Thread by @michaelharriot

Here are some of my favorite stories about Martin Luther King Jr. that you won't hear today from people who wanted to paint him as this adorable teddy bear and not the radical that he was.

A thread.

King was a hustler.

One time, he rode the bus to Dublin, Ga. to enter an oratorical contest about the Constitution for kids from 12-16. Now, this was in 1944, when the U.S. was in WWII.

All the little children give their speeches about Black people in the land of opportunity.

When it was King's turn, he GOES OFF!

He was supposed to be talking about FREEDOM! But he says: "Black America still wears chains. The finest Negro is at the mercy of the meanest white man."

He asked why we were fighting for somebody ELSE's freedom when we ain't free?

MLK was wrong for that.

Why?

He took those folks' money. See, when King won that oratorical contest against middle-schoolers and high school freshmen and sophomores, he was 15, but...

HE HAD ALREADY BEEN ACCEPTED INTO COLLEGE!

He wasn't playing fair.

And he was ALWAYS that way. On the way home from that contest, the bus driver made him stand up so some white ppl could have a seat.

King refused but he didn't have a way home. So he stood up. But as he did, he called the driver a "Black son of a bitch"

Later in life, after he had been beaten, stabbed and abused, he STILL said it was the "angriest I have ever been in my life."

We often forget that King was a boy genius who wasn't afraid of ANYTHING. As a 15-year-old freshman at Morehouse, he played football against grown men.

Of course, he couldn't go out and party because he was so young. That's probably where he developed his hustling skills.

That's right: King was a low-key pool shark.

In seminary, King would play until 3 in the morning. And he was good!

King was a radical.

For instance, when people argued that segregation kept white women safe, King was like: "Don't nobody want y'all lil white girls! Maddafack, the race-mixing comes from white dudes messing with our women. Y'all leave our women alone!"*

*I'm paraphrassing

Now he didn't actually TELL anyone this or say it in a speech.

He wrote it down...
In a letter...
To the Atlanta Constitution...

WHEN HE WAS SEVENTEEN.

Martin Luther King DID NOT PLAY.

And, although we like to think of MLK as someone who was a benign puppy, he was not against people protecting themselves.

He argued with his advisors in favor of armed self-defense and had to be convinced about that nonviolent stuff. Even after he was famous, he stayed strapped.

Like that time a reporter came to talk about his stance on nonviolence. King was talking and Bayard Rustin had to stop the reporter from sitting down. He didn't want the reporter to sit there.

It was the chair where King kept his pistol.

Why did he need a gun?

Because people were trying to KILL HIM!

Like the time King was arrested visiting his brother Alfred in Birmingham. Some people forget that King's brother was a pastor in Birmingham and one of the leaders of the Birmingham Campaign, a series of protests.

Because King had his brother's back, White clergymen in Bham wrote an open letter: "A Call for Unity," (doesn't that sound familiar?). Most people understood that when the white pastors used the old-school racist trope condemning "outside agitators," it was a direct shot at King.

But, again, MLK ain't no punk. He said: "Aight, y'all wanna come for me? Well, get ready for the clapback."

"The clapback" is now known as "A Letter from a Birmingham Jail."

But King wasn't done clapping back.

A month later, he went BACK and marched with his lil bruh.

And this time, the Klan were waiting.

By "the Kla," I mean, the police.

They arrested Alfred for parading without a permit. But big bruh was there. He got everyone out of jail and the city agreed to desegregate and hire more Black people.

You know the Klan cops were mad

But King had to leave. Just before he left, someone saw cops leaving packages for him at his hotel and another at his brother's house

Plus, everyone knew King stayed at the AG Gaston motel. ALL the civil rights leaders stayed there. People left stuff for him there all the time.

Gaston owned a bank and was one of the businessmen who was low-key financing the Civil Rights Movement.

But, because it was Mothers Day, MLK had to rush back to Atlanta to preach. There was no time to stop by the hotel to pick up presents.

It was not a gift.

It was a bomb.

Just as King left town, the historic A.G. Gaston motel exploded.

Then, the KKK bombed Alfred's house.

Alfred was in the rear of the house, so he rushed his family out of the back door instead of the front.

As he did, the "package" at the front door exploded.

Numerous witnesses saw the cops deliver the packages.

So what did MLK do?

HE WENT BACK TO BIRMINGHAM!

Now you might think that this was an attempted assassination.

DO YOU EVEN GO HERE?

Nah, bruh, this wasn't the usual Klan violence.

This was an INSURRECTION.

In 1962, Birmingham voted to change to a Mayor/Council government

For decades, a triumvirate of segregationists "commissioners" controlled Bham: JT Waggoner, Art Hanes & the infamous Bull Connor.

As Public Safety Commissioner, Connor was in charge of law enforcement

In 1948, when white segregationists left the Democratic Party to form the pro-segregation Dixiecrats, do you know who led the walkout?

Bull Connor.

Where did the Dixiecrats hold their pro-segregation convention?

Birmingham.

Now Connor was running for mayor

When the Freedom Riders arrived in Bham in 1961, Connor promised the KKK 15 minutes alone with them to beat and bomb the bus.

He was the one who orchestrated the bombings. He jailed civil rights leaders. He ordered attack dogs and fire Hoses during the Children's crusade.

In '62, Connor decided to close all public parks instead of desegregating.

MLK was like: "We gotta get rid of this guy."

THAT's why he kept coming to Birmingham to "stir up trouble" THAT's why white moderates called him an "outside agitator."

And THAT'S WHY Bull Connor lost.

Birmingham voted to change from being run by commissioners to a mayor.

But, just like a certain other guy, Connor contested his election. He claimed voter fraud and refused to leave office. He even took it to court.

But he lost

And the last-ditch attempt at an insurrection came 2 weeks before the Supreme Court ruled that Connor had to leave office.

MLK and Black people in Birmingham ousted the most violent segregationist in the civil rights era.

And that's not all...

On September 15, 1963, King was in the pulpit when someone whispered that 16th St Baptist Church had been bombed.

There are people on your timeline right now saying MLK would've called for "unity and healing"

Would he, though?

King sent this telegram to Gov. George Wallace:

"The blood of four little children ... is on your hands. Your irresponsible and misguided actions have created in Birmingham and Alabama the atmosphere that has induced continued violence and now murder."

DO NOT TELL ME WHAT MARTIN LUTHER KING WOULD HAVE DONE

But here is the backstory to all of that:

In 1960, twenty-seven-year-old Gary Rowe joined the Eastview Klavern of the KKK, the most violent chapter in Klan history.

Rowe was with the Klan when they attacked the Freedom Rides because HE ARRANGED IT WITH Connor.

Rowe was with the cops when they planted the bombs at the AG Gaston hotel

Rowe was involved in the planning of the 16th street Baptist Church bombings.

And a cop investigating the bombings discovered all of this.

But the FBI intervened and classified all of the evidence.

Why?

Well, they would have also discovered that a man named Barrett T. Kemp actually PAID Gary Rowe to join the Ku Klux Klan. And for years, Kemp had been paying Rowe to commit these acts.

Barrett Kemp was a special agent for the FBI.

That revelation would have also led to the discovery of the FBI file that said this about MLK:

"We must mark him now if we have not done so before, as the most dangerous Negro of the future in this nation"

Of course, everyone loves a martyr.

But only after they're dead

theroot.com/from-most-hate…