Martin Luther King, and how falling farm prices restored Civil Rights

Today is Martin Luther King day, and we owe him. He was a terrific speaker and he overcame much reluctance not just from Southern Segregationists, but “moderate” Northern whites including church leaders, in order to move Civil Rights forward — in other words, to get back to obeying the Constitution. He spoke despite danger. But that’s not why the Civil Rights movement succeeded and Black Americans in the South got their votes back in the Sixties. Falling farm prices were responsible. That’s the story one is able to piece together from books such as Robert Caro’s biography of Lyndon Johnson, about the politics of the time.

The truly astonishing story goes back much further: Just how and just why it was possible to circumvent the very constitution of the United States for a full century in the first place? Collusion is the answer, and much of the responsibility lies with the Republican party in the North Eastern States during most of the twentieth century. The Republicans (a party that was from the beginning well-funded by industrialists) wanted low taxes and low levels of government services because that’s what big businesses valued. (A well-educated workforce wasn’t much needed, back then.) The white South wanted blacks to be less than full citizens — that was their big wish; and for decades congressmen colluded across party lines (since the South was almost uniformly Democratic back then) to trade votes with each other so that each faction got what they wanted. If Southern Democrats were willing to vote for low taxes/few services, then Northern Republications would vote to keep blacks from voting and make sure discriminatory “Jim Crow” laws stayed in place. Politics were more fraternal then — but not in a good way, and only if you were white!

But over those decades, making a living by farming in the South got harder. When farm prices weren’t high enough to provide prosperity for white (voting) farmers in the South, their representatives decided they couldn’t continue to vote against, for example, farm supports and rural services (such as electricity) anymore — not and get re-elected, at any rate. The compact was broken, and Congress no longer stood in the way of the constitutional rights of black citizens: since if North-Eastern Republicans weren’t getting their quid pro quo — namely votes to suppress public services from the Southern Democrats; well then Republicans weren’t going to keep exerting themselves to illegally suppress black men and women in the South, either.

That made a sea change. Federal troops and agencies would not be used to enforce discrimination. They might even be used to help curb it, now and then. Suddenly, the only question was who would have courage to challenge the local and State authorities across the South. It wasn’t going to be the President, whose job that sorta was, because he didn’t yet think the time was yet ripe for real change. (It never is, there’s always a cost.) If he had, we’d likely be celebrating JFK day today (he did chip in once his hand was forced.)

Men and women such as Medgar Evers, who was killed on June 12, 1963; and Martin Luther King, who was assassinated on April 4, 1968, stepped up to the challenge, instead. We should remember them all today, and their sacrifices. But let’s also take a little time out of this day to bitterly curse out the memory of those Eastern Special Business Interests who were so willing to pervert the law and constitution for so many decades in the House and Senate, just so that they could hoard away a few more precious dollars, to keep for themselves, too.

If you think that’s a sour note, best stop reading now. In Alabama, Arkansas, and Mississippi then MLK Day is also Robert E. Lee Day (their birthdays were four days apart.) So there you get to celebrate the man who more than any other defended the “great truth” that the “negro is not equal to the white man,” commanding an army that kidnapped and enslaved black Americans during the rare times it went on the offensive, at the very same time! Hmmmmmm.

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Martin Luther King’s “Letter From Birmingham Jail”
http://www.uscrossier.org/pullias/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/king.pdf

Of course, Martin Luther King probably couldn’t succeed today, surveillance has come too far (also frequently in breach of the Constitution.)
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/02/history-surveillance-and-black-community
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2016/01/what_the_fbi_s_surveillance_of_martin_luther_king_says_about_modern_spying.single.html