What would U.S. be like if King, the Kennedys weren't assassinated?

Aug. 28 marks the 40th anniversary of the March on Washington and King's "I Have a Dream Speech." I was talking with some co-workers about what a different world we would live in today if people like King, Evers, Malcolm X, JFK and RFK were able to bring their visions to fruition.

In what ways would it be different? How would it be the same? Would we be living King's dream today?



BTW, here's a story on the events marking the occasion in D.C.
March called passing of rights torch
Observance today includes focus on youth

By MELANIE EVERSLEY
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

An inscription marks the spot where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his "I Have a Dream" speech. Below, an emotional Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) is comforted by Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) and Coretta Scott King at the inscription. WASHINGTON -- A mosaic of young Americans believes the best way to honor the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. is to push for a more humanitarian government. As they address a crowd from across the country on the National Mall today, they will press for King's contemporaries to hand them the torch
http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/0803/23march.html

I think about what the country would be like had they never been born... and thank my lucky stars.

> what a different world we would live in today if people like King, Evers, Malcolm X, JFK and RFK were able to bring their visions to fruition.

I was just concentrating on a specific time period.

and was from a different era.

It doesn't make his death any less tragic but
as one Senator out of 100 his influence was necessarily
less than that of a President or high profile
civil rights leader.

someone very bush-league is responsible for the plane going down.

I'm just sayin'...

:hi:

If you speak out, you die. I think these two fine gentlemen, as well as many others, proved this point.

Anyone who gets inbetween a republican and the White House usually ends up dead.

Anytime someone beats the right, its just a fluke.

And when they manage to beat the right and survive, they are hounded and ridiculed for the rest of their lives.

Look at Carter and Clinton.

then I am prepared to die for the cause.

They can't kill us all, and they know they are losing thier base.
I don't want to be killed because I defy them, but I am willing to put my life on the line to ensure that we get our country back. There are many who have sacrificed all they have ever had to push forward the ideology that all of the citizens of this nation can kive in equality, History has shown us that although the road is long and filled with snags and pitfalls, it can be traversed, and goals can be won.

I have been willing to put my life on the line in the Army to defend our nation; I am equally prepared to sacrifice to ensure our country and our planet becomes a better place to live. If these people see me as such a threat where they have to deprive me of my posessions or my life. that is prooof enough for me that I am fighting the good fight.

I start to imagine and then it hurts so much that I force myself to stop. No one really knows, including even me; so, I have to let it go.

John Lewis is such a decent guy. Now, I have a picture in my mind of him needing to be comforted and I remember he was right there when they murdered MLK ... it just breaks my heart.

Unfortunately, I believe that what happened (once it happens) is the way it was and so I just can't indulge in what I wish had happened and move on from that point. I believe we have to deal with what is, but I certainly understand your questionning ...

:thumbsup: :hi:

Would he have furthered the anti war movement?If Lennon was no threat, why did the FBI dog him like they did?

"What if JFK lived?"

http://www.jeffreyland.com/jfk/whatif/

I don't buy it. I believe one of the reasons JFK was killed was because he was discovering how badly the CIA was misleading him about Vietnam, and was increasingly determined to put a stop to it.

So assume Kennedy pulls out. Goldwater runs on an anti-appeasement platform, that American prestige and the need to contain Communism require us to stay in 'Nam. Not sure who wins-- I don't see America having that big an emotional stake in the war, either way, in 1964, so it probably comes down to the economy.

In any case, I agree with this future history that this delays the Civil Rights Act of 1965 by several years. Even if Kennedy wins, he doesn't have the mandate or the political capital to pull it off-- and if Goldwater wins, he has no interest in it. Either way, Dr. King is preoccupied with the various issues of civil rights and equal access, and never starts to develop his anti-war, anti-corporatist critique (which I believe is what got him shot in real life). Eventually his determined non-violent stance gets civil rights laws passed, especially when he hooks up with Motown, whose artists start playing hit songs based on King's theories. The Watts riots never happen.

Bobby Kennedy wins in 1968. He makes the fight against organized crime the cornerstone of his presidency. To remove one of their major sources of funds, he decriminalizes most recreational drugs, along the Dutch and English models: small amounts of recreational marijuana are sold under loose government supervision in coffee shops, and opiate addicts can register and get regular fixes in outpatient clinics, or if they want to kick, hospital facilities are available. LSD remains available as a psychiatric tool, and recreational use never becomes a requisite for membership in the counterculture (and Timothy Leary remains an academic). The culture wars of the Summer of Love et seq. never happen. A lot of that energy goes into the arts: an amazing renaissance of theatre and literature, and Jimi Hendrix hooks up with Gil Evans to write a symphony that becomes as popular as Rhapsody in Blue. (BTW, the other thing I disagree with this other alternate history is, I think the Beatles would have revolutionized the world of pop music even without the JFK assassination. I remember how refreshing "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" sounded after three years of lame teenage crooners with pompadours. And I think the Summer of Love still happens pretty much as we remember it, but of course way less belligerent, since the war wound down. Indeed, the American audience demands quality, so disco never happens, and neither does "Married With Children.")

When RFK points out that the Soviet apparatchiks essentially constitute a Mafia, he makes important allies among the Republican right, especially Goldwater, and together they draft a foreign policy based not on military containment but on economic marginalization. We still bribe third world countries with development assistance and trade credits, but we require greater standards of openness, and a lot of official corruption never happens. Nasser remains anti-Israel but ceases to flirt with Russia, and because of American pressure, the 1973 war never happens, and as soon as Sadat takes the reins, he writes a peace pact with Israel. Lebanon (which, with American aid, stays independent of Syria) and Jordan soon follow. We withdraw our support from the Shah, who abdicates in favor of a parliamentary system where the mullahs constitute a large minority party but never attain absolute power. America and the UN guarantee universal free access to Jerusalem, and Israel is persuaded to give back the West Bank. (Not the Golan; Syria is left as the most belligerent Arab state, and forges close ties with Iraq-- who America never favors.) I'm not sure whether the West Bank becomes a Palestinian state or simply gets returned to Jordan, but in either case, there are no major organizations devoted to terrorism. India and Pakistan get along too; the most fractious spot on the globe is Northern Ireland.

Africa becomes self-supporting, which is a good thing, because the space program becomes so successful that by now we're mining the asteroids and no longer have to get our chromium and such from there. Butchers like Idi Amin are quickly turned out of office by neighboring countries whose leaders like to quote JFK and Jefferson. Other than that, people get to realize there's really nothing to fight over. I'm not sure if Andropov is smart enough to realize that the Soviet system is washed up-- he was KGB, and has issues with freedom-- but certainly the people are ready. Whoever is president when Gorbachev is in charge gives Russia all the development aid it needs. We develop the Uzbek oil and gas fields together. The Sauds no longer have the leverage of pulling the strings on the entire fossil fuel market, and OPEC never happens. Besides, we've got solar power installations all over the map-- on the open seas, electrolyzing water for hydrogen to run fuel-cell powered cars. Smog is a thing of the past.

Pleasant dreams, folks.

in your alternate reality. :-)

If you find out how to get a visa, let me know :-)

I should point out that, in this history, there's no guarantee RFK doesn't get whacked by the Mafia. (One of the competing theories of the JFK assassination is that the mob did it in retaliation for siccing RFK on them as attorney general, especially as they saw him as indebted to them for the presidency, thru Frank Sinatra's connections. But I do regard that theory as less likely, since reliable observers have placed a lot of people in Dallas in 1963 who later turned up doing dirty tricks for Nixon and the BFEE.) But this would not mean the end of that policy; indeed, the American people would demand vengeance.

The worst thing about the modern world isn't Republicanism, it isn't capitalism, it isn't even the propagandizing and dumbing down of the mass media. It's corruption, pure and simple. (Or, more precisely, all these other evils derive from the essential racketeering nature of the BFEE and its various crony-capitalist tools: Big Oil, Big Media, Big Pharma, and the Military-Industrial Complex.) I'd actually take a principled conservative (say, Goldwater or McCain) over a compromised Dem (say, Richard Daley or Gray Davis) any day. So the crucial thing in redeeming America is to root out corruption wherever it lurks. I feel very strongly that the winning platform for the Dems in 2004 is to say "We're not anti-business, but we are anti-Enron! We're not anti-war, but we are anti-lying your way into it!"

</soapbox>

I respectfully suggest you add it to the site provided on the original message. It's much better written than theirs and, IMHO, is more accurate as well.

Take me along; please...

:loveya:

But I don't think things would be as bad as they are. I think they all would have help make things better.

but other blacks and I have discussed it before. Sometimes a movement needs more than a hero. Some movements are so important and cause so much change that they need a martyr.

I won't speak to the Kennedys. But Martin Luther King perhaps took on that role for us. I wish I had a chance to see him, meet him or hear him speak in person. But maybe not for us, but for the rest of America, they needed an example of just how bad things were. Dr. King became that example. Even white people remember him with reverence. For many of them, I think that was a first.

From his writings, King definitely knew he was a target and was willing to take on the role of martyr. He was the epitome of courage.

by no means a first!

HarrietTubman, Frederick Douglass, Thurgood Marshall, and Paul Robeson are who immediately come to mind.

:hi: :thumbsup:

The reality is we are like children growing up without their grandparents who pass on their wisdom and provide a particular kind of strength in bad times that only they possess.

Whenever some repug cites the name of JFK about cutting taxes for the ultra rich, they conveniently forget that JFK advised this country to keep its manufacturing base strong. When Falwell invoked the name of MLK on CrossFire last week saying that he, Falwell, would have supported the Civil Rights movement, Dr. King was unavailable for comment. When black youths are disproportionately incarcerated, the protests of Malcolm X cannot be heard. And yes, Paul Wellstone's vote and outrage at all the the junta does is missed.

I have thought about this subject often and even more in these dangerous times. What advice, what consolation, what encouragement would our leaders have given to us, their true heirs, in the struggle to keep democracy alive?

"If "ifs" and "ands" were pots and pans, there'd be no need of tinkers." G. B. Shaw

People only appreciate King now because he is dead, when he was alive he the most hated person in America.

he rallied 300,000 (I believe) people of all colors and ethnicities to his March on Washington for Jobs and Justice in August of 1963: almost a full five years before he was murdered!

I recollect him having many, many followers. He ignited a movement. He wasn't public enemy number one.

Granted, there were many factions in America that hated him with a passion -- people within the federal government, people who wanted to retain the racist status quo, but don't you think your statement is a bit hyberbolic. And it wasn't just African-Americans who revered him when he was alive. Once they started turning hoses and dogs on nonviolent protesters, once people who were registering people to vote started turning up dead, many in white middle America had their stomachs turned by the inhumanity that was shown to their fellow citizens.

Would you care to clarify your statement or provide evidence for your assertion?