Martin Luther King Memorial at the National Mall

IN A memorable 2011 VFR discussion titled, “Contrary Thoughts on the Martin Luther King Holiday and its Significance in American Life,” Lawrence Auster mentioned King’s activities on the night of his famous “I Have a Dream” speech, which has been the subject of an outpouring of racial atonement in the media this week, a sort of Yom Kippur for white liberals. In that discussion, Auster wrote:

As for MLK’s sexual activities, according to his own long-time lieutenant Ralph Abernathy, he did carry on with a great variety of women more or less continuously. He even was having a very audible sex session with a woman in his hotel room immediately after he delivered the “I have a dream speech,” while his confederates, gathered in the main room of the suite, heard the session going on. That he behaved in such a manner on that historic day suggests a person who is seriously disordered. On another occasion, which as I remember was just before his death, as told in Abernathy’s book, King got into sleazy arguments and physical fights with two different paramours on the same evening. The evidence is established that MLK was not just a man who had an adulterous liaison here and there as he traveled around the country, living and working under tremendous stress, and an object of awe and admiration, a situation that will naturally present sexual temptations, but that he was spectacularly out of control in his sexual life. A man who is spectacularly out of control in his sexual life is not a person who can properly be seen as a moral leader. Also there is evidence that King was aware of this darkness in himself, was deeply ashamed of it, but felt powerless to do anything about it, and let it continue to control him.

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