Mad mullah biography of martin luther king

Post Contributed by Caitlin Margaret Kelly, Curator, Archive of Documentary Arts & Director, Power Plant Gallery

When I opened the newly arrived box the first photograph on top of the stack was one of the few with a title, called, “Two Minute Warning.” It is an iconic image taken on March 7, in Selma, Alabama, by a young photojournalist for the Birmingham News, James ‘Spider’ Martin. This print is among the more than 40 gelatin silver prints by Martin recently acquired by the Archive of Documentary Arts at the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library. The prints depict the violence of Bloody Sunday, the men and women of the Selma to Montgomery March, and George Wallace on the campaign trail. There are photographs of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., John Lewis, and Ralph Abernathy, among many others.

But in among the well-known visages, are many unknown faces, all marching through the landscape. It wasn’t long into my inspection of these prints that I started to notice the suitcases, the socks, a backpack worn by John Lewis, and the straining hands holding up Amelia Boynton – grasping for the fabric of her coat.

While a few of the prints were made in , most were reprinted by Martin between Some of the later prints come with handwritten reflections. On the back of a photograph of Ralph Abernathy and M.L.K. at the Selma March, Martin writes:

“Dr. King knew he was a target. Many times I was tipped off that he might be assassinated. I look at this picture and think that Dr. King is looking towards heaven and thinking that it is enevitable (sic) that he will die fighting for the struggle. I think of the gospel song “Commin’ Home (sic).”

As a member of the news media, Spider Martin was on site to cover a march. It wasn’t until the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge that he also became a witness to the violence of Bloody Sunday. John Lewis is quoted as saying, “he left, through the power of his camera and with a quick eye, images that will educate

What do an organic farmer from Spain, a union worker activist from Brazil, and a human rights scholar living in London have in common? They are all individuals who affect substantive change in their communities, and they are also individuals who are overlooked by the corporate media. The latter has its own lists of “experts” — usually well-groomed males with little involvement in the daily struggles of the unseen and unheard multitudes of the world, yet able to influence their lives (most often detrimentally) from a well-guarded distance.

So how does the business of expertise work? Why are those qualified to address their own affairs so widely ignored by mainstream channels in favor of intellectual middlemen who purport to have some sort of legitimacy over a range of narratives, without any convincing credentials, let alone first-hand experiences?

The phenomenon precedes the advent of network television and satellite news. It is embedded in a Western tradition that was formulated around imperial conquests: For a people to be conquered, they have to be understood in a language that prioritizes the interests of the colonialist over the rights of the colonized. The latter’s identity is replaced by verbal and textual reductionism. Thus Mohammed Abdullah Hassan, the Somali leader who strove for twenty years to free his people from British and Italian colonialism was termed “Mad Mullah” by the British. Hassan, of course, was as “mad” as Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and the vigorous leaders of numerous struggles around the world. The list of these individuals is ever expanding, as activists are written off by those in power, those whose “sanity” preaches subscribing to the status quo and the inherent wisdom of the system.

This system serves not the majority of people living within it, but rather the combined interests of those with the money and those with the weapons: One funds the othe