The Gantt Report


As the world celebrates the birth date of the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Junior and commemorates his accomplishments and achievements prior to his death in 1968, The Gantt Report would like to suggest that the spirit of Dr. King lives on.

In that regard, if I could write a letter that his spirit could read, this is what I’d say:

Dear Dr. King:

I am writing this letter to let you know that your dream is becoming a nightmare! Your flock is divided and your sheep are running around the pasture like they’re crazy!

As a child running up and down the streets of Atlanta’s Auburn Avenue, I may have seen you and didn’t know who you were. You know you once lived a couple of doors down that street from my grandmother and ultimately preached farther down on Auburn Avenue at Ebenezar Baptist Church along with your father “Daddy King”.

Anyway, by the time I got to high school I knew exactly who you were. I even went to Grady High School with your daughter Yolanda.

I knew you were a civil rights leader and I knew Black Americans needed you and many more!

When you began your fight for equal rights and justice, Dr. King, you were a young man. In fact, students were a very important part of the civil rights struggle back in the day.

Today, most Black students are an embarrassment! They’re too busy playing cards, rapping and dancing to stand up and speak out about anything. The students of today would rather hold hands with little devils and devilettes and other enemies of African-Americans than to hold hands with each other.

In 2007, young Black men and women need leadership. They need attention and they need direction.

Children really are the key to our future. Those of us still alive over 40 years of age are caught up. Too many Black people think that jewelry is important, cars are important and clothes are important.

You fought for equal rights and justice but to survive, we also need power. Black people young and old need to be taught or re-taught that land is power. Revolutions, even “Negro Revolutions”, are fought for land!

Dr. King your old organization is merely symbolic now. No one is traveling around to truly help the struggling people in our communities.

Yes we do have poverty pimps and religious charlatans that visit towns, rhyme a little, take up a collection and disappear to the next town. However, Dr. King, no one wants to go to Montgomery or to Memphis and stay there until the job is done, until the battle is won.

We’ve got a lot more Black elected officials since you fought for voting rights Dr. King. All we need now are some good Black candidates. Who can deliver is still the question and what Black elected official is doing that now, I don’t know. We had an Adam Clayton Powell but he’s up there in heaven with you. We had a Harold Washington, a Shirley Chisom and even a Maynard Jackson in your hometown Atlanta.

Today we have brothers hiding payoff money in refrigerators. We have crack heads and womanizers to go along with the Black politicians trying to do their best.

Yes, Dr. King, we still have a long ways to go but we can start by stop singing “We Shall Overcome” every year on your birthday! I know the constant signing of that song year after year burns your heavenly ears!

In conclusion, Dr. King, I want to end this letter by thanking you. I could thank you for a lot of things but the one thing you did that meant most to me was that you taught Black people not to be afraid of their enemies.

You knew you could be jailed but you would not desert your cause. You knew you could be beaten but you never punked out and ran away. You knew the beasts of the world would try to hurt you financially but you never sold your people out for rice, peas, nickels or dimes!

Dr. King, I often pray for God to send us another Martin Luther King. I would even appreciate another Moses, Joshua, Malcolm or Marcus.

Rest Dr. King but there will be no peace until there is justice! (Gantt’s new book “Beast Too: Dead Man Writing” is coming soon. Contact Lucius at www.allworldconsultants.net)