By Michael Finger

April 1, 2008

In his final years, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had death on his mind.

While watching news coverage of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, he turned to his wife, Coretta, and told her, “This is what is going to happen to me.” All his adult life, this practitioner of nonviolence had been threatened, assaulted, and surrounded by people — most of them white, some of them black — who considered him their enemy. The FBI routinely released memos documenting his activities, with the heading “Martin Luther King — Communist.” Andrew Young, one of the leaders of the Atlanta-based Southern Christian Leadership Conference, observed that King had questioned “fundamental patterns of American life” and had therefore “become the enemy” to many Americans.

So as he headed to Memphis in the spring of 1968, to hold what he hoped would be a peaceful demonstration in support of the sanitation workers’ strike here, King knew his life was in grave danger. “There’s no way in the world you can keep somebody from killing you,” he told a reporter, “if they really want to kill you.”

And he knew Memphis would be a challenge. The sanitation strike had dragged on into its fifth week, and the situation seemed hopeless. Jerry Wurf, international head of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) had complained bitterly, “I spent half my time trying to keep that city from burning down, while the god-damned mayor was pouring gasoline on the situation as I ran around pulling matches out of people’s hands.”

King’s supporters had dire premonitions. On the night following the dreadful riot of March 28th, the Rev. James Jordan, pastor of historic Beale Street Baptist Church, woke up in tears. He later told friends that he’d had a nightmare: “Dr. King’s picture came before me. I saw the Lord had shown me Dr. King’s death.”

When King decided to return to Memphis on April 3rd, to salvage his reputation and show the world that he could indeed preach the gospel of nonviolence with a second march on April 8th, a bomb threat delayed his flight. Ralph Abernathy, his second-in-command at the SCLC, reassured him, “Nobody is going to kill you, Martin,” but King still seemed deeply troubled. Later that day, however, he told supporters, “I would rather be dead than afraid.”

Then came his famous speech that blustery evening of April 3, 1968, at Mason Temple. With the wind howling outside and banging the shutters around the packed auditorium, he seemed to pause and reflect for a few seconds, then said, “Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I have seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we as a people will get to the promised land . . .”

Within 24 hours, he would be felled by an assassin’s bullet. On these pages we present the storm of events that surrounded Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in his final hours in Memphis. >>>

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Despite the global interest in the rise of China, no one is paying much attention to its ideas and who produces them. Yet China has a surprisingly lively intellectual class whose ideas may prove a serious challenge to western liberal hegemony

Mark Leonard is the executive director of the European Council on Foreign Relations. His book What Does China Think? has just been published by 4th Estate

I will never forget my first visit, in 2003, to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) in Beijing. I was welcomed by Wang Luolin, the academy’s vice-president, whose grandfather had translated Marx’s Das Kapital into Chinese, and Huang Ping, a former Red Guard. Sitting in oversized armchairs, we sipped ceremonial tea and introduced ourselves. Wang Luolin nodded politely and smiled, then told me that his academy had 50 research centres covering 260 disciplines with 4,000 full-time researchers.

As he said this, I could feel myself shrink into the seams of my vast chair: Britain’s entire think tank community is numbered in the hundreds, Europe’s in the low thousands; even the think-tank heaven of the US cannot have more than 10,000. But here in China, a single institution—and there are another dozen or so think tanks in Beijing alone—had 4,000 researchers. Admittedly, the people at CASS think that many of the researchers are not up to scratch, but the raw figures were enough.

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Emotions Run High as Many Plays, Musicals Are Canceled

By Robin Shulman

Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 11, 2007;

NEW YORK, Nov. 10 — Tears, confrontation and confusion reigned in the Times Square theater district Saturday as a sudden strike by stagehands closed down more than two dozen Broadway plays and musicals, leaving would-be theatergoers outside the darkened halls.

The stagehands, who work behind the scenes to create the lights, sounds, special effects and glamour of Broadway, began picketing late-morning matinees after contract talks broke down between their union and theater owners and producers in a dispute largely over work rules.

Paula Jager, of Montvale, N,J., comforts her daughter Angela, 4,
after a Dr. Seuss musical was canceled by the strike.
(By Diane Bondareff — Associated Press) “They canceled the show, honey,” said Kim Fraioli, a trauma therapist from Bedford Corners, N.Y., breaking the news to Kaylee, 5, that she would not be able to see “The Little Mermaid” and its lead character. “I’m so sorry, and I promise you will get to see Ariel later,” she said as her daughter’s eyes welled with tears.

Grown men and women who had waited months, traveled distances, and paid hundreds of dollars to see Broadway shows also came close to tears in front of the picket lines.

“I can’t decide whether I might cry,” said Robert Wilson, 18, of New Castle, Pa., who had driven to New York with eight friends, one of whom displayed a tattoo of Ariel on her hip.

“Why are you doing this now, when I come to see the show?” one woman yelled at the picketers.

Scott Crawford, 33, a university administrator from Akron, Ohio, had waited months to see “Avenue Q” because it’s “raunchy and hilarious,” he said. “In Ohio, we have raunchy, and we have hilarious, but we don’t have them together.”

Other popular shows that were shut down included “The Phantom of the Opera,” “Rent,” “Les Miserables,” “Mamma Mia!” “The Color Purple” and “The Lion King.”

It was the first time Local One of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, a 121-year old union, had called a strike on Broadway. A four-day walkout of musicians in 2003 was the first Broadway theater strike in two decades.

Befuddled crowds jammed the 46th Street TKTS discount ticket booth, hoping to get into shows that were still running, because their theaters have separate contracts with the union. They included “Mary Poppins,” “Mauritius,” “Pygmalion” and “Young Frankenstein.”

In an auction-like atmosphere, full-throated theater promoters touted the shows that had not yet sold out, describing them one by one:

“Jump”: “They do a lot of acrobatic kung fu stuff, crazy stuff with families.”

“Altar Boyz”: “It’s a musical. These guys are getting an epiphany from God to start a boy band.”

Comedy club promoters also found themselves attracting unaccustomed interest.

Julius Donat, who plies 7th Avenue selling comedy tickets, said on most days, people pass him right by. “We’re too good, we want to go to Broadway,” he said, mimicking people who had disdained his offerings in the past.

“Now look at you,” he said of his newfound customers.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said he had spoken with theater owners and the union and hoped they could resolve their differences quickly to avoid a severe impact on an industry that brings in nearly a billion dollars a year. “While this is a private labor matter, the economic impact is very public and will be felt far beyond the theaters closed today,” he said in a statement.

Local One had been working without a contract since July while negotiating for months with the League of American Theatres and Producers, but talks broke down.

The old contract sets formulas for how many stagehands must be called to work, what kinds of tasks they are allowed to undertake, and how long they may work. Theater managers want more flexibility in deciding how many stagehands are needed.

On Thursday, after days of difficult talks, Local One got permission from its parent union to strike.

“It is a sad day for Broadway, but we must remain committed to achieving a fair contract,” Charlotte St. Martin, executive director of the League of American Theatres and Producers, said in a statement. All disappointed theatergoers will get exchanges or refunds for their tickets, she said.