The Goddess: A Classic from the Golden Age of Chinese Cinema, Starring the Silent Film Icon Ruan Lingyu (1934)

in Film | November 18th, 2014

Ruan Lingyu deliv­ered one of the great­est per­for­mances in silent cin­e­ma, and yet to West­ern audi­ences, she is almost com­plete­ly unknown.

Up until the Impe­r­i­al Japan­ese Army invad­ed the city in 1937, Shang­hai was the thriv­ing, cos­mopoli­tan cul­tur­al heart of Chi­na. The first Chi­nese film was made in Shang­hai in 1905 and, for the next cou­ple of decades, cos­tumed retellings of tra­di­tion­al tales dom­i­nat­ed the indus­try. Then, in the ‘30s, film­mak­ers like Sun Yu and Cheng Bugao start­ed to make grit­ty, real­is­tic movies about the strug­gles of the low­er class. Per­haps the great­est of these films is Wu Yonggang’s 1935 mas­ter­piece The God­dess, fea­tur­ing an absolute­ly heart­break­ing per­for­mance by Ruan. You can watch it above.

On paper, the sto­ry of The God­dess could eas­i­ly be mis­tak­en for films by Josef Von Stern­berg or G.W. Pab­st – a “fall­en woman” weepie where the pro­tag­o­nist suf­fers for the sins of hyp­o­crit­i­cal soci­ety. Ruan plays the name­less lead, a beau­ti­ful, impov­er­ished woman forced to sell her body to feed and edu­cate her son. She soon falls in with The Boss, a porcine, dis­solute gang­ster who serves as her pimp. She scrapes and strug­gles to keep her son out of the same gut­ter where she finds her­self trapped. Yet, at every step, she and her son are taunt­ed and shunned. When she spends every­thing she has to put her son into a good school, the child is expelled sim­ply because the oth­er par­ents don’t approve of her. “Even though I am a degen­er­ate woman,” she begs to the school board, “don’t I have the right as a moth­er to raise him as a good boy?”

While silent film act­ing tend­ed towards the histri­on­ic, Ruan’s per­for­mance is nat­u­ral­is­tic while still hav­ing an emo­tion­al raw­ness that few actors could match. Just watch the scene where the pro­tag­o­nist is watch­ing her son per­form dur­ing a school play. Her expres­sion of unadul­ter­at­ed parental pride slow­ly cur­dles as she hears vicious whis­pers from near­by haus­fraus. Like Gre­ta Gar­bo or Mar­lene Diet­rich, Ruan has a wound­ed beau­ty that sim­ply riv­ets you to the screen.

Like many of the char­ac­ters she played, Ruan came from hum­ble begin­nings and had per­pet­u­al roman­tic trou­ble. When her com­pli­cat­ed per­son­al life became the fod­der for press, she took an over­dose of sleep­ing pills on March 8, 1935, leav­ing behind a note that read, “Gos­sip is a fear­ful thing.” She was only 24. Ruan’s funer­al pro­ces­sion was over three miles long and three women were report­ed­ly so dis­traught over her death that they com­mit­ted sui­cide. The funer­al even end­ed up on the front page of the New York Times who called it “the most spec­tac­u­lar funer­al of the cen­tu­ry.”

In 1992, Mag­gie Che­ung played Ruan for Stan­ley Kwan’s Cen­ter Stage (1992), which end­ed up win­ning a Best Actress prize at the Berlin Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val.

The God­dess will be added to our list of Great Silent Films, part of our larg­er col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

101 Free Silent Films: The Great Clas­sics

A Page of Mad­ness: The Lost, Avant Garde Mas­ter­piece from the Ear­ly Days of Japan­ese Cin­e­ma (1926)

65 Free Char­lie Chap­lin Films Free Online

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

A History of Ideas: Animated Videos Explain Theories of Simone de Beauvoir, Aristotle & Other Philosophers

in Animation, Philosophy | November 17th, 2014

The UK’s Open Uni­ver­si­ty has become a depend­able source of very short, online video intro­duc­tions to all sorts of things, from weighty sub­jects like reli­gion, eco­nom­ics, and lit­er­ary the­o­ry to lighter, but no less inter­est­ing fare like the art and sci­ence of bike design. With breezy tone and seri­ous intent, their ani­mat­ed “60-Sec­ond Adven­tures” make seem­ing­ly arcane aca­d­e­m­ic ideas acces­si­ble to laypeo­ple with no pri­or back­ground. Now they’ve teamed up with writer and BBC broad­cast­er Melvyn Bragg of In Our Time fame for a series of video shorts that run just a lit­tle over 60 sec­onds each, with ani­ma­tions by Andrew Park of Cogni+ive, and nar­ra­tion by comedic actor Har­ry Shear­er from Spinal Tap, The Simp­sons, and, most recent­ly, Nixon’s the One.

Drawn from Bragg’s BBC 4 radio pro­gram “A His­to­ry of Ideas,” the shorts intro­duce exact­ly that—each one a pré­cis of a long­stand­ing philo­soph­i­cal prob­lem like Free Will vs. Deter­min­ism (top) or the Prob­lem of Evil (above). Unlike some sim­i­lar­ly rapid out­lines, these videos—like the tie-in Bragg radio program—don’t sim­ply sketch out the issues in abstract; they draw from spe­cif­ic approach­es from fields as diverse as neu­ro­science, moral phi­los­o­phy, the­ol­o­gy, and fem­i­nist the­o­ry. In the video on free will at the top, for exam­ple, Shear­er intro­duces us to the Libet exper­i­ments, per­formed in the 1980s by neu­rol­o­gist Ben­jamin Libet to test our abil­i­ty to make vol­un­tary, con­scious deci­sions. The “Free Will Defense” video above references—at least visu­al­ly—Bertrand Russell’s noto­ri­ous teapot in its rather skep­ti­cal pre­sen­ta­tion of this the­o­log­i­cal bug­bear.

Some of the videos get even more spe­cif­ic, focus­ing in on the work of one thinker whose con­tri­bu­tions are cen­tral to our under­stand­ing of cer­tain con­cepts. Just above in “Fem­i­nine Beau­ty,” we have an intro­duc­tion to exis­ten­tial philoso­pher Simone de Beauvoir’s argu­ment that fem­i­nine beau­ty, and gen­der pre­sen­ta­tion more gen­er­al­ly, is social­ly con­struct­ed by pre­vail­ing patri­ar­chal norms—a con­cept cen­tral to the fem­i­nist work of lat­er thinkers like Judith But­ler. And below, we have the 18th cen­tu­ry con­cept of the “Sub­lime,” a sup­pos­ed­ly high­er, more threat­en­ing and inef­fa­ble aes­thet­ic mode, as dis­cussed in the work of con­ser­v­a­tive polit­i­cal philoso­pher Edmund Burke (also a sub­ject dear to Immanuel Kant, who had his own take on the idea).

See more “A His­to­ry of Ideas” short, ani­mat­ed videos—including “Diotima’s Lad­der,” “The Gold­en Ratio,” and “The Harm Prin­ci­ple”—on Youtube or the BBC Radio 4 site. The scripts for the clips, we should add, were writ­ten by Nigel War­bur­ton, whose Phi­los­o­phy Bites pod­cast you should nev­er miss.

And for much more exten­sive dis­cus­sions of these age-old philo­soph­i­cal ques­tions with real liv­ing “philoso­phers, the­olo­gians, lawyers, neu­ro­sci­en­tists, his­to­ri­ans and math­e­mati­cians,” down­load episodes of Melvyn Bragg’s “A His­to­ry of Ideas” show here or on iTunes.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

120+ Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

“Hei­deg­ger in the Kitchen”: Alain de Botton’s Video Essay Explains the Philosopher’s Con­cept of Being

8‑Bit Phi­los­o­phy: Pla­to, Sartre, Der­ri­da & Oth­er Thinkers Explained With Vin­tage Video Games

The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps – Peter Adamson’s Pod­cast Still Going Strong

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Radio David Byrne: Stream Free Music Playlists Created Every Month by the Frontman of Talking Heads

in Music | November 17th, 2014

Pho­to cour­tesy of LivePict.com CC-BY-SA‑3.0.

David Byrne has played many roles: front­man of Talk­ing Heads, archi­tec­tur­al observ­er, com­pos­er of opera (specif­i­cal­ly opera about Imel­da Mar­cos, for­mer first lady of the Philip­pines, the coun­try from which I write this post today), enthu­si­as­tic musi­cal col­lab­o­ra­tor, urban cycling advo­cate — and that only counts the ones he’s played here in Open Cul­ture posts. (Some­day, we’ve got to write up his love of Pow­er­point.) But did you know he’s also done a free inter­net radio show, and for near­ly a decade at that? “For one or two days a month I queue up David Byrne’s Radio Sta­tion on the web and lis­ten to his two-hour loop of new, won­der­ful, deli­cious tunes,” writes Kevin Kel­ly in a Cool Tools post from 2008, just over halfway into the life of the show so far. “Rock-star Byrne is a pro­fes­sion­al musi­cal pio­neer, admirably eclec­tic in his taste, yet astute­ly dis­crim­i­nat­ing at the same time. Over years of lis­ten­ing to all kinds of music — exper­i­men­tal, indie, inter­na­tion­al, fringe, clas­si­cal, pop — he’s heard enough to make some great rec­om­men­da­tions.”

Kel­ly cites such tan­ta­liz­ing Byrnean playlists as “Ice­landic Pop,” “Opera high­lights,” “Eclec­tic Stuff,” and “African Fusion Pop.” More recent ses­sions, which can run for three hours or longer, include “South­ern Writ­ers,” “Songs of Burt Bacharach,” and “Raga Rock.” A new playlist comes out every month. You can list to his August playlist, “Cus­tom Jack­ets, Now and Then,” a cel­e­bra­tion of women “who have been taint­ed or touched by coun­try music” includ­ing Neko Case, Emmy­lou Har­ris, Gillian Welch, and Lucin­da Williams. You can also hear a brand new Novem­ber playlist on the davidbyrne.com front page, which uses a new­er audio play­er than all the pre­vi­ous install­ments. “Viva Mex­i­co Part 1” promis­es a selec­tion of artists from that vibrant coun­try who “have found ways to incor­po­rate their Mex­i­can musi­cal her­itage and cul­ture into what might be called the glob­al pop form,” result­ing not in “imi­ta­tions of North Amer­i­can or UK alt-rock” but songs that “sound like noth­ing but them­selves.” And if you can’t trust David Byrne to know musi­cal unique­ness when he hears it, who can you trust?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Byrne: How Archi­tec­ture Helped Music Evolve

David Byrne: From Talk­ing Heads Front­man to Lead­ing Urban Cyclist

David Byrne’s Grad­u­a­tion Speech Offers Trou­bling and Encour­ag­ing Advice for Stu­dents in the Arts

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Watch the New Trailer for the Upcoming Joan Didion Documentary, We Tell Ourselves Stories In Order to Live

in Film, Literature | November 17th, 2014

It did­n’t take long, only 25 hours, for Grif­fin Dunne and Susanne Ros­tock to raise enough mon­ey on Kick­starter to com­plete a doc­u­men­tary on nov­el­ist and essay­ist Joan Did­ion. Ini­tial­ly hop­ing to raise $80,000, they’ve already received com­mit­ments exceed­ing $211,000, and they still have four days to go.

We Tell Our­selves Sto­ries In Order to Live will be the first and only doc­u­men­tary about Joan Did­ion. And it will be made with Joan, using her own words.  The trail­er for the doc­u­men­tary just pre­miered on Vogue. It’s fit­ting, see­ing that Did­ion land­ed her first job, at Vogue, after win­ning an essay con­test spon­sored by the mag­a­zine. She also pub­lished her sem­i­nal essay, ““On Self Respect” in Vogue in 1961.

You can watch the trail­er above. Also don’t miss our roundup from ear­li­er this year: 13 Mas­ter­ful Essays by Joan Did­ion Free Online

via @michikokakutani

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and Google Plus and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox.

Watch Harvard Students Fail the Literacy Test Louisiana Used to Suppress the Black Vote in 1964

in History | November 16th, 2014

This sum­mer, we revis­it­ed a lit­er­a­cy test from the Jim Crow South. Giv­en pre­dom­i­nant­ly to African-Amer­i­cans liv­ing in Louisiana in 1964, the test con­sist­ed of 30 ambigu­ous ques­tions to be answered in 10 min­utes. One wrong answer, and the test-tak­er was denied the right to vote. It was all part of the South’s attempt to impede free and fair elec­tions, and ensure that African-Amer­i­cans had no access to pol­i­tics or mech­a­nisms of pow­er.

How hard was the test? You can take it your­self below (see an answer key here)  and find out. Just recent­ly, the same lit­er­a­cy test was also admin­is­tered to Har­vard stu­dents — stu­dents who can, if any­thing, ace a stan­dard­ized test — and not one passed. The ques­tions are tricky. But even worse, if push comes to shove, the ques­tions and answers can be inter­pret­ed in dif­fer­ent ways by offi­cials grad­ing the exam. Carl Miller, a res­i­dent tutor at Har­vard and a fel­low at the law school, told The Dai­ly Mail: “Louisiana’s lit­er­a­cy test was designed to be failed. Just like all the oth­er lit­er­a­cy tests issued in the South at the time, this test was not about test­ing lit­er­a­cy at all. It was a … devi­ous mea­sure that the State of Louisiana used to dis­en­fran­chise peo­ple that had the wrong skin tone or belonged to the wrong social class.” (Some­times the test was also giv­en to poor whites.) Above, you can watch scenes from the Har­vard exper­i­ment and stu­dents’ reac­tions.

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and Google Plus and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox.

Follow Us on Facebook, Twitter … Or, Better Yet, Get Our Daily Email

in Uncategorized | November 16th, 2014

Read­ers often ask us, “What’s the best way to make sure that I don’t miss any of your posts?” First and fore­most we rec­om­mend sign­ing up for our dai­ly email. Each day, you will receive an email that tidi­ly wraps up every­thing we’ve fea­tured on the site over a 24 hour peri­od. Faith­ful­ly it will appear in your inbox each day. Sign up for the free email here. And, to ini­ti­ate the email sub­scrip­tion, please make sure that you click the ver­i­fi­ca­tion link in the email you will receive upon reg­is­tra­tion.

You can always fol­low us on Twit­ter (@openculture) where we high­light our dai­ly posts, plus many oth­er cul­tur­al curiosi­ties found on the web. Def­i­nite­ly give that a shot.

You can also like our Face­book page, and then Face­book will decide whether you get to see our posts. They just do the think­ing for you. Lucky you.

Final­ly, con­sid­er sub­scrib­ing to our RSS feed, espe­cial­ly if you use feed read­ers like Feed­ly. That will let you keep tabs on each and every post. The RSS address is: http://feeds.feedburner.com/OpenCulture

The Great War: Video Series Will Document How WWI Unfolded, Week-by-Week, for the Next 4 Years

in History | November 14th, 2014

This ambi­tious project deserves a men­tion: Medi­akraft Net­works has launched a video series on Youtube that will doc­u­ment how World War I unfold­ed, week-by-week, over a four-year peri­od, from 1914 to 1918. A new video will be released every Thurs­day, and it will reflect on what hap­pened dur­ing the same week 100 years pri­or. Launched in late July, the series has already cov­ered 16 weeks of The Great War, with lat­est video show­ing how World War I became a defen­sive war and trench­es began to scar the land. Host­ed by Indy Nei­dell (read an inter­view with him here), each video fea­tures archival footage from British Pathé, the news­reel archive com­pa­ny that put over 85,000 his­tor­i­cal films on YouTube ear­li­er this year.

You can watch all 16 episodes above, along with a few help­ful primers that explain why the War start­ed in the first place. To view new videos as they get released, keep tabs on this Youtube page. There should even­tu­al­ly be close to 300 episodes. Quite an under­tak­ing!

As a side note, I noticed that a Dutch pod­cast (in Eng­lish) will cov­er “The First World War in 261 weeks.” That’s the title of the pod­cast itself. Find it here.

via Kottke.org

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free: British Pathé Puts Over 85,000 His­tor­i­cal Films on YouTube

Free Online His­to­ry Cours­es

The His­to­ry of Rome in 179 Pod­casts

Learn The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy in 197 Pod­casts (With More to Come)

Read Joyce’s Ulysses Line by Line, for the Next 22 Years, with Frank Delaney’s Pod­cast

The Art of Leo Tolstoy: See His Drawings in the War & Peace Manuscript & Other Literary Texts

in Art, Literature | November 14th, 2014

Like all great writ­ers, Leo Tol­stoy has inspired a great many visu­al adap­ta­tions of his work, of vary­ing degrees of qual­i­ty. Just this past month, the Vol­gograd Fine Arts Muse­um in Rus­sia held an exhi­bi­tion of “92 graph­ic works from the col­lec­tion of the Yas­naya Polyana Estate-Muse­um,” the author’s coun­try estate and birth­place. Each work of art “recre­ates immor­tal images of the char­ac­ters, recon­structs the his­toric epoch, and reflects the dynam­ics” of his mas­ter­pieces Anna Karen­i­na and War and Peace, as well as his short sto­ries for chil­dren.

Trav­el to Moscow, how­ev­er, to the Leo Tol­stoy State Muse­um, and you’ll find Tolstoy’s own visu­al art, which he sketched both on the very man­u­script pages of those nov­els and sto­ries and in the note­books that inspired them. At the top of the post, see a man­u­script page of War and Peace with the fig­ures of a boy and a well-dressed woman drawn very faint­ly into the text. Direct­ly above, see a sketch for his ABC book, a primer he cre­at­ed for his peas­ant schools at Yas­naya Polyana.

Tol­stoy didn’t only illus­trate his own work; he also made some sketch­es of his con­tem­po­rary Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days—see one above—which he read in French with his chil­dren. These few draw­ings may seem like lit­tle more than doo­dles, but Tol­stoy in fact had a very fine hand, as you can see in the two sketch­es below from note­books he kept dur­ing his time in the Cau­cusus. It was then, while serv­ing in the army, that Tol­stoy began writ­ing, and the note­books he kept would even­tu­al­ly inspire his 1863 nov­el, The Cos­sacks.

These draw­ings are so well ren­dered they make me think Tol­stoy could have become a visu­al artist as well as a great writer. But per­haps the exact­ing nov­el­ist was too harsh a crit­ic to allow him­self to pur­sue that course. Over forty years after mak­ing these draw­ings, Tol­stoy pub­lished his thoughts on art in essay called What is Art?. In it, the great Russ­ian writer cre­ates what Gary R. Jahn in The Jour­nal of Aes­thet­ics and Art Crit­i­cism admits are some “unrea­son­ably nar­row, exclu­sive” cri­te­ria for defin­ing art.

Tol­stoy also pro­pounds some­thing akin to a meme the­o­ry, which he calls a qual­i­ty of “infec­tious­ness.” Art, he writes, is “a human activ­i­ty con­sist­ing in this, that one man con­scious­ly, by means of cer­tain exter­nal signs, hands on to oth­ers feel­ings he has lived through, and that oth­er peo­ple are infect­ed by these feel­ings and also expe­ri­ence them.” At the cru­cial­ly for­ma­tive peri­od when these draw­ings were made, Tol­stoy obvi­ous­ly decid­ed he could best “infect” oth­ers through writ­ing. That same year, he pub­lished the first part of his auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal tril­o­gy, Child­hood, under a pseu­do­nym, fol­lowed quick­ly by Boy­hood. By the time he retired from the army in 1856 and left the Cau­cusus for St. Peters­burg, he was already a lit­er­ary celebri­ty. See more of Tolstoy’s draw­ings from his Cau­cusus note­books here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Leo Tol­stoy Cre­ates a List of the 50+ Books That Influ­enced Him Most (1891)

Rare Record­ing: Leo Tol­stoy Reads From His Last Major Work in Four Lan­guages, 1909

Fyo­dor Dos­to­evsky Draws Elab­o­rate Doo­dles In His Man­u­scripts

The Art of William Faulkn­er: Draw­ings from 1916–1925

The Draw­ings of Jean-Paul Sartre

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Watch Entr’Acte: René Clair’s Dadaist Masterpiece, Scored by Erik Satie and with Cameos by Marcel Duchamp & Man Ray (1924)

in Art, Film | November 14th, 2014

René Clair’s 1924 avant-garde mas­ter­piece Entr’Acte opens with a can­non fir­ing into the audi­ence and that’s pret­ty much a state­ment of pur­pose for the whole movie. Clair want­ed to shake up the audi­ence, throw­ing it into a dis­ori­ent­ing world of visu­al brava­do and nar­ra­tive absur­di­ty. You can watch it above.

The film was orig­i­nal­ly designed to be screened between two acts of Fran­cis Picabia’s 1924 opera Relâche. Picabia report­ed­ly wrote the syn­op­sis for the film on a sin­gle sheet of paper while din­ing at the famous Parisian restau­rant Maxim’s and sent it to Clair. While that hand­writ­ten note was the gen­e­sis of what we see on screen, it’s Clair sheer cin­e­mat­ic inven­tive­ness that is why the film is still shown in film schools today.

Clair sought to cre­ate a work of “pure cin­e­ma,” so he filled the film with just about every cam­era trick in the book: slow motion, fast motion, split screen and super­im­po­si­tions among oth­ers. The cam­era is unbound and wild­ly kinet­ic. At one point, Clair mounts the cam­era upside down to the front of a roller­coast­er.

In true Dadaist fash­ion, Clair cre­ates a series of strik­ing images – an upskirt shot of a leap­ing bal­le­ri­na; a funer­al pro­ces­sion bound­ing down the street in slow motion; a corpse spring­ing out of a cof­fin – that seem to cry out for an expla­na­tion but remain mad­den­ing­ly, fre­quent­ly hilar­i­ous­ly obscure.

The movie also serves as a class por­trait of the Parisian avant-garde scene of the ear­ly ‘20s. Picabia and Erik Satie – who scored the movie – are the ones who fired that can­non. In anoth­er scene, Mar­cel Duchamp and Man Ray can be seen play­ing chess with each oth­er on a Parisian rooftop.

Com­pared to Luis Bunuel and Sal­vador Dali’s noto­ri­ous 1928 short Un Chien Andalou – a movie that is still quite shock­ing today – Entr’Acte is a much lighter, fun­nier work, one that looks to thwart bour­geois expec­ta­tions of nar­ra­tive log­ic but doesn’t quite try to shock them into indig­nant out­rage. In fact, to mod­ern eyes, the movie feels at times like a par­tic­u­lar­ly unhinged Mon­ty Python skit. Picabia him­self once assert­ed that Entr’acte “respects noth­ing except the right to roar with laugh­ter.” So watch, laugh and pre­pare to be con­fused.

Entr’Acte will be added to our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Two Vin­tage Films by Sal­vador Dalí and Luis Buñuel: Un Chien Andalou and L’Age d’Or

The Seashell and the Cler­gy­man: The World’s First Sur­re­al­ist Film

David Lynch Presents the His­to­ry of Sur­re­al­ist Film (1987)

A Tour Inside Sal­vador Dalí’s Labyrinthine Span­ish Home

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

‘You Are Done’: The Chilling “Suicide Letter” Sent to Martin Luther King by the F.B.I.

in History, Letters | November 13th, 2014

In Novem­ber of 1964, Mar­tin Luther King received a chill­ing let­ter, pur­port­ed­ly from a dis­il­lu­sioned mem­ber of the African-Amer­i­can com­mu­ni­ty. “King, look into your heart,” writes MLK’s crit­ic. “You know you are a com­plete fraud and a great lia­bil­i­ty to all of us Negroes.”

The let­ter then turns men­ac­ing. It gives the civ­il rights leader a choice. Com­mit sui­cide or get killed:

You are done.

King, there is only one thing left for you to do. You know what it is. You have just 34 days in which to do it (this exact num­ber has been select­ed for a spe­cif­ic rea­son, it has def­i­nite prac­ti­cal sig­nif­i­cance). You are done. There is but one way out for you. You bet­ter take it before your filthy, abnor­mal fraud­u­lent self is bared to the nation.

Straight from the begin­ning, King knew the real author behind the “sui­cide let­ter,” as it’s now called. It was the FBI, led by J. Edgar Hoover, who har­bored a deep and abid­ing hatred for King. For years, the pub­lic only had access to redact­ed copies of the let­ter. The redac­tions obscured the meth­ods of the FBI — the way the agency tried to “frac­ture move­ments and pit lead­ers against one anoth­er,” writes the Elec­tron­ic Fron­tier Foun­da­tion, and the way it used sur­veil­lance to invade King’s per­son­al life and then black­mailed him with the infor­ma­tion it gath­ered. That’s what’s hap­pen­ing in the para­graph that begins “No per­son can over­come the facts, not even a fraud like your­self.”

This sum­mer, while research­ing at the Nation­al Archives, Bev­er­ly Gage, a pro­fes­sor of Amer­i­can his­to­ry at Yale, stum­bled upon an unredact­ed copy. You can read it above. On Tues­day, Gage wrote about the let­ter and its his­tor­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance in The New York Times. The unredact­ed let­ter was also pub­lished in the Times.

via Boing­Bo­ing/EFF

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read Mar­tin Luther King and The Mont­gomery Sto­ry: The Influ­en­tial 1957 Civ­il Rights Com­ic Book

200,000 Mar­tin Luther King Papers Go Online

The Exis­ten­tial­ism Files: How the FBI Tar­get­ed Camus, and Then Sartre After the JFK Assas­si­na­tion

Free Online His­to­ry Cours­es