Lately I’ve been studying about the Civil Rights Movement and I’m blown away at the amount of risk taken by those standing up for the right thing. These risk takers obviously didn’t know how America would treat them but it turns out this quality was exactly what America was looking for in a leader.
John F. Kennedy, while running for president in 1960, learned of the unjust prison sentence of a civil rights activist named Martin Luther King Jr. King was arrested along with 33 other activists holding a nonviolent protest against a segregated cafeteria in Atlanta. All charges were dropped except King’s, who the police said violated probation stemming from a minor traffic ticket months earlier. Many in America considered the arrest and conviction unjust but President Dwight Eisenhower ignored the situation along with VP, and republican presidential candidate, Richard Nixon. John Kennedy did not. He interceded on King’s behalf, speaking out against the imprisonment, and King was released. Eight days later John F. Kennedy won the Presidential election by a slender margin.
It’s natural to play it safe and stay away from risk. Lay low and don’t stand out and you won’t be criticized…and you probably won’t make much of an impact either. Kennedy was risking his career but MLK was risking his life! Both, of course, were assassinated but not before civil rights history was made. Enormous risk became enormous impact.
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February 9, 2012 at 7:34 am
Bruce
Wow Brian, you are not too swift. The Dead keednny’s were a hard core leftist/socialist punk band, sorry to break it to you, that song was about Ronald Reagan. Read about Jello Biafra, he was with the left naturally.you asked Reagan had nothing in his personal background that could account for their unending vitriolAsk the thousands slaughtered in Nicaragua in the covert wars funded by selling weapons to Iran. His personal background was milk and cookies, but Reagan was a mass killer, a mass murdering killer, who was responsible for thousands of deaths in South America…… And he destroyed millions of Americans lives by busting their unions. Indeed, the thinkers of America, who understood what was gonig on, despised Ronald Reagan. The dead keednny’s were a hard left punk band, who questioned POWER.. Do not ever toss those guys in with your ideology. This is what is offensive. Indeed the D.K attacked the keednny’s, the Reagans, the Rockefellers, they were LEFTISTS, not Democratic apoligists. I think Savage is totally ignorant playing their music…. Biafra would smack a right winger like Savage right in the face or kick him in the head with a pair of Doc martins
February 9, 2012 at 8:19 am
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