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Wallace Milam - "Our next speaker who I am very glad has joined us and took some time out of his schedule to be with us today, an author of one of the books in the case that has been recently reissued called, "Murder in Memphis" is Dick Gregory. And he has been a long time Civil Rights activist, and a long time comedian, and a long time person who has spoken to the spiritual values that might guide this nation in a different direction. We are very honored and glad to have him here, Dick Gregory"
(applause)
"Thank you, praise God! Really, I like to bring, I always bring stuff, I'm always giving ten minutes worth of speeches, I thank you all for being here. I kind of went over to the Lorraine Motel a little while ago, and we have come a long way since then in 30 years, if you look at the...you wouldn't think we have, but we have. 30 years ago a lot of us would have....
"One of the things we are going to have to stop doing is trying to be validated by NBC, CBS, and others. We are going to have to look at them as thugs, like they are. It's hard to do. It's hard to bring yourself around to believe that Queen Elizabeth just might have class. And so the whole game, the power that will save humanity is in this room. We have that power. We can't keep looking for someone else to plant our crops for us. We got that power. And I know that the CIA and the FBI are just wishing we could kinda like go away. And those thugs that they use like Posner, they have no respect for him. They have respect for us. They keep wondering, 'How do you get all this stuff?' 'We got a multi-billion dollar machine, we sell dope, we do all kinds of things, and when folks get in the way we murder people, and you folk all just keep coming, and keep coming.' Wonderful. And so somewhere you feel like we really made a difference.
And this whole thing now, you know, the fact that the King family has come out, they are not going to be able to deal with that. And why, how has the King family come out? Because of you. Where do you think they got there information from? You think Marty came down, Martin came down and said 'Here!'
And so I can say things. People keep asking me things cause I marched with King, what would King think..., I don't know.
It's kind of interesting, things like racism and sexism, we have come a long way now then we were then. And then, you know, I look at this whole mess with the White House, and the networks, how they are programmed, their thinking, you know a man's sex life is his sex life, leave him alone. C'mon now, if Monica Lewinsky had been named Tameka Jones that boy would have been out of the White House. And so you stop and think where this thing is and how fast its going.
I picked up an article in the New York Times, I buy about $5, $6 dollars worth of newspapers, magazines, every week, so I keep seeing a lot of things. This is a New York Times article, February 15th, bottom of the page, "Federal Judge tells Florida Pizza Shop to Deliver to Black Community". Damn! I thought we came a long way. (laughter) In February of this year we have to go to federal court to get a pizza! (laughter) Jesus, Marty, can you imagine what they are doing with my mortgage? (laughter)
And then you stop and think, when you read this headline here, which is really kind of incredible, it was in The Philadelphia Inquirer, in big bold print headline, somethings I can quote cause I almost memorize them. This one I have to show, Philadelphia newspaper, very interesting, it says, "Black folks found to be more religious than white folks" (laughter) And a white newspaper can say that and get away with it, no one accuses them of being racist, but if a black newspaper said that or Jesse Jackson said it, or Black radio station said it, even Black folks would have called in. So you stop and think about 30 years ago. I can stand here because I've been out there, and I can say that never before in the history of this planet have any group of people made the progress that African-American people have made in America in the last 30 years. Never before in the history of this planet. In spite of Black folk and White folk lying to one another. I have never understood how White folks can work so hard on these conspiracies and still be racist. You know, I have never understood that. You know, work hard to find out so-and-so killed so-and-so and wouldn't give a nigger the time of the day, I don't understand that. And somewhere when you stop and think about how all of this has come together, someone asked me the other day if I would join in a lawsuit with Judiciary Watch, and I said if you don't tell nobody, I won't tell nobody, you don't tell your friends, I won't tell mine. And then NBC comes in and says, 'How could you join up with that...' I said, 'Young man get out of my face.'
The real people that run this planet is Queen Elizabeth right or left. 300 thugs who determine what you are going to eat and when you are going to eat it. They don't play that right and left wing crap. Only fools get into that game. What is that game about? Rockefeller? What's Dupont? The real people, them god damn bankers who determine what the price of money, they don't play that crap. They manipulate it all.
I don't expect anything out of NBC, owned by General Electric? CBS, owned by Westinghouse? ABC owned by Walt Disney? Mickey Mouse? Somewhere, somewhere, the only time I seem them dogs scramble, all of the anchor folks is when some woman in Manasas, Virginia cut off an old man's joint, (laughter) them anchorman go nuts, you know, 'Oh my God, go to a commercial! (laughter) I think I felt something that night when she did it. (laughter) You know, I'm out walking with my wife (and he mimes doubling over) she says what's the matter, I said, comrade in trouble somewhere. (laughter) And the Brothers, the Black folks were funny, they say don't worry about it, it was a White thing. (laughter) Black women know we're sleeping on our bellies a little bit more now. (laughter)
Where have we come in 30? We've really come a long way. I've got ten children, (pause) by mistake. (laughter) No, now let me explain that. I made $1500 dollars in 1961, the year, with a wife and family. I had like $30 dollars a week. And then the next 18 months I hit so big as a comic I made like $3 million dollars, and so you can see how I became like White, I finally got it, so my thinking became like White (laughter) and so I began reading The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and I remember reading this article says, "Typical American family," New York Times, talking about White folks, "have two and a half children per family." And I said to my wife, 'Look here baby, White folks done figure out how to have half a baby.' (laughter) And I said, 'Damn it! White folks can't do something you and I can't do, let's go for the half a baby. And whole ones kept coming out.' (laughter) The doctors were strange, they said, "You have a healthy baby boy!' I said, 'Again? Are you sure? A whole one?' I had ten children before I realized White folk just count like that (laughter) You just add it up, divide it, just call it that, whatever it come to, right?
The game. I was with Johnny Cochran the other night, I said to him, 'God, you sure have messed up my life with looking at trials. I followed the O.J. trial, up with it early in the morning, and I watched it all day long, every day, watched reruns at night, nervous wreck on the weekend. That damn O.J. trail had me so messed up, two weeks before that first trial ended, I was looking at it one day, and something came over me, I thought I did it. (laughter) I called my wife, I said, 'Baby get out the tight gloves I'm going to turn myself in.' (laughter)
And then O.J. is really strange on Larry King 3 months ago (and Dick mimes O.J. crying) 'I did not lie. Everynight when I go to sleep she comes to me in my dreams.'
I tried to call him but the phone had been disconnected. (laughter) I wanted to tell him the next time she comes here you ask her who did it (laughter)
Robin Palmer, who did not even get the joke, who thinks Dick Gregory was making a joke that O.J. did not do it, belts out, "O.J. did it! Don't you try to say; O.J. did it and you fucking know it!
Me - "Hey!"
Gregory - "Oh. Okay. I don't have a problem with that."
Robin Palmer- "I know you do but that's a problem."
Gregory- "You know you might get to play with some of these folks here but just be cool and wait till your questions and answer period, okay."
(All the laughter, fun, energy, life and air has now left the room, thanks to Robin Palmer.)
Gregory - (trying to continue) "Look if you get this uptight about some jokes"
(some laugh) I used to have that in nightclubs
Palmer - "Let me tell you about ol' Johnny Cochran being your friend-"
Gregory - (who can't believe this) Oh...
Palmer- "And Al Sharpton being your friend-"
Gregory - "There you go. Well, there it is. Well, I tell you what, I have done as much as probably anybody else to make this country work right. And I don't bring no hang ups and no games. And I'm not playing games. And I'm here tonight to say to you all that's out here working how much I love ya and how much I appreciate ya. And anybody else got any hang ups this is the wrong place for them. We'll deal with that some other time, but I really want to see this thing happen here. I'm probably one of the few people who could be stupid enough to believe that when I got the O.J. autopsy, Ron Goldman had his dick cut off and stuck in his mouth, and she had both of her breasts cut off, I'm not stupid enough to believe I know that and the FBI don't know that. I'm not stupid enough to believe that I know that and the New York Times don't know that. And I'm not stupid enough to believe that when they found that skin under Nicole Simpson's fingernails, that they told us of, that you never heard the end of it. And when those folks in the L.A. crime lab got ready to announce that the skin was white all four of them were murdered. NBC didn't report that. CBS? ABC? And for those of you that do research, this is the Miami Herald, Thursday, July the 20th, 1995, "Four L.A. City Employees Killed". And you got to read way down into the story, way down into the story before you find out who they were. There have been people doing this for years, the war in Vietnam, how Iraq started on Martin Luther King's birthday, January the 15th, 1991. Harper's magazine had already, I don't think I have ever seen their cover before, the 82nd Airborne paratrooping in Kuwait, and it says "The Case for U.S. Intervention, How When and Why" What's the date? March of 1975.
Harper's magazine did a front page story on what they were going to do. And they did it, word for word. A handful of evil old men. That run and control and manipulate, and manipulate, and manipulate, and manipulate
"I'll never forget when my files was out, from the FBI, where J. Edgar Hoover had said, "Use the mob to kill Dick Gregory" and only one newspaper ran the story, one newspaper, and that was The Chicago Tribune, and if, if, they had said Gregory was caught in bed with a 6 year old child, all the papers would have printed it. The game, the game.
"So, you know you stop and you look, and you see, and it's incredible. I do radio shows, I've known for years that truth don't have to be validated by ignorance. Martin Luther King had a fantastic effect of my life, but before Martin, John Wayne was my hero, I just really believed that he was right, they was wrong, get some guns and go get 'em. That thing affected me. I would rather be killed than kill someone. I didn't think I would be that way, and I don't push that on no one else. sitting in on a radio show I did in February, February 11th, 1991, I sent a letter to the Attorney General of the United States about one of the most powerful human beings in America, a banker Lyman Drudge (?). And I knew the Attorney General wasn't going to do anything so I got on the radio show and I called Clark Clifford's name off and said all y'all got to do is go to The First American Bank, and go to page 4, and blah, blah, blah, and they sent letters to the radio station, how stunned and shocked, and that's what 1991. "We are stunned and shocked at you. We just cannot believe that you would do that." And then in July 1992, world wide headlines "Clark Clifford Indicted". We were able to manipulate that out of a little radio show. Because we are not running a popularity contest, and not worried about truth being validated.
"This is the article I was telling you about, Philadelphia Inquirer, "In Daily Life Black folks more religious than White folks" A white paper can do that and get away with it. I do it, and little by little by little by little it will happen. We will change it, all the way down.
Martin came down here, and did it, and did it, and did it, and did it. I don't know how many of you all in this room is aware of the fact that during the
O. J. Simpson murders out in California, the Russian satellite, any of y'all know this story? Anybody? No?
(some member of the audience responds)
Gregory- "Yeah, they took, filmed the whole damn thing, sent it to the United States government, they haven't heard from them yet. I'm on my way there Friday to see if I can get the film., try and find how much money they want. They didn't do it by design it was accidental, over the West coast. The game.
"And so when y'all go home look at your toothpaste, your toothpaste! It just happens to be Crest. Look at your toothpaste. Look at the little mark, [the warning label] it says do not what?
some audience member- (guessing) - "Do not give to children?"
Gregory - "It says do not swallow."
same audience member - "No, but it also says 'Do not give to children'.
Gregory - "No, no, no, listen, to tell you not to give it to children [is one thing] but to tell you not to swallow. (laughter) Hey man, this ain't on whiskey! (laughter) Huh? This is the same people, same people. And I can't understand how we can be worried about who killed so-and-so here and we go home everyday to those same thugs. And then it says on the bottom, 'In case you do swallow get in touch with the local poison control center' (laughter) Huh?
an audience member - "and that's my brand."
Gregory - "That's your brand? (laughter) Well just send it to some friends you like.
"So anyway, somewhere, somewhere, when you stop and think about where this is going we win, we win. And somewhere when you stop and think about all of you in this room, we win. Cause there is something they need to know, that they can't just kill all of us. And that's the beauty. There is a God for us. And I leave you today and say to you that we represent light. And all the forces over there, and all those voices over there, that book, that's dark. If you want to know how much power we have over them, when You go to your room tonight turn the light of and then turn it back on, light is bright, darkness is , you know, out there. And let me leave you with this, food for thought, in 1923 a very important meeting took place in, probably, one of the top ten hotels in the world at that time, the Edgewater Beach Hotel in Chicago, attending that meeting were 9 of the world's most power financiers, one president of the largest independent steel company, second, president of the largest utility company, third, president of the largest gas company, fourth, the greatest wheat speculator on the planet, five the president of the New York Stock Exchange, sixth, a member of the President's cabinet, seventh the greatest Baron on Wall St., eighth, the head of the world's greatest monopoly, and nine president of the Bank of International [something] Now, you have to admit that that group was some folks who had some power, some success, and understood the art of making money. Compare that group to this group. (laughter) But somebody 25 years later in 1948 said let's check them out and see where they are. Now, understand your power, and understand what God is, and what love is 25 years later. The president of the largest independent steel company Charles [?] was dead, and had lived on borrowed money the last five years before he died; number two, president of the greatest utility company Howard Entelman [?], died a fugitive from justice, penniless and in a foreign land; three, the president of the largest gas company Howard Hopson, had become insane; four, the greatest wheat speculator Arthur Cutler, had died in a foreign country, broke; five, the president of the New York Stock Exchange Richard Whitney had just been released from the insane asylum with cancer to go home and die with his family; sixth, member of the President's cabinet, Albert Cole had just been pardoned from jail so he could go home and die with his family; seventh, the greatest baron on Wall St. Jessie Livermore had just committed suicide; eighth, the head of the world's greatest monopoly Ivan Cutler had just committed suicide; nine the president of the Bank of International Settlements Leon Frazier, just committed suicide.
"All of them had learned the art of making money, but there is a universal god for us. And I share that with you to say to you that all of these folks who manipulate and change things for what they want to put on the network, that's no power. So, I just want to say to you thanks. I went over to the Lorraine Motel to pass this press statement over to the press, we was in front of the FBI building yesterday in a prayer vigil to get J. Edgar Hoover's name off that building (applause) and I say to you what I said to the press there that if I was in Germany today and I walked down the street and I saw a building with Adolf Hitler's name on it I would know that some evil stuff is going on in that building (laughter) and I feel the same way. And so I want to close this by asking you to help me. I went over today at 6:01 to give this press statement that went out around the world, out of my office, that as of 6:01 today I decided that I would eat no more solid food again in life untill J Edgar Hoover's name is off that building and until the President meets with Corretta Scott King and sets up the type of inquiry, not no government trick, that would bring the truth. I don't know how long I will hold out, I don't know. I went two and a half years during the war in Vietnam. But I notice one thing, the bad folks don't fast. Nobody ever fasted for the war in Vietnam. (laughter) Nobody. So, what I ask you to do as I leave you is three times a day just tune in, in your meditation to the power we have. And at 12 noon, wherever you are tune in, and at night, before you go to bed, tune in. And I don't know if it will be 30 days, 3 days, 3 years, 30 years, that is my commitment. That is what I have got out of this movement. I mean I can't drink a scotch every day, 4 packs of cigarettes, top weight of 365 pounds, I had totally no respect for human life, including my own. And so I leave you and I just cannot say to you enough that the whole world owes you all a thanks. Just look around here before you leave this conference and you notice something. Ain't no homeless folks among us. What I mean by that is there is no one here with us tonight, or last night, or tomorrow, because we didn't have anything to do. We all interrupt our schedules to be here. We are not being paid by some big conglomerate, so again. So again I thank you, cause I got a stake in this thing. I do not believe that we have gone beyond the point of no return. And I out this, number one priority, Jim Garrison became a judge in New Orleans, some of you all remember that? How did he get to be judge in New Orleans? Judge Mariel (?) became the first black mayor in New Orleans and without nobody talking about it that judgeship was always known as the black judgeship, and I read in the paper one day that Jim Garrison was running so I went in to help him and he said, 'No, no, no, you don't understand, this is for a Black man. I'm just running to get my name out there cause I am going to run for such and such a.' And I said, 'No, no. You my partner, my comrade, I draw the line with the folks that's out here putting their lives on the line, if you was running against my mother or any of my children, with what you have been out here with, I'm supporting you.' That's how he got to be judge, that's why he was always known as the negro judge. He kept that and he got 99% of the black vote. And I share that with you today because that is how I feel about you. That's why I'm here to tell you how much I love you, because you all are going to have to do this. Everybody in this room is qualified to be very successful in what you're doing. Success comes easy, you can look around and see some success. Success comes hard when you've been successful but you have to be documented. So I just say, thank you, and hope we pray for one another and feel for one another, and understand one another because this is what is going to make this country great. Not how much money you got, how much education you got, money is not power, education is not power, information is power, and if I give you bad information you have bad power. So i just want to say thanks to you all for giving me such good information. And thank you."
(applause)
John Judge - "We are also lucky to have with us tonight, Jerry Ray, the brother of James Earl Ray, whop stuck by his brother all these years and tried to help him out with his situation and get him a retrial, and he joins us here tonight. would you like to make a few comments?
Jerry Ray - "Okay, I'll make a few comments.
(applause)
"As everybody knows Gerald Posner has a book out, it's a fiction book, no truth, I went through most of it, and he just takes parts from George McMillan and Gerold Frank, most of them have been proven as false. And so yesterday he was down at this bookstore, I forget the name of the bookstore and so I went down there to confront him about it, and it's on tape. And we had a long discussion down there, and I pointed out all the lies in it, and about me, and other family members, and other things that were said. And like I say it's an establishment book, and it won't sell because like 90% of the American public don't believe what's going on, they are wise to that, but being that he is an establishment writer even if it flops Random House will carry him because it will be just a big tax write off.
"And I don't have too much to say, most people knows what's going on. And I've been in this fight for 30 years, as long as James has been fighting. People I really appreciate in the fight are people like Dick Gregory, more so because those are the people putting everything on the line, and you would think it would be everybody. And Corretta King, she lost her husband, and Dexter lost his dad. And I talked to Dexter in the hotel in Nashville. I picked them up at the airport when they met James several months ago, and we had a long talk in the hotel room. I said, 'Dexter, if you believe what you read about me, I hate Blacks, I hate Jews, I hate everybody. And he looked at me and he said, 'I don't believe them. They got a black reporter in Atlanta, she hates our family and is always writing stories about us.' So he said, 'You're a victim, I'm a victim, you lost a brother, I lost my father.' And so I asked him 'When you go to see my brother tomorrow, they are going to say, "He conned you, he conned you!" And so when Dexter came out the next day he said, 'I believe James Earl Ray is innocent, and he didn't con me.'
"So anyway it's the Black people who are really trying harder, more than the White because the Black people know what the FBI is and how they operate and all the disgusting stuff they pull off. And like a few months ago, John Campbell, the prosecutor said that if they order, Judge Joe Brown, orders a trial there ain't going to be no trial because there ain't no evidence. Here a couple of weeks ago he said they have overwhelming evidence. And before they tested the gun they said if a bullet came out that proved that the death bullet didn't come from the gun that James Earl Ray bought they would say that he could have shot him with a different gun. So if you take one side, they take the other, they cover all their tracks. But we are going to continue to fight. Even after I talked to Dexter King, I talked to Corretta but I didn't talk to her about that. Me and Dexter and Pepper said that when James does die, if he doesn't get a liver transplant, we are going to continue to fight after he is dead to clear his name and find out who actually did kill King.
(applause)
"And so like I say, I don't have too much to say, this thing has been going on for 30 years. And I got my FBI files under the Freedom of Information Act, Mark lane represented my brother, I didn't know a thing about it, and I got my FBI files, and Jim Lesar has seem them they are about that big. And they got me robbing three banks, beating up somebody. I say, 'Try to indict me for all those charges.' And so they didn't have anything there about the Alton, Illinois bank but when I went before the Assassination committee they accused me of robbing the Alton, Illinois bank. And they said we are going to prove that you and your brother robbed it. And they tried to do the same thing when James was up there earlier. And me and a TV reporter, I think Dick Gregory knows him, it was a John Hollinger from in St. Louis, he's the one that exposed that spy, we went over to Alton, Illinois, that's only 30 miles across the bridge from St. Louis, and I was living in St. Louis, and the bank was robbed in July of '67, and this was in '78 so that was 11 years, and the statute of limitations expires after 7 years, so this being Congress the Assassinations Committee accused me of robbing that bank so I went over there the next day and turned myself over to the police chief. And so he asked me if I was going to confess to robbing the bank. I said no, I can't confess to something I didn't do but Congress accused me of robbing it so i am going to turn myself in. (laughter) He said you never was a suspect.
"But anyway that's been going on for 30 years, but they haven't got the best of me and I ain't got no use for the FBI, because it's the same FBI now as it was then. Like this FBI guy that just came out a week ago about finding that "Raoul" statement in the car, he said at church the other night that he won't turn it over to the FBI, because they will destroy it cause they are all racist.
"So, I want to thank you for being here and listening to me, and I am going to sit down now and turn it over to somebody else."
(applause)
John Judge - "Professor Phil Melanson is here. He is an author and researcher, and also a teacher, and he has worked for a number of years on many of these cases. And he has written extensively on both the Martin King and Robert Kennedy cases. He has a recent book out called, "ShadowPlay" on the Robert Kennedy case. And we are going to have him speak next. He is also a board member of the Coalition."
Phil Melanson - "I do have to look at these notes, don't get scared, it's not that I have a lot to say it's that I have a few random thoughts about where we are and what's going on. It's interesting that Dick Gregory would be asked what Dr. King would think and he declined to speculate. It is interesting to me that David Garrow would know what Dr. King would think and what it would mean to his legacy and is willing to tell all of us what that means. (laughter) And so are many, many pundits who of course do not understand the legacy but think they do.
"I also think it is interesting that the King family is now a cottage industry of assassination buffdom, because they are involved and because they have taken money from TIME-Warner in some kind of a deal when Mr. Posner, of course, is only a saint pursuing the truth even though he has a half million dollar advance and is part of the real cottage industry, and draws on authors like George McMillan, Gerold Frank, and others as you pointed out, recycle, recycle, recycle, and pile on those FBI footnotes, and go out and collect the money.
"I think it is interesting we can measure our progress by the attacks that have come in such a flurry, with such a vengeance to anybody who has been involved in this progress, on the King family, certainly on Dr. Pepper. I can attest to the fact that I live only a few miles from a city where Bill Pepper started his rabble-rousing after the Civil Rights movement and before he got involved in this, and coincidentally with the new activities we were getting huge articles on the front page of the Providence Journal talking about allegations of impropriety by William Pepper 20 years ago in Providence when he was making things difficult for the political establishment, pulling out all the stops.
End Tape # 3 Side B Comfort Inn, Friday April 13, 1998 7:00 p.m.
Tape #4 Side A Comfort Inn, Friday April 13, 1998 7:00 p.m. Begins
Phil Melanson - [was speaking about a reporter who asked him about Bill Pepper's work. Melanson said he had some different views on some items]....my views are different than Bill's, we overlap in the middle, I go one way, he goes a little other, but basically I commend him for his courage and I think he's on the right track. And of course you know how that ended up. It ended up, "Alternative Expert Has Different Track Than Pepper". And I call him up the L.A. Times, furious, wrote them a letter. And the author of the article said he apologized, he felt the same way but his editor had done that. Bill Pepper warned me that USA Today did not have a positive attitude towards what was going on but being an academic I think anyone is convertible to the truth, you know, (snickers of laugher) So I was schmoozing with Richard Willing of USA Today and he had a copy of Posner's book and I didn't, it was a galleys, [that's a publishing term meaning an advance copy of a forthcoming book usually given out to certain select media, usually already well known and favorable media outlets, to help promote it] and he was preparing it to mine, and I thought we were engaging in a good intellectual dialogue, and I thought we were just schmoozing. So I pick up a copy of USA Today, I think it was the day before I got here, whatever, and there I am on the front page, and it's advertised as "An Alternative Theorist" and the quote from me was "How do you to Pepper when somebody goes that far?" Something to that effect. What he had said was, 'Are you doing another book? Do you have another theory?' And I said, 'No I am just working to get the case open, how do you top Pepper when someone has gone that far, meaning with all the good things that he has done but I became the local poster boy for hitting on Bill.
"CBS News, seeing this in USA Today spent a lot of time with me in the hotel here, thinking about coming to our event last night, I guess because they thought good things of me since I had allegedly criticized Bill's work in USA Today. And then darn it all, last night at the event, I pick up The Memphis Commercial Appeal and I find out I just one more buff at a "peculiar event" that had a crowd one third less than I estimated it to me. So I have come full circle now, and I'm back in "buffdom" so you can embrace me (laughter)
"I think one of the things we can get out of all of this is, I have not abandoned that we will get justice out of it, but in the spirit of the King family's new proposal, if we can't get justice we can still get historical truth. We can still get our political truth back. And hopefully we can get justice along the way. And I think there are two kinds of people that don't go along with this. I am convinced that there are really truly naive people who don't understand what we understand. Some of them are in the media and they just think that something that I envision and many others envision in Dr. King's assassination could not happen here and it is hard to educate them otherwise. They are very powerful allies of the people who know what happened here, and know that that could happen, and were part of it, or knew of it. And when you put those forces together, it is a very powerful opposition. And I think we have done well to be where we are.
"I also think, to finish, it really disturbs me when we keep being punished in the media and by people who don't understand these issues as to why we are focusing on Dr. King's death, when we could be focusing on the political legacy that he gave us, the marvelous accomplishments that he had and that. I have a little bit of sympathy for that, in the sense that we have a holiday that does that. It doesn't do it as perfectly as we would like but at least we try. On the day in which one of the greatest political leaders in the history of the world was taken from us 30 years ago, can't we just acknowledge what happened, and why it happened?
"And, of course, the people who challenge us for acknowledging that are the very ones who have no idea why it happened. They think these are two disconnected events. As if Dr. King might have had a heart attack that ended his life at a tragically young age, but he left us this legacy. (laughter)
"But when you realize, as many of us do in this room that the circumstance of Dr. King's death are very much related to his life, his struggles, and his accomplishments, if you see those two things, I think we are very much in his legacy rather than outside of it. Thank you."
John Judge- "I know Phil always likes to be called a buff but since I was compared on the John McGloughlin News Hour to Mel Gibson, I must really be buff.
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