Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the mountaintop speech and an "inescapable web of mutuality.”

You're surely aware that Wednesday, April 4, marks 50 years since the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Although I wasn't yet 8 years of age, I remember it well. I especially remember the palpable sense of anxiety in Georgetown when urban rioting greeted the news of King's death.

We have not, in the past half century, had a year freighted with such emotional and historical heft, in part because we have not seen the convergence of so many defining issues—war, civil rights, populism, political realignment—in so short a timespan. Yet the singularity of 1968 does not diminish its pertinence to our present turmoil. This week, two events in particular are worth considering in tandem: one a cataclysm, the other a tragically predictive attempt to understand how such cataclysms occur.

King had gone to Memphis in support of a strike by sanitation workers. His last speech on April 3, 1968, came to be known as the “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech. In it, King made reference to a brush with death ten years earlier, when he'd been stabbed by a mentally ill woman named Izola Curry. She stabbed him with a letter opener, with the blade barely missing the aorta.

It came out in the New York Times the next morning, that if I had sneezed, I would have died. Well, about four days later, they allowed me, after the operation, after my chest had been opened, and the blade had been taken out, to move around in the wheel chair in the hospital. They allowed me to read some of the mail that came in, and from all over the states, and the world, kind letters came in. I read a few, but one of them I will never forget. I had received one from the President and the Vice-President. I've forgotten what those telegrams said. I'd received a visit and a letter from the Governor of New York, but I've forgotten what the letter said. But there was another letter that came from a little girl, a young girl who was a student at the White Plains High School. And I looked at that letter, and I'll never forget it. It said simply, "Dear Dr. King: I am a ninth-grade student at the White Plains High School." She said, "While it should not matter, I would like to mention that I am a white girl. I read in the paper of your misfortune, and of your suffering. And I read that if you had sneezed, you would have died. And I'm simply writing you to say that I'm so happy that you didn't sneeze."

And I want to say tonight, I want to say that I am happy that I didn't sneeze. Because if I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been around here in 1960, when students all over the South started sitting-in at lunch counters. And I knew that as they were sitting in, they were really standing up for the best in the American dream. And taking the whole nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the Founding Fathers in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been around in 1962, when Negroes in Albany, Georgia, decided to straighten their backs up. And whenever men and women straighten their backs up, they are going somewhere, because a man can't ride your back unless it is bent. If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been here in 1963, when the black people of Birmingham, Alabama, aroused the conscience of this nation, and brought into being the Civil Rights Bill. If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have had a chance later that year, in August, to try to tell America about a dream that I had had. If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been down in Selma, Alabama, been in Memphis to see the community rally around those brothers and sisters who are suffering. I'm so happy that I didn't sneeze.

For fifty years, scholars and other interested parties have been trying to locate the "sneeze" letter to which King referred. Just last week, the Wall Street Journal claimed to have unraveled the story; it seems he got the quote correct, but misattributed it to a school girl rather than the letter's real author, an adult civil rights activist who died only three years after King.

You can follow the link to the story, which was suggested to me by an observant friend. It's worth considering when (or if) an otherwise harmless misstatement merits greater scrutiny. While it doesn't sound to me as if the WSJ is suggesting there is a major historical record in need of correction, perhaps the central point is that King didn't survive to correct his own memory lapse.

Found: The Long-Lost Link to Martin Luther King Jr.’s Last Speech, by Cameron McWhirter

The night before his assassination 50 years ago, he built a theme of his “mountaintop” speech around a fan’s letter—which has never surfaced until now

... Several historians asked by the Journal to review Ms. Kepler’s 1958 letter said that they believe it is the one to which Dr. King refers in his 1968 speech. David J. Garrow, a Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of Dr. King, said that he is “quite convinced” that Ms. Kepler’s letter is the one. “He remembers the language exactly but just got the I.D. wrong,” he said. Mr. Bass, the Westchester historian, agrees: “He basically took that great line and kind of spiced it up.” Others said that it wasn’t the only time that Dr. King had tapped material from memory and misattributed its source.

For the record, my letter to the city controller v.v. payroll claims.

I e-mailed this letter at 12:00 p.m. on Wednesday, November 29, 2017. Like sand in the hourglass, so are the days of our lives ... in the absence of a newspaper.

---

To: Linda Moeller, city controller

Greetings,

On November 7, 2017, the Board of Public Works and Safety approved claims presented to the body by your office. My request concerns a specific claim, as follows:

CLAIMS
Payroll Claims: 1,058,603.61
(Bank 2)

Can you please provide me with an itemized listing of these claims? If these are not accessible to members of the public according to the stipulations of Indiana’s Public Access Laws, can you point me to the section explaining this?

Thanks,

Roger

For the record, my letter to redevelopment officials v.v. Dan Coffey's for-pay parking lot on city property during Harvest Homecoming.

I e-mailed this letter at 8:36 a.m. on Wednesday, November 29, 2017. For previous articles on the topic, go here: The Redevelopment Commission's meeting calendar has been scrubbed from the city's web site, but somehow, somewhere, they'll be asked about Coffey's pocket-lining parking project.

Like sand in the hourglass, so are the days of our lives ... in the absence of a newspaper.

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To: Shane Gibson, interim Redevelopment director
To: Adam Dickey, Redevelopment Commission secretary

Good morning, gentlemen.

As has become widely known, during Harvest Homecoming the city-owned property at the foot of Bank Street was being used by the formerly Democratic councilman Dan Coffey to sell parking, supposedly on behalf of the Knights of Columbus (although the exact accounting of this remains unknown).

I’ve been trying to determine who granted Coffey permission to use city property for this purpose. Developer Matt Chalfant told me he had no contact with Coffey, and in any event, didn’t take possession of the property (presumably for his projected future construction) until after the festival.

The Board of Public Works and Safety publicly told me it was not approached and knows nothing. President Warren Nash suggested I ask Redevelopment.

Councilman David Barksdale told me he can’t remember it coming up at a Redevelopment Commission meeting, and observed that interim director Gibson might know.

I looked at posted minutes on redevelopment’s web site, and saw no mention. However, minutes for October have yet to be published (?), and I can find no calendar for the commission’s meeting dates, which (perhaps) have been changed from twice to once monthly?

I’m hoping one of you can shed some light on this. If the K of C actually received the bulk of the money for the cars being parked during Harvest Homecoming, that’s fine insofar as it goes, except there was no publicly stated process for determining which other worthy entities might undertake the effort. Not to mention the potential liability …

My question: Did the Redevelopment Commission, or someone on the city’s redevelopment staff, or one of you, or the mayor himself, issue explicit permission for Coffey to use public property for parking cars during Harvest Homecoming?

If yes, is there a record?

If no, then doesn’t this mean it was illegal, and if so, what does the city propose to do about it?

Thanks for your cooperation,

Roger

Marohn to POTUS: "We're going to make investments in infrastructure with the systems we have, not the ones we wish we had. There are ways to get better results now."

The excerpt here is intended as a tease only. You'll want to read Marohn's statement at the point of origin, because the links included provide a wealth of information as well as opportunities for further study.

Forget POTUS.

This letter needs to be read by all public officials in New Albany and Floyd County, and they also should consider visiting Strong Towns on a regular basis. Something solid is on display there every day.

A Letter to POTUS on Infrastructure, by Charles Marohn (Strong Towns)

 ... What do we do today? To paraphrase former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, we're going to make investments in infrastructure with the systems we have, not the ones we wish we had. There are ways to get better results now.

• We need to prioritize maintenance over new capacity. With so many non-performing assets, it's irresponsible to build additional capacity. Project proposers will try to add additional capacity with their maintenance projects. If it is truly warranted, it can and should be funded locally. Cities need to discover ways to turn such investments into positive ROI projects, a process the federal government can only impede.
• We must prioritize small projects over large. Small projects not only spread the wealth, they have much greater potential for positive returns with far lower risk. Large projects exceed their budgets more often and with greater severity -- dollars and percentage -- than smaller projects. A thousand projects of a million dollars or less have far more financial upside than a single billion-dollar project ever will. It's administratively easier to do fewer, big projects, but that is a bureaucratic temptation we need to overcome.
• We should spend far more below ground than above. Many of our sewer and water systems are approaching 100 years old. When these core pipes fail, the problems cascade throughout the system. Technology may soon dramatically change how we use our roads and streets making investments in expansion there obsolete, but water and sewer will still flow through pipes as it has for thousands of years. We should spend at least $5 below ground for every $1 we spend above.
• We should prioritize neighborhoods more than 75 years old. We've modeled hundreds of cities across the country and in every one the neighborhoods with the highest investment potential are the ones that existed before World War II. These are established places where small investments have a huge impact. Most investments in neighborhoods built after World War II are simply bailouts, pouring good money after bad.

In letter, Gahan confirms intent to snub Leadership Southern Indiana and bypass LSI's mayoral debate (includes my return letter).

Previously, we considered the question of Mayor Jeff Gahan's attendance at campaign season forums and debates.

On mayoral forums and debates, no-show incumbents and "a spectrum of opinion."

Gahan will merely smile and gesture toward numerous nice, shiny objects.

Assuming this letter I received today (above) is not a hoax, it's official: Gahan is snubbing Leadership Southern Indiana's mayoral debate at New Albany High School on Tuesday, September 29. He'll also avoid the Building & Development Association of Southern Indiana forum on Thursday, September 10.

Surely it's no coincidence that the LSI debate format is far more rigorous than the League of Women Voters' ceremonial softball toss at Gahan's own Silver Street Park on September 24, which was organized by Gahan's appointee Linda Moeller, and will include questions provided to the candidates in advance.

Conversely, the LSI debate is being organized as a real debate, with questions unknown to candidates, and also with the opportunity for candidates to ask questions of each other. Yesterday (September 2), LSI held a pre-debate session, at which it was remarked that Gahan's participation was as yet uncertain: "The negotiations are ongoing," said one organizer.

However, the letter was postmarked on September 1. Gahan already knew what he intended to do the day before yesterday, apparently without informing LSI.

Here is the reply I'll be return snail mailing.