Robert B. Sklaroff, M.D., F.A.C.P.

Medical Oncology/Hematology  Telephone: (215) 333-4900

 Facsimile: (215) 333-2023
Smylie Times Building - Suite #500-C
8001 Roosevelt Boulevard  rsklaroff@gmail.com
Philadelphia, PA 19152
January 31, 2019

To: Patrick J. O’Connor, Esq., Chair, Temple University Board of Trustees – Plus Trustees
Re: Marc Lamont Hill, Ph.D. [D.O.B. 12/17/1978]
Cc: internet

This is provided to illustrate the difference between documented enlightenment regarding MLK-Jr. and the
fanciful portrayal that MLH has disseminated as a "scholar" of whom Temple University should feel proud?

{Essentially, MLH blindly hews the extreme-radical postures regarding law-and-order, here, ignoring the
fact that MLK-Jr. would be denied the ability to defend himself by lefties who endorse firearm confiscation.}

http://thefederalist.com/2019/01/30/second-amendment-is-a-civil-right-african-
americans/?fbclid=IwAR25zvSNBxdYzczDULJO-XhJ_EOXC0UWUBQ-
b_HhU4qPFXetB9ORmpSwjRU#.XFGnTMD_g5Y.facebook

"African-Americans Have a Long History Of Championing Gun Rights"

“Today, the men and women of the NRA honor the profound life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,”
the gun-rights group National Rifle Association tweeted on Martin Luther King Day. “King applied for a
concealed carry permit in a ‘may issue’ state and was denied. We will never stop fighting for every law-
abiding citizen’s right to self-defense.”

The tweet triggered widespread anger and condemnation from liberals, most of them pointing out that
King was murdered by a gun. Just as guns themselves are not evil, they are not a panacea. Yet, whether
intentional or not, strict gun control laws are often functionally racist. They deny the most vulnerable
citizens in our communities, people who reside in urban liberal areas — in cities like Chicago and DC —
the right to defend themselves, their families, and their property from criminality.

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King, who remained the target of unceasing violent threats throughout his life, often relied on armed
guards to protect his home and family. While King left no detailed position on the Second Amendment,
he did indeed apply for a concealed carry permit after his house had been firebombed in 1956. Almost
surely because of the color of his skin, Alabama law enforcement denied his application as “unsuitable.”

{NOTE that the author doesn’t pretend that MLK-Jr. had commented on gun-rights; rather, the piece is
based upon the concepts that motivated him to seek a firearm, and that motivated others to block him.}

King’s inability to arm himself was merely another episode in a long history of attacks on the rights of
African Americans. While early Americans often denied both Catholics and other intolerable Christian
denominations their right to self-defense, black Americans were deprived of these rights for centuries
longer. Many African-Americans are denied those rights today.

The early Americans had seen the right to bear arms as a means to counteract internal tyranny and the
threat of invasion. African Americans understood those threats better than most. It was the abolitionist
and champion of individual rights Frederick Douglass who reacted to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850,
authorizing local governments to seize and return escaped slaves to their owners, by editorializing that
the best remedy might be “a good revolver, a steady hand, and a determination to shoot down any man
attempting to kidnap … Every slave hunter who meets a bloody death in this infernal business is an
argument in favor of the manhood of our race.”

By the first post–Civil War election in 1868, some southern blacks had begun to arm themselves. In one
incident in Tennessee, by brandishing his gun a black man fought off a mob of terrorizing Klansmen who
dragged him from his house. “I prevented [one of them] by my pistol, which I cocked, and he jumped
back,” the man explained. “I told them I would hurt them if they got away. They did not burn nor steal
anything, nor hurt me.”

This event was the exception for a population that was often left helpless. “Black Codes” would soon be
instituted, making the ownership of guns illegal for most blacks, leaving them at mercy of their racist
neighbors and governments. This is why Jacob Howard, the Michigan senator who introduced the
Fourteenth Amendment to ensure that blacks in the South had their constitutional rights protected, noted
that the amendment was meant to ensure “the personal rights guaranteed and secured by the first eight
amendment to the Constitution” as in the freedom of speech and of the press and “the right to bear
arms,” specifically.

Although some of the Founders never intended for the Second Amendment to protect all men, civil rights
activists made the argument that those natural rights should extend to everyone. The late nineteenth-
century civil rights leader Ida B. Wells noted that one of the lessons of post–Civil War America and “which
every Afro American should ponder well,” is that “a Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every
black home, and it should be used for that protection which the law refuses to give.” T. Thomas Fortune,
another black civil rights activist of the era, argued that it was with a Winchester that the black man could
“defend his home and children and wife.”

In contemporary times, African Americans helped codify the Second Amendment as an individual right.
Although many people are familiar with the name Dick Heller, one of the first plaintiffs of the case that
evolved into 2008’s District of Columbia v. Heller decision that codified the Second Amendment as an
individual right, an African-American single woman and Washington D.C. resident named Shelly Parker
was one of the first plaintiffs to sign onto the case.

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Fed up with the crime near her Capitol Hill home, Parker attempted to clean up the neighborhood,
provoking the ire of local drug dealers, who began vandalizing her property and threatening her life. In
Washington, DC, however, if Parker obtained a gun to protect herself, she would be arrested. “In the event
that someone does get in my home,” she explained, “I would have no defense, except maybe throw my
paper towels at them.”

It was Otis McDonald, a 76-year-old African-American retired maintenance engineer, whose name is on
landmark Supreme Court McDonald v. City of Chicago decision, which compelled that city to allow citizens
to have firearms in their homes for self-defense.

This isn’t merely about bump stocks or other ancillary gun questions. Many major cities effectively ignore
the Second Amendment victories of Heller and McDonald. Today numerous new gun regulations that
inhibit the right of citizens in high-crime areas to defend themselves are being contemplated and voted
on by politicians in cities and states across the country. Whether they find the idea of citizens defending
themselves “unsuitable” or not, we do not know. What we do know is that those who most need their
constitutional right to bear arms are the ones who suffer.