Question I was wondering, in the Philadelphia office, we've been doing a lot of things, and one of them, is, on Martin Luther King Day, Michelle actually did a class on Martin Luther King. And, before she did a class, I've been thinking about some things. She told me about how King wanted to get rid of the ghettoes and things like that. And, it sort of sparked an interest of my own, on education--I guess for everyone, not just the ghettoes.

I read the book To Save the Nation, and you outlined some plans you had as far as education. Now, the thing I don't really understand, is how we could do this thing, massively... If you have these great ideas--how do you change the whole system of education for the better?

And, I mean, because, I have a design class. And we had to come up with 100 ideas for a certain project. And the entire class could only come up with 30 ideas. And, that shows a kind of fracture in the way we think, I guess. And, I was wondering how we could change that, in the school system?

LaRouche: We're in the same ballpark, to come back to the same thing I started with: Don't look for particular ideas, of how to reform education. Look at the fact, that the so-called "leading followers" of Martin Luther King--those associated with him, after he was murdered, all failed. Starting with Jesse Jackson--the older Jesse Jackson; I think the son is a little bit more interesting. But, they failed. They all ran to the government foundations, different foundations. They all began to peddle their rear end on the street, in one way or the other.

What was the difference between them, and Martin?  A very fundamental difference. And that goes to this question of education: The question of principle, the question of leadership, the question of the tragic versus the sublime. Martin, like Jeanne d'Arc, had no fear of immortality. As I know the other people around him, to the degree I know them--and I know some personally, closely and so forth, and I have some very good observations by close associates of that operation, who know something about it. They all were deadly afraid of immortality.

Martin was murdered. We don't know exactly who ordered the murder, directly. We know who ordered the murder in general: It was J. Edgar Hoover. And the so-called--.

The murder of Martin, was a part of the 1966-1968 Nixon campaign for President, based on the so-called "Southern Strategy." And, the point was--and these guys, who organized the "black power" movement, organized against Martin, on behalf of Nixon! And, people wouldn't admit it. They wouldn't admit it: That they were the tools, of the Nixon crowd. And, of J. Edgar Hoover, and so forth. It all came out, in the wash a little later. Gradually, we began to find out what their real careers were, who owned them.

And, those who were not corrupt, in the sense of being intentionally corrupt, were cowards, like Hamlet. As all of the leaders around Abernathy, my dear friend, you know, the same thing.  They all became corrupt! They ended up working for the Moonies! Or similar kinds of things. So, they betrayed the cause.

Now, you go back to this issue of Frederick Douglass, where you're talking about education in general, particularly the education of Americans of African descent: You're talking about Frederick Douglass, and what he represented. What was Frederick Douglass's standard for the struggle for freedom of slaves?  The highest level of education possible, is the road to freedom. What you are, how you develop yourself--that is who you are! Not whether you got chains on you or not, but who you are! You're a slave, if you're a slave in your own mind! If you can free yourself of the slavery in your mind, you can free yourself of the slavery of the chains, in due course.

Frederick Douglass represented that.

Now, what did these swine do, immediately after Lincoln was shot? They took the system of education, of the struggle for freedom, typified by Frederick Douglass--who was a great thinker; whose son was an important Classical musician, and so on and so forth. And they said, "We must not over-educate the freed slaves, because they will be discontented with the kind of employment they're going to get. So, we must not educate them above their expectation in life." This is the beginning of Jim Crow. And, it was done by the so-called "pro-abolitionist" crowd from Boston, and other similar kinds of places.

The problem here, all along, has been this idea of "relevant education," for Americans of African descent. Crap! Every American's entitled to the same opportunities in education. The same kind of education; the same kind of knowledge! This cultural relativism, just means somebody's going to be on top, and somebody's going to be on the bottom. The idea of equality, true equality, which is, first of all, equality of the mind: We don't want children to learn something, which is "relevant" to their condition of slavery. We want them to understand something which is human. Their power in humanity. Not this so-called "game," which the Ford Foundation and others plugged.

And, if we have this understanding, on the question of education, that what Martin represented--forget the fact that he was a very well educated person, in his own way; Boston University graduate in theology, divinity; well-educated. And a very superior person, who was sitting there, in Alabama, fairly obscure, when the ministers associated with him, recognize him as being an exceptional person, of exceptional talent. And, they voted him in, to take this job. And he accepted it.

And, he went on, from that experience of taking that job, to become the leader of a struggle for freedom, a true struggle for freedom. He became so successful, that they killed him.

Because they understood the principle of tragedy: If you kill the one guy who's leading a movement, who represents the sublime, you can destroy the movement. Whenever you have a movement, which is based essentially on one leading person, who's a competent leader, who represents the sublime--as Martin did! See, Martin wasn't struggling for African-American freedom: He was struggling for the freedom for everybody! That was his power! Everybody knew that Martin was a world leader, a national leader. He was not a leader of an under-class.

And his idea was, that you eliminate the under-class, by establishing equality. And he was for everything! He should have been President of the United States! Morally, he was qualified to be the President, where others were not: Because he represented the sublime. He was willing, as he said, in his mountaintop speech, to put his life on the line, for the sake of a fundamental change in society; not a change for persons of African descent--a fundamental in society! To bring about a just society.

And morally, he was qualified to be President of the United States, on the day he made that speech. Because that's the commitment we should require, of a President, is that kind of commitment.

And, when they chopped him off, and other people, who were otherwise well-meaning, who had worked with him, without his leadership, they were impotent! And, the whole thing disintegrated.

Why was it done? It's obvious, to anyone looking back--it's obvious.

Nixon, in 1966 had gone to Mississippi, in the aftermath of Johnson's signing of the two civil rights bills. And he'd gone down there, and he met with the Ku Klux Klan, and Trent Lott! And Trent was probably a member of the Klan at that time. And, they started what became the "Southern Strategy": To get all the racists in the Democratic Party in the South, to come over to the Republican Party behind Nixon. And, thus the Republican Party could take over the Presidency, and they could establish fascism in the United States. Under a Nixon Administration, directed by Henry Kissinger.

And Henry Kissinger was a product of, what? Henry Kissinger was a product of--the Nashville Agrarians! The Nashville Agrarians were the grandsons of the founders of the Ku Klux Klan! Henry Kissinger was educated, where? At Harvard! By a Prof. William Yandell Elliott, who  was a member of the Nashville Agrarians. The New York Times, and the literary societies in the United States, or literary magazines, are being influenced largely by the Nashville Agrarians. The racists were taking over America!

And, Martin Luther King was the biggest threat they had to their program. So, they killed him.

And, when he was toppled, everybody around him, who had been associated with him as followers, went the other way. And Jesse Jackson was the first. Jesse Jackson was not standing anywhere near Martin, when Martin was shot. But Jesse went out there. Got on a plane. Got to Chicago. Rubbed some blood on his shirt, and when out there, and said, "I was standing next to Martin." And that was the first time he became known as a "pusher."

So, this is the issue. What is needed here, in the case of education, is leadership, which can be trusted, by people who are confused and in doubt. People need inspiration, of leadership they can trust. If a Martin Luther King were alive today, with his qualities, and started an education movement, that's where he'd start. He'd say, "We've got to do this. We've got to go to the mountaintop."  And, people who are reluctant to take that kind of education, would seize it, because they were following a leader, just as some people in France followed Jeanne d'Arc. A hero, who represents the sublime. Who inspires in people around him, the confidence to do something.

Yes. We can provide the other ingredients. The ingredients required for the American of African descent is the same as anybody else's. No difference: They're Americans! I know this, because I worked with Africa. The typical American of African descent has no idea, in the world, what Africa is! They're Americans. They don't know anything about it. I know about it. I dealt with this for years, for decades. They're Americans!

And, they have to stand up on their own conscience, and their own dignity, and say, "We are Americans. We have the right to be part of the leadership in policy-making for this country. And we have a right to access to the knowledge we need to do that job."

And, I would start and say, as I've said, often enough: "Martin Luther King should have become President." If they hadn't killed him. If that idea gets across, you won't have a problem in getting people to accept the kind of education they need. If they see the inside of Martin's mind, as I have. This man was a great man; and we lost him.

And we need leaders who can inspire. Who can be recognized as people, as inspiring, who are valid, as the other people around Martin were not valid. They ran the other way. There was no established national leadership of the civil rights movement, once Martin was shot. They all ran the other way. And, that was the great demoralization, which destroyed it. Then all the funny-funnies took over, from 1968 on. And I was there. I was involved in it.

And, so the first thing? Yes. What I otherwise say on education, what we need, but it work, unless you can inspire the recipients of that proposed education, to desire it. And to have an image of themselves, which is not a second-class image. Which in the history of the so-called "black education" in the United States, since the Civil War, has been dominated by this thing: "Let's not educate them above their station." And, if you say, "No. Martin should have been President," then, that's a different image. Then, education becomes important. And the Frederick Douglass image, then, becomes the connection to Martin Luther King. [applause]

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