ASSOCIATIONS AND MONUMENTS
2-28-13
When we build monuments to men are we building them to remember a man’s noble deed and his good works OR DO WE BUILD MONUMENTS TO MEN TO COMMEMORATE THEIR GOOD DEEDS AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS?
For example, on City of Selma property (the city right of way) in front of Brown Chapel AME Church, there is a monument to remember Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Was that monument placed there to commemorate his good deeds or was it placed there to honor his good deeds and his associations.
On the associations of Dr. King, the Pulitzer Prize winning author Taylor Branch, the leading living authority on the life of Dr. King, documents the associations of Dr. King with known communists and the influence they had on King and especially on his Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Though there are a number of examples of King’s association with and influence by known communists, Branch, in his prize winning book Parting the Waters, vividly sets forth King’s associations with two prominent communists, Stanley Levison and Jack O’Dell. These two men are significant because it took a direct threat from President John F. Kennedy to King in June, 1963, before King would sever his ties with them.
Because FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover believed that King himself was a communist, Hoover was able to obtain permission from both President Kennedy and his brother, Attorney-General Robert Kennedy, at various times to wire tap King’s phones in the SCLC offices to motel rooms to homes where the civil rights leader stayed. From this wire tap surveillance, the FBI obtained information that confirmed the close friendship and associations of King with these two communists, among others involved in the movement.
A New York lawyer, Levison had been in the leadership of the Communist Party in the U.S. since the early 1950’s. Levison was introduced to King in 1956 by Bayard Rustin, himself a former member of the Young Communist League arrested in California on a charge of engaging in public in homosexual conduct. Levison became King’s closest white friend, was an advisor to, wrote speeches and organized events for and refused to ever take any pay for his work.
Jack O’Dell was instrumental in the work of SCLC and the primary fund raiser for King and the SCLC. He was on the verge of becoming the Executive Director of SCLC when pressure from President Kennedy forced King to sever his ties with O’Dell.
In June, 1963, Dr. King was invited to the White House where the Kennedy brothers carefully staged a three part power play to force him to remove Levinson and O’Dell from his circle of associates and friends. First, King was met by Assistant Attorney-General Burke Marshall who warned him that “he must sever relations with Stanley Levison who was a communist functionary and with Jack O’Dell, whom Levinson had planted inside the SCLC to influence the civil rights movement”. (Parting the Waters, p. 835)
When King seemed unconvinced that his closest friends could be communists, Burke took him to see Robert Kennedy, who told him the same facts about Levinson and O’Dell. “Kennedy intimated that Levinson was working on Soviet orders to weaken the United States by manipulating the civil rights movement” (p. 836)
Robert Kennedy saw that he was getting no where in convincing King about what needed to be done. Bobby took him to meet the President. The President and Dr. King walked alone in the Rose Garden. In the conversation, “The President put his hand on King’s shoulder and whispered that he had to get rid of Levison and O’Dell. They’re communists” (p. 837) When King asked for proof, the President replied with specifics: Jack Odell is a ranking member of the national committee of the American Communist Party…Levision was O’Dell’s handler…O’Dell was fully engaged in conspiracy as “the number five communist in the United States”. (p. 837)
Though Levison and O’Dell had been two of King’s closest associates for some 7 years at the time and were primarily responsible for raising most all of the money for King, the SCLC and the movement during that time, faced with the threat from the President himself, King reluctantly severed his ties with two of his closest associates.
Although Dr. King’s financial advisors, fund raisers, speech writers, travel companions, and event organizers were long time communist and he had a long time association with them as well as other communists, there is a monument to him in Selma on city property on a street named in his honor. But the monument was not erected to honor him because of his associations or to commemorate his association with communists, but to remember what he did good. Surely every person of good will, white and black, will agree that the monument was erected not to honor his associations, but to remember his heroic efforts.
That being true of Dr. King, why isn’t it also true of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, associated with the KKK, for two years out of his entire life???
