Speaker 1: Pushkin. This week was Martin Luther King Junior Day, which
Speaker 1: reminded me that one of my favorite ever episodes of
Speaker 1: Cautionary Tales was about Martin Luther King Junior's most famous
Speaker 1: speech and about an infamous speech given by a very
Speaker 1: different character, Gerald Ratner. A confession. I am a public
Speaker 1: speaking nerd. I competed in international debate competitions at school
Speaker 1: and once had a career plan to write books about
Speaker 1: public speaking. I find the art of public speaking fascinating
Speaker 1: and much misunderstood. And the more I looked into the
Speaker 1: story of these two speeches, each of which defined a
Speaker 1: man's career, the more I thought to myself, we're thinking
Speaker 1: about this all wrong. We have a marvelous slate of
Speaker 1: Cautionary Tales coming in twenty twenty four, but I hope
Speaker 1: you'll forgive me if I and the Cautionary Tales team
Speaker 1: take a short rest to recharge our batteries. We will
Speaker 1: be back with new episodes in February. But until then,
Speaker 1: here is another chance to hear the astonishing talents of
Speaker 1: Jeffrey Wright in Martin Luther King Junior, the Jewelry Genius,
Speaker 1: and the art of public speaking. One late summer day
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty three, thousands upon thousands of people gathered
Speaker 1: on the Mall in Washington, d C. They had come
Speaker 1: to America's capital for jobs and freedom, to show the
Speaker 1: Kennedy administration that civil rights legislation must be pushed through Congress,
Speaker 1: and to hear the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Junior speak.
Speaker 1: The official program had been long and packed with speeches,
Speaker 1: but a quarter of a million people defied the heat
Speaker 1: as they waited. The crowd stretched back from the Lincoln Memorial,
Speaker 1: packing the sides of the famous reflecting pool, swirling around
Speaker 1: the base of the Washington Monument, and extending toward the
Speaker 1: intransigent capital itself. The Mall usually dwarfs anything on a
Speaker 1: human scale. Not that afternoon. The gospel singer Mahalia Jackson sang,
Speaker 1: I've been butked and I've been scorned. Anticipation was building.
Speaker 1: All three television networks switched to live coverage. Doctor King
Speaker 1: stepped forward to speak to address not only the sweltering crowd,
Speaker 1: but a national audience he had never had before and
Speaker 1: might never have again. Doctor King had spent the night
Speaker 1: laboring on his speech with a few trusted aids, weighing
Speaker 1: every word of what he would say. For a few minutes,
Speaker 1: the nation, even the world, would be focused on those
Speaker 1: words from the Lincoln Memorial steps. Doctor King knew that
Speaker 1: those words had to be perfect. But now let's leave
Speaker 1: this iconic scene behind us and travel across time and
Speaker 1: across the Atlantic. Twenty eight years later, a very different
Speaker 1: man would give a very different speech in front of
Speaker 1: a very different audience. This man's name was Gerald Ratner,
Speaker 1: and he didn't have a dream. He had a nightmare.
Speaker 1: I'm Tim Harford, and you're listening to cautionary tales. Gerald
Speaker 1: Ratner's speech, to be clear, wasn't about civil rights. It
Speaker 1: was about selling cheap jewelry. It became iconic because it
Speaker 1: didn't go well. And as you've probably figured out by now,
Speaker 1: I'm fascinated by things that didn't go well. But I'll
Speaker 1: let you into a secret. I'm also fascinated by the
Speaker 1: art of public speaking. I love doing it and i
Speaker 1: love studying it. Public speaking is such a strange thing,
Speaker 1: as natural as talking and yet wrenchingly difficult. And how
Speaker 1: it was approached by these two men, Gerald Ratner and
Speaker 1: Martin Luther King, and what happened to them could teach
Speaker 1: us a lot. Dr King and mister Ratner are a
Speaker 1: study in con trusts. Martin Luther King took the high
Speaker 1: road through education, earning a doctorate in theology. Gerald Ratner
Speaker 1: took the low road. Ratner was born in London in
Speaker 1: nineteen forty nine and expelled from school at the age
Speaker 1: of thirteen. When he was fifteen, he joined the family business,
Speaker 1: a group of six jewelry shops. Ratner worked behind the
Speaker 1: counter for ten years, but noticed that he didn't have
Speaker 1: many customers his age or younger. Those people had no
Speaker 1: interest in gold and diamond rings. They were spending plenty
Speaker 1: of money on clothes and music. Shopping malls were busy.
Speaker 1: Jewelers were not. They were dusty and intimidating. Nothing had
Speaker 1: a price tag. The doors would be locked behind you
Speaker 1: when you entered. Young Gerald soon had a management role
Speaker 1: and steered the family business towards more informal shops, selling
Speaker 1: products that would appeal to young shoppers on a budget.
Speaker 1: It was a canny move. By the age of thirty five,
Speaker 1: Ratner was a millionaire. He began a series of ambitious takeovers.
Speaker 1: By the age of forty, he was running fifteen hundred stores,
Speaker 1: in the UK and a thousand in the US. His
Speaker 1: brands included k Watches of Switzerland and Ratner's itself. Gerald
Speaker 1: Ratner had built the largest jewelry group on the planet,
Speaker 1: and then he destroyed it in a matter of seconds.
Speaker 1: Gerald Ratner had been asked to address the Institute of Directors,
Speaker 1: a prestigious audience of six thousand British business leaders. The
Speaker 1: venue was the Royal Albert Hall, vast and trimmed with
Speaker 1: gold and red velvet, perhaps the grandest auditorium in London. Understandably,
Speaker 1: Ratner started his speech looking nervous. He was a self
Speaker 1: made man, a school dropout who now stood in front
Speaker 1: of business royalty, and in fact, there were actual royalty
Speaker 1: in the audience too. Ratner was rich and successful, to
Speaker 1: be sure, but did he fit in? Three minutes after
Speaker 1: starting his speech, he finds his theme mocking his own products.
Speaker 2: We've got this imitation book that you lay on your
Speaker 2: coffee table. Pages don't actually open, but they're beautiful, curled
Speaker 2: up corners with imitation antique. Dust I knows you might
Speaker 2: say it's not in the best possible taste, but we
Speaker 2: sold a quarter a million of them last year.
Speaker 1: The audience love it, They laugh, They clap. Ratner looks braver.
Speaker 2: We also do this nice sherry to canter. It's cut
Speaker 2: glass and it comes complete with six glasses on a
Speaker 2: silver plated tray that your butler could bring you in
Speaker 2: he serve you drinks on.
Speaker 1: Oh you're too funny, Gerald. Some other people in the
Speaker 1: audience would have employed butler's, but Ratner's customers certainly couldn't
Speaker 1: afford one any more than they could afford a genuine
Speaker 1: antique book, a decanter in a silver tray for your butler.
Speaker 1: Nice one, and.
Speaker 2: It's really only cost four pounds ninety five pence.
Speaker 1: That's about twelve dollars in today's money.
Speaker 2: People say to me, how can you sell this for
Speaker 2: such a low price? I say, because it's total craft.
Speaker 1: Moll laughter, more applause. Ratner's killing it on stage. He's
Speaker 1: also just killed his own business empire. He didn't realize
Speaker 1: it at the time. The speech had gone down very
Speaker 1: well with the audience in the Royal Albert Hall, but
Speaker 1: the newspaper reporters in the room smelled a story. The
Speaker 1: jokes that have played so brilliantly on the day did
Speaker 1: not go down so well when served up cold on
Speaker 1: the front page age of the morning papers. At the time,
Speaker 1: the UK was in the middle of a recession. Ordinary
Speaker 1: people didn't take kindly to a multi millionaire standing in
Speaker 1: front of his fellow one percenters and mocking his own
Speaker 1: customers for their crass taste. And who would buy an
Speaker 1: engagement ring from a company whose own boss had declared
Speaker 1: their products were crap sales ebbed Ratner's group shares fell
Speaker 1: nearly ninety percent between the speech in April and Christmas.
Speaker 1: Ratner was sacked from his own company. Inevitably, they changed
Speaker 1: the company name. Ratner's was a toxic brand, forever tarnished
Speaker 1: to this day. In the UK, doing a Ratner is
Speaker 1: part of the language, universally understood as committing a humiliating
Speaker 1: career ending gaff. Ratner's name became its own one word
Speaker 1: cautionary tale. The lesson seems obvious enough if everyone's watching,
Speaker 1: choose your words with care, don't wing it. But what
Speaker 1: if that lesson has the story completely backwards in retrospect?
Speaker 1: The Reverend Doctor King had been preparing his whole life
Speaker 1: to give the speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
Speaker 1: His memory had always been prodigious at the age of five,
Speaker 1: he was learning Bible passages by heart. He told his
Speaker 1: parents that when he grew up, he was going to
Speaker 1: get some big words, so he did. Martin's father was
Speaker 1: a preacher, and the boy took to the craft of
Speaker 1: speechmaking early. At the age of fourteen, Martin traveled across
Speaker 1: Georgia on a bus to compete in public speaking contest.
Speaker 1: On the way home to Atlanta, things went sour, very sour.
Speaker 1: King and his friend were sitting near the front of
Speaker 1: the bus with their teacher, Sarah Grace Bradley. At a
Speaker 1: busy stop, a rush of white passengers got on, and
Speaker 1: the bus driver, also white, ordered King and his friend
Speaker 1: to give up their seats.
Speaker 3: You buys, move it, get yourself to the back.
Speaker 4: Of the bus.
Speaker 1: There was a pause. Dr King later said.
Speaker 3: We didn't move quickly enough to suit him, so he
Speaker 3: began cursing us.
Speaker 1: The driver was now hurling every racist slur you can
Speaker 1: imagine and threatening to call the police.
Speaker 3: Harm Martin, Please do what he says. So we walked
Speaker 3: to the back of the bus and I had to
Speaker 3: stand all the way to Atlanta.
Speaker 1: It was dark outside for ninety miles. There was nothing
Speaker 1: to look at but the seat on the bus filled
Speaker 1: with white people.
Speaker 3: It was late at night, and I was tired, but
Speaker 3: that wasn't the point. It was the humiliation.
Speaker 1: Martin, remember, was just fourteen years old.
Speaker 3: That night will never leave my memory. It was the
Speaker 3: angriest I've ever been in my life. Suddenly I realized,
Speaker 3: you don't count. You're nobody.
Speaker 1: But Martin Luther King Junior wasn't destined to be nobody
Speaker 1: for long. And the journey on the way to being
Speaker 1: not just somebody, but somebody who made his mark on
Speaker 1: history arguably began not with that unforgettable humiliation, but with
Speaker 1: the triumphant day that had preceded it. The long and
Speaker 1: infuriating bus journey of Martin Luther King Junior had been
Speaker 1: on the way home from a public speaking competition. Martin
Speaker 1: had won a prize at the contest, delivering his speech
Speaker 1: titled The Negro and the Constitution entirely from memory. My
Speaker 1: heart throbs anew in the hope that, inspired by the
Speaker 1: example of Lincoln, imbued with the spirit of Christ, they
Speaker 1: will cast down the last barrier to perfect freedom. That
Speaker 1: speech showed off the teenage King's approach. He would research
Speaker 1: draft redraft memorize, finally deliver with passion. King used the
Speaker 1: same principles three years later, preaching for the first time
Speaker 1: in a small meeting room at his father's church. He
Speaker 1: was spectacular. The crowds kept coming until young Martin had
Speaker 1: to move to the main auditorium. Martin won an oratory
Speaker 1: prize in college. He used to practice imagined court testimony
Speaker 1: in front of a mirror, dreaming of becoming a lawyer. Instead,
Speaker 1: he applied for a job as a minister at a
Speaker 1: Baptist church in Montgomery, Alabama. As part of his application,
Speaker 1: he had to give a sermon, and of course, he
Speaker 1: used something meticulously crafted, a sermon he had preached several
Speaker 1: times before practice don't just make it up as you
Speaker 1: go along. Once he secured that job, he stuck to
Speaker 1: that winning formula. King's responsibilities as a minister had to
Speaker 1: be fulfilled while he was still finishing his doctorate in theology,
Speaker 1: so he rose at half past five each morning, made coffee,
Speaker 1: shaved his stubborn bristles into a neat mustache, then worked
Speaker 1: on his doctorate for three hours before his pregnant wife,
Speaker 1: Coreta woke to join him for breakfast. All the while
Speaker 1: King lavished enormous effort on his sermons. He would begin
Speaker 1: drafting on Tuesday and continued to research and draft throughout
Speaker 1: the week, drawing ideas from Plato Aquinas freud Gandy. As
Speaker 1: Sunday approached, he would write it all out on yellow
Speaker 1: lined paper and commit it to memory, just as he
Speaker 1: had done at the age of fourteen. He would bring
Speaker 1: the script to church with him, but as he ascended
Speaker 1: to the pulpit, he would leave it in his chair
Speaker 1: and speak without notes for half an hour or more.
Speaker 1: He was fantastic, people said. The congregation adored him and
Speaker 1: the way he spoke with style about matters of substance,
Speaker 1: and to achieve this mastery, the young Reverend King spent
Speaker 1: fifteen hours or more crafting each sermon. Martin Luther King
Speaker 1: was one of the greatest speechmakers to grace the English language,
Speaker 1: and at first it might seem obvious why, as well
Speaker 1: as being educated and prodigiously talented, he ensured that every
Speaker 1: syllable of his oratory was meticulously prepared. Gerald Ratner could
Speaker 1: have learned from doctor King's example, couldn't he, Well, the
Speaker 1: truth is way more interesting than that, So why would
Speaker 1: a public speaker set aside the script or memorized remarks
Speaker 1: and speak off the cuff. I asked Charles Limb. He's
Speaker 1: a neuroscientist, a surgeon, a jazz saxophonist, and one of
Speaker 1: very few people who's actually studied the improvising brain. Lim
Speaker 1: researches people as they improvise inside brain scanners called fmur
Speaker 1: eye machines. Imagine sliding on your back so that your
Speaker 1: head is surrounded by a giant, white plastic doughnut with
Speaker 1: the feel of a vintage iPod. The scanner is generating
Speaker 1: powerful magnetic fields to illuminate the contrast between oxygen rich
Speaker 1: blood flowing to different areas of your brain and the
Speaker 1: oxygen depleted blood flowing away. Again, your head is held
Speaker 1: perfectly still. If you're a hip hop artist, you then
Speaker 1: have to spit some rhymes in response to random words.
Speaker 1: If you're a jazz musician, you have to tap out
Speaker 1: riffs on a plastic keyboard lying across your knees and
Speaker 1: no metal, Otherwise the magnetic field would rip the keyboard
Speaker 1: apart and pull the shrapnel into the scanner with your head.
Speaker 1: It's a tough gig. Through these experiments, Limb and other
Speaker 1: neuroscientists have been discovering hints of what goes on in
Speaker 1: an improvising brain. There's a distinctive pattern in the prefrontal cortex,
Speaker 1: which seems to be the seat of consciousness, memory, morality, humor,
Speaker 1: and even the sense of self. But the pattern isn't
Speaker 1: that the prefrontal cortex is lighting up during improvisation. On
Speaker 1: the contrary, broad areas of it shutting down the dorso
Speaker 1: lateral areas either side of the top of your forehead
Speaker 1: and the lateral orbital areas behind your eyes. Improvisers are
Speaker 1: escaping their internal restraints. They're letting go. Most of us
Speaker 1: go through our days holding back our mental impulses to
Speaker 1: swear or lash out. All this requires a degree of
Speaker 1: self control, so that filtering is a good thing. That
Speaker 1: you can have too much of a good thing, says
Speaker 1: Charles Limb. Too much filtering can squash our creativity. Improvisers
Speaker 1: shut down their inner critics and allow new ideas to
Speaker 1: flow out. The improvising brain is disinhibited, although not so
Speaker 1: crudely as the drunk brain. That is why improvisers can
Speaker 1: produce flashes of pure brilliance. It's also why improvisation feels
Speaker 1: so risk. A script can seem protective, like a bulletproof vest,
Speaker 1: but sometimes it's more like a strait jacket. Improvising unleashes creativity.
Speaker 1: It feels fresh and honest and personal. Above all, it
Speaker 1: turns a monologue into a dialogue. Miles Davis, the legendary
Speaker 1: jazz trumpeter, talked about improvisation as the freedom and space
Speaker 1: to hear things. That's a fascinating turn of phrase. Not
Speaker 1: the freedom and space to play things or to do things,
Speaker 1: but to hear things, to be more open to the
Speaker 1: sound of your own instrument, the sound of the group,
Speaker 1: And that matters for more than just music or rhetoric,
Speaker 1: because we're scared of improvising, and we're not just afraid
Speaker 1: to improvise on stage, we're also becoming afraid to improvise
Speaker 1: face to face. The sociologist Sherry Turkle has been interviewing
Speaker 1: young people about their communications through smartphone apps. It wasn't
Speaker 1: just because the apps were convenient or addictive, although they
Speaker 1: could be both. Texting is attractive because traditional conversations feel scary.
Speaker 3: I'll tell you what's wrong with conversation.
Speaker 1: One high school senior told Sherry Turkele.
Speaker 3: It takes place in real time, and you can't control
Speaker 3: what you're going to say.
Speaker 1: What you're going to say. This student is so used
Speaker 1: to being able to proofread every message that he's become
Speaker 1: scared of simply talking and seeing what happens. But then
Speaker 1: perhaps he's right to be scared. We should ask Gerald Ratner.
Speaker 1: Gerald Ratner learned to laugh at himself a long time ago,
Speaker 1: but he rejects the idea that somehow his mistake all
Speaker 1: worked out for the best. People ask me if I'm
Speaker 1: glad I said what I said. They're ridiculous. How could
Speaker 1: I be grateful? I lost everything? Ratner plunged into depression.
Speaker 1: He has bounced back in some ways. He had some success,
Speaker 1: setting up a chain of health clubs and even an
Speaker 1: online jewelry business. But the truth is that there was
Speaker 1: nothing he could do, no success that he could achieve
Speaker 1: that would ever be as famous as his gaff. The
Speaker 1: search for a good joke destroyed his business, and it
Speaker 1: nearly destroyed him. Who would want to risk the fate
Speaker 1: of Gerald Ratner when they could follow the meticulous example
Speaker 1: of the young Martin Luther King. It seems obvious that
Speaker 1: when speaking in public, we should prepare as diligently as
Speaker 1: King did when he drafted and memorized his sermons. But
Speaker 1: the truth about Gerald Dratner's impromptu remark about his products
Speaker 1: being total crap is this. It wasn't impromptu. He chose
Speaker 1: those words with care to circulating drafts of the speech
Speaker 1: to get comments. He had used the total crap joke
Speaker 1: before without running into problems, and as he prepared to
Speaker 1: deliver the speech on a larger stage, he sought advice.
Speaker 1: His wife told him to be careful that others, including
Speaker 1: a friend who was one of the most influential figures
Speaker 1: in the advertising industry, encouraged him to tell even more
Speaker 1: daring jokes. They thought Ratna would sound self deprecating and
Speaker 1: that his audience would love the gags, which was true.
Speaker 1: Those in the hall that day did love it. But
Speaker 1: in the newspapers the next morning, Ratner simply sounded like
Speaker 1: a millionaire mocking his struggling customers. When I listened back
Speaker 1: to Ratner's speech, I don't hear the mockery at all.
Speaker 1: I hear something else. Immediately after saying his own products
Speaker 1: were crap, Ratner says are.
Speaker 2: Ratner's shots will never win any awards. Design they're not
Speaker 2: in the best possible taste. I admit that. In fact,
Speaker 2: some people say they can't even see the jewelry for
Speaker 2: all the banners and posters smothering the shot windows.
Speaker 1: There's a different tone. Suddenly, there's a note of defiance,
Speaker 1: even anger.
Speaker 2: So it's interesting that these shots that everyone has a
Speaker 2: good laugh about take more money per square foot than
Speaker 2: any other retailer in Europe.
Speaker 1: The hall is hush, now, nobody's laughing.
Speaker 2: Why, because we give the customer what they want.
Speaker 1: Gerald Ratner wasn't laughing at his customers. He identified with them.
Speaker 1: He thought the business royalty in the hall were laughing
Speaker 1: at his customers and his business ideas and him. This
Speaker 1: was his response, You laugh at us, he was saying,
Speaker 1: but my customers are happy and I'm rich, So who's
Speaker 1: laughing now. Ratner's downfall wasn't caused by a lack of preparation,
Speaker 1: but by a lack of judgment. Ratner did exactly what
Speaker 1: he planned to do. He had simply failed to foresee
Speaker 1: the consequences. Improvisation was not to blame. Improvising does expose
Speaker 1: us to new and different risks, but even careful preparation
Speaker 1: cannot remove Risks entirely. In December nineteen fifty five, Rosa
Speaker 1: Parks was arrested after refusing to give up her seat
Speaker 1: on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama to a white man.
Speaker 1: As a local church leader with a reputation as an orator,
Speaker 1: Martin Luther King was asked to organize a boycott of
Speaker 1: Montgomery's buses. He hesitated. He was exhausted. His newborn baby daughter, Yoki,
Speaker 1: wouldn't stop crying in the night. King asked for time
Speaker 1: to mull over the idea of a bus boycott, but
Speaker 1: an influential local activist, Edie Nixon, would have no delays.
Speaker 1: You ain't got much time to think, said Nixon. You're
Speaker 1: in the chair from now on. So it was that
Speaker 1: King found himself bounced into leading the Montgomery Improvement Association.
Speaker 1: He had to give an inaugural speech, and he had
Speaker 1: to give it immediately. Rosa Parks was news. The bus
Speaker 1: boycott was news. There wasn't time to spend days redrafting
Speaker 1: or consulting the sayings of Plato or Gandhy. Doctor King
Speaker 1: arrived home from the meeting with Edie Nixon and the
Speaker 1: activists at half past six. He had to head to
Speaker 1: the speech venue Holt Street Church at ten to seven.
Speaker 3: I had only twenty minutes to prepare the most decisive
Speaker 3: speech of my life. I became possessed by fear.
Speaker 1: King knew that newspaper men would be there, perhaps even
Speaker 1: television crews. And yet just as the stakes were highest,
Speaker 1: the habit of meticulous preparation that had served him so
Speaker 1: well all his life was useless. He couldn't research, draft, redraft,
Speaker 1: and memorized. He had no time. King looked at his watch.
Speaker 1: Already five minutes had ticked away while he fretted. Every
Speaker 1: Sunday he delivered a sermon based on fifteen hours of
Speaker 1: hard work. Now he was about to deliver the most
Speaker 1: important speech of his life, and he had just fifteen minutes.
Speaker 1: He sketched a couple of thoughts with his hand shaking,
Speaker 1: pondering the delicate balance he had to strike between militancy
Speaker 1: and moderation. Then he prayed that was all the preparation
Speaker 1: he could spare before driving to the Holt Street Church.
Speaker 1: Ten thousand people stood outside, unable to cram themselves in,
Speaker 1: listening to the proceedings via a loud speaker on the roof.
Speaker 1: The Montgomery police were their in force. So were the
Speaker 1: television cameras pointing at the pulpit as King stepped up
Speaker 1: and began to speak.
Speaker 3: My friends, we're here this evening for serious business.
Speaker 1: The speech is brilliantly described in Taylor Branch's biography of King.
Speaker 1: Instead of the usual careful script, lovingly prepared and committed
Speaker 1: to memory, King was groping his way towards the right words.
Speaker 4: I think I speak with legal authority, not that I
Speaker 4: have any legal authority, but I think I speak with
Speaker 4: legal authority behind me. That the law, the ordinance, the
Speaker 4: city ordinance, has never been totally clarified.
Speaker 1: He had never in his life delivered a sermon with
Speaker 1: a line as weak and confused as that one. Fifteen
Speaker 1: hours of preparation always ironed out every wrinkle. But King
Speaker 1: was finding something more valuable than time to prepare, in
Speaker 1: Miles Davis's phrase, the freedom and space to hear things.
Speaker 1: As he spoke, King listened to the crowd, feeling out
Speaker 1: their response. Speaking in the moment. His early sentences were
Speaker 1: experiments grasping for a theme, exploring how each sounded and
Speaker 1: how the crowd responded. Each phrase shaped The phrase that
Speaker 1: followed his speech was not a solo. It was a
Speaker 1: duet with his audience. After a cautious opening, King talked
Speaker 1: of Rosa Parks, of her character and Christian commitment, and.
Speaker 3: Just because she refused to get up, she was arrested.
Speaker 1: The crowd murmured their assent. After a pause for breath,
Speaker 1: King changed irec you.
Speaker 4: Know, my friends, there comes a time when people get
Speaker 4: tired of being trampled over by the iron feet of oppression.
Speaker 1: And suddenly the avalanche began. A few yells of support
Speaker 1: became a roar of approval and anger. The spirit of
Speaker 1: the crowd was self sustaining, a torrent of emotion and sound,
Speaker 1: which grew stronger. Just when it seemed the soundless fade,
Speaker 1: further waves crashed in from the thousands of voices outside.
Speaker 1: The cheering was everywhere. Then King spoke up again. With
Speaker 1: the help of the crowd, he found his theme.
Speaker 4: There comes a time when people get tired of getting
Speaker 4: pushed out of the glittering sunlight of life's July and
Speaker 4: left standing amidst the piercing chill of an alpine November.
Speaker 1: Amid the sound of feet thundering on the church's wooden floorboards.
Speaker 1: King was forced to pause as with any extemporaneous performance,
Speaker 1: Kings was imperfect, with some meandering lines and a limp conclusion.
Speaker 1: Despite all that, these improvised remarks were easily the finest
Speaker 1: speech that King had yet given. People who had seen
Speaker 1: him speak many times were astonished. He spoke with so
Speaker 1: much force, Nobody, said one witness, nobody dreamed of Martin
Speaker 1: Luther King being that sort of man under these conditions.
Speaker 1: King himself, one suspects, had not truly understood what he
Speaker 1: could unleash once he let himself go. He didn't want
Speaker 1: to improvise the speech, preferred the script for when the
Speaker 1: situation gave him no alternative. He came to understand what
Speaker 1: older preachers had told.
Speaker 3: Him, open your mouth and God will speak for you.
Speaker 1: Seven and a half years later, in nineteen sixty three,
Speaker 1: he found himself faced with see King to a quarter
Speaker 1: of a million people who'd marched on Washington d C.
Speaker 1: He knew he'd be live on every national television network.
Speaker 1: This speech demanded the preparation of old It was too
Speaker 1: important to be left to chance. Doctor King and his
Speaker 1: aides had prepared a typewritten script, unpromisingly.
Speaker 3: Titled almost Never Again.
Speaker 1: King's team was trying to navigate complex waters with the
Speaker 1: text of this address. King needed to reach out to
Speaker 1: white allies, to rebut the hardline approach of Malcolm X
Speaker 1: and others, and to respond to President Kennedy's Civil Rights Bill.
Speaker 1: Was the bill to be criticized as inadequate or welcomed
Speaker 1: as progress. There was much politicking behind the scenes, and
Speaker 1: each speaker had been allotted only seven minutes. There was
Speaker 1: no exception for Martin Luther King. All of these constraints
Speaker 1: called for precise drafting. He knew that he would be
Speaker 1: speaking King with a vast statue of Abraham Lincoln behind him,
Speaker 1: one hundred years after Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation had declared the
Speaker 1: enslaved people of the United States to be free. So
Speaker 1: King decided to open with an artful echo of Lincoln's
Speaker 1: Great Gettysburg Address and referred to the Emancipation Proclamation as
Speaker 1: a promisory note on which America had defaulted. As a
Speaker 1: script normal scene never again was over formal and flawed.
Speaker 1: Parts of it read like poetry. Others were clumsy legalese.
Speaker 1: As King read out the speech, it did not stir
Speaker 1: the soul, but then toward the end came a biblical flourish.
Speaker 4: We will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters,
Speaker 4: and righteousness like a mighty stream.
Speaker 1: And as King said those words, approving cheers rippled up
Speaker 1: and down the mall. Then King looked down at his script.
Speaker 1: The next line was pretentious and limp. He couldn't bring
Speaker 1: himself to say the words, and so instead he started
Speaker 1: to improvise, telling the crowd go.
Speaker 3: Back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama.
Speaker 1: Behind him stood his friends and colleagues. They knew that
Speaker 1: King had stepped away from the script, and at the
Speaker 1: moment of maximum danger and maximum opportunity, the climax of
Speaker 1: his speech, he was looking for something to say, something
Speaker 1: that would touch the people there at the mall and
Speaker 1: watching across the country.
Speaker 2: Tell him about the dream.
Speaker 1: Mine, yelled the singer Mahalia Jackson. It was a reference
Speaker 1: to something doctor King had been preaching of late to
Speaker 1: church congregations, a dream of a brighter future in which
Speaker 1: whites and blacks lived in harmony. And as he stood
Speaker 1: facing the television cameras and the vast expectant crowd looking
Speaker 1: for inspiration, Martin Luther King heard Mahalia Jackson, and he
Speaker 1: began to create on the fly one of the most
Speaker 1: famous speeches of the century about how he had a dream,
Speaker 1: a dream that America would live up to the.
Speaker 3: Words all Men are Created.
Speaker 1: Equal, A dream of an oasis of freedom and justice.
Speaker 1: A dream that little black boys and black girls would
Speaker 1: be able to join hands with little white boys and
Speaker 1: white girls as sisters and brothers. Normalcy never again was forgotten.
Speaker 1: The conclusion to the speech that shook the twentieth century
Speaker 1: wasn't in the script. The best things usually aren't. Key
Speaker 1: sources for this episode include Taylor Branch's book Parting the Waters,
Speaker 1: Martin Luther King Junior's autobiography, and my own book MESSI
Speaker 1: The Power of Disorder to Transform Our Lives. For a
Speaker 1: full list of references, see Timharford dot com. Cautionary Tales
Speaker 1: is written by me Tim Harford with Andrew Wright. It's
Speaker 1: produced by Ryan Dilly and Marilyn Rust. The sound design
Speaker 1: and original music is the work of Pascal Wise. Julia
Speaker 1: Barton edited the scripts. Starring in this series of Cautionary
Speaker 1: Tales Helena Bonham Carter, and Jeffrey Wright, alongside Nizzar Elderazi
Speaker 1: Ed Gochen, Melanie Gutteridge, Rachel Hanshaw, copenaholbrook Smith, Greg Lockett,
Speaker 1: Messea Munroe, and Rufus Wright. This show wouldn't have been
Speaker 1: possible without the work of Mea LaBelle, Jacob Weisberg, Heather Fine,
Speaker 1: John Schnaz, Carlimgliori, Eric Sandler, Emily Rostick, Maggie Taylor, Aniela
Speaker 1: La Khan, and Maya Kanig. Cautionary Tales is a production
Speaker 1: of Pushkin Industries. If you like the show, please remember
Speaker 1: to rate, share, and review.