Martin Luther KING
Martin Luther King, Jr.pour écrire en gros
Martin Luther King addressing the press in 1964.
Born
January 15, 1929
Atlanta, Georgia, USA
Died
April 4, 1968
Memphis, Tennessee, USA
Martin Luther King, Jr. (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was a Baptist minister and activist who was the most famous leader of the Civil Rights Movement. King won the Nobel Peace Prize and Presidential Medal of Freedom before being assassinated in 1968. For his promotion of non-violence and racial equality, King is considered a peacemaker and martyr by many people around the world. Martin Luther King Day was established in his honor.
Contents [hide]
1 Family and background
2 Civil rights activism
2.1 Stance on Affirmative Action
2.2 The March on Washington
2.3 Bayard Rustin
3 Chicago
4 Further challenges
5 Assassination
5.1 Allegations of conspiracy
5.2 Recent developments
6 King and the FBI
7 Awards and recognition
8 Authorship issues
9 Books by Martin Luther King, Jr.
10 Legacy
11 King in Popular Culture
12 Coinage
13 References
14 External links
14.1 Video and audio material
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Family and background
King was born in Atlanta, Georgia (on Auburn Avenue) to the Rev. Martin Luther King, Sr. and Alberta Williams King. He was named Michael Luther after his father, but later the Reverend King changed both their names to Martin Luther in honor of the great church leader. He graduated from Morehouse College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology in 1948. At Morehouse, King was mentored by President Benjamin Mays, a civil rights leader. Later he graduated from Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania [1] with a Bachelor of Divinity degree in 1951. In 1955 he received his Ph.D. in Systematic Theology from Boston University.
King married Coretta Scott on June 18, 1953. King's father performed the wedding ceremony in Scott's parents' house in Marion, Alabama.
King and Scott had four children:
Yolanda Denise (November 17, 1955, Montgomery, Alabama)
Martin Luther III (October 23, 1957, Montgomery, Alabama)
Dexter Scott (January 30, 1961, Atlanta, Georgia)
Bernice Albertine (March 28, 1963, Atlanta, Georgia)
All four children have followed their father's footsteps as civil rights activists, although their pet issues and opinions differ.
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Civil rights activism
In 1953, King became the pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. He was a leader of the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott that began when Rosa Parks refused to comply with the Jim Crow law that required her to surrender her seat to a white man. The boycott lasted for 382 (381 is the number usually quoted, but that overlooks the fact that 1956 was a leap year) days. The situation became so tense that King's house was bombed. King was arrested during this campaign, which ended with a United States Supreme Court decision outlawing racial segregation on intrastate buses.
Following the campaign, King was instrumental in the founding of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957, a group created to harness the moral authority and organizing power of black churches to conduct nonviolent protests in the service of civil rights reform. King continued to dominate the organization until his death. The organization's nonviolent principles were criticized by some blacks and challenged by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).
The SCLC derived its membership principally from black communities associated with Baptist churches. King was an adherent of the philosophies of nonviolent civil disobedience used successfully in India by Mahatma Gandhi, and he applied this philosophy to the protests organized by the SCLC. King correctly recognized that organized, nonviolent protest against the racist system of southern segregation known as Jim Crow laws would lead to extensive media coverage of the struggle for black equality and voting rights. Indeed, journalistic accounts and televised footage of the daily deprivation and indignities suffered by southern blacks, and of segregationist violence and harassment of civil rights workers and marchers, produced a wave of sympathetic public opinion that made the Civil Rights Movement the single most important issue in American politics in the early 1960s.
King is perhaps most famous for his "I Have a Dream" speech, given in front of the Lincoln Memorial during the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and FreedomKing organized and led marches for blacks' right to vote, desegregation, labor rights and other basic civil rights. Most of these rights were successfully enacted into United States law with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
King and the SCLC applied the principles of nonviolent protest with great success by strategically choosing the method of protest and the places in which protests were carried out in often dramatic stand-offs with segregationist authorities. Sometimes these confrontations turned violent. King and the SCLC were instrumental in the unsuccessful protest movement in Albany, in 1961 & 1962, where divisions within the black community and the canny, low-key response by local government defeated efforts; in the Birmingham protests in the summer of 1963; and in the protest in St. Augustine, Florida, in 1964. King and the SCLC joined forces with SNCC in Selma, Alabama, in December 1964, where SNCC had been working on voter registration for a number of months.
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Stance on Affirmative Action
Martin Luther King Jr. may have supported affirmative action. Among his comments:
"Whenever this issue [compensatory treatment] is raised, some of our friends recoil in horror. The Negro should be granted equality, they agree, but should ask for nothing more. On the surface, this appears reasonable, but is not realistic. For it is obvious that if a man enters the starting line of a race three hundred years after another man, the second would have to perform some incredible feat in order to catch up."
"A society that has done something special against the Negro for hundreds of years must now do something special for him, to equip him to compete on a just and equal basis."
"... for 15 centuries the Negro was enslaved and robbed of any wages — potential accrued wealth which would have been the legacy of his descendants. All of America's wealth today could not adequately compensate its Negroes for his centuries of exploitation and humiliation. It is an economic fact that a program such as I propose would certainly cost far less than any computation of two centuries of unpaid wages plus accumulated interest. In any case, I do not intend that this program of economic aid should apply only to the Negro: it should benefit the disadvantaged of all races."
As one site puts it: "King actually suggested it might be necessary to have, something akin to 'discrimination in reverse' as a form of national 'atonement' for the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow segregation." [2][3][4]
Scholars argue whether he advocated affirmative action for the poor, blacks, or both. King himself admitted that the vast majority of the poor were black anyway, implying that he could put his proposed programs in terms of class and not race, while still achieving the end of compensatory treatment, albeit via a more agreeable position. While it may seem that he alternates between advocating socioeconomic and racial affirmative action, the latter predominated. In a Playboy interview he proposes a massive public works project of Depression-Era proportions, the likely grounds for Reagan calling King a near communist. [5][6]
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The March on Washington
King and SCLC, in partial collaboration with SNCC, then attempted to organize a march from Selma to the state capital of Montgomery, for March 25, 1964. The first attempt to march on March 7, was aborted due to mob and police violence against the demonstrators. This day since has become known as Bloody Sunday. Bloody Sunday was a major turning point in the effort to gain public support for the Civil Rights Movement, the clearest demonstration up to that time of the dramatic potential of King's nonviolence strategy. King, however, was not present. After meeting with President Lyndon B. Johnson, he had attempted to delay the march until March 8, but the march was carried out against his wishes and without his presence by local civil rights workers. The footage of the police brutality against the protestors was broadcast extensively across the nation and aroused a national sense of public outrage.
The second attempt at the march on March 9 was ended when King stopped the procession at the Edmund Pettus Bridge on the outskirts of Selma, an action which he seemed to have negotiated with city leaders beforehand. This unexpected action aroused the surprise and anger of many within the local movement. The march finally went ahead fully on March 25, with the agreement and support of President Johnson, and it was during this march that Willie Ricks coined the phrase "Black Power" (widely credited to Stokely Carmichael).
King, representing SCLC, was among the leaders of the so-called "Big Six" civil rights organizations who were instrumental in the organization of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963. The other leaders and organizations comprising the Big Six were: Roy Wilkins, NAACP; Whitney Young, Jr., Urban League; A. Philip Randolph, Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters; John Lewis, SNCC; and James Farmer of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). For King, this role was another which courted controversy, as he was one of the key figures who acceded to the wishes of President John F. Kennedy in changing the focus of the march. Kennedy initially opposed the march outright, because he was concerned it would negatively impact the drive for passage of civil rights legislation, but the organizers were firm that the march would proceed.
The march originally was conceived as an event to dramatize the desperate condition of blacks in the South and a very public opportunity to place organizers' concerns and grievances squarely before the seat of power in the nation's capital. Organizers intended to excoriate and then challenge the federal government for its failure to safeguard the civil rights and physical safety of civil rights workers and blacks, generally, in the South. However, the group acquiesced to presidential pressure and influence, and the event ultimately took on a far less strident tone.
As a result, some civil rights activists felt it presented an inaccurate, sanitized pageant of racial harmony; Malcolm X called it the "Farce on Washington," and members of the Nation of Islam who attended the march faced a temporary suspension.[7]
The march did, however, make specific demands: an end to racial segregation in public school; meaningful civil rights legislation, including a law prohibiting racial discrimination in employment; protection of civil rights workers from police brutality; a $2 minimum wage for all workers; and self-government for the District of Columbia, then governed by congressional committee.
Despite tensions, the march was a resounding success. More than a quarter of a million people of diverse ethnicities attended the event, sprawling from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial onto the National Mall and around the reflecting pool. At the time, it was the largest gathering of protestors in Washington's history. King's I Have a Dream speech electrified the crowd. It is regarded, along with President Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, as one of the finest speeches in the history of American oratory.
Throughout his career of service, King wrote and spoke frequently, drawing on his long experience as a preacher. His "Letter from Birmingham Jail", written in 1963, is a passionate statement of his crusade for justice. On October 14, 1964, King became the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, which was awarded to him for leading non-violent resistance to end racial prejudice in the United States.
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Bayard Rustin
African American civil rights activist Bayard Rustin counseled King to dedicate himself to the principles of non-violence in 1956, and had a leadership role in organizing the 1963 March on Washington. However, Rustin's open homosexuality and support of democratic socialism caused many white and African Americans leaders to demand that King distance himself from Rustin, which he did on several occasions--but not all, such as when he ensured Rustin's role in the March on Washington.
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Chicago
In 1966, after several successes in the South, King and other people in the civil rights organizations tried to spread the movement to the North, with Chicago as its first target. King and Ralph Abernathy, both middle class folk, moved into Chicago's slums as an educational experience and to demonstrate their support and empathy for the poor.
Abernathy could not stand the slums and secretly moved out after a short period. King stayed and wrote about how Coretta and his children suffered emotional problems from the horrid conditions and inability to play outside.
In Chicago, Abernathy would later write, they received a worse reception than they had received in the South. Thrown bottles and screaming throngs met their marches and they were truly afraid of starting a riot. King had always felt a responsibility to the people he was leading to not unnecessarily stage a violent event, something rather unique to him as a radical social leader of the 1960s or any other decade. If King had intimations that a peaceful march would be put down with violence he would call it off for the safety of people. But he himself still faced death many a time by marching at the front in the face of death threats to his person. And in Chicago the violence was so formidable, it shook the two friends.
But worse than the violence was the two-facedness of the city leaders. Abernathy and King secured agreements on action to be taken, but this action was largely bureaucratically killed after-the-fact by politicians within mayor Richard J. Daley's corrupt machine. Some of their small successes such as Operation Breadbasket, did not translate into anything as large as the desegregation cases of the bus boycott in the South. However, they did light the fire of ideas like Affirmative Action and organizing labor as legitimate techniques in the minds of the people.
When King and his allies returned to the South, they left Jesse Jackson, then a young Chicago activist, in charge of their organization. While Jackson had a great deal of heart and oratorical skill, he knew very little about running an organization. They asked him for financial information, and he sent them a bag of unorganized receipts. Chicago could be seen as a point where the civil rights movement lost its momentum and began to fade to a shadow of what King had planned for it.
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Further challenges
Starting in 1965, King began to express doubts about the United States' role in the Vietnam War. On April 4, 1967 -- exactly one year before his death -- King spoke out strongly against the US's role in the war, insisting that the US was in Vietnam "to occupy it as an American colony" and calling the US government "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today." But he also argued that the country needed larger and broader moral changes:
A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just." [8]
King was long hated by many white southern segregationists, but this speech turned the more mainstream media against him. TIME called the speech "demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi (a propaganda radio station run by the North Vietnamese Army during the Vietnam War)", and the Washington Post declared that King had "diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people."
The speech was a reflection of King's evolving political advocacy in his later years, sparked in part by his affiliation with and training at the progressive Highlander Research and Education Center. King began to speak of the need for fundamental changes in the political and economic life of the nation. Toward the end of his life, King more frequently expressed his opposition to the war and his desire to see a redistribution of resources to correct racial and economic injustice. Though his public language was guarded, so as to avoid being linked to communism by his political enemies, in private he sometimes spoke of his support for democratic socialism:
You can't talk about solving the economic problem of the Negro without talking about billions of dollars. You can't talk about ending the slums without first saying profit must be taken out of slums. You're really tampering and getting on dangerous ground because you are messing with folk then. You are messing with captains of industry.... Now this means that we are treading in difficult water, because it really means that we are saying that something is wrong... with capitalism.... There must be a better distribution of wealth and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism. (Frogmore, S.C. November 14, 1966. Speech in front of his staff.)
King also stated in his "Beyond Vietnam" speech that "True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring." From Vietnam to South Africa to Latin America, King said, the U.S. was "on the wrong side of a world revolution." King questioned "our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America," and asked why the U.S. was suppressing revolutions "of the shirtless and barefoot people" in the Third World, instead of supporting them.
In 1968, King and the SCLC organized the "Poor People's Campaign" to address issues of economic justice. The campaign culminated in a march on Washington, D.C. demanding economic aid to the poorest communities of the United States. He crisscrossed the country to assemble "a multiracial army of the poor" that would descend on Washington -- engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience at the Capitol, if need be -- until Congress enacted a poor people's bill of rights. Reader's Digest warned of an "insurrection."
King's economic bill of rights called for massive government jobs programs to rebuild America's cities. He saw a crying need to confront a Congress that had demonstrated its "hostility to the poor" -- appropriating "military funds with alacrity and generosity," but providing "poverty funds with miserliness."
On April 3, 1968, King prophetically told a euphoric crowd:
It really doesn't matter what happens now.... some began to... talk about the threats that were out -- what would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers.... 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've looked over, and I've 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. And so I'm happy tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.
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Assassination
The Lorraine Motel, where Rev. King was assassinated, now the site of the National Civil Rights MuseumKing was assassinated the next evening, April 4, 1968, at 6:01 PM, on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, while preparing to lead a local march in support of the predominantly black Memphis sanitation workers' union which was on strike at the time. Friends inside the motel room heard the shot fired and ran to the balcony to find King shot in the throat. He was pronounced dead at St. Joseph's hospital at 7:05 PM . The assassination led to a nationwide wave of riots in more than 60 cities. Four days later, President Lyndon Johnson declared a national day of mourning for the lost civil rights leader. A crowd of 300,000 attended his funeral that same day.
Two months after King's death, escaped convict James Earl Ray was captured at London's Heathrow Airport while trying to leave the United Kingdom on a false Canadian passport in the name of Ramon George Sneyd. Ray was quickly extradited to Tennessee and charged with King's murder, confessing to the assassination on March 10, 1969, (though he recanted this confession three days later). Later, Ray would be sentenced to a 99-year prison term.
Ray, a presumed white supremacist and segregationist, allegedly killed King because of the latter's extensive civil rights work. On the advice of his attorney Percy Foreman, Ray took a guilty plea to avoid a trial conviction and thus the possibility of receiving the death penalty, although it is unlikely that a death sentence would have been carried out, due to the U.S. Supreme Court's 1972 decision in the case of Furman v. Georgia that invalidated all state death penalty laws then in force.
Ray fired Foreman as his attorney (from then on derisively calling him "Percy Fourflusher") claiming that a man he met in Montreal, Canada with the alias "Raoul" was involved, as was his brother Johnny, but not himself, further asserting that although he didn't "personally shoot Dr. King," he may have been "partially responsible without knowing it," hinting at a conspiracy. He spent the remainder of his life attempting (unsuccessfully) to withdraw his guilty plea and secure the trial he never had.
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Allegations of conspiracy
Some have speculated that Ray had been used as a "patsy" similar to the way that alleged John F. Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald was supposed to have been. Some of the claims used to support this assertion are:
Ray was a small-time thief and burglar, and had no record of committing violent crimes with a weapon.
The weapon that Ray is believed to have used in the assassination (a Remington Gamemaster Model 760 .30-'06 caliber rifle) had only two of Ray's fingerprints on it.
According to several fellow prison inmates, Ray had never expressed any political or racial opinions of any kind, casting doubt on Ray's purported motive for committing the crime.
The rooming-house bathroom from which Ray is said to have fired the fatal shots did not have any of his fingerprints at all.
Ray was believed to have been an average marksman, and it is claimed by many that Ray had not fired a rifle since his discharge from the U.S. Army in the late 1940s.
Many suspecting a conspiracy in the assassination point out the two separate ballistic tests conducted on the Remington Gamemaster had neither conclusively proved Ray had been the killer nor that it had even been the murder weapon. Moreover, witnesses surrounding King at the moment of his death say the shot came from another location, from behind thick shrubbery near the rooming house, not from the rooming house itself, shrubbery which had been suddenly and inexplicably cut away in the days following the assassination. Also, Ray's petty criminal history had been one of colossal and repeated ineptitude, he'd been quickly and easily apprehended each time he committed an offense, behavior in sharp contrast to that of his shortly before and after the shooting; he'd easily managed to secure several different pieces of legitimate identification, using the names and personal data of living men who all coincidentally looked like and were of about the same age and physical build as Ray, he spent large sums of cash and traveled overseas without being apprehended at any border crossing, even though he had been a wanted fugitive. According to Ray, all of this had been accomplished with the aid of the still unidentified "Raoul." Investigative reporter Louis Lomax had also discovered the Missouri Department of Corrections, shortly after Ray's April 1967 prison escape, had sent the incorrect set of fingerprints to the FBI and had failed to notice or correct this error. Lomax had been publishing a series of investigative stories on the King assassination for the North American Newspaper Alliance, stories challenging the official view of the case, and had been reportedly pressured by the FBI to halt his investigation.
According to a former Pemiscot County, Missouri deputy sheriff, Jim Green, who claimed to have been part of an FBI-led conspiracy to kill Dr. King, Ray had been targeted as the patsy for the King assassination shortly before his April 1967 prison escape and had been tracked by the Bureau during his year as a fugitive. After several trips to and from Canada and Mexico during this time, Ray had gone to Memphis after agreeing to participate (allegedly controlled by his mysterious benefactor "Raoul" who reportedly had weeks before while in Birmingham, Alabama ordered Ray to purchase the Remington Gamemaster rifle) in what he was told was a major bank robbery while King was in town--since city police resources would be dedicated toward maintaining security for King and his entourage, the intended bank heist would be much simpler than usual. Green (who, like Ray, had asserted that FBI assistant director Cartha DeLoach headed the assassination plot) had claimed Ray had been ordered to stay in the rooming house and as a diversion for the purported bank heist, to then hold up a small diner near the rooming house at approximately 6:00 p.m. on April 4th. Dr. King was shot a minute later by a sniper hidden in the shrubbery near the rooming house. Meanwhile, according to Green, two men, one of them allegedly a Memphis police detective, were waiting to ambush and kill Ray while Ray was on his way to the planned diner holdup and then plant the Remington rifle in the trunk of Ray's pale yellow (not white) 1966 Ford Mustang, effectively framing a dead man. However, moments before the assassination, Ray had apparently suspected a setup and instead quickly left town in his Mustang, heading for Atlanta, Georgia. Atlanta police found Ray's abandoned Mustang six days after King had been shot.
Ray and six other convicts escaped from Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary in Petros, Tennessee on June 10, 1977 shortly after Ray testified that he did not shoot King to the House Select Committee on Assassinations, but were recaptured on June 13 and returned to prison.[9] More years were then added to his sentence for attempting to escape from the penitentiary.
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Recent developments
In 1997 Martin Luther King's son Dexter King met with Ray, and publicly supported Ray's efforts to obtain a trial.
In 1999, Coretta Scott King, King's wife (and a civil rights leader herself), along with the rest of King's family won a wrongful death civil trial against Loyd Jowers and "other unknown co-conspirators". Jowers claimed to have received $100,000 to arrange King's assassination. The jury of six whites and six blacks found Jowers guilty and that "governmental agencies were parties" to the assassination plot. Dr. William Pepper represented the King family in the trial. [10] [11]
In 2000, the Department of Justice completed the investigation about Jower's claims, but did not find evidence to support the allegations about conspiracy. The investigation report recommends no further investigation unless some new reliable facts are presented. [12]
Jesse Jackson, who was with King at the time of his death, noted:
"The fact is there were saboteurs to disrupt the march. [And] within our own organization, we found a very key person who was on the government payroll. So infiltration within, saboteurs from without and the press attacks. ... I will never believe that James Earl Ray had the motive, the money and the mobility to have done it himself. Our government was very involved in setting the stage for and I think the escape route for James Earl Ray." [13]
King biographer David Garrow disagrees with William F. Pepper's claims that the government killed King. He is supported by King assassination author Gerald Posner. [14]
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King and the FBI
John F. Kennedy in the Oval Office with various civil rights activists including Martin Luther King (second from left).King had a mutually antagonistic relationship with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), especially its director, J. Edgar Hoover, who had deeply detested the civil rights leader. The FBI began tracking King and the SCLC in 1961. Its investigations were largely superficial until 1962, when it learned that one of King's most trusted advisers was New York City lawyer Stanley Levison. The Bureau of Investigation suspected that Levison had been involved with the Communist Party, USA—to which another key King lieutenant, Hunter Pitts O'Dell, was also linked by sworn testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). The Bureau placed wiretaps on Levison and King's home and office phones, and bugged King's rooms in hotels as he traveled across the country. The Bureau also informed then-Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and then-President John F. Kennedy, both of whom unsuccessfully tried to persuade King to dissociate himself from Levison. For his part, King adamantly denied having any connections to Communism, stating at one point that "there are as many Communists in this freedom movement as there are Eskimos in Florida"; to which Hoover responded by calling King "the most notorious liar in the country."
The attempt to smear King as a communist was in keeping with the feeling of many segregationists that blacks in the South were happy with their lot, but had been stirred up by "Communists" and "outside agitators." Movement leaders countered that voter disenfranchisement, lack of education and employment opportunities, discrimination and vigilante violence were the reasons for the strength of the Civil Rights Movement, and that blacks had the intelligence and motivation to organize on their own.
HUAC later was discredited for its coercion of witnesses and the manner in which it sought to implicate individuals with vague and often sweeping accusations and assumptions of guilt by association. The Committee was renamed in 1969 and eventually abolished.
Later, the focus of the Bureau's investigations shifted to attempting to "discredit" King through revelations regarding his private life. FBI surveillance of King, some of it since made public, demonstrates that he also engaged in numerous extramarital sexual affairs. Accounts of such behavior also have been provided by King's associates, including close friend Ralph Abernathy who said King spent his last night on earth engaged in an adulterous liaison with several prostitutes. Further remarks of King's lifestyle were made by several prominent officials, such as President Lyndon B. Johnson who notoriously said that King was a “Hypocrite preacher”.
The Bureau distributed reports regarding such affairs to the executive branch, friendly reporters, potential coalition partners and funding sources of the SCLC, and King's family. The Bureau also sent anonymous letters to King threatening to reveal information if he didn't cease his civil rights work.
Finally, the Bureau's investigation shifted away from King's personal life to intelligence and counterintelligence work on the direction of the SCLC and the Black Power movement.
On January 31, 1977, in the cases of Bernard S. Lee v. Clarence M. Kelley, et al. and Southern Christian Leadership Conference v. Clarence M. Kelley, et al. United States District Judge John Lewis Smith, Jr., ordered all known copies of the recorded audiotapes and written transcripts resulting from the FBI's electronic surveillance of King between 1963 and 1968, be held in the National Archives and sealed from public access until 2027.
Across from the Lorraine Motel, next to the rooming house in which James Earl Ray was staying, was a vacant fire station. The FBI was assigned to observe King during the appearance he was planning to make on the Lorraine Motel second-floor balcony later that day, and utilized the fire station as a makeshift base. Using papered-over windows with peepholes cut into them, the agents watched over the scene until Martin Luther King was shot. Immediately following the shooting, all six agents rushed out of the station and were the first people to administer first-aid to Dr. King. Their presence nearby has led to speculation that the FBI was involved in the assassination.
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Awards and recognition
Besides winning the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize, in 1965 the American Jewish Committee presented the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. with the American Liberties Medallion for his "exceptional advancement of the principles of human liberty." Reverend King said in his acceptance remarks, "Freedom is one thing. You have it all or you are not free."
The band U2 wrote the song "Pride (In the Name of Love)" as a tribute to Dr. King and his work. However, the song contains a historical error, as the first line of the last chorus (which references Dr. King's assassination) reads "Early morning, April 4/Shot rings out in the Memphis sky", whereas Dr. King was killed shortly after 6 PM - early evening. U2 vocalist Bono admits he "screwed up" when writing the lyrics and now performs the song live with the correction.
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Authorship issues
Main article: Martin Luther King, Jr. - authorship issues
Beginning in the 1980s, questions have been raised regarding the authorship of King's dissertation, other papers, and his speeches. (Though not widely known during his lifetime, most of his published writings during his civil rights career were ghostwritten, or at least heavily adapted from his speeches.) Concerns about his doctoral dissertation at Boston University led to a formal inquiry by university officials, which concluded that approximately a third of it had been plagiarized from a paper written by an earlier graduate student, but it was decided not to revoke his degree, as the paper still "makes an intelligent contribution to scholarship." Such uncredited "textual appropriation," as King scholar Clayborne Carson has labeled it, was apparently a habit of King's begun earlier in his academic career. It is also a feature of many of his speeches, which borrowed heavily from those of other preachers and white radio evangelists. While some political opponents have used these findings to criticize King, most of the scholars in question have sought to put them into broader context; for example, Keith Miller, probably the foremost expert on language-borrowing in King's oratory, has argued that the practice falls within the tradition of African-American folk preaching, and should not necessarily be labeled plagiarism.
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Books by Martin Luther King, Jr.
Stride toward freedom; the Montgomery story (1958)
The Measure of a Man (1959)
Strength to Love (1963)
Why We Can't Wait (1964)
Where do we go from here: Chaos or community? (1967)
The Trumpet of Conscience (1968)
A Testament of Hope : The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. (1986)
The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. by Martin Luther King Jr. and Clayborne Carson (1998)
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Legacy
King's reputation has grown to become one of the most revered names in American history. Today he is often compared with Abraham Lincoln, with supporters remarking that both men were leaders who strongly advanced human rights against poor odds, in a nation divided against itself on the issue - and were ultimately assassinated in part for it. Even posthumous accusations of marital infidelity, communism, and academic plagiarism have not seriously damaged his public reputation but merely reinforced the image of a very human hero and leader. King's wife, Coretta Scott King, followed her husband's footsteps and was active in matters of social justice and civil rights until her recent death. The same year Martin Luther King was assassinated, Mrs. King established the King Center [15] in Atlanta, Georgia, dedicated to preserving his legacy and the work of championing nonviolent conflict resolution and tolerance worldwide. His son, Dexter King, currently serves as the Center's president and CEO. Daughter Yolanda King is a motivational speaker, author and founder of Higher Ground Productions, an organization specializing in diversity training.
King's name and legacy have often been invoked since his death as people have begun to debate where he would have stood on various modern political issues were he alive today. For example, there is some debate even within the King family as to where he would have stood on gay rights issues. Athough King's widow Coretta has said publicly that she believes her husband would have supported gay rights, his daughter Bernice believes he would have been opposed to them. [16]. The King Center lists homophobia as an evil that must be opposed. [17]
In 1980, King's boyhood home in Atlanta and several other nearby buildings were declared as the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site. At the White House Rose Garden on November 2, 1983, U.S. President Ronald Reagan signed a bill creating a federal holiday to honor King. It was observed for the first time on January 20, 1986 and is called Martin Luther King Day. It is observed on the third Monday of January each year, around the time of King's birthday. On January 18, 1993, for the first time, Martin Luther King Day was officially observed in all 50 U.S. states. In addition, many U.S. cities have officially renamed one of their streets to honor King. King County, Washington rededicated its name in honor of King in 1986. The city government center in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania is the only city hall in the United States to be named in honor of King.
Design for the MLK Jr. National MemorialIn 1998, Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity was authorized by the United States Congress to establish a foundation to manage fundraising and design of a Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial. [18] King was a prominent member of Alpha Phi Alpha, the first intercollegiate Greek-letter fraternity established for African Americans. King will be the first African American honored with his own memorial in the National Mall area and the second non-President to be commemorated in such a way. The King Memorial will be administered by the National Park Service.
He is one of the ten 20th-century martyrs from across the world who are depicted in statues above the Great West Door of Westminster Abbey, London.
King in Popular Culture
King is also the basis for the comic book character Professor Charles Xavier, the leader of the X-Men.
King was also featured in the January 20, 2005 installment of The Boondocks comic strip, in which young Michael Caesar imagines King enjoying his birthday celebration by engaging in a number of modern hip hop dances. A year later, King was the central figure in the January 15, 2006 episode of The Boondocks television series, "The Return of the King". The animated program depicted a fantasy world in which King was not fatally shot, but instead went into a coma, and awoke thirty-two years after his shooting to find that his ideals of non-violence are met with disdain in the post 9/11 era. The point of the episode was a theoretical look at what Dr. King would think of modern Black America.
Coinage
Coin redesign advocates have asked that King's image be placed on the penny or dime. The penny will be permanently redesigned in 2010, and the current design will no longer be issued beyond 2008, but Abraham Lincoln will remain on the coin. A group of civil rights activists attempted unsuccessfully in 2000 to place his image on the half dollar. Beforehand, these same people also attempted several times to place King's image on the twenty dollar bill.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This is a PDF transfer of the review article ‘The Historicity and Historicisation of
Arthur’ (archived at http://www.arthuriana.co.uk/historicity/arthur.htm), the first
version of which appeared online in 1998. This transfer has been undertaken in order
to ease both the reading and referencing of this article. The text itself remains
unchanged from the HTML version, aside from being necessarily re-formatted and
having the separate notes incorporated as end-notes. An up-to-date expansion,
development and revision of the views presented below can be found in my Concepts
of Arthur.
Thomas Green, Exeter College
University of Oxford
14th May 2006
* * *
The Historicity and Historicisation of Arthur
1. Introduction
Many different theories are available as to the ‘identity’ of Arthur and some brief
methodological notes will be found here regarding the making of such identifications.
While these theories are interesting, they fail to address fully one important question –
was there a historical post-Roman Arthur? Many books, articles and web-pages
simply make the a priori assumption that there has to be a historical figure behind the
Arthurian legends. Such an assumption is totally unjustified. As anyone at all familiar
with medieval literature in general will know, the historicisation of nonhistorical/
mythical personages – often through association with some important event
of the past – is not in any way an unusual occurrence. Some examples of this that will
probably particularly interest readers of this article are Hengest and Horsa, who were
Kentish totemic horse-gods historicised by the 8th-century with an important role in
the 5th-century Anglo-Saxon conquest of eastern Britain (see Turville-Petre, 1953-7;
Ward, 1969; Brooks, 1989; Yorke, 1993); Merlin (Welsh Myrddin), who was an
eponymous founder-figure derived from the place-name Caer-fyrddin and historicised
with the deeds of one Lailoken (see Jarman, 1991); and the Norse demigod
Sigurd/Siegfried who was historicised by being associated with a famous historical
battle between the Huns and the Burgundians dated 437AD, in the Nibelungenlied
(Thomas, 1995, p.390).1 Given this, no a priori judgements can be made as to whether
a figure is, in origin, historical, mythical or fictional – each individual case must (and
can only) be decided by a close examination of all the relevant material. When we
have figures such as Arthur being portrayed as historical we are therefore, on a very
basic level, looking at either a historical figure or a legendary figure who became
historicised, with neither explanation enjoying priority on a priori grounds – it must
be recognised that one can only say that there has to have been a historical Arthur
once all the material has been evaluated and this has been shown to be the case; there
is no possible justification for simply assuming this. The following article is intended
to provide a summary account and bibliography of the latest academic research into
2
Arthur with a particular focus on the question of historicity. Aside from the various
articles and books cited, much of what is below has been discussed in detail on the
discussion list of the International Arthurian Society, Arthurnet, in a moderated debate
that I had the great pleasure of chairing. The results of this discussion, including all
posted comments, can be found in the Arthurnet archives.
2. The Historical Arthur: an Analytical and Bibliographic Survey
Any inquiry into the ‘historical’ Arthur must proceed from the sources. One of the
most important sources for the student of post-Roman Britain is archaeology and,
indeed, the case is sometimes made that it is our only reliable source (see, for
example, Arnold, 1984). When looking at Arthur’s possible historicity however,
archaeology cannot really help as it deals with sites not people – it can show that a site
was occupied in the right period but only very rarely (that is, when we have an
inscription) can it tell us who the occupier was. The only piece of archaeological data
which might have been significant to the debate is the Glastonbury cross naming King
Arthur as the occupant of the grave it was supposedly found in by the monks of
Glastonbury in 1191. Some have suggested a mid 10th- or 11th-century date for this
(for example, Radford, 1968; Alcock, 1971) but it is now clear that it was the product
of a late 12th-century fraud and derivative of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia
Regum Britanniae, and thus of no use in the search for a historical Arthur (see Rahtz,
1993; Carey, 1999; Carley, 1999; Gransden, 1976; Somerset and Dorset Notes &
Queries for 1984 &c.; there was a copy of Geoffrey’s Historia at Glastonbury from
c.1170. The early 6th-century inscribed stone that has recently been found at Tintagel
does not refer to Arthur, contrary to reports by English Heritage and the media).
Given the above, any conclusions regarding Arthur’s historicity, or lack thereof, must
be drawn from the textual references to him.
The King Arthur we encounter in the later medieval texts (and with which people are
often most familiar) is not the Arthur of earlier works – shortly before A.D. 1139
Geoffrey of Monmouth (Galfridus Monemutensis) completed his Historia Regum
Britanniae (‘History of the Kings of Britain’) which glorified Arthur and made him an
international warlord. This work quickly became influential throughout western
Europe and affected the Arthurian legend in all areas with the result that, in general,
scholars look to sources written before Geoffrey’s Historia for the ‘original’ Arthur
(that is, in the ‘pre-Galfridian’ sources). One well known dissenter from this is
Geoffrey Ashe (1981; 1985; 1995) who argues that Riotamus, a 5th-century ‘king’ of
the Britons who campaigned on the continent, is the actual historical prototype of
Arthur and Geoffrey of Monmouth drew on this tradition when writing his magnum
opus. While this theory is quite popular it is rightly dismissed by academics as
nothing more than ‘straws in the wind’ (Bromwich et al, 1991, p.6. See also Padel,
1994, p.31, n.113; Hanning, 1995; Padel, 1995) on the grounds that, while Riotamus
(or Breton traditions about this figure) could be the (partial) inspiration for Geoffrey’s
portrayal of Arthur, he has nothing at all in common with the insular traditions of
Arthur and thus cannot be the prototype for Arthur as a whole (indeed, he doesn’t
even have the correct name. Ashe explains this by saying that Riotamus was a title
and Arthur was his real name but a recent reviewer (Padel, 1995) has shown this to be
incorrect). The above means that the historical Arthur, if he existed, will be found in
the pre-Galfridian texts and it is to these we must now turn.
3
The pre-Galfridian sources for Arthur can be most conveniently read in Coe and
Young (1995), which provides facing text and translation. Some earlier historians,
such as John Morris (1973), tried to make use of, as historical texts, all the sources
which mentioned Arthur including, for example, the Saints’ Lives and late poetry.
This tendency has been correctly and heavily criticised by David Dumville (1977a),
amongst others, mainly because these sources cannot be seen as in any way
historically reliable – we are therefore, when looking at a possibly historical Arthur
and in the light of Dr Dumville’s learned comments, essentially confined to four
pieces of evidence which might contain information of real historical value: the
Annales Cambriae (Phillimore, 1888; Morris, 1980); the Historia Brittonum (Morris,
1980; Dumville, 1985; Koch and Carey, 1995); the collection of heroic death-songs
known as Y Gododdin (Jackson, 1969; Jarman, 1988; Koch, 1997); and the four or
five occurrences of the name Arthur in 6th- and 7th-century contexts (Barber, 1972;
Bromwich 1975-6; Coe and Young, 1995, pp.156-165).
Dealing with the last of these first, the occurrence of four (or possibly five) people
named ‘Arthur’ in 6th- and 7th-century western Scotland and Wales has often been
seen as one of the best pieces of evidence for a historical Arthur – the argument is,
essentially, that the appearance of these names reflects the commemoration of an
earlier historical figure (see, for example, Chadwick and Chadwick, 1932).2 However
such a commemoration by name of an earlier historical hero would be totally
unparalleled in the Celtic world and as such cannot be at all supported as an
explanation of these names (see Bromwich, 1975-6, pp.178-9). Thus these names
cannot be used as evidence for a historical Arthur and as long as we continue to see
Arthur as genuinely historical they are likely to remain a lasting crux (at present there
is only one viable explanation of these names, that proposed by Dr Oliver Padel
(1994, p.24) – see below on this. It is worth noting that none of these ‘Arthurs’ can be
seen as the ‘original’ Arthur, pace Barber, 1972 – see Bromwich, 1975-6, p.179;
Jackson, 1973; Roberts, 1973-4).3
The second source for consideration is the collection of heroic death-songs known as
Y Gododdin, relating to a battle fought in the late 6th-century. In recent years there
has been considerable debate over the statement in Y Gododdin that Gordur ‘fed black
ravens on the rampart of a fort, although he was no Arthur’ (B.38. Koch (1997)
numbers this B².38). Thomas Charles-Edwards (1991, p.14), building on his theory of
textual transmission (set forth in Charles-Edwards, 1978), concluded that, as the
reference only occurs in the B version and not the A version of Y Gododdin, it need be
no older than the 9th- or 10th-century. Recently, however, John Koch (1997) has
attempted a ‘reconstruction’ of the ‘original’ text of Y Gododdin and includes the
‘Arthurian’ reference in this text, dated by him to pre-638AD. Whilst his is certainly
an interesting exercise in discovering how Y Gododdin might have looked if it was of
6th- or 7th-century date, the limitations of this ‘reconstruction’ must be recognised.
As one reviewer has noted, Koch’s text is, in reality, a translation of Y Gododdin into
the language of c.600AD and in this it must be seen in the same light as Jarman’s
earlier translation of this text into modern Welsh (Jarman, 1988) – Koch has not
shown that Y Gododdin was composed in this period, only what it might have looked
like if it had been (Padel, 1998). Indeed, Isaac has demonstrated that Koch’s whole
theory of the creation and transmission of Y Gododdin, including the idea that B²
represents the Ur-text, cannot be at all supported (Isaac, 1999). Similar caveats have
4
been shown to apply to Koch’s ‘reconstruction’ of the poem Gweith Gwen Ystrat,
with Isaac demonstrating that whilst one can undertake such a exercise and show how
this poem would have looked if it had been composed c.600AD, such a reconstruction
is entirely unwarranted and there is no reason to think that the text was composed in
this period (Isaac, 1998). Given the above, it seems clear that, despite Koch’s
assertions, ‘[t]he date of composition [of Y Gododdin] remains as unclear as ever.’
(Padel, 1998, p.55). Indeed Isacc (1996; 1999) has recently followed D. Simon Evans
(1978) in arguing that there is no linguistic evidence that would necessitate dating Y
Gododdin as a whole before the 9th- or 10th-century and, in light of all of this,
Charles-Edwards’ comments on the antiquity of the Arthurian references in this text
must stand.
Turning to the ‘Arthurian’ awdl (‘stanza’) of Y Gododdin, how does this reference
affect the question of Arthur’s historicity, given that Arthur only appears as a
comparison to a warrior of (supposedly) the late 6th-century? One common argument
is that in works such as Y Gododdin the figures named are always believed to be
historical and therefore the Arthurian awdl would seem to indicate that by the 9th- or
10th-century Arthur was believed to have been a historical personage, at least by the
author of Y Gododdin (see Jarman, 1989-90; Bromwich et al, 1991). Whilst
superficially convincing, there are considerable problems with such a judgement.
First, the simple fact of the matter is that we can only identify a few of the characters
that appear in early Welsh heroic poetry; many of the people in the poems appear only
there, so that we have no knowledge of whether they were (or were thought to be)
historical or not – it is an assumption, nothing more, that everyone in these poems was
a real historical figure and as such we cannot take Arthur’s presence in Y Gododdin as
evidence either for his historicity or a belief in his historicity . Second, the assumption
may well not have a sound basis as Dr Rowland has recently noted that the people
who appear in these works (and are recognizable) are nearly all historical figures, that
Gereint like most of the heroes identifiable in this type of poetry is a historical figure
(Rowland, 1990). Given this, there is no reason for making any such assumptions.
Third, in Y Gododdin Arthur is in the remarkable position of appearing ‘only not to
appear’ (Padel, 1994, p.14). Unlike Gordur or the other warriors he is not actually
present at the battle: ‘In the allusion, Arthur is presented as the unrivalled paragon of
martial valour and is thus used to form a highly unusual comparison by rendering
explicitly inferior the honorand of the awdl (‘stanza’). Therefore, if the relevant awdl
and lines can be sustained as Aneirin’s original, this would tell us that by the later
sixth century there existed in North Britain a tradition of a Brittonic superhero
Arthur...’ (Koch, 1996, p.242). Whilst we might not be able to accept Koch’s
assertions on dating, we can say that Arthur is essentially a ‘highly unusual
comparison’, not a warrior who is being honoured; he is not envisaged as being
present at the battle and he is a military ‘superhero’, someone to whose heights of
valour not even a man who killed 300 in one rush could compare. He is therefore in a
different league to the rest of the figures who appear in Y Gododdin and, as such,
there is no reason to think that assumptions drawn from the identifications of a few
characters in the text as a whole, even if they were viable, would apply to him. All the
Y Gododdin reference tells us is that Arthur was seen, by the 9th- or 10th-century, as
‘the impossible comparison’ (Padel, 1994, p.14), a ‘superhero’ to whom not even the
greatest living warrior could compare; it does not tell us whether this reflects a
mythical ‘superhero’ named Arthur or a historical Arthur mythicized and Arthur is, in
5
the text, in no way associated with the defence of post-Roman Britain or any specific
period of history.4
In light of the fact that neither of the above can help in the investigation of Arthur’s
possible ‘historicity’, the case for a historical Arthur rests entirely on two sources, the
Historia Brittonum and the Annales Cambriae, both of which would appear to have a
concept of Arthur that is (at least partly) unequivocally historical. The Historia
Brittonum was written anonymously in A.D. 829/30, the ascription to one ‘Nennius’
now being regarded as false (Dumville, 1974; 1975-6, though see Field, 1996). There
is considerable debate over the nature of the text (see, for example, Dumville, 1986;
Charles-Edwards, 1991; Dumville, 1994; Koch, 1997; Howlett, 1998) but it now
seems clear that the writer of the Historia was not an ignorant and incompetent
compiler who simply ‘made a heap’ of earlier sources but rather an ‘author’ who
wrote the Historia Brittonum with a unity of structure and outlook and engaged in the
active processing of his sources, and this conclusion is endorsed by the researches of
Dr David Howlett who sees the Historia as a work of architectonic genius making use
of the sophisticated ‘Biblical style’ in its construction (Howlett, pers. comm.; 1998,
chp.5. For the Celtic-Latin tradition of Biblical style see Howlett, 1995).
Given the above, we must question to what extent the author altered his sources for
his own purposes, what were the nature of his sources, and thus how far can we trust
what we read in the Historia? Dumville (1986) took a very pessimistic line on this,
arguing that it was a source only for the 9th-century and its concerns. While this view
has been challenged by Thomas Charles-Edwards (1991), who identifies the Historia
as a fusion of the two historical genres, historia gentis and historia ecclesiastica, it is
still clearly the case that ‘even where credit might be given to the supposed source [of
a section of the Historia], the author’s methods...do not encourage us to be confident
about the possibility of recovering usable information about the period whose history
he was narrating. His procedures were synthetic and interpretive, his sources
overwhelmingly non-contemporaneous with the events which they purport to
describe’ (Dumville, 1994, p.419).5 As such the Historia is of very dubious historical
value, for example, in addition to many of its sources being of a similar date to itself
and suspect in nature, the Historia can be shown to portray characters who are
decidedly mythical in origin, such as Hengest and Horsa (see Turville-Petre, 1953-7;
Ward, 1969; Brooks, 1989; Yorke, 1993; Green, n.d.), as genuinely historical. Indeed,
as a number of recent commentators have recognised, the Historia Brittonum is in fact
a synchronising and synthetic history of the type well known from medieval Ireland,
fusing sources for its own political ends and involved in the creation of a full national
pseudo-history, a process which was closely allied with the historicising of legend
(Padel, 1994, p.23; Carey, 1994; Dumville, 1994; Coe and Young, 1995, p.6).
Directly relevant to this question of the ‘historical value’ of the Historia Brittonum is
the fact that the author of the Historia was not writing ‘history’ as we know it today
but was rather engaging in something more akin to that which we would call
sermonising, and this must be remembered in any analysis of the Historia. To try and
read such works as the Historia as linear history is completely false to the methods
and assumptions with which they were composed (see Hanning, 1966; Howlett, 1998;
N. Hinton, pers. comm).
This leads us to Chapter 56 of the Historia Brittonum, which contains the references
to a ‘historical’ Arthur. This is ‘a pseudo-historical account of a suspiciously
6
formulaic list of twelve battles against Germanic invaders’ (Coe and Young, 1995,
p.6), supposedly fought by Arthur. Some have suggested (for example, Chadwick and
Chadwick, 1932; Jones, 1964) that Chapter 56 could have been based on a poem
written in Welsh that was translated into Latin by the author of the Historia. Whilst
this is an interesting suggestion it has to be recognised that such a notion is
speculation and it does not allow us to give this section of the Historia an early date.
Indeed, various considerations indicate that any such hypothetical poem would date to
much the same period as the Historia anyway (see Jackson, 1945-6, p.57; Jackson,
1959a, pp.7-8; Dumville, 1977a, p.188; Jarman, 1981, pp.2-3; Dumville, 1986, pp.13-
4; Charles-Edwards, 1991, pp.21-29; Padel, 1994).6 Furthermore it must not be
forgotten that, with the writer of the Historia Brittonum now seen as an author
actively manipulating his text to create a synthetic pseudo-history rather than a simple
compiler, Chapter 56 was, to some large extent, his creation. This is underlined by Dr
Howlett’s (1998, chp. 5) discovery that this section is written in the highly complex
‘Biblical Style’, showing that Chapter 56 was an integral part of the Historia that was
created, engineered and planned by the author in accordance with his aims and
methodology. As such the notion that Chapter 56 might represent anything like a
postulated earlier source incorporated bodily into the text of the Historia can be
rejected. Instead it seems clear that this chapter, along with its concept of Arthur,
cannot be separated from the Historia as a whole, the aims, methodology, unity of
structure and outlook with which this was created, or, indeed, the general comments
of Dr Dumville and others on the nature of the Historia and its sources noted above
(see further Hanning, 1966; Barber, 1972, p.101ff.; Charles-Edwards, 1991, p.21ff. on
Chapter 56 as an integral and inseparable part of the Historia). The best we can
therefore honestly say is that in the Historia Brittonum, a source of very dubious
historical value (which can be shown to portray mythical figures as genuinely
historical), we have evidence for the idea that Arthur was a historical figure being
current by A.D. 829/30 at the latest.
Our last source, the Annales Cambriae, was compiled in 950s and is sometimes seen
as providing good evidence for Arthur being a historical figure (see Grabowski and
Dumville, 1984 for the dating. Studies and commentaries on the text include Jones,
1964; Alcock, 1971; Hughes, 1980; Grabowski and Dumville, 1984; Dumville, 1990;
Charles-Edwards, 1991 and Koch, 1996. Dumville apparently has a new study of the
Annales forthcoming). It mentions Arthur in two entries: that for A.D. 516 which tells
of the ‘battle of Badon, in which Arthur carried the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ on
his shoulders for three days and three nights, and the Britons were the victors’ and
that for A.D. 537 concerning ‘the battle of Camlann, in which Arthur and Medraut
fell’. In assessing the value of these entries, considerable attention should be paid to
the date of these annals. Jones (1964) and Alcock (1971) were both inclined to see at
least one of these annals as a contemporary record of Arthur and, if it could be
accepted, such a conclusion would ‘prove’ Arthur’s historicity. However, the late Dr
Hughes (1980) in her important and extensive studies of the Annales reached a rather
different (and convincing) conclusion, and this has been built upon by Dumville (in
Grabowski and Dumville, 1984) and Charles-Edwards (1991) – the Annales Cambriae
to 613 is basically a version of the ‘Chronicle of Ireland’, with the sections from 613
to 777 being based on North British materials; there is absolutely no justification for
thinking that any of the pre-613 British entries are drawn from contemporary or even
near-contemporary sources and, rather, they should be seen as retrospective
interpolations dating from between the very late 8th-century (the period in which the
7
‘Chronicle of Ireland’ was first brought together with the post-613 North British
materials at St David’s in order to extend backwards a chronicle kept by that
community from the closing years of the 8th-century onwards) and the mid 10thcentury
(when the Annales reached something like its final form). Indeed, in light of
Dr Dumville’s further researches into the date of this bringing together, the above
terminus post quem for the interpolations might well be shifted forward to the earlymid
10th-century.
Looking at the annals themselves, one very important point must be made: the Badon
entry in the Annales is not an independent witness to Arthur’s historicity. Instead it is
clearly related to the Historia Brittonum’s account (Chapter 56) of Arthur’s eighth
battle at Guinnion Castle, in which Arthur carries an icon on his shoulders into battle
with him, and as such the Annales account either derives from the Historia Brittonum
or its source. Thomas Charles-Edwards has suggested (1991, pp.25-8) that they be
seen as dual elaborations of single original, the entry in neither case being very much
older than the text it is contained in (829/30 for the Historia and the 950s for the
Annales). However, a more convincing explanation has been provided by Professor
John Koch. Koch observes that both the Historia Brittonum and the Annales
Cambriae have the probable confusion of Old Welsh scuit ‘shield’ and scuid
‘shoulder’ in them and notes that ‘that error of transmission is hardly likely to have
come about twice’. He goes on to say that ‘In all details, the Annales Cambriae entry
is more easily understood as derived from Historia Brittonum’s account’, which
would appear to be the most probable scenario on the present evidence and is sound
even without the support of the scuit/d confusion (see Koch, 1996, pp.252-3 for
discussion; also Barber, 1972, p.105). Similarly the second entry regarding Camlann
is best viewed as non-traditional and as having mid 10th-century origins (see Charles-
Edwards, 1991, pp.25-7, 28; Ashe, 1986, pp.76-8; Wood, 1981, pp.59-60; Bromwich,
1978a, p.487; Jarman, 1983, p.109), with the consequence that the Annales Cambriae
cannot really be seen to be of any independent value in making the case for a
‘historical Arthur’. As a result we are forced to return to the text of the Historia
Brittonum.
Whilst general comments on Chapter 56 of the Historia Brittonum have been made, a
more detailed examination of the information contained within it may prove
enlightening. It is easy to assume that all the battles mentioned in Chapter 56 were
remembered as being those fought by Arthur but such assumptions may well be
incorrect. Perhaps the most famous ‘Arthurian’ battle is that of Badon (in montis
badonis) but the reference to this has serious problems. It has long been accepted that
this is the same battle as the obsessio Badonici montis of Gildas’s De Excidio
Britanniae § 26 (see Winterbottom, 1978 for an edition and translation. The date of
publication of this work, and thus the date of Badon, has been much discussed – see
for example Miller, 1975; O’Sullivan, 1978; Sims-Williams, 1983; Lapidge and
Dumville (edd.), 1984; Higham, 1994; Howlett, 1998)7 and one of the arguments
against Arthur’s historicity has always been that Gildas fails to mention Arthur in his
reference to the battle.8 It is usually countered (as Jackson 1959a) that he was
deliberately omitted, either because Gildas didn’t approve of him or because his
contribution to the victory was too well known, but recent work suggests that the
reason Arthur was not mentioned was indeed because he was not associated with the
battle when Gildas wrote. Rather than not naming anyone as the British leader at
Badon, Gildas does indeed assign Badon a victor – Ambrosius Aurelianus. The idea
8
that this figure was the true victor has been previously dismissed on the grounds that
the manuscript (British Library, Cotton Vitellius A.vi) implies a major interval
between Ambrosius and Badon. Dr Oliver Padel has returned to the original
manuscript however and has been able to show that the break evident in
Winterbottom’s edition (1978) has no manuscript authority and rather that Mount
Badon now ‘reads naturally as the victory that crowned the career of Ambrosius
Aurelianus’ (Padel, 1994, pp.16-18 at p.17. For further very good reasons to doubt the
attribution of Badon to Arthur see Jones, 1964; Bromwich, 1978a, p.276; Bromwich
et al, 1991, pp.3-4. There seems to be good evidence for the existence of traditions
about Badon which did not associate it with Arthur – see Bromwich, 1978a). This is
all, of course, of the utmost significance as it further undermines our faith in the
‘traditions’ recorded in the Historia Brittonum – it seems very probable that in the
case of Badon we are seeing a battle that had originally been fought by another leader
being attributed to Arthur by the 9th-century (It is interesting to note that this
conclusion has also recently been reached – apparently without knowldge of Padel’s
work – by Woods (1999, pp.34-38) who, like Dr Padel, returns to the original
manuscript and finds the un-edited text clearly indicating that Gildas saw Badon as
being won by Ambrosius). This tendency would appear not to be restricted to the
battle of Badon – similar cases can be made for the eleventh, ninth and seventh battles
(see Jackson, 1945-6; Jackson, 1949; Bromwich 1975-6 and Padel, 1994, pp.18-19).
The other battles are largely unidentifiable,9 though the tenth, the ‘battle on the bank
of a river which is called Tribruit’, is recorded elsewhere in very early sources as a
traditional battle against werewolves, thus casting further doubt on the Historia’s
value; similarly a good case can be made for seeing Cat Coit Celidon in Chapter 56 as
the entirely mythical battle of trees recorded in the archaic poem from the Book of
Taliesin, Kat Godeu.
Other elements within the body of Chapter 56 appear similarly suspect. For example,
Prof. Hanning (1966, pp.119-20) and Prof. Charles-Edwards (1991, pp.24-5 and 28)
have respectively shown that both the number of battles and the reference to Arthur as
dux bellorum would seem to reflect the needs of the author of the Historia rather than
any postulated earlier source. Whether or not all of the above conclusions regarding
the identification of the battles are accepted it can be said, bringing all this together,
that in the Historia Brittonum, our only really usable source for a ‘historical’ Arthur,
we have a text which cannot be at all relied upon to predate the 9th-century and the
contents of which can be described as being, at the very least, suspect – as such it can
tell us virtually nothing certain about any possible ‘historical’ Arthur. Indeed, the
whole portrayal of Arthur in the Historia Brittonum might be seen to reflect the needs
and aims of the 9th-century author rather than genuinely ancient tradition, as we
might expect given the nature of the text as a whole (see Hanning, 1966; Dumville,
1986; Charles-Edwards, 1991, pp.21-9; Dumville, 1994; Coe and Young, 1995, pp.6-
7; Howlett, 1998). The failure of the Historia as a source of information regarding any
historical Arthur and the consequent intangibility of this ‘historical’ Arthur is a fact
which has often been remarked upon: as Dr Dumville has written, ‘This is not the
stuff of which history can be made’ (1977a, p.188. See further Jackson, 1945-6;
Jackson, 1959a; Jones, 1964; Bromwich, 1974-5; Dumville, 1977a; Charles-Edwards,
1991; Padel, 1994, and also Dumville’s (1994) comments on the Historia as a whole).
What then of the case for Arthur’s historicity? It should be obvious that, even when
we restrict ourselves to the best sources for a ‘historical’ Arthur, as discussed above,
9
we can come to no solid conclusions regarding historicity. The four occurrences of the
name Arthur in southern Scotland and southern Wales in the 6th- and 7th-century
cannot be seen as evidence for a historical Arthur; indeed they defy interpretation if
we have a historical Arthur. The Y Gododdin reference clearly reflects a 9th- or 10thcentury
(and possibly earlier) concept of Arthur as a military ‘superhero’ but this
concept of Arthur could result either from a mythical figure being used as ‘the
impossible comparison’ or a historical figure being mythicized as a paragon of valour
– thus this reference cannot help us to reach any solid conclusions. The case for a
historical Arthur must therefore be based on only two sources, the Historia Brittonum
and the Annales Cambriae, and neither of these can be seen as a reliable witness to
historicity, both being late in date and suspect in content, with the latter very probably
being derivative of the former and the former being a synthetic pseudo-history known
to portray mythical figures as historical – as such, these sources cannot in any way
prove that there was a historical 5th-/6th-century Arthur and no contemporary or nearcontemporary
source makes any mention of him.10 The best we can say is that there
existed by the 9th-century at the latest a concept of Arthur as a historical figure; our
sources are simply not of the quality that would allow us to come to any firmer
conclusion than this.11
Against this we have to set the evidence for the existence of a concept of Arthur as a
legendary figure. Whatever else we might say about it, Y Gododdin (and, it might be
added, Marwnad Cynddylan) very clearly possesses a concept of Arthur as a mythical
‘superhero’, not a historical figure. Similarly in the Historia Brittonum, the earliest
source to portray Arthur as ‘historical’, Arthur appears not only in the ‘historical’
light of Chapter 56 but also in a manifestly legendary folkloric light in Chapter 73 (an
important point that is too often overlooked, particularly as the legends recorded here
are considered to pre-date the 9th-century, see Bromwich and Evans, 1992, p.lxvi),
and this same concept of Arthur as a mythical hero is found in a number of other early
sources, such as the 8th-century Preideu Annwfyn (Padel, 1994; Koch, 1996, pp.263-
5, etc.. See further below). Given this, a concept of Arthur as a figure of myth and
legend can be demonstrated to be present as early as (and, indeed, earlier than) a
concept of Arthur as a historical figure. Here we must return to the methodological
comments made at the beginning of this study. As was there noted, there are
numerous examples of mythical or fictional figures being historicised, often in
association with some important event of the past, and consequently ‘no a priori
judgements can be made as to whether a figure is, in origin, historical, mythical or
fictional – each individual case must (and can only) be decided by a close
examination of all the relevant material.’ Each of these possibilities is equally as
likely to be true, on a priori grounds, as the others; the burden of proof lies with all
sides. In the absence of such proof we simply cannot assume – in the ‘no smoke
without fire’ mould – that one explanation of figures such as Arthur enjoys priority
over the others: it does not. Thus whilst the above ‘legendary Arthur’ might be the
result of a historical figure being mythicised, it is at least equally as likely that, in the
absence of good evidence either way, the above ‘historical Arthur’ was a result of a
legendary figure being historicised (it is perhaps worth noting with regards to this that
the ‘process of historicising legends was a widespread feature of Celtic literary
activity in the Middle Ages’ (Padel, 1994, p.23)).
Hence in answer to the question ‘Was there a historical Arthur?’, the sources being
questioned (i.e. the Historia Brittonum and the Annales Cambriae) can only answer ‘perhaps, maybe’ – they cannot say ‘no there wasn’t’ for obvious reasons but equally
they cannot say ‘yes there was’: the nature and quality of the sources for a ‘historical’
Arthur is quite simply such that they neither show nor demand a historical figure to lie
behind them and we most definitely cannot assume one in the absence of this. Whilst
it is possible that Chapter 56 of the Historia reflects, to some extent, the distorted but
genuine traditions of a ‘historical Arthur’, it is at least equally as likely, given the
nature of our sources, their claims to reliability and the fact that a concept of Arthur as
a mythical hero existed from at least the 8th-century, that the opposite is true and that
these references simply reflect a legendary figure (such as that of Chapter 73 of the
Historia) historicised by the 9th-century. Arthur could well be a mythical figure
portrayed as historical by the author of the Historia Brittonum in just the same way as
Hengest and Horsa were mythical figures portrayed as historical by both Bede and the
author of the Historia. In the absence of a priori assumptions regarding historicity, a
detailed investigation of the ‘relevant material’ (as required by the above
methodology) has left us with a situation in which the information contained within
these late references could still reflect either a historical figure or a legendary figure
historicised with no convincing reason, from the internal evidence of these few
sources, for accepting one alternative over the other. To put it another way, there is no
obvious reason from the material discussed above to prefer the portrayal of Arthur in
Chapter 56 of the 9th-century Historia Brittonum over that in Chapter 73, or vice
versa.12
Part of the problem, of course, lies with methodology. When the case for a historical
5th-/6th-century Arthur is made, it involves trawling the pre-Galfridian source
material for anything that might be used to back it up. The interest is not with the pre-
Galfridian material itself and with what it tells us but rather with what it can tell us
about a possibly historical figure called Arthur. The texts selected to answer this
question, as in the above analysis, are thus divorced from the context of the whole
body of pre-Galfridian material in which they must surely be viewed and of which
they form an integral part. By asking ‘Was there a historical Arthur?’ one forces the
texts to answer ‘perhaps, maybe’; they have no other choice because, on the basis of
the few sources selected and the viewing of these few sources in isolation, they are
incapable of denying that there was such a figure just as they are incapable of
confirming it. As such this ‘perhaps, maybe’ is in reality valueless. What this means
is that conclusions regarding Arthur’s historicity can and should only be drawn via a
sound methodology, namely by looking at all the available evidence and allowing it to
‘lead’, not forcing it to conform to preconceived notions. The Historia Brittonum and
Annales Cambriae references must be seen in the context of all the early Arthurian
material, not as discrete pieces of information that can be mined for ‘facts’. No
judgements of any value can be made by attacking the pre-Galfridian corpus in a
piecemeal fashion – one has to look at the weight of the body of evidence as a whole.
To quote Dr Padel, ‘the nature of the inquiry, which hitherto has always started with
the natural question ‘was there a historical Arthur?’, has determined its outcome
(‘Yes, perhaps’)’ (Padel, 1994, p.2. Ashe (1995) also makes this point). By
commencing an examination of the pre-Galfridian material with a view to discovering
(or, at least, investigating) a truly historical figure of the post-Roman period the
conclusions reached are unavoidably biased and the investigation ignores the majority
of the available early evidence.
TO BE CONTINUED...
