHQUAKE
60th: Chris and Golf
61st: Chris visits Byron in London
62nd: SUMMERTIME
63rd: PHYLLIS’ LETTER TO BYRON
64th: GUN CRAZY AMERICANS
65th: MISS YOU
66th: SCRUFFY
67th: Mason leaves for college
68th: ART
69th: Day after 911
70th: PAPOU. CALLING CHRIS
71st: Two Women
72nd: ANOTHER YEAR
73rd: PLANNING CALIFORNIA VISIT 2019
74th: KAYAKING WITH DOLPHINS
75th: M and M
76th: HALLOWEEN 2019
77th FINGER EXERCISE
78th: First late letter
89th: MIAMI
90th: Thanksgiving and the SRA
91st: Dentist
92nd: EDUCATION
93rd: Almost Xmas
94th: Boxing day 2019
95th: 2nd January 2020
96th: 9 January 2020. Liars and Thieves
97th: 16 January. Thursday
98th: 23 Jan. Mystery Thursday visit
99th: 30 Jan. Months end
100th: 6 February. 2020. Summer Holiday
101st: 13 February. 2020. Family Law
102nd: 20 February. Dogs
103rd: 27 February. The elderly in the desert
104th: 5 March. James Munbys’ talk on family law. And unilateral judgments
105th: 26 March covid19-what-else
106th: 2nd April. British Family law
107th. 9th April. Good news about Covid
108th: 15 April. 2020. Covid Tzar. A good pair of hands
109th: 23 April: Distance Learning
110th: 30 April. A video Letter. Byron Sundays
111th: 7 May. VE Day
112th: 14th May. History Lesson
113th: 21 May. A family birthday
114th: 28th May. Happy Birthday
115th: 4th June. Riots
116th: 11th June. Guessing
117th: 18th June. More Covid
118th: 25th June. Business open from Lockdown
119th: 2nd July. Writing and Cleaning
120th: 9th July. Six years after Scotland
121st: 23 July. Masked Lockdown
122nd: 30 July. Maybe next year?
…….130th. The one before the end
131st The last letter September 24th