When Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. visited the newly constructed Berlin Wall in 1964, he deemed it to be “very depressing.”
Conversely, Erich Honecker, mastermind of the “anti-fascist protection barrier,” touted the structure as a monumental achievement of his regime. In January 1989, the soon-to-be-deposed East German dictator boasted that the barrier, designed, of course, to imprison his citizens, would be still standing in another hundred years.
It is ironic that in her recent Martin Luther King Jr. Day speech at the University of New England, Angela Davis took umbrage at the proposed U.S.-Mexico border wall, given her prior support for and patronage received from the German Democratic Republic.
Dennis Coffey
Old Orchard Beach
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