Speaker 1: Push it in. I'm Khalil Jibron Muhammad.
Speaker 2: I'm Ben Austen. We're two best friends, one black, one white.
Speaker 3: I'm a historian and I'm a journalist. And this is
Speaker 3: some of my best friends are.
Speaker 2: Some of my best friends are In this show, we
Speaker 2: wrestle with the challenges and.
Speaker 3: The absurdities of a deeply.
Speaker 2: Divided and unequal country.
Speaker 3: In this episode, we are taking a deeper look at
Speaker 3: a human being who helped lead a movement to end
Speaker 3: racism in America. He paid the ultimate price for changing
Speaker 3: the course of history, even though we still haven't lived
Speaker 3: up to his dream.
Speaker 2: Hm hm, Well put Khalil because we are talking, of
Speaker 2: course about the doctor Martin Luther King Jr. And today
Speaker 2: on the show, we're talking to my friend Jonathan I
Speaker 2: who has a new biography called King A Life Man.
Speaker 2: He did dozens of new interviews of firsthand witnesses to
Speaker 2: history and also examine never before seeing FBI documents.
Speaker 3: Jonathan also wrote one of the foremost and most recent
Speaker 3: biographies of Muhammad Ali, which includes stories about my great
Speaker 3: grandpa Elijah Muhammad Man.
Speaker 1: Don't you wish he did someone yours?
Speaker 2: You just stole my line khalil.
Speaker 4: Ah.
Speaker 3: Man, you know, I am excited about this conversation with Jonathan,
Speaker 3: but I wanted to start us off by just telling
Speaker 3: you and like having a conversation about the first time
Speaker 3: I learned about King.
Speaker 1: But you go first.
Speaker 3: When did you first like have a King encounter?
Speaker 2: Okay, So we didn't go to the same grade school,
Speaker 2: the same elementary school, but my public school on the
Speaker 2: South Side that we had a King celebration every year
Speaker 2: in February, and it was it was always music. There
Speaker 2: were always like these people who came in and had
Speaker 2: us sing songs together, and it was kind of wonderful,
Speaker 2: but it was also like the more sort of anodyne
Speaker 2: version of King. I now know, you know, like, uh,
Speaker 2: you know, doctor King told us about his dream kind
Speaker 2: of kind of songs. Yes, what about you.
Speaker 3: Well, the funny thing is, man, I have no recollection
Speaker 3: of doctor King throughout middle school or high school, and
Speaker 3: that's probably not what happened. I'm sure at some point,
Speaker 3: you know, there was one of those really tired, you know,
Speaker 3: profile images of him on the bulletin board at some point.
Speaker 3: So in college, though, I had a real sort of
Speaker 3: come to King moment where I confronted face to face
Speaker 3: like the controversy and the politicized backlash against the early
Speaker 3: days of King's holiday. So got to Penn in Philadelphia
Speaker 3: in late nineteen eighties and I was a freshman. They
Speaker 3: were just institutionalizing annual King rituals, and that was kind
Speaker 3: of the beginning for me. It was the first time
Speaker 3: I ever remember like not doing anything but learning about
Speaker 3: doctor King. But fast forward two years later, my junior year,
Speaker 3: and a columnist at Penn writes a searing critique of
Speaker 3: the annual celebrations of Doctor King now two years later
Speaker 3: and basically said, yeah, he said, this dude was a
Speaker 3: communist who wanted to take money from white people to
Speaker 3: redistribute it to black people. And man, I took this
Speaker 3: so personally that I organized one of the first student
Speaker 3: demonstrations that I ever participated in. And in some ways,
Speaker 3: it was that moment that made me think that I
Speaker 3: don't really know enough about doctor King's actual life to
Speaker 3: defend his legacy. And I felt a little bit vulnerable
Speaker 3: in being emotionally upset about what I read but not
Speaker 3: really understanding, like was doctor King communists?
Speaker 2: And what does it mean? And what does that mean
Speaker 2: to redistribute wealth. Is that even a bad thing?
Speaker 1: Exactly?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love that. So let's hear from John. He's
Speaker 2: going to help us understand this more. And we both
Speaker 2: read this book, King of Life, and let's jump into
Speaker 2: this conversation.
Speaker 3: Let's do it, all right, John, John, I welcome to
Speaker 3: some of my best friends are man. This is such
Speaker 3: a treat to have you a Chicagoan, a biographer of
Speaker 3: part of my family history. This is a very special
Speaker 3: moment for me, and I know you and Ben have
Speaker 3: some history yourselves.
Speaker 4: Thanks Khalil, I'm excited to talk to you guys.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, congratulations on this amazing book, King a Life.
Speaker 2: It's now a national bestseller and very worthy of it,
Speaker 2: and so congrats.
Speaker 3: Thanks feeling Yes, So, I mean, here is a man
Speaker 3: who may be one of the most celebrated and misunderstood
Speaker 3: figures in American history. I I was really excited to
Speaker 3: read this. I know that she found some new things.
Speaker 3: And I guess one way to start this conversation is
Speaker 3: just like you know, doctor King is captured as its
Speaker 3: adult civil rights icon. But of course he was a kid,
Speaker 3: and so tell us something new about his childhood that
Speaker 3: would surprise our listeners.
Speaker 1: That would surprise us.
Speaker 5: Well, first of all, a lot of people don't know
Speaker 5: he went by Mike Little Mike actually for most of
Speaker 5: his childhood, and even when he went to college, he
Speaker 5: was still introducing himself as Mike Little Mike. King was
Speaker 5: little because his dad was big Mike, and also because
Speaker 5: he was small. He was, you know, at maximum height,
Speaker 5: he reached five to seven, so he was he was.
Speaker 5: He skipped a couple grades, so, you know, elementary school,
Speaker 5: high school. He was two years younger than his classmates.
Speaker 5: And he was short to begin with, so that might
Speaker 5: be why he grew the mustache as quickly as he could,
Speaker 5: as soon as he could.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that reminds me.
Speaker 3: I tell people all the time, you know, I'm not
Speaker 3: much taller than five seven myself. I skipped a gray.
Speaker 3: All the great leaders.
Speaker 1: In the world are short, guy.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's just yeah, me too. It's the only
Speaker 4: thing King and I have in common.
Speaker 2: Yeah, at me too, as somebody who's six three and
Speaker 2: lean and handsome.
Speaker 3: Yeah you're not even sixty three whatever whatever, at best
Speaker 3: six y two.
Speaker 2: So John more about his childhood. This is something in
Speaker 2: the book that surprised me. Can you tell us about
Speaker 2: the premiere of Gone with the Wind and Little Mike's
Speaker 2: role in this premiere.
Speaker 5: Yeah, this is fascinating. You know, the movie premieres and
Speaker 5: it's it's based off the huge best selling books. So
Speaker 5: this is a major event when the movie comes out.
Speaker 5: The biggest stars in Hollywood, Clark Gable is the.
Speaker 4: You know, is the start.
Speaker 5: He flies in on a special jet from Hollywood to
Speaker 5: Atlanta for the premiere and this is the biggest event
Speaker 5: that's hit Atlanta in ages. You know, Atlanta's trying to
Speaker 5: step out, trying to prove that they're a big sophisticated city,
Speaker 5: so they roll out the for Kate Oh man, you're
Speaker 5: gonna put me on the spot nineteen I think the
Speaker 5: film was.
Speaker 4: Thirty nine. Yeah, so.
Speaker 5: This is a great whitewashing of history, of course, because
Speaker 5: we're celebrating the plantation era, we're celebrating slavery, we're celebrating
Speaker 5: you know, this this vision that really cleans up a
Speaker 5: lot of the history. Right, But when it comes to Atlanta,
Speaker 5: Atlanta is just thrilled to have this thing, except maybe
Speaker 5: some people in the black community are not so thrilled
Speaker 5: because they see they're not allowed to go see the
Speaker 5: Hollywood premiere.
Speaker 4: They're not They're not.
Speaker 5: Invited except as servants to work at this great, big
Speaker 5: party that they're throwing for the premiere of the movie.
Speaker 5: And Daddy King's church, Martin Luther King Senior's church, is
Speaker 5: invited to perform at the opening. They still can't come
Speaker 5: in to see the movie, but they're invited to sing
Speaker 5: dressed as slaves standing in front of this mockup of
Speaker 5: the Tara Plantation. And Daddy King accepts the invitation. A
Speaker 5: lot of black leaders in Atlanta are furious with him,
Speaker 5: saying that he should not be endorsing this this event.
Speaker 5: But Martin Luther King Senior, you know, has this complicated
Speaker 5: relationship with the city powers of Atlanta. He wants to
Speaker 5: be a fighter, he wants to stand up for civil rights,
Speaker 5: he wants to push for integration, but he also enjoys
Speaker 5: the fact that he has an audience with with white leaders,
Speaker 5: business leaders, and politicians. So he gives permission for his
Speaker 5: church to appear at this thing, and his wife, Alberta King,
Speaker 5: leads the choir, and the choir is dressed in garments
Speaker 5: depicting them as enslaved people, and young Martin Luther King
Speaker 5: Junior age ten is sitting in the front row singing along.
Speaker 2: Man, John, I want to thank you for telling us
Speaker 2: that that was great, powerful, And I want to follow
Speaker 2: up with something that Khalil said at the start, which
Speaker 2: is like how daunting it is to write a biography
Speaker 2: of King. You know, not only is he mythologized, but
Speaker 2: there's been a lot of other writing. And I'll just say,
Speaker 2: for my part, one of the ways that you kind
Speaker 2: of conquer this is just the writing is so damn good.
Speaker 1: Yes, snap snaps over here, and.
Speaker 2: Just you know, I'll think of one part, which is
Speaker 2: the nineteen sixty three March on Washington when King gives
Speaker 2: his most famous speech. I have a dream. Everyone knows
Speaker 2: this moment, and you tell this moment like almost through
Speaker 2: a prism. You've interviewed a woman who attended, and so
Speaker 2: you shift to her point of view sometimes, and you
Speaker 2: have a guard, this white guard on stage with King
Speaker 2: who's known only for like his hand moving the microphone.
Speaker 2: But you've interviewed him, and so you're able to sort
Speaker 2: of pivot and create this prismatic, full on kind of
Speaker 2: like omniscient moment. It's really just amazing. Can you talk
Speaker 2: a little about about the actual archival research, the documents,
Speaker 2: the things that make this biography different than all the
Speaker 2: previous ones.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, I went around the country and interviewed
Speaker 5: everybody I could who had any connection to King, and
Speaker 5: I found hundreds of people, lots of scores of people
Speaker 5: who actually knew King. And this is I figured the
Speaker 5: last chance to really run around and meet these people.
Speaker 5: And I've even before I thought about doing a book,
Speaker 5: I just thought, I'm going to travel the country.
Speaker 4: And interview people who knew King.
Speaker 5: And then I interviewed dozens of people who were at
Speaker 5: the march on Washington, as you said.
Speaker 4: And I also had just a ton.
Speaker 5: Of new archival material. You know, we have thousands of
Speaker 5: pages that the FBI has released just in the last
Speaker 5: few years. They keep issue releasing new stuff. And at
Speaker 5: the same time I found Martin Luther King, Senior's unpublished autobiography,
Speaker 5: I found maybe tens of thousands of pages at your
Speaker 5: old favorite haunt, Khalil, the Schomberg Library in Harlem. King's
Speaker 5: personal archivist L. D.
Speaker 4: Reddick.
Speaker 5: He was the official archivist for the for the Southern
Speaker 5: Christian Leadership Conference, and all of his papers were at
Speaker 5: the Schomburg unopened the boxes had not yet been opened,
Speaker 5: they had not even been cataloged.
Speaker 3: Yet most people don't realize that biographies are essentially the
Speaker 3: life blood of biography are the documents. And here you've
Speaker 3: just given us a kind of an insider's perspective on
Speaker 3: what it means to crack open a new collection. But
Speaker 3: you also talk about the FBI records, and in some
Speaker 3: ways they are the backbone of the book. You essentially
Speaker 3: say that these newest FBI records that have recently been
Speaker 3: released show definitively that King was not a tool, not
Speaker 3: connected to had nothing to do with the Communist Party
Speaker 3: of the United States. And in fact, in exploring these
Speaker 3: FBI records, you come to an even more definitive conclusion
Speaker 3: that he was always couching his critique in the American dream,
Speaker 3: in this notion of a kind of constitution that had
Speaker 3: created the possibility for the nation to quote unquote live
Speaker 3: up to its promises.
Speaker 1: Do I have that right? I mean, are we going
Speaker 1: to put this to bed?
Speaker 3: Now?
Speaker 5: Yeah, let's put it to bed. I think the FBI
Speaker 5: have put it to bed. The FBI knew that King
Speaker 5: had nothing, no interest in commune, and they knew that
Speaker 5: he was only using these You know, he had these
Speaker 5: allies who had communists passed because he was trying to
Speaker 5: build a more democratic American society.
Speaker 4: They knew that all along.
Speaker 5: They just couldn't deal with it because they hated him
Speaker 5: so much and because they by that point had him
Speaker 5: in their sights intent on destroying his reputation and breaking
Speaker 5: up you know, his works.
Speaker 3: So yeah, so listen, this is this is a show
Speaker 3: that talks about the absurdities of race, built around an
Speaker 3: interracial friendship that's you know, almost forty years in the making.
Speaker 3: And you are Chicago based author. But I'm always ribbing
Speaker 3: Ben about sort of his choices in life, and one
Speaker 3: of your choices is to focus on black men and
Speaker 3: these biographies you've written about Ali, So tell us, like,
Speaker 3: how did you, as a white writer, come to take
Speaker 3: such a great interest in these, you know, significant black
Speaker 3: figures in American history.
Speaker 5: Well, since you guys go back and talk about childhood
Speaker 5: a lot and show, I'll have to do the same.
Speaker 4: I mean, yes, I'm a little bit older than you guys.
Speaker 5: I was born in sixty four, so I'm going to
Speaker 5: school and I can remember the first day of kindergarten.
Speaker 5: There are no black kids in my neighborhood. But I
Speaker 5: pull up to school and there's busses of white kids
Speaker 5: and there's buses of black kids, and my little six
Speaker 5: year old brain must have been going, Okay, what's going
Speaker 5: on here? And over time, you know, I just normalized it.
Speaker 5: I made friends all through elementary school and high school,
Speaker 5: and by the time I got to college, there were
Speaker 5: African American studies classes available. I didn't realize that that
Speaker 5: was like a fairly new thing at the time, but
Speaker 5: I was excited and I grew up. Also, it's the seventies, right,
Speaker 5: so it's.
Speaker 4: In the air.
Speaker 5: Muhammad Ali is the most famous man on earth, and
Speaker 5: everybody's trying to figure out what he means in terms
Speaker 5: of race relations in America because he's calling it out,
Speaker 5: he's calling out racists, but he's also yucking it up
Speaker 5: on TV with Johnny Carson. So like, my little brain
Speaker 5: is trying to figure this stuff out. Good Time, Sandford
Speaker 5: and Sun like all of this is like, you know,
Speaker 5: it must have been something about that environment I grew
Speaker 5: up in that's drawing me to these questions. So I
Speaker 5: think it developed organically because of the way I was
Speaker 5: raised and where I was raised and just what was
Speaker 5: in the culture at the time.
Speaker 3: So you are a product of black studies.
Speaker 1: Hallelujah.
Speaker 3: See this is what happens. This is what happens white
Speaker 3: folks when you get exposed to black writers, black literature.
Speaker 2: And black whole culture. Yeah, exactly, John, We're going to
Speaker 2: take a quick break and we come back. We're going
Speaker 2: to talk more about Martin Luther King as a complicated,
Speaker 2: actual living person. We are back on Some of my
Speaker 2: best friends are with Jonathan. I. You know, one of
Speaker 2: the things you've dug into all of these new FBI
Speaker 2: wiretaps that have been released, and they tell us something
Speaker 2: that we already knew. We knew that King had lots
Speaker 2: of affairs, but they tell it in much more detail.
Speaker 2: We actually know who the affairs are with. We know
Speaker 2: the actual words that he said when he called these women.
Speaker 2: And I just like, I know, you don't really I know,
Speaker 2: you don't psychoanalyze King in this book, But this has
Speaker 2: been sitting with me and troubling me. And since I've
Speaker 2: read the book, it's like, what was King actually thinking? Like,
Speaker 2: here's a guy who's in charge of this movement, and
Speaker 2: he's so busy and exhausted, and the stakes are so
Speaker 2: damn high, and he's he's undertaking like not like two
Speaker 2: or three affairs, like six and eight at a time.
Speaker 2: And there's like even in the language he's using with
Speaker 2: these women, there's like actual expressions of love of need,
Speaker 2: and I just don't really know, like what's going on?
Speaker 2: How do you make sense of that?
Speaker 4: It's hard, It's really hard. You know.
Speaker 5: We see this with a lot of powerful, famous men,
Speaker 5: this this need for attention, this need for constant gratification.
Speaker 5: And maybe, as Ralph Aberneth he said, it's a stress
Speaker 5: release because he's under such enormous pressure, and yet he
Speaker 5: knows that it's that he's risking everything. He knows that
Speaker 5: any day he could wake up and read this in
Speaker 5: the paper, because he knows the FBI is listening to
Speaker 5: his phone calls and why are tapping his hotel rooms
Speaker 5: and leaking it to the to the press. So the
Speaker 5: strain he's under is just unbelievable, and you constantly ask yourself,
Speaker 5: why doesn't he just stop? Why does he keep subjecting
Speaker 5: himself to this risk? But you know, as Ralph Abernethy
Speaker 5: and others who knew him said, he couldn't it became
Speaker 5: a compulsion. And he did also have a lot of
Speaker 5: mental health issues. You know, he was hospitalized numerous times
Speaker 5: for what he called exhaustion, but you know, others close
Speaker 5: to him called anxiety and depression. So I don't think
Speaker 5: it was a logical rational choice.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: If King lived in a different time, he would have
Speaker 3: gone to see there's one of those sex addiction specialists
Speaker 3: like Eric eric Ay, the R and B artist. When
Speaker 3: who's cheating on halle Berry, you just go, you know
Speaker 3: and talk to somebody to help work it out. I mean,
Speaker 3: I agree with Ben, we don't learn anything new, But
Speaker 3: not only is it humanizing, but it also you know,
Speaker 3: you can kind of see a struggle in this that
Speaker 3: there is something that feels like he's lost control of
Speaker 3: himself in this way because the risks are great, and
Speaker 3: he's constantly fretting about whether or not the movement can
Speaker 3: succeed based on the choices they make, and here obviously
Speaker 3: his personal ones are part of that risk analysis.
Speaker 2: And John, I want to I want to ask you
Speaker 2: a follow up to that, which is, I'm curious, what
Speaker 2: new did you learn about Koreta Scott King? Like, what
Speaker 2: what's the what's your sort of new insight into her.
Speaker 5: Well, first of all, I think she's a far greater
Speaker 5: hero than than she's been portrayed.
Speaker 2: She was.
Speaker 5: More of an activist than King was when they I
Speaker 5: think that's the main thing that attracted King to her.
Speaker 5: Of course, she was, you know, intelligent and beautiful, but
Speaker 5: she came with a pedigree for activism. She'd been at
Speaker 5: Antioch and involved in all these protests, and King was
Speaker 5: really attracted to that. And then, of course, you know,
Speaker 5: she gets shut down because of the sexism of the
Speaker 5: time and the sexism.
Speaker 4: Of the church.
Speaker 5: She's not allowed to be as activist as she wants
Speaker 5: to be. But she still pushes King all the way.
Speaker 5: When when King wins the Nobel Prize, Coreda is the
Speaker 5: first one that says that we have an even greater
Speaker 5: responsibility now to speak out not just on voting rights
Speaker 5: and integration, but on war and materialism and poverty. It's Kreta, really,
Speaker 5: who's you know, giving them a little nudge every step
Speaker 5: of the way. And yeah, she she certainly knew about
Speaker 5: his extramarital affairs, even though she denied it all of
Speaker 5: her her life. But that to me makes her even
Speaker 5: more heroic. Because the FBI is trying to drive a
Speaker 5: wedge between King and Coreta, and she's just not going
Speaker 5: to let it happen.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: One of the things that I took from your treatment
Speaker 3: of Caretta and these notes that she kept, is the
Speaker 3: extent to which King himself, who was criticized at the
Speaker 3: time by people in the movement, women in particular like
Speaker 3: Ele Baker, who helped to lead the NAACP and eventually
Speaker 3: the Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee, You basically show that
Speaker 3: King himself was a sexist. He didn't really value the
Speaker 3: voice of women in the movement, including his own wife.
Speaker 5: Yeah, he had a serious blind spot there, as did
Speaker 5: many women. I mean, as did many men of that time,
Speaker 5: and certainly many Southern Baptist preachers.
Speaker 4: People like Ella Baker.
Speaker 5: Called him on it, and his own wife called him
Speaker 5: on it, and he wasn't He just wasn't there yet.
Speaker 2: And John, what evidence is there or is there any
Speaker 2: evidence that the FBI fabricated or distorted what they found
Speaker 2: about King? You know, so they have actual tape. Did
Speaker 2: they make anything up about him?
Speaker 4: Great question? So we have the transcripts of the tapes.
Speaker 5: The tape themselves won't be released until twenty twenty seven,
Speaker 5: although I think some people are trying to suppress that
Speaker 5: from being released then. But the transcripts are accurate, according
Speaker 5: to everybody I spoke to who's on those tapes. Andrew
Speaker 5: Young has read the transcript he's on the recordings, and
Speaker 5: he says that his words are accurately transcribed. Bayard Rustin
Speaker 5: got ahold of his own FBI files and said the
Speaker 5: transcripts were accurate. So I don't think there's much doubt
Speaker 5: when we read transcripts that they're accurate. But the memos
Speaker 5: are that summarize what's being heard in these hotel rooms
Speaker 5: are definitely open to scrutiny, and that, you know, we'll
Speaker 5: just have to see if and when those tapes are
Speaker 5: released in twenty twenty seven, whether the FBI was in
Speaker 5: fact embellishing some of what they heard in the memos.
Speaker 1: Got it, got it well.
Speaker 3: One of the things that the transcripts don't distort it
Speaker 3: in which drive a lot of your new ways in
Speaker 3: which you reveal the complexity, particularly of King's own doubts
Speaker 3: and frustrations, are the conversations he's having with his own
Speaker 3: own team. I mean, you just mentioned Andy Young actually
Speaker 3: reviewing the transcripts for accuracy. So talk to us a
Speaker 3: little bit about what more we learn in terms of
Speaker 3: the internal dialogue between King and his close advisors.
Speaker 5: The FBI transcripts, to me are so important because we
Speaker 5: see how the FBI is trying to weaponize King's behavior
Speaker 5: against himself. That's what's most important about his about the
Speaker 5: tawdry details of his sex life, that our government is
Speaker 5: trying to weaponize it. But the other there's a there's
Speaker 5: a hidden benefit to these transcripts, and that's that we
Speaker 5: get this really intimate view of King on the phone
Speaker 5: with his closest friends and advisors. We hear his doubts,
Speaker 5: we hear his concerns, we hear him suffering as he's
Speaker 5: saying that he feels like he's losing sway with the
Speaker 5: American public, that people aren't listening to him anymore. And
Speaker 5: then his own advisors are urging him, you know, stick
Speaker 5: with where you're good at, stick with where you're most effective,
Speaker 5: focus on voting rights in the South. And King is saying, no,
Speaker 5: don't you understand me. His best friends don't understand that
Speaker 5: this this is about something bigger than voting rits in
Speaker 5: the South. This is about the Bible for him, and
Speaker 5: that he has to speak out about racism in the North.
Speaker 5: He has to speak out about segregation in the northern
Speaker 5: schools and about the war in Vietnam. This is what
Speaker 5: the Bible commands him to do, and his own closest
Speaker 5: advisors don't get it. And you could just hear his
Speaker 5: pain that he's feeling about this. It's really heartbreaking.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's really fascinating. I had a chance to meet
Speaker 3: Andy Young a few years ago. We actually did a
Speaker 3: panel together.
Speaker 1: And it was a kind of retrospective there.
Speaker 5: I saw it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah, Ben was in the audience, and it was
Speaker 3: a kind of generational dialogue about like where do we
Speaker 3: go from here. The Charlottesville riot of twenty seventeen with
Speaker 3: the tiki torch mob down in Virginia had just happened
Speaker 3: a day or two before, and I remember talking to
Speaker 3: Andy after the panel discussion and he shared a moment
Speaker 3: that you actually have in the book.
Speaker 1: It almost verbatim.
Speaker 3: It may be that you had not talked to him
Speaker 3: long before that, but he said, you know, King's inner
Speaker 3: circle included James Bevel, who he said, and you right,
Speaker 3: was certifiably insane, and that King himself often wanted this
Speaker 3: kind of team of rivals around him, and that Andy
Speaker 3: Jung was always positioned as the most conservative, the most thoughtful,
Speaker 3: the most you know, deliberative, and these other folks around
Speaker 3: him were like, let's burn this shit down or let's
Speaker 3: do this. You know, he said, you know, people wanted
Speaker 3: to get themselves killed the way they're behaving. And I'd
Speaker 3: love that you are able to capture some of that
Speaker 3: energy and uncertainty because so often these histories of social
Speaker 3: movements are so linear. You know, everything is foreordained, it's
Speaker 3: all looking back, and you really do capture the way
Speaker 3: in which in these moments they really don't know what
Speaker 3: to do, They really are unsure, and they are just
Speaker 3: taking risks and leaps of faith.
Speaker 5: That's one of the things I love about King is
Speaker 5: that he's throwing himself into stuff where he doesn't know
Speaker 5: how it's going to turn out. He goes down to
Speaker 5: Mississippi and marches with Stokely Carmichael after the James Meredith shooting,
Speaker 5: and and and Stokely says, you know, I'm using you right,
Speaker 5: you know, like all this black power stuff sounds a
Speaker 5: lot more fiery when I'm standing next to Martin Luther King,
Speaker 5: and King says, yeah, it's okay.
Speaker 4: I've been used before.
Speaker 5: And you can actually see some of Stokely's philosophy sort
Speaker 5: of creeping into King's speeches. It's beautiful because he's because
Speaker 5: he's really a listener's and he's learning as he goes.
Speaker 4: And that's Martin Luther King.
Speaker 5: You know, you could just he could just be the
Speaker 5: He could just bigfoot everybody if he wanted to, but
Speaker 5: that's not his style.
Speaker 2: Maybe one of the things this is well known, but
Speaker 2: reading the book made me think of it even more
Speaker 2: is that his career is essentially thirteen years. He dies
Speaker 2: at thirty nine. He sort of starts in organizing at
Speaker 2: twenty six, which is such a short amount of time.
Speaker 2: And maybe what you're describing there is not a middle
Speaker 2: aged person or an older person who's stuck in their ways,
Speaker 2: You know that we don't. We like to think of King,
Speaker 2: because of his whole aura, as somebody who's older. But
Speaker 2: he's he's young still and he's still like it sounds
Speaker 2: like he's still learning all the time.
Speaker 4: No question about that.
Speaker 5: You know, he wanted to be a college professor, he
Speaker 5: wanted to maybe be a president, of university. He wanted
Speaker 5: to be like Benjamin Mays at Morehouse, given you know,
Speaker 5: inspirational lectures to the student body. I think he was
Speaker 5: always into learning, and he got thrust into this position
Speaker 5: of leadership, but it was not his first choice, and
Speaker 5: in some ways he wasn't really suited for it personality wise.
Speaker 5: He didn't ever really feel like the need to be
Speaker 5: the center of attention. That was just not his not
Speaker 5: his vibe.
Speaker 1: A man named King did not want to be King.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and our greatest protest leader hated conflict.
Speaker 2: So a last question about the FBI tapes. So much
Speaker 2: of what you just said, like we understand King through
Speaker 2: these tapes, and so I want to know how should
Speaker 2: we how we should understand the FBI, Like what is
Speaker 2: what's our government's role in the history of the civil
Speaker 2: rights movement in undermining the pursuit for equality.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's one of the most shameful chapters in our
Speaker 5: country's history that you know, we take this guy who
Speaker 5: I think should be on Mount Rushmore, one of the
Speaker 5: greatest heroes of American history, whose main mission is to
Speaker 5: try to make this a greater democracy, to live up
Speaker 5: to the words in the Constitution and our government can't
Speaker 5: can't handle that and attacks him and really tries to
Speaker 5: destroy him. A lot of it is based on racism.
Speaker 5: Hoover was absolutely racist, but a lot of it is
Speaker 5: just also based on his seeing his job and not
Speaker 5: just him, but all of the power structure seeing their
Speaker 5: job is maintaining the status quo that we're in power,
Speaker 5: we want to stay in power, and sharing it with
Speaker 5: Black Americans is not really in our not to our benefit.
Speaker 2: And j Edgar Hoover, you said Hoover, j ed Gar
Speaker 2: Hoover is the head of the FBI who just went
Speaker 2: after King relentlessly.
Speaker 5: Yeah, he's the he's the main guy. But we shouldn't
Speaker 5: just blame it on him because LBJ was complicit. The
Speaker 5: Kennedys authorized the wiretaps, members of Congress knew about the surveillance,
Speaker 5: did nothing about it. The white media didn'tknew about the surveillance,
Speaker 5: did nothing about it. So Jane Hoover is a big
Speaker 5: part of the problem, but not the whole problem.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I just want to echo because I think
Speaker 3: as a historian, as someone who writes about this period,
Speaker 3: who teaches this period, we as Americans do not fully
Speaker 3: appreciate how central our own federal government was in destroying
Speaker 3: the promise of the Civil rights era and the black
Speaker 3: freedom movement more generally, like that, that is that just
Speaker 3: has to be said again and again and again, because
Speaker 3: the extent to which we always think about the white
Speaker 3: supremacists of the South and the KKK, or we think
Speaker 3: about white moderates in there weak response to the possibility
Speaker 3: that unfold around them, which we're going to talk about,
Speaker 3: we still have to take ownership of the efforts of
Speaker 3: the most powerful law enforcement agency working against change.
Speaker 4: I couldn't agree more.
Speaker 5: And there was a moment in this book where I
Speaker 5: really got my blood started to boil. You know, I
Speaker 5: writing the scene of the march on Washington, and it's
Speaker 5: one of the most beautiful moments in American history. Literally
Speaker 5: feels like we're at a turning point, that America might.
Speaker 4: Be ready to change. And you know, you've.
Speaker 5: Got nationally televised millions and millions of people watching as
Speaker 5: black and white people are literally singing in harmony, holding hands.
Speaker 5: And then the next day the FBI isshes this memo
Speaker 5: saying King must be considered the most dangerous man in
Speaker 5: America because he threatens status quo and That's just such
Speaker 5: a sad moment in American history because we had a
Speaker 5: chance to Really it felt like we had a chance,
Speaker 5: and the people who were there that day and even
Speaker 5: people watching it on TV felt like this could be
Speaker 5: the moment that we change, that we leave our are
Speaker 5: passed behind, and the FBI say no, no, We're not
Speaker 5: gonna do that.
Speaker 3: Come on, that is a disturbing and also appropriate moment.
Speaker 1: To take a break.
Speaker 3: We are going to talk about what comes after the
Speaker 3: I have a dream speech, what comes after the civil
Speaker 3: rights achievements of nineteen sixty four and sixty five.
Speaker 1: When we get back from a short.
Speaker 2: Break, All right, John, I want to talk about King's
Speaker 2: popularity or lack of it, So you righte that, like
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty three, babies all over the country are
Speaker 2: being named Martin, and by nineteen sixty six there aren't
Speaker 2: that many babies being named Martin. You also tell us
Speaker 2: that in nineteen sixty four there's this list of the
Speaker 2: most admired men in the entire WORL world and he's
Speaker 2: right up there on the top of it. And then
Speaker 2: by nineteen sixty six is a survey and sixty three
Speaker 2: percent of those who were interviewed have a negative view
Speaker 2: of King. What happened? Why did he become so unpopular.
Speaker 1: And so quickly?
Speaker 4: So quickly?
Speaker 5: For sure, he decided that he was going to say
Speaker 5: what he believed, and that was not a good move.
Speaker 5: You know, he was popular as long as he was
Speaker 5: criticizing Bull Connor in Birmingham. He was popular as long
Speaker 5: as he was talking about voting rights for people in Mississippi,
Speaker 5: because northern liberals could get behind that. But when he
Speaker 5: starts saying, you know, you northern liberals got a problem too.
Speaker 5: You're fleeing the cities for the safe white enclaves of
Speaker 5: the suburbs, and your schools are just as segregated as
Speaker 5: the schools in Birmingham, Alabama. And when he begins speaking
Speaker 5: out against the Vietnam War, which was still relatively popular
Speaker 5: at the time, all these white Americans in the North
Speaker 5: in particular, are saying, wait a second, we thought you know,
Speaker 5: you were talking about those those.
Speaker 4: Other racists of sticking white people right, stay.
Speaker 5: In your lane. And even King's advisors are saying to him,
Speaker 5: you know, we might be more effective if we just
Speaker 5: focused on the South. And people can't understand even though
Speaker 5: you know the reason King becomes successful in the first
Speaker 5: place is because he's preaching this very mainstream view really
Speaker 5: in a way like, I just want us to live
Speaker 5: up to the democracy, to the promises of democracy and
Speaker 5: the Constitution.
Speaker 4: I just want us to live up to the words
Speaker 4: in the Bible. We can all agree on that, right.
Speaker 5: But when he when he starts getting specific and pushing
Speaker 5: it beyond the Deep South, suddenly people be it, get
Speaker 5: uncomfortable with that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and listen, So, John, you and I are in Chicago,
Speaker 2: and you talked about him. Him bringing this message up north.
Speaker 2: Chicago is one of his main destinations. So in nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty three there's this amazing school boycott in Chicago to
Speaker 2: protest segregation. Two hundred thousand and students leave public schools
Speaker 2: in Chicago to say, we can't have segregated schools any longer.
Speaker 2: We can't be taught in these like you know, buses
Speaker 2: that are outside the schools, mobile mobile trailers. And King
Speaker 2: comes up and lends his support to that, and then
Speaker 2: he comes back up to Chicago and actually moves here
Speaker 2: with Correta to the West side of Chicago to highlight
Speaker 2: to protest housing issues here. He wants open housing nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty is open housing that you know, Chicago has such
Speaker 2: is in many ways the most segregated city in the country.
Speaker 2: And you know that there are all these restrictions on
Speaker 2: where black people could live. They're not actually allowed to
Speaker 2: enjoy the open market of housing. Yeah, and he talks
Speaker 2: about finding racists here that are you know, would make
Speaker 2: people in Mississippi blush. Yeah. I mean even throw that
Speaker 2: to you, Khalil, because you know, what did you think
Speaker 2: of those moments? And you know when the story returns
Speaker 2: to Chicago.
Speaker 3: Well, I've often had to disabuse young people, particularly my students,
Speaker 3: of this idea that we historians called Southern exceptionalism, because
Speaker 3: it is such a deeply conventional notion that the racism
Speaker 3: of yesterday was a Southern problem and that the issues
Speaker 3: in the North were really about ungrateful black people in
Speaker 3: their dysfunctional homes with fathers missing, who become welfare dependents
Speaker 3: and turn to pathology and gangs and all of this.
Speaker 3: In other words, racism has been written out of most
Speaker 3: textbooks that teach this period of US history, and so
Speaker 3: I actually do think of it as a backlash moment
Speaker 3: because white liberals and moderates do have to confront doctor
Speaker 3: King's moral authority on their own ground, and they show
Speaker 3: their fucking asses big time, like you know, in a
Speaker 3: way that is very powerful even to this day, to
Speaker 3: see the venomous Confederate flag waving rage that we see
Speaker 3: in video archival footage of the protest Engage Park, for example, Jonathan,
Speaker 3: which which you've written about.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and you know, it's interesting what you're saying to
Speaker 5: Khlill is really powerful because we see the people throwing
Speaker 5: rocks and bricks at King Engage Park and that's famous.
Speaker 5: And King leaves here saying these these white people waving
Speaker 5: the Nazi flags could teach people in Birmingham about racism.
Speaker 5: But the piece that we don't see and we don't
Speaker 5: talk about as much is the fact that King was
Speaker 5: getting all of the support from the northern suburbs, from
Speaker 5: the white supporters around on the periphery of Chicago and
Speaker 5: being invited to speak at churches and synagogues up there.
Speaker 5: But those folks weren't marching with them Engage Park. You know,
Speaker 5: they were comfortable sending their support their checks in the mail.
Speaker 5: But when he moved to Chicago, he did not find
Speaker 5: the groundswell of support that he was looking for, and
Speaker 5: he also found divisions in the black community too. He
Speaker 5: wasn't able to rally the kind of backing here that
Speaker 5: he that he needed, in part because so many people
Speaker 5: here in the city were dependent on mayor daily for
Speaker 5: their jobs, and church leaders were divided to not all
Speaker 5: of the black churches got behind King in the way
Speaker 5: he had hoped. So it was he found and you know,
Speaker 5: his advisors warned him, Chicago's a lot more complicated. The
Speaker 5: moral issues aren't as black and white, no pun intended.
Speaker 4: It's going to be.
Speaker 5: Harder to really focus the media on your message here
Speaker 5: because it's more nuanced. And all that played against him.
Speaker 5: But that having been said, you know, King really pushed
Speaker 5: for specific reforms. He got the city to agree to make,
Speaker 5: you know, important changes in laws and policies, and then
Speaker 5: once he left town.
Speaker 4: The city just abandoned all that said. Yeah, don't let
Speaker 4: the door hit you on the way out.
Speaker 2: You have a line and of what King sort of
Speaker 2: has this revelation about white people after coming north and
Speaker 2: he says they're all unconscious racists.
Speaker 4: Yeah that hit heard, Yeah yeah.
Speaker 3: And also the kind of language that today is had
Speaker 3: been completely removed from any notion of what King actually
Speaker 3: stood for. You also tell the story of Mike Wallace
Speaker 3: telling a CBS audience in the summer of nineteen sixty
Speaker 3: six that white people were fed up with racial turmoil,
Speaker 3: which is, like, you know, the perfect both honest expression
Speaker 3: of what is actually happening and also an echo of
Speaker 3: the Reconstruction period, when white people were fed up with
Speaker 3: the racial turmoil of white Southern Democrats deciding that they
Speaker 3: were going to take back control of the South, and
Speaker 3: the federal government deciding, you know what, the costs are
Speaker 3: too great, We're done with this, We're out, and so
Speaker 3: there we are. But King doesn't help himself, right, he
Speaker 3: doesn't help himself because with all of that, he adds
Speaker 3: insult to injury by saying this war in Vietnam is
Speaker 3: a moral abomination and unmitigatingly calls publicly calls for an
Speaker 3: end to the US involvement, and holds LBJ to task
Speaker 3: for escalating the war.
Speaker 5: And what I love about that is that he's saying
Speaker 5: that the war is not just about you know, losing lives.
Speaker 5: It's not just about the fact that we're killing our
Speaker 5: brothers in Vietnam. That we're all children of God, He's
Speaker 5: saying that war has another consequence, that it leads to
Speaker 5: immortal rot in society, that it undermines all of the
Speaker 5: goodness that we're trying to teach. That you can't teach war,
Speaker 5: you can't advocate for war and still say that we
Speaker 5: are that we are committed to love and kindness and peace.
Speaker 4: He's seeing the big.
Speaker 5: Picture and in a way that you know, very few
Speaker 5: leaders are brave enough to call out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Okay, John, maybe you're already answering this question that
Speaker 2: I'm about to ask, but it's something I thought about
Speaker 2: reading the book, is whether it actually was a strategic
Speaker 2: mistake on his part to bring the Vietnam War also
Speaker 2: in to these major issues that he's trying to tackle,
Speaker 2: and King's own leadership is saying like this is a mistake.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a great question.
Speaker 5: And people are a lot smarter than I am, you know,
Speaker 5: like fired Russ and we're saying exactly what you're saying,
Speaker 5: that you're you're wasting your energy, that you're never going
Speaker 5: to accomplish all of these things that you're talking about.
Speaker 5: If you just focus on where your strongest, we can
Speaker 5: change the country. If we change if we get enough
Speaker 5: people registered to vote in the South. We change the
Speaker 5: balance of power in every state legislature, we change the
Speaker 5: balance of power in Congress. We tip presidential elections, we
Speaker 5: start to see more black people being elected to office.
Speaker 5: All of that will will help us in the long run,
Speaker 5: and then you can start talking about you know, demilitarization
Speaker 5: and attacking materialism. But like lay the groundwork. That's how
Speaker 5: fired rust In, a brilliant strategist saw things. But King
Speaker 5: just couldn't do it. Like he said, you know, he
Speaker 5: wasn't a politician. He wasn't Machiavelli, and he wasn't thinking
Speaker 5: about what made the most sense. He was thinking about
Speaker 5: what was the right thing to do. He was a
Speaker 5: you know, he was a minister primarily fundamentally.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, I I'm fascinated by this issue too, and
Speaker 3: I don't think it's it's clear like in terms of
Speaker 3: political strategy. But what I have to say for me
Speaker 3: personally that I admire so much about doctor King is
Speaker 3: what you just said, John, that he wasn't a politician.
Speaker 3: And when he tells the country that he's not going
Speaker 3: to support lbj reelection bid, it really strikes me as
Speaker 3: a moment when we saw kind of the last time
Speaker 3: that black leadership, organic black leadership, social media leadership was
Speaker 3: not captured by the Democratic Party that King maintained as
Speaker 3: independence in such a way that you cannot find today.
Speaker 3: You have people who are civil rights leaders, who are
Speaker 3: who are essentially an extension of the Democratic Party, and
Speaker 3: I would say, for me, it has hurt us. And
Speaker 3: so one lesson coming out of this is that King's independence,
Speaker 3: even in the critique of Bayad Rustin, gets lost in
Speaker 3: what for that generation was a brass ring which was
Speaker 3: to participate in electoral politics, but it was also a
Speaker 3: devil's bargain because once you started participating, then you had
Speaker 3: debts to be paid, you had loyalties to protect, and
Speaker 3: I think that the independence of social movements have been
Speaker 3: lost in that translation.
Speaker 5: That's a really interesting point. And when you think about
Speaker 5: what King was trying to do when he was assassinated
Speaker 5: was to pull together all of these factions in the
Speaker 5: Poor People's Campaign and to basically occupy Washington and force
Speaker 5: the nation to pay attention to all of the injustices.
Speaker 5: I mean, it's incredibly audacious and maybe by Ourdrustin would
Speaker 5: have said it was naive, but he was trying to
Speaker 5: find a way to do it. He wasn't just talking
Speaker 5: about it. He wasn't just writing op eds or.
Speaker 4: Going on TV.
Speaker 5: He was trying to build a new coalition.
Speaker 3: I love that term occupy, occupy Washington, DC, because that's
Speaker 3: exactly what it feels like looking back on the promise
Speaker 3: of it. But let's talk just for a second about
Speaker 3: the enduring relevance of King. I mean, doctor King today
Speaker 3: is a symbol of American exceptionalism, and it seems to me,
Speaker 3: I mean, just certainly from my reading of your biography
Speaker 3: and the teaching that I do in the classroom that
Speaker 3: I mean, this guy is as relevant today and death
Speaker 3: as he was when he was alive. I mean, was
Speaker 3: that a motivating factor even several years ago, not counting
Speaker 3: the madness of anti CRT and the misappropriation of King's content,
Speaker 3: of our character stuff that goes on now. I mean,
Speaker 3: how were you thinking about King's legacy when you first
Speaker 3: set out to do this biograph.
Speaker 5: I started this book I think even before yeah, before
Speaker 5: Trump was elected. So, but there was so much in
Speaker 5: the air at the time that was was relevant. Obviously,
Speaker 5: because so much of what King had to say is
Speaker 5: still you know, ringing in our ears. You know, he
Speaker 5: called out not just racism, but income inequality and and incarceration,
Speaker 5: and he talked about reparations, he talked about police brutality.
Speaker 5: You know, the issues are still so alive. And at
Speaker 5: the same time, I felt like, where's King now? We're
Speaker 5: not teaching his works, We're not you know, kids aren't
Speaker 5: reading him. I wasn't reading him in college. We've turned
Speaker 5: him into this really safe, watered down figure, and his
Speaker 5: life and his words don't bear that out. So I
Speaker 5: just felt like, especially when I was meeting people who
Speaker 5: knew King during my ALI work, I felt like we
Speaker 5: needed to hear his voice again. We needed a more
Speaker 5: intimate portrait of King. That was really what got me started.
Speaker 3: So you just mentioned reparations and the Poor People's Campaign
Speaker 3: and the possibility that it held, you know, at the
Speaker 3: height of the apotheosis of King and his vision for
Speaker 3: the future of America. So what are some of the
Speaker 3: lessons that we should take from King's own commitment to
Speaker 3: this bold, challenging vision of a multi racial demid percy
Speaker 3: that was more egalitarian.
Speaker 5: I don't know where to start on that one, Khalil,
Speaker 5: but I think the main message is that it's okay
Speaker 5: to be idealistic, it's okay to and it's in it's
Speaker 5: necessary to fight for what you truly believe in. And
Speaker 5: yes there's there's time and a place for compromise, but
Speaker 5: not everybody has to be a compromiser. I think King
Speaker 5: was pushing us to really fight for what we believed in,
Speaker 5: and in some ways the man who best recognized that
Speaker 5: was j Edgar Hoover. He truly recognized the threat that
Speaker 5: that posed.
Speaker 2: Hmmm, yeah, that's something that Khalil Lexto always say that
Speaker 2: the backlash is so strong because the danger of multiracial
Speaker 2: democracy is real. One of the lessons that I took
Speaker 2: away from reading the book is what you talked about earlier,
Speaker 2: kind of a mission on King's part, which is overlooking
Speaker 2: women in the movement. And you know, it's so clear
Speaker 2: that that women need to be part of the struggle
Speaker 2: going forward, and they were, they were diminished somewhat during
Speaker 2: his time, and so there seems to be like, when
Speaker 2: I think of the lessons for today, that seems to
Speaker 2: be part of it for sure.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's one of the negative lessons, and you know,
Speaker 5: we can see it. King missed out on a huge
Speaker 5: opportunity there, and everybody from Ella Baker to King's own
Speaker 5: wife was trying to wake him up to that, and
Speaker 5: he failed. And maybe if he'd lived longer, he would
Speaker 5: have come around and seen the light.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, you just used a word wake up, which
Speaker 3: it actually is a term that comes up in the
Speaker 3: very last sentence of the book. And Ben and I
Speaker 3: were joking about the fact that this notion of being
Speaker 3: woke right has become essentially criminalized in something like twenty
Speaker 3: states in terms of what it means to teach children
Speaker 3: the actual king, the radical king, the king who believed
Speaker 3: in a revolution of values, or even to teach about
Speaker 3: the FBI's Hitler.
Speaker 2: Right, I'm the very last line of the book. Re
Speaker 2: read the line.
Speaker 3: No, no, I'm going to I'm want to ask John, John,
Speaker 3: I'm going to have you say it.
Speaker 1: Do you know the last line of the book?
Speaker 4: I don't you do it?
Speaker 1: All right? All right, find it. It's the very last line.
Speaker 5: You got to read it are very Survival depends on
Speaker 5: our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas,
Speaker 5: to remain vigilant, and to face the challenge of change.
Speaker 2: Thank you for reading that. Were you thinking there. Even
Speaker 2: in writing that about sort of all the current attacks,
Speaker 2: I'm being called wokeness, like the anti wokeness movement from
Speaker 2: the right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that was that was a part of it. But
Speaker 5: the main point I think is that he's saying we
Speaker 5: have to stay alert and if you want to use
Speaker 5: the word woke, fine, but we have to be aware
Speaker 5: that that conditions always change, but our principles don't have to,
Speaker 5: and that we have to keep fighting no matter what
Speaker 5: the conditions we're in. And if you're not, if you're
Speaker 5: so set in your way, is that you're not paying
Speaker 5: attention to the changes and you're not adapting to them,
Speaker 5: and you're not renewing your call and renewing your vision,
Speaker 5: then you're not going to get it done. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well that's encouraging.
Speaker 3: Let's let's hope the book doesn't end up on any
Speaker 3: banned book list, so.
Speaker 5: It might be good for some more people, you know,
Speaker 5: I do want it to be in everybody's hands.
Speaker 2: Yeah, people who might Yeah, people who might not initially
Speaker 2: embraced King but could learn a lot from this book
Speaker 2: and can learn about our democracy.
Speaker 3: Well, John, it was a true delight to have you
Speaker 3: on some of my best friends, are I learned some
Speaker 3: new things in reading your biography. I hope that our
Speaker 3: listeners pick it up and check it out as well.
Speaker 3: We're excited to see what comes next.
Speaker 4: For you don't even ask oh, thank you guys man.
Speaker 2: So John's book and maybe even more so, the conversation
Speaker 2: that we just had made me think about King differently. Okay,
Speaker 2: it made me think about King really as part of
Speaker 2: the complex history and politics of his moment, you know,
Speaker 2: like we often think about King or the fight for
Speaker 2: civil rights almost in kind of biblical terms, like you know,
Speaker 2: Moses getting the Israelites out of Egypt, and as you said,
Speaker 2: there was like this brass ring of fighting for voting rights.
Speaker 2: But he was also just like part of history, like
Speaker 2: he had to think about the political moment, like there's
Speaker 2: a war going on, I gotta say something, and like
Speaker 2: there's a Democrat running for president LBJ, Do I support
Speaker 2: him or not? That's right to me. That's so interesting
Speaker 2: because it makes me think of like any leader today,
Speaker 2: you know, you know, do you support Biden his re
Speaker 2: election campaign? You know, do you talk about climate change? Also?
Speaker 2: Do you talk about immigration? Like everything is watered down?
Speaker 2: And that's yeah, it's just a different view of King.
Speaker 2: It's a different way to think about him, and it's
Speaker 2: also what makes John's book unique.
Speaker 3: I think, well, I think in general, biographies at their
Speaker 3: best capture the indeterminacy, the uncertainty, the emotional rollercoaster that
Speaker 3: leaders experience, and people who are involved in work that
Speaker 3: is disruptive, that is dangerous. And I love that in
Speaker 3: this conversation with Jonathan we were able to hear from
Speaker 3: him and of course, having read the book, just how
Speaker 3: much this new information draws our attention to these guys.
Speaker 3: You know, they were all young. King was mostly you know,
Speaker 3: the late nineties and early thirties, I mean, unbelievable, right,
Speaker 3: So I hope that people pick this biography up. You know,
Speaker 3: this is a moment for revisiting this past that will
Speaker 3: help us hopefully see our way through the battles ahead.
Speaker 2: Right right, Well, love you, Khalil.
Speaker 1: Love you too.
Speaker 3: Some of My Best Friends Are is a production of
Speaker 3: Pushkin Industries. The show is written and hosted by me Khalil,
Speaker 3: Jabon Muhammad, and my best friend Ben Austin.
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Speaker 2: I'm gonna buy you lunch okay, whatever man