Exactly 50 years ago today on the 4th of April 1968, Reverend Martin Luther King Jnr was assassinated. The African-American minister, activist and doctor of systematic theology was shot at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee at the age of 39.
Today, 50 years later, the United States of America and the lives of African-Americans in America is very far from what He envisioned and described ever so clearly. Not only is the image of America today very far from what MLK dreamed, the land of the free and home of the brave is today as polarised as it was in the 60s.
In today’s America just as in the popular novel Animal Farm “all people are equal but some people are more equal than others.” The major notable difference now is that Black Americans now have access to certain rights and jobs which were a dream in the 60s including having the country’s ‘first black president’, Barack Obama.
While America and the world celebrates the bravery and conviction with which Reverend King stood against racial inequality in America with what came to be known as the civil rights movements, one of the questions African-American activists living today need to ask is: Why was Martin Luther King Assassinated?
THE OAU AND OAAU
Before MLK was assassinated, another influential black American minister and human rights activist, Malcom X had been assassinated 3 years prior. Before his assassination in 1965 Mr X had been influential in the founding of the OAAU (Organisation for Afro-American Unity) announcing it’s creation in June of 1964.
The organisation was to be modelled after a newly formed pan-African body, the OAU (Organisation of African Unity). In July of 64. just a month after announcing the creation of his OAAU, Malcom went to Africa and attended the 2nd session of the OAU becoming the first high profile African-American activist to attend and address it’s leaders.
Malcom saw the OAAU as a way of “un-brainwashing” black people, ridding them of the lies they had been told about themselves and their culture. As such the OAAU would push for black control of every aspect of the black community. The OAAU’s objectives and mode of operation which would be strikingly different from those of Martin Luther King Jnr’s made it a target for the seemingly omnipotent FBI.
According to Wikipedia in a memo dated July 2, 1964, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover described the nascent OAAU as a threat to the national security of the United States. Few months later on the 21st of February in 1965 while preparing to address the OAAU. 39 year old Malcom was gunned down in Manhattan, New York.
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Fast forward three years later, MLK was also assassinated. At the time of his assassination the Reverend, was envisioning an African outreach just as his fellow activist Malcom X had begun to do. Like Malcom, Martin had visited Africa, attending Ghana’s Independence celebrations and meeting with some of Africa’s 1st generation of leaders like Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah and Zambia’s Kenneth Kaunda.
Not long after, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jnr was gunned down also at the age of 39. Despite their ideological differences, Dr King Jnr and Malcom X demonstrated a common interest of reaching out to Africa, with the goal of reconnecting America’s Black community to Africa.
At the time MLK was assassinated the OAU was already making great strides, breaking apart the shackles of colonialism. One territory after another, African states were gaining independence from their erstwhile colonial masters and the entire colonial system was falling apart like a line of dominoes.
If the OAU alone was getting such results one can only imagine what kind of results a coalition between the OAU and the OAAU would produce. Could it be that this is what the FBI was most afraid of: A grand coalition of African forces, fighting for the human rights, social and economic freedoms of African peoples both in Africa and abroad?
If the OAAU were to follow in the footsteps of it’s African counterpart, it would have undoubtedly caused gigantic problems for the American government. Just as the freedom fighters throughout Africa had been organised, trained, armed and released into the jungle to fight off their oppressors, freedom fighters in America’s war against racial inequality would have potentially received similar backing to lead an armed struggle for freedom there.
This is what the fictional character, Killmonger from Marvel’s black panther movie envisioned – arming Africans all over the world with the powerful vibranium in order to lead an armed struggle. And just as the should-be Hero Killmonger was painted as the villain in the fictional comic, while living both Malcom X and Martin Luther King were branded as villains and quickly done away with.
Today there is no talk of OAAU, and the OAU was dissolved and replaced by the AU (African Union). In death MLK is celebrated as an icon while his dream has faded into a nightmare. Many will take the opportunity to celebrate the life of the good Reverend and forget to ask the questions that matter.
Why were these good men assassinated, why is one celebrated and hero-fied while the other is somewhat vilified, what did the assassins want to stop these men from doing and what is being done today to see to it that MLK’s dream does not die out as a mere dream?