MLK | First One Through

On April 3, 1968, Rev Martin Luther King Jr, delivered his final speech. It is considered one of the greatest speeches of the 20th century.

And CNN edited it.

Just after the one minute mark of his speech in the third paragraph, King set the stage to compare the journey of African Americans from a life of racism to one of liberty, much as the biblical Jews left slavery in Egypt to their promised land. It served as a foreshadow to the end of the speech in which King compared himself to the Jewish prophet Moses who went “up to the mountaintop” to look over to the “promised land” in which he could not enter, even as the Children of Israel succeeded in their trek.

The actual words King said were:

“Something is happening in Memphis; something is happening in our world. And you know, if I were standing at the beginning of time, with the possibility of taking a kind of general and panoramic view of the whole of human history up to now, and the Almighty said to me, “Martin Luther King, which age would you like to live in?” I would take my mental flight by Egypt and I would watch God’s children in their magnificent trek from the dark dungeons of Egypt through, or rather across the Red Sea, through the wilderness on toward the promised land. And in spite of its magnificence, I wouldn’t stop there.”

But CNN removed the words in red above “and I would watch God’s children in their magnificent trek from the dark dungeons of Egypt” which described the Jews as “God’s children” who left slavery towards their promised land in Israel. Instead, the CNN text reads like a general travelogue, stripped of any significance. The promised land is sanitized of its Jewish essence, and applicable to any and all.

CNN edited one of the greatest speeches in modern history which continues to be read to this day, and removed the plight of the Jews and their three thousand year old-Zionism, presumably to make a political point. And a very noxious one at that.