know, hopefully we can do our part because we can't we can't keep having what's happening on the ground right now. i don't know how people in gaza are surviving. are our friends and colleagues in israel are still shaken to the core by what happened on october seven. and so something needs to change. sorry. i want a final word. so we want to you for being in this conversation with us tonight. i mean, could we could go on much further and? you know, i'm trying to lean into to to although, you know, there's the anti fascist antonio gramsci. she had a quote, the of the intellect optimism of the will. so the optimism of the will is that we keep fighting even though. you know, it it bleak and and we appropriately should be very sad

grieving. but that should not stop us from continuing to fight because it is not tenable. so thank you for coming out there are books in the back. women and children first great local bookstore selling nathan's book. please buy one. i think he'll stick around for the next 15 or 20 minutes or so and sign books. support human rights watch, support the palestinian film festival, support jvp, all the organized that are organizing around this issue, providing information, but also write your local elected and demand that they support a ceasefire thank you. thank you all. it is really wonderful for us to have john and i back at the carter library.

you know, it has just been several years since jonathan was here. he was here for the book, a book about jackie robinson. and that's been probably. live seven or eight years since then. and what's really neat is that jonathan had decided to kick off his book tour for his new book. his book just came out yesterday and do that here at the jimmy carter presidential library, which is really, i think, a great. this is his sixth book he's just written, as i said, about jackie robinson, lou gehrig, muhammad ali capone, as well as the foursome who really did the push to get the approval of the birth control pill. but the thing that the thing that you see jonathan's writing is an immense amount of research

that goes into it. and i think he by that naturally his dad was an accountant. so a stickler for details. and his mom was a community act of us. and so if you think about that and think about the subjects he's written about jackie robinson, muhammad ali, martin luther king, i think he gets that from her as well. he's been a reporter at the new orleans times-picayune, the dallas morning news, chicago magazine, the wall street journal. he has taught at columbia college and lecture is at northwestern university. the washington post calls his new book the most compelling account of king's life in a generation. and so i think we're in for a treat tonight. so it was important, i think, for us to have just the right person to interview jonathan,

valerie jackson. is that person, you know, she is always referred to as the former first lady of atlanta, which is true, but it really doesn't tell her story. i mean, she's grown, she grows up in virginia. she is the one of the first african-americans students admitted to her high school. she goes college, gets her degree in business administration, goes to the wharton school of business, probably the finer school of business gets her mba, gets her mba. there she goes on. she's an advertising executive a regional marketing executive for an airline. she when she married mayor maynard jackson, who was the first african american mayor of the city of atlanta, she served as an advisor to the city's

economic development program, bringing national convener jones in programs to this city. and then if i were to go on and list every board and committee and commercial that she is on or heads, you'd never hear anything from jonathan tonight. so please join me in welcoming valerie jackson and jonathan, i. say evening, good evening. and of all those things that he mentions, my favorite thing to do is to read and talk to authors, which i've been doing for over 20 years. well, i'm so happy to be here. jonathan, it's so good to see you again. i think the last time we were together, i was interviewing you on your muhammad ali that's right book. and we had a wonderful time. as a matter of fact, i commented to you about how many tabs i had to put in the book because

you've got even more this to listen i look i was trying to be discriminate. i was halfway through the book and i noticed that almost every page had a tab on. i said, wait a minute, darling, you got to slow down here, got to discriminate eating, right? well, this is discrimination, all right? and and that was after i slowed down a bit what this really means, though, is that this is a very comprehensive, rich book that contains so much important information that you really, i can't resist, underscore and highlighting. thank you. so which color marks the corrections? i'm not. i think you're going to ask me which ones are the f. yeah, i'll get to that later. yeah. right, right. anyway, there have been so many books written already about martin luther king. i've got at least eight or nine on my shelf, not counting yours and not to mention his that he wrote about himself, too. about ten of those.

so the first question one wants to know is why did you think there was a need for yet another martin luther king book? two reasons. mainly. one, it had been a long time since the last king biographer in 40 years when the civil war, the trumpet sound came out. and since then we've had other great books about civil rights, about king, obviously, the taylor branch trilogy, but that's covers really america in the king years. david carroll's book is not a biography. it's wonderful. but 40 years between king biographies is ridiculous. that's much too long. and in that time, obviously, there's a lot more material, not just fbi material, but archival material that's come into play. and at the same time, there were people alive who knew dr. king and was really the sweet spot where i could get around and interview them for, you know, it was too late. and obviously when i was here in atlanta and for my ali book,

interviewing people like john lewis, like and andrew young, i just gravitated toward asking them, you know, what was dr. king like? because ali and king met a couple of times. so i began asking them, you know, how they got along. but really, i was just curious to talk to people who knew martin luther king jr and, you know, we're here at the carter center. jimmy carter was born four and a half years before martin luther king. so jimmy carter could still be with us. i mean, sorry, jimmy carter is still with us. that guy, right? right. martin luther king could still be with us. his older sister is still with us. so i just realized that this was an incredible opportunity to meet people who knew him and to talk to him and record their stories one last time and like you said, there are so many things, personal papers, even a biography that coretta scott king had written that included a lot of things about him. so there is a great deal of information that had not been out there before that you have brought to the front. but i must say that the portrait of king that emerges from your

book may be troublesome to some people, but you said that you to recover the real man from the mr. hagiography and i had to look at it. but even though i know what it explained to the audience, what you meant by you wanted to recover him from, the hagiography that surrounds often one of the things that's happened, especially since the national holiday was implemented, is that we've turned him into this almost ideal figure and know we teach beginning in kindergarten, this vision of dream of king, beginning with i have a dream. and we often don't get much more sophisticated that and in the process of doing that, i think we lose sight of his humanity. we lose sight of the fact that he had feelings that he suffered, that he had doubts, and that he wasn't perfect. and we don't need our heroes to be perfect.

we just need them to be brave. an idealistic and and moral. and he was all of those things. so i wanted to write a book that you could feel like you believed this was the real man and not the cardboard cutout that we've been getting for so long. tell us a little bit about luther king as a young man a.k.a michael. yeah, mike a little mike, as he was called, because his daddy was big mike grew up here in atlanta. of course, auburn avenue and he was, of course, the preacher's son. and to was under constant scrutiny as a result of that and grew up learning the bible before he learned to read and also you know somewhat privileged compared to i talked to a lot of people who knew him who said that he didn't seem to be as bruised by growing up in the racist south some of the others because he had this little bit of a bubble. you know auburn was considered, you know, the miracle mile. it was it was a special place

where black people are in their own businesses and had these powerful churches and had some power within the community to negotiate with politicians. and king had this, you know, educated set of parents. and his father came from sharecropping. he wasn't always educated. be educated himself. by the time he got to atlanta. and, you know, all of these influences prepared. king to be who he was. so how did he come come from being michael to now martin luther? well, his father began his father was born michael king with no middle name in stockbridge. his when he moved to atlanta, he began calling himself m.l. king. and it's not even clear that he had a middle name. i think a lot of people at that felt like initials added, a little bit of dignity. and it was it was a trendy thing at the time, just to call yourself by two initials and. it appears that he did it really just because he was rising in the world and he wanted to be a little more professional, m.l. sounded a little bit more professional, and then he began calling himself martin and

marvin. at one point in the 1930 census, he's listed as marvin king. that might just have been it might have been a mistake by the census taker. we don't know. but then he travels to germany and learns more about martin luther and comes back and the ale to luther. and it's a very gradual process. it's not until his wedding invitation goes out that he begins to call himself martin, eloquent for the first time. and then a few years after he begins using martin luther king and then tells his son, by the way, your name is changing, too. so why martin luther, what was the significance? why would he choose name of martin? luther was the great protestant reformer from germany who really stood for religious independence, for standing up for your beliefs, for, you know, for principle, over over practicality. well, he didn't really want to be a minister. did he know he was his father a long time, assumed that he was going to be a minister. yeah, but well, it's interesting, though. i was really struck by this. i found an autobiography you

that daddy king martin luther king jr senior was referred to as daddy king. i found an autobiography that he wrote that was never published. and in that autobiography, he talks about how he really didn't pressure his kids to become preachers. but martin junior and his brother eddie became preachers. but daddy king said he wanted them to make money. he was really he was really more concerned them. thank you. i'm sweating quite a bit here. this happens to me often. don't worry. you're not making me nervous. i didn't mean no thanks, but. in this autobiography, that was never published. daddy king, that he really wanted them to be businessmen, lawyers. he was really concerned with their financial security and that's so interesting to me because, you know, daddy can grow up, as i said, a sharecropper, his son and i think that his ability to get off the farm and go to atlanta and himself was was a was life

changing experience for his entire family. and he was also concerned with his children's safety. you know, the idea martin luther king junior would become the of a protest movement in montgomery to begin with really frightened him. and he went to montgomery several times and said, you've got to stop this. you've to come home, knock this off, because you're going to get killed. so, daddy king, like most parents, was protective of. his son wanted him to be financially stable. and we often hear that he pressured his kids to become preachers, but according to this unpublished autobiography, not true, that of the the one thing about his childhood that struck in the book was when they had premiere of gone with the wind in atlanta. big, big premiere, you know, and it what the problem was, it was segregate it so blacks were not allowed to to attend. you know, as guest unless they were being a chauffeur or a waiter. but the family had a great choir

at ebenezer baptist church. and i'm not sure if if they had a king made the suggestion or if they reached out to him. but somehow or another they were invited to perform, not to be a guest, but to perform at the premiere and they did. tell me, what role did he play? well, martin luther king, jr played he was dressed an enslaved boy and sat in the front row of the choir. the entire choir was dressed in slave togs and they performed for this all white audience of these rich benefactor there's these rich moviegoers. clark gable had flown in on a private jet. this was the biggest event in atlanta history at that time. and it's celebrated slave culture and daddy king decided to bring his choir. and alberta king, his wife, led that choir. and friend, the daily june dobbs

-- told that the rest of much of the black community was furious with daddy king for allowing his choir to perform at the premiere of gone with the wind. but daddy king, the response was a lot of that movie true. and it's a kind of a big deal. i think he got caught up in the excitement of the celebrity, but the thought and there's a picture of it, you can't quite make out young luther king jr, but you see the children in the front at the hollywood premiere. and martin luther king is one of those children in the front row. well, aunt june actually, and his meinhardt aunt, one of the six dobbs sisters who are all outstanding women in their own right, john wesley dobbs, whom a street is named him, as you might know, had six daughters, and they all excelled. i mean, its mother was a french professor, but a grandfather. dobbs was very upset about the

king family performing in this performance, and june said that basically daddy king led a combination of protest and accommodation. yeah. to be able to operate in the city and to develop grace with the white leaders. grandfather dobbs didn't think that was a good enough reason. but anyway, we'll move on from that or get. it now in his he he actually ended up going to seminary right tim at school of ministry and had a have a little problem in terms of he was an speaker but his writing left much to be desired and so often had a handicap talk about how he. plagiarized. well let's just get to it. i didn't want say that.

to be blunt here we're among friends. listen, as i said before, i think it's important that we acknowledge that our heroes don't have to be perfect or else who's going to expect to be a hero to lead? who's going to take a position of leadership if? you have to be perfect. none of us are perfect. so he skipped several grades at school. it really set him back. he had to account for it and it affected his his performance all through school. college, and then also think there's a somewhat of a culture there, some experts in the room who can chime in on this or dispute me. but i think preachers don't have the same attitude about plagiarism that professors have because they borrow from other preachers and they repeat. and that's of the beauty of of the of the church. it's part of the beauty of sermons, is that they're like jazz musicians, they hear a phrase, they borrow a phrase, they make it their own. so martin luther king grew up practicing sermons long before he practiced writing high school or college dissertations.

so he began plagiarizing at an early age. i the fact that he plagiarized his doctoral dissertation dissertation is well known. it was reported years ago by professors at stanford. i discovered and i'm pretty sure i'm the first one to discover this, that he also plagiarized the high school speech contest that he entered and finished in third place. so the martin luther king finished third place in a public speaking contest. shocking enough. yes, maybe if he hadn't plagiarized it and written his own, he would have won. yeah, he got bad grades in english. i was surprised at that. i'm going to move on now because there's so much to cover. and i want to kind of get to as much as i can. king was influenced by several great minds, like reinhold niebuhr and philosophers friedrich nietzsche and gandhi. of course, in addition to the religious ministers that he studied who were some of the most lasting influences, do you

believe on dr. king and why? well, if we're just talking academics, i was gonna say jesus obviously is probably the most important influence other than his parents, that maybe more than his parents, but benjamin mays, morehouse, has to be at the very of the list. i would put benjamin mays as a greater influence than thoreau and, niebuhr and gandhi, even because benjamin mays offered a vision that was just subtly different enough from what father offered, from what martin luther king senior offered, martin luther king jr was like a lot of us a little embarrassed by his father. he was a country preacher. his grammar wasn't good. his speeches were very and his sermons were very emotional, you know, he shouted and he stomped. and young martin felt like he wanted to be where sufficed cater than that and he wanted to be more of an outright activist. he wanted to make if he if he was going to be a priest a preacher, he was going use it to fight jim crow, not just to lead

his community and uplift his community, but to get on the front lines in fight against crime, benjamin mays offered a vision of how to do that. benjamin mays combine and the preaching and the and the intellectual rigor and the discipline to to do something with yourself, he said. you know, morehouse morehouse men had a responsibility. and i think martin luther king really felt like that's the kind of man he wanted to be. well, benjamin mays was my husband. maynard's hero also is one of mine, too i met him. he was a wonderful person. and my favorite quote is from benjamin images, and it is and i'm sure that dr. king probably heard this, too, if you believe in something, you must act on it. if don't act on it, it's not a belief. it's just an opinion. i like that. well, all right. i don't mean not in my book. i'm making a list of all the

things that are not in the book. and on the list. all right, whatever. we're familiar with a lot of the names associated with dr. king, ralph abernathy, who was his best male friend. of course, you know. bayard rustin. i mean, i thought he was outstanding. a philip randolph, thurgood marshall. we mentioned benjamin mays. and then there were people like stanley levison, which we i never really heard very much about until i read your book. talk about stanley levitan. levison emerged as the leader of the montgomery bus boycott. immediately people began to say, this guy is magic. this guy's got power. he's he's he's lighting up the media. he people are flocking to him saying, we need to get this guy to help us expand this beyond montgomery. so literally, people like bayard rustin, people like lillian

smith just arrive in montgomery. we need you and we're going to, you know, what can we do to help take this beyond montgomery? and one of the people who contact is this white businessman with with and long lasting communist ties named stanley levison. and stanley levison goes on to become one of king's closest friends and best advisors for the rest of life. he ghost writes a lot of king's for him and they have these long, late night conversation. the king was not a good sleeper. he'd be up two or three in the morning with ideas racing through his head, and he could call stanley levison probably more than anyone else to these ideas around and it's a fascinating thing. you know, friendship, it's strictly an activist, intellectual friendship, not like, you know, ralph abernathy, with whom, you know, he would die in every know whenever he's in atlanta who sunday dinners and all that. well levison said that king was

the most powerful figure in the country without a political a labor union or a wealthy. behind him. that that was significant. i thought was significant. but stanley levison also brought some problems, him being his strong connection with the communism. how did that affect dr. king and did he eventually try to distance himself maybe from he was warned and over again by the kennedys. you got cut, levison, out of your life. if you because j edgar hoover is breathing down your neck and he's upset that you're and they thought it was a real for them too. it's not that the kennedys weren't just blaming hoover. they felt like they could all be tarred with the communist brush because they were because king was had this association not just with levison, but with several people within the organization. and it's it's silly because there were former communists all over america at this point,

right. and including people who worked around the white house. right. right. so but but it became an obsession for j edgar hoover jr and it led in part that's one of the reasons that hoover became obsessed with really destroying king. it began with the communism and with the fact that king dared to criticize the fbi. yes. king said that the fbi had a problem because it had no black agents in south, no black fbi agents operating in the south. they were supposed to be helping to protect the civil rights marchers, the activists. but how could when they were all white and they were all in bed, basically with the white police and sheriff's departments in, the southern towns in which they were working, and most of them were kkk members, many of them were kkk members. so when king said this j edgar hoover, who is famously sensitive to criticism, became irate. how this barrhead as he liked to. king how dare guy criticize me? and and that's really big part

of why the entire weight of the federal government's law enforcement bureau came down on one moral leader. those are some of the strong men that surround it. dr. king, tell me about the strong women who worked there skin off the bones. don't let me get personal here and who oftentimes were subjugated, lesser roles in the sclc, especially. talk about that environment and including carter scott king was. yeah we'll make it play yeah. the civil rights movement was led primarily by black baptist preachers, who grew up in a culture that did not really women's leadership. and people like dorothy cotton, ella baker, septima clark talked about it all the time that they were valued as foot soldiers. but there was no chance that they were ever going to be given positions of leadership. and ella baker, in particular

was incredibly qualified. she was offered was briefly the the acting head of the sclc but executive director she's the acting executive director and she she would have been a great choice for permanent executive director job. but it was never even in ruston and prevailed on king to hire her because he had no intention yeah they knew how good and that's again because they are not from the skinhead culture of preachers who had even more bias than most of most of america had bias towards women in position of leadership in the fifties and sixties. but i think in the religious community, that bias even deeper and and it held the moving back and they were they were fortunate to have some of those people that i just mentioned working in the fields and doing a lot of the grunt work, organizing, educating, teaching nonviolent classes, knocking on doors, working on voter registration. they played an enormous role, but they did not play the kind of role that they could have. and the same is true for coretta

scott king, because scott king was a more experienced activist than martin king when they met. and i believe that that's probably the thing that most attracted him to her is that she came not with the passion to fight for change, but with the experience. and antioch college, she had been involved in the acp. she'd been involved in local protests. a barbershop wouldn't cut black people's hair. she'd been to the progressive party's national convention. so. king when he meets her in boston dating, he's dated a lot of women. he's dating a lot of women at the time he meets coretta and he says this is the one this you're one i'm going to marry tells her on the first date why she's beautiful brilliant but so were some of the other women. but i believe it was because she had that experience as an activist and that really excited him, but he didn't really take advantage of it, didn't he? did not. i mean she, he wanted her at home to take care of the kids basically. yeah. and it just goes to show how deep some of our bias and blind spots run is still there.

and it's still there. yeah. yeah. although it was not like that. and i know that and i believe you, but in coretta case, it was. it was really painful because she beseeched him over and over and she writes in her own memoir about this conversation where she's now got four children at home and she says to him, you know, i feel called to do this work, to. and he says, you're called the way i'm called in anyway. you have to stay home with the children. and she says, i accepted that. and over and over again. and i found these tapes that she made when she was working on her memoir. i again, i think i'm the first person to have access to these tapes. right after her husband's assassination, she began working on a memoir and she sat down with a ghostwriter and an editor and she recorded what she wanted to say in the book. and over and over again in these tapes, she says, and that, too, i accepted and you just, you know, your heart just goes out to her and montgomery said that

dr. king found his voice and his purpose following the montgomery bus boycott and he said his purpose was not to instruct, to educate his purpose was to prophesies. what did he mean by that? prophesies, i think king, when he his voice discovered that he was offering a vision of the future, he was not just asking people to follow him. he was asking them to envision an america that did not yet exist in, america that had been promised in the declaration of independence. and he was asking all of america, white america included, to share this vision, to see that this was possible. so in a way, he's evoking this image of what we can be as a country and and it's and it's it's magical in a way because it combines these things that we all can sort of agree. we believe in the words in the bible, the words in the constitution. so he's he's i think when when

he's prophesying is is a future where america actually lives up to what it says it's going to do to begin with. well, by 1964, at the sclc was pretty much in disarray. it was broke. the leadership was uncertain. people were squabbling between each other. and then there was the competition with the naacp and snick and other groups. so and one in particular, i know it was diane nash that women didn't get credit. i noticed diane's name because i think you said she was one of the only people she would not have had to bring up. right. well, i got i interviewed. i'm just kidding. okay. okay. so i interviewed almost everybody who i wanted to interview. i worked really hard to try to. and there were some people in the audience here who helped me make connections to get

interviews. dana bash is the only person who i was not able to get to talk to me and. the reason she wouldn't touch me, she was very nice about it. she said, i'm tired of all the stories about the civil rights movement centering on dr. king. he's he was a great leader. but there were a lot of great leaders. and this he the movement made king. king did not make the movement. that's what she said. and i completely respect that opinion. and i can understand why she, you know, it was more of a, you know, a symbolic i'm not going to be help you with this book because i am i don't want to see more focus on dr. king. so he got a lot of criticism about that, taking away the spotlight from the movement and i out a lot, trying to raise money for slc. and of course, the focus was on him for that. but but there was a point of contention. well, several really turn around tuesday quickly, if we can talk about that, because a lot of

people well, you tell them what it was and the question was, did martin luther king sell out? so what was the you can make an argument that dr. king sold out in that he was often criticized. he was in a very difficult position. obviously, he is too conservative for a lot of people and too radical for others. and he's often trying to balance all these interests. one of the things that i love about dr. king that fascinates me is that he's arguably our greatest protest leader of all time, and he hates conflict. it comes from his from his childhood. i think maybe from being the middle child, but also from having a domineering father. he's he's afraid of making enemies. he doesn't want anybody be mad. and that's not usually a great quality for a leader because you have to make hard decisions. so when it comes to something like turnaround tuesday, he's got the president and the attorney general saying you can't march across that bridge and he's got john lewis and

snick and all these other people who people who have flown from all over the country taking busses and trains to join this protest. we're expecting to walk across that bridge with him in the lead and king is trying figure out what if we just go to the bridge and make a prayer and then turn around? he's trying to find a way to please everybody. and you can't. and i think some people view that one of history basically he aborted the aborted the march and he went to a certain point and then. right. and stopped and a lot people felt like he he sold out. so what happened in chicago? i mean, it looked like the movement almost turned a made a diversion when he went north, when he went to trying to to work on civil rights there. what happened in chicago? why wasn't he king? you know, we often tell the story of king as if in the last years of his life he became more radical and then he began to

focus on northern segregation and northern racism. i make the contention and others have written this as well, that he was radical all along and he calling out northern racism all along. just we weren't listening because he was making big headlines in places birmingham and selma. and that's where the news was really focused. but as he traveled the country, raising money all those years and as he went to los angeles, chicago and san francisco and philadelphia, he wasn't raising money there by saying, we need your help in birmingham, was saying, you've got a problem here, too. you know, you northern who you know, i'm asking you for money, but you need to turn around, look at yourselves in the mirror because you're not much better. so he goes to chicago in 1966, moves into the west side of chicago and north lawndale, an apartment there with coretta, and tries to make the point, tries to demonstrate because one of the things that king realizes is that he's great at focusing media. he's wherever goes, the cameras come. so if he goes to chicago, he can

call attention to the fact that chicago schools are just as segregated as birmingham's chicago's housing, especially it's it's low income is just as segregated as anything you'll find in the south. so he's going to chicago to try to call attention to that. but he finds that he's up against forces that he's not accustomed dealing with, that the black community for one thing, isn't as united. there are thousands upon thousands of black city employees who are loyal to the mayor who won't march him, who won't join him, and his message becomes a lot less clear to the media what is it he really wants? so, mayor in chicago basically offers king these compromises to make them go away and then doesn't fulfill any of the promises that he made once. king is and that's why my hometown, chicago, is still probably the most segregated city in america. king proposed to what he called a new emancipate and

proclamation. and it was formalized, as a matter of fact, on may 17th, today's date in 1962, he presented it to president kennedy. but jfk didn't quite favor it. and i think that really hurt dr. martin luther king. do you think that might have had something to do with the trajectory, the movement? there's no question about it. king was really disappointed with jfk. king felt like kennedy owed the black community some action after of the closest election in american history that some say was swung by voters and king felt like kennedy was to act up because kennedy was concerned about reelection and worried that he might lose some of the black the some of the white vote in the south if he gave in, too, on civil rights. so king comes to kennedy with this second emancipation

proclamation on the anniversary of the first one, and kennedy basically ignores it and i think king was bit was deeply disappointed by just about everything kennedy did until he was forced by some of king's protests to to take a more public stand and to really speak out. but king had to really put his feet to the fire to get that done. speaking of putting his feet to the fire, the fbi, we got to talk about that. and they they were obviously out to destroy king. but someone said to king that he bill the cat. what does that mean when king criticized edgar hoover j edgar hoover then began this investigation, wiretaps on king's home phone, his office phone, the phones of stanley levison, bayard rustin, clarence jones, all wiretapped, fbi listening, endless, you know, most of his conversations and at one point, hoover tells some

reporters that king is the most dangerous man in america, that king is shocked by this and he doesn't know what to do. should he go to j edgar hoover and again, he doesn't really like conflict. he suggests that we just maybe he should go and have a session with him and try to talk things through, make peace and bayard rustin recommends the opposite. he says, let's build a cat. let's just go after it. let's make him an enemy. make him a foe. let's so knows where, where, where we're coming from and he knows what and we know what he's up to. let's, you know, let's let's attack. and king won't do it. king just, you know. go ahead. oh, no, no. i'm sorry. i didn't mean to cut you off, but i. but i have a bone to with the kennedys, not but robert f kennedy approved the tapping the why would do that? i why would he do that. well, for one thing, j edgar hoover was a very powerful man. he had information on the

kennedys, too. that's what i thought. and that's exactly what robert kennedy talked about, that in in his own oral history with the kennedy library, he talks about the fact that he know if it was true, but he said hoover had information on a hotel incident that threatened to use against them. but i also think that in general, there was a culture fear around communism that was part of it and fear of j edgar hoover. so the kennedys kowtow and gave in. even though robert kennedy like to think of himself as a great supporter of the civil rights movement and we could go on and talk about lbj because i think in some ways he was worse. i think he encouraged it. he didn't just that's what i had a question. is he a friend or foe? because on one hand, he was to martin luther king about being helpful, and then the other hand, it was like he didn't stop the fbi from doing things that were absolutely vicious and uncalled for. i think lbj is both a friend and

foe. he's a friend and that he helps pass two of the most important. well bills in american history. and and he can't do that without. king but one of the really interesting things is that when you listen to the phone calls and lbj, all of his phone calls and the are anyone can listen to them on the internet. now, at the lbj library. and in the beginning, when. king first when lbj takes office calls king immediately reaches out to him and says, we're going to need to work together. and he's calling him. martin there's a very warm, friendly conversation. and over the next couple of years you hear that going cold, you hear him starting to call him dr. king, reverend king and the friendliness is gone. and that's because all the while lbj is getting a steady sometimes one or two memos, a week from directly from hoover to the president with the just tawdry gossip. there's no reason the president needs to this stuff except that clearly both men are enjoying keeping tabs on this man and mocking him for his for his for

his weakness. and, of course, martin luther king's stand on vietnam did not make johnson very happy. and that was really the the tipping point, because the relationship had already gone bad. and then when king speaking out on vietnam, that's when i believe kennedy really begins. i'm sorry, lbj begins to see mlk as a foe, as this guy is out to hurt me now and that's when it's the relationship is pretty much destroyed. lots of turmoil it brings me to the king's state of mind, especially toward the end. coretta scott king and others were very concerned about king's bouts of depression. there were signs of it in his early childhood, even. was it true that he actually, for real, tried to suicide twice when he was a teenager or was that just acting? well, he jumped of a second story window twice. now you tell me the 13 years old, his grandmother had first been hurt. the first time he jumped. second time was when his grandmother died.

is that a call for attention? is it just a cry of agony? is it a suicide attempt? very hard to say, but it was clearly a very emotional act from someone who was deeply, deeply grieved. and all his life, he you know, he suffered emotionally. and it's something that, you know, back then it was very difficult to talk about. public figures never talked about their their mental health issues. but in week, if you go back and read even the newspaper coverage, if you go back and read coretta is books, the signs are all there. coretta calls it depression and. when when martin luther king found out that he won the nobel peace prize, where was he? he was in the hospital. and when reporters came to interview him. so what are you doing in the hospital? he said, i'm being treated for exhaustion. and now then she powerful. she the nobel prize made it even worse, though because that just put more pressure on her. that's right the demands were even greater on his she was worried about that she said that after that, even in the

immediate aftermath of winning the prize, she well, she worried what that was going to do to the pressure on him and. then the gallup polls started coming out in 1964. he was the number four that my person in the world 1965 it slipped to fifth 1966 he was dropped completely from the list. i'm sure that hurt. and then mike wallace asked king if people were getting tired of the civil rights movement. the new york times said, quote, the civil rights movement has collapsed. what happened? what and how was king dealing with all of this you? you know, as i said earlier, he was always too conservative for some and to radical for others. but as the civil rights movement progressed and as more aggressive voices began to be heard, stokely carmichael, malcolm x wright king had a hard time because people felt like he was weak and yet, you know, the thing that think bothered him

the most was that he felt like even his friends and advisers didn't understand him. and there's this incredible phone call that, again, we know because the fbi was recording it where he's talking to stanley levison right after his speech about vietnam, riverside church, april 4th, 1967, and has just delivered what i believe is his greatest and it's it's his greatest speech because it together everything he's been talking about his entire life, everything the bible taught him, he's saying that america a serious problem, not just racism, not just with poverty, not just with warfare, but with all of these things. and that we faced a moral collapse, a society, if we didn't address and if we didn't if we weren't true to our beliefs. when we speak of the truth in the bible, that we were destined to fall, that we were we were doomed. and his one of his best friends who's known him 12 years at this point, stanley levison, calls him the next day and says that

was a terrible speech. it wasn't you. it didn't sound like. and you're just going to cost us support among all the people who are helping us. we're never going to be able to get any access to the white house again. and king says we have this you know, transcript of this. we know exactly what he said. he says, haven't you been listening to me all these years? oh, well, i might made a political mistake in giving that speech, but i did not make a moral mistake in giving that speech. and here he is, martin luther king jr. and still people are questioning him and questioning his morality vision. earlier we mentioned how he said that his purpose was to prophesies. boy, he prophesized own death many times. belafonte tells us stories about a nervous tic. you want to tell that one? yeah. you belafonte spent like quality time, personal time.

he's one of the few people who i interviewed who i felt like stop to ask dr. king how he was doing. how are you holding up? you know, he would make time just for the two of them to hang out, have some quiet time. there were so many demands him and everybody wanted something. but belafonte was and famous. he wanted to help. he didn't. and he said at one point he noticed that martin, as he called him, had a little tic, like a little, a little almost like a hiccup you couldn't hear unless you were alone in the room with him. it was like a constant swallowing and. it went on for months, maybe years. and then one day when belafonte saw him again, dr. said it was gone. belafonte noticed that was gone. and he said, martin, what happened to your tic? said, i cured it. they'll say, how do you cure it? so i peace with death. happy man who was making a movie about martin luther king asked him, i'll shoot the movie end

and he said, do you remember me getting killed? yeah, that's what little abbey had getting killed, not me dying. me getting killed. he knew. i mean, his home had been bombed. he'd been and had been shot had he been stabbed, the chest, it was not. and after king, after kennedy's assassination, he turned coretta scott king and said, this is going to happen to me. i've been this mean got over here telling me to wrap it up. so but there are a few things that i could take your time all night. toward the end, we kind of mentioned he started to get more radical, starting to sell, more like malcolm x. as a matter of fact, talking about reconsider section of an entire american society and reparations even. talk about king's view, what reparations could be or be in this country. we forget. and again, talk about how we teach. i have a dream. starting in kindergarten, we forget the first half of that

speech where dr. said america had made a broken promise to black people and that it was time to pay up. he talked about reparations. he said that you cannot calculate the amount of income this country generated has been generated from slavery and sharecropping. and it is and it would be fairly simple to come up with a calculation that would pay back at least some of that. and he talked about guaranteed income for people, guaranteed jobs, things that we're still talking about today, prophesized soon after he after king died. richard nixon did propose guaranteed income. so it was not was not pie in the sky. it was not crazy liberal, you know, socialist propaganda. it was it was realistic. and it still is realistic after chicago. king felt that, quote, most americans are unconscious, racist. do you agree with it then and now? yeah, continuing king's legacy.

are we going to be able to do it or it will have to be adapted or changed in some way? is the king relevant today as he was 60 years ago? i king is as relevant, if not more. and i think that there are ways to make his legacy come to life. but it's only if we actually study the man's real words read his writing, not just the familiar speeches that are on television. we don't teach anything but letter from birmingham jail and most public schools. and letter from birmingham jail is terrific. and it's. but. but king had a lot more to say. and books are just not widely distributed, not widely taught. i went to the washington, d.c. they didn't have any of his books for sale. we king's words. and we need to discuss king's life again, not just turn them into a monument and not just celebrate them on the holiday once a year near the conclusion of your book, you at the mass, you spoke about the national

monument in washington, d.c. and you surmised, quote, in halloween, as in hallowed be thy and halloween king, we have hallowed, hallowed him made him empty, hallowed what if you better explain that? well, we celebrate, you know, mattress sales, the king's birthday, you know, we we we talk about i have a dream as if it's, you know, just holding hands, as if, you know, black children and white children could play together. that would be enough. king was so complicated. he was so brave. he was asking us to reconsider the very structure of our society. and he got us to a point where it seemed like maybe we were ready to think about changing who we were. maybe we were at a point where and i think, you know, it's crystal clear, like after the march on washington, that americans are really to rethink

things. and we've backed away from that. we've hollowed him out to the extent we we don't really embrace ideas anymore. and that's what i meant by that. you close your book with some final words from king. it reads, quote, our very survival depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and face the challenge. change. what i found interesting about this was his use of the word awake and 1963 a grocery a black grocery worker who was enthused by king's leadership said quote the -- people are now not. we have woke up. wow. jonathan, can we stay awake in this woke culture that we have

today? we have to. what choice do we have? because, you know the way the woke is defined in the dictionary now an excessive political correctness. i'm not playing with that definition. all right. all right. okay. good. well, it is usual. it's been a pleasure. it's been to see so much interesting. i think we did okay by having valerie do the press. in. honestly, i could listen to them talk night long, but i want to give you an opportunity. did i ask jonathan some questions? and if you'll wait? yeah. raise your hand and wait for trey to come around with the microphone. right. right over here in the middle of

trying. the king family cooperate with you on this. you never mentioned their name other than coretta. this whole evening, the big question. no, it's a fair question. the king children did not want to do interviews. they did not respond to my requests. some of the nieces and nephews did speak to me and i the. that's that's the best i could do in this case. the king children did not did not give me interviews. i have high. thank you so much for your interview tonight. mrs. coretta scott king, to make sure that young people got to understand the words of her husband in 1999, she a group of us to make sure that the who arrived at the king center were diverse and they represented her husband's words. when i think about montgomery. rosa parks, december first,

1955. that moment king emerges as the leader. how is it in your. because i did hear the word emerge. how you feel as if at that moment they felt, let's go get that young preacher, dexter avenue baptist church. he doesn't know any better. all right. i want you to address that. and then also secondly, it is troubling to see king kneeled and around and not cross edmund pettus bridge. it was tough because diverse clergy who flew in reeb and james reeb and lee jackson and louisa viola lewis. so they lost their lives. but dr. king's life was not in vain. so how do we how do we take those moments where we say let's look at our leader as as courageous but human? one december 1st, 1955. and then at that bridge where

king said he knelt, but he had to turn around. so the first question why king emerged at that moment, why he was chosen. you're right. he was chosen in part because he was new in town and he hadn't made enemies yet. and there were other leaders who had been there a while. they worried that if they chose one of those leaders, the others would resist cooperating. so. king because he was new in town because he had a reputation for being a great speaker, was asked to be the spokesman of the movement. at first, he was not asked to be the the president of the montgomery improvement. he but when he found his voice, when when the crowd's response ended to him in that way, it became clear that he had the power, that the potential to lead. so i would say that he responded to that, not knowing what he was getting into. he was not looking to become a leader of anything. he had just turned down invitation from the naacp in alabama because he had a lot on his plate. you know, a new baby and a doctoral dissertation and a new

church that he was still getting to know. so not looking to leave, but he felt called and he started leading. he felt compelled in part by of course, by the voice of god, which literally he said came to him, but also by the voices of those people who called back to him when he when he preached and who became his his fervent. and as for moment, when he knelt and did not satisfy by those followers in the same way, i think it's just a reminder that he was human, that he was flawed, and that he he had moments of doubt. and that was a moment doubt. and, you know, levison, stanley levinson talked to him once when when dr. king was talking about, you know, his frailties and some of the rumors that were going around and so forth. and he said to dr. king, you do not have to be a perfect man. you just have to a perfect leader. i was like, well, yeah and i would argue that if you want to be a perfect leader, that the best leader you can be and the

best man. good point. good point. good point. yeah. was there a particular information or effect that led you to raise your esteem of dr. king even more in, your research and if you don't mind me asking this, i'll love the luckiest man. and what led to turn to write about gehrig? okay. the first question i can sit here all night and give you hundreds of examples. things that king did, small things he did that inspired me, the way he treated. he remained humble. he would spend time with people who needed attention. he was still the pastor to his in atlanta and in montgomery even as he became famous. but i think the big thing that inspired me more than anything else is that this man did not have to keep going after he'd been shot at and his house had been bombed and stabbed in the chest. and after the fbi began coming down on him over and over again.

he had moments where he could have hit pause. he could have taken a year off and gone on sabbatical, written a book. but he felt that he had he was called by god and he and and he not only kept going, he doubled down. he became more courageous. it have been easy just to stick to voting rights and. keep working on where he had some success. but no, he goes to chicago, he goes to los angeles. he speaks out against the vietnam war. that kind of moral courage to me is, you know, beyond inspiring. and it just spending that much time thinking about the choices that he made, you know, forever changed me. and i'll to you afterwards about lou gehrig, because my brain just won't go there right now. thank. stand again and again. right. i often think about what america we would have without the loss the early loss of lincoln, kennedy and martin luther king.

could you speak to the momentum that was cut off after his death? you know something that, a lot of black activists after the assassination said is that we kill our prophets in america and we ought to do a study on the effects of assassin nation on american history. i'm not an expert, but when you think about the ideas that were lost, we think about the courage that was lost and and why, you know, we blame the you know, we can talk all day about conspiracy theories, but it's clear that and this is something harry belafonte preached the way to the end that we don't like radicals in this country. we're uncomfortable with radicals, even though we're a country born of revolution. we don't teach radicalism in our schools. we have managed to portray it as a bad thing. and look how many our radicals have been eliminated because of that, because we've created that culture. i think, okay, let's do right

here in the middle. just a second. let's go to to you. hi. thank you very much for coming to speak with us this evening. i am the generation of elementary that you talked about. i up watching my friend martin and growing up with this very idealized of martin luther king and being taught that the civil rights movement was over, that equality had been achieved once. we elected a black president. as we can see, the civil rights movement has not ended. it has transformed. it's taken on different focuses. so it's shifted away from segregation and towards police brutality to justice. my question to you is what impact do you see that has lasted across the decades since martin luther king's death that is embodied in the civil rights movement today? you know i think that and i'd

love to hear your response to that question, too, but i think that what's the thread that unifies the civil rights movement and always has abolition to today is among other things black dignity, true justice. the ideas that king talked in the bible, that we are all made the image of god and that only man has invented these arbitrary divisions and that quest for dignity is a line. and it's whether you're talking about police brutality, whether you talk about voting rights then or now, voting. it's about dignity if we're teaching people, if we're teaching people to, understand and apply dignity and equality, then we're we're you know, we're doing the right and but it doesn't have to be that doesn't it shouldn't be so complicated. what would you say. unfortunately, i did not hear the second part of your question, your statement. and so i trust that he gave the right answer.

you would have been better at that one. for his jonathan. valerie, could you all spend a moment on on the aftermath, dr. king, in terms of the people he trained and house is influence continued whether it was andy young as mayor or maynard jackson, john lewis had a to me his genius was as a manager of these very strong personalities ranging from stokely carmichael to john lewis to the women who about him but he gifted them with a sense of leadership and commitment to the struggle that went on after his. people talk about the did the spiraling down of sclc and traditional civil rights organizations but the world is different because of andrew young. the world was different because of being a jackson. needless to say, the world didn't because lewis and he has a constellation people.

what the fauntroy whitey walker fred shuttlesworth people sprinkle the poor across the south and the rest of the united states. and i think sometimes when we write these biographies of dr. king. now, just because i haven't read it. but but think what happens is that he all this happened and no one says no in fact his students, his pupils, his acolytes went on to do even more. so in your conversations, his compatriots and and all the folks that you're interviewed that any of this ever come out? well, the actions speak for themselves, because those people that you mentioned, you know, on to do great things. and i would include coretta scott king on that list of course. but what about you? what's your take on that? how did the the heirs or the people who inherited the the movement, how did they. i think inspired by king. i think those who were paying attention were inspired and jean, i might have to differ with your word manwich, because i don't think i don't think dr. king advantage any of those people. what he did do was influence

them. now. and we went from he said, dr. king used to say civil to you guys, like managing a of well well you can't do that can you. so but it's the influence is the lasting influence is. and i think that comes from speaking the truth because the truth will outlast a lot of things, it might take a long time to get back to that path, but eventually it will and people like benjamin mays made a great influence on man. it that i'm still quoting benjamin mays. you know. so i think the the trickle down the trickle down influence respect, dignity and a search for truth and a love of mankind is what all of those acolytes, as you said got from from dr.

martin luther king. and i just pray that they keep on keeping on. yeah. you know, and that your children, you and my and my daughters, you know, will be able to reflect it. also. and i think i'm going to take the privilege. the last question and i was just thinking about the amount of detail you in your book, some of it flattering, some of it not flattering. and i wonder, do you think that makes him a it makes something makes him someone that we can all relate to. he's just a myth. he's a person like you and and perhaps gives us hope that. we all have the opportunity to do the kinds of things that he's done. i think that's essential. and it's you know, central to what i was trying to do with this book. i have a paragraph early on the book where i say, you know, he

chewed his fingernails. he had a dog named topsy. he couldn't save his skin, was too sensitive. so at the same time, as we discussed, he was a progressive in every way. he had a hard to a blind spot when it came to women in roles of leadership. let's let's accept the fact he was human. let's look at and again, those little details. that's just that brings him to life. that's how i feel like i want you to read this book and feel like you got to spend some time with him, that you got to know him better and i want you to feel the loss that. we we all should feel that that this man was only with us for 39 years and that we as a country could take care of him and, that we didn't you know, we deserved he deserved better and we deserve better. and you can only really feel that kind of pain. think if you if you love him when you read the book. and i hope that's true. you mentioned story but that you talk about -- gregory believe it was was it -- gregory that said

that he was the reason you should not lose this it was about -- gregory saying that a movie had been made about martin luther king, which is which made him a real hero. he said to me. jesus was real. okay, here we go. all right. but we don't really we can't really prove it. right? we can prove martin luther king was real because we were here. i mean, i met him and we have him on film. we have him on tape. no. what happens, no matter how many hundreds of years from now, no one's going to be able to deny that martin luther king was real. but i would argue that if we go too far in him into a mythological figure, you lose sight of how real he was and. -- gregory knew it. people from atlanta who are still with us today, who knew him could feel his reality. and we just need to keep him

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