January 17, 2025 • 30 mins
Manny Munoz & Kenneth C. Davis discuss the life, legacy, and holiday honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Kenneth C. Davis is a historian and author of the 'Dont Know Much' series of books.....his latest book is titled - THE WORLD IN BOOKS: 52 Works of Great Short Nonfiction or his website; DontKnowMuch.Com.
Kenneth C. Davis is a historian and author of the 'Dont Know Much' series of books.....his latest book is titled - THE WORLD IN BOOKS: 52 Works of Great Short Nonfiction or his website; DontKnowMuch.Com.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to iHeartRadio Communities, a public affairs special focusing on
the biggest issues impacting you this week.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Here's Many Munio's Hello, and thank you for tuning into
this week's program. As you heard, I am Manny Muno's
and this is iHeartRadio's Communities. The Reverend Martin Luther King
born January fifteenth, nineteen twenty nine. We commemorate his life
this year on Monday, January twentieth. But why this man's
(00:31):
life is celebrated? Why does he specifically have a national
holiday honoring his life? It's bringing an expert to talk
about it. Kenne FC Davis is a historian the author
of the Don't Know Much series of books. His latest
is titled The World in Books fifty two Works of
great short nonfiction. His website is don't Know Much dot com.
(00:53):
Ken always a pleasure. I appreciate the time.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Thank you for having me, Manny. It's always a pleasure
to talk to you as well. And I'll start it
off by saying happy New Year to you as well.
As we're still in the early weeks of a new year,
and let's hope this one is better than the last one.
But this is always a good time to think about
a start, a fresh start as we turn the page
(01:19):
on the calendar.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Without question, thank you and happy New Year to you
as well. Let's start off with Martin Luther King Jr.
And how his early life shaped his views on civil rights.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
It's a really important and interesting question. First of all, Manning,
most people don't know that Martin Luther King was actually
born Michael King Junior. His father was also Michael, his
father and grandfather of both ministers, ministers and preachers in
the most prominent, perhaps most prominent church certainly in Atlanta,
(01:55):
and one of the most prominent black churches in the South,
the Ebenezer Baptist Church. And to answer your question right
off the bat, there are very few individuals in all
of history, you know, when we get away from president's,
politicians and generals, who have changed the country and changed
(02:18):
the world in some respects. And Martin Luther King is
one of those Americans who certainly is on that list.
And that is why he is one of the few
people who is honored with a national holiday his extraordinary events.
He was born January fifteenth, nineteen twenty nine. Of course,
(02:39):
we mark the holiday on a is a the third
Monday in January. I believe that's it. Ironically, this year
it is also Inauguration Day, so a little bit of
a different spin on things. He grew up, as I said,
the son of a very very prominent minister in one
of the most prom Black churches in America in Atlanta,
(03:05):
and one of the real turning points for him, at
least in his early life, was going to more House College.
And he actually started more House College when he was
only fifteen. He talked about maybe not being really prepared
for that. He had been skipping grades through high school
and went to college early. But he in going to Morehouse,
(03:30):
which was a very prominent black college founded much earlier
in history in Augusta, and very important in the history
of black colleges and universities in America. But while he
was there he read Henry David Thereaux's essay called on
(03:53):
Civil Disobedience for the first time. On civil disobedience was
the Row, of course. Perhaps more famous is the author
of Walden, in which he retreated into a cabin in
the woods for two years. He was very very He
King was very influenced, influenced by this pamphlet. It is
(04:17):
one of the books by the way that I include
in the world and books, so it is has been
an influential book throughout history, also influenced Gandhi, the leader
Indian independence, so important book in American history and world history.
And Thoreau was writing about his decision to not pay
(04:40):
taxes and go to jail rather than support a war,
and that was the war in Mexico that would be
support flavoring. So this was an idea that really appealed
to the young Martin Luther King, by the way, I said,
his name was Michael at birth his father, and he
(05:04):
went to the Middle East to the Holy Land at
a certain point, had a kind of profound experience there,
and his father decided to change his name to Martin
Luther King, after the great leader of the Protestant Reformation.
So it's interesting, a little bit of I guess trivia
(05:29):
you could call it, but still an interesting one. He
became convinced that non cooperation with evil is as much
of a moral obligation as cooperation with good is. And
he felt that nobody had been more eloquent and passionate
and getting that idea across than Threaw And so as
(05:51):
a result of that, he came to understand this idea
of civil obedient non cooperation, but nonviolent civil disobedient, nonviolent resistance,
and that was going to be the key, of course
to his approach to the civil rights movement, which was
(06:15):
obviously at odds with other leaders of the time. But
he certainly became the most prominent, most famous, most notable
civil rights leader of his time, of course, until his
death in nineteen sixty eight by assassination.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
I want to get into a lot of what you
just discussed there and the differences between him and some
of the other civil rights leaders of the day. You
mentioned the church several times there in his early upbringing,
this kind of religious awakening, when he and his father
went to the Holy Land. Talk to me about that role,
the role that the Christianity and the Church played in
(06:56):
influencing his approach to activism.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
There's no question that this is the center of his
early life and early years. It was the center of
his existence. As I mentioned his not only his father
was the minister of this very significant church, but also
his grandfather. It was the center of his life. He
(07:22):
writes about in his own autobiography later on, about growing
up and not in tremendous poverty, even though it was
the Great Depression. He certainly talks about growing up during
the period when people were on breadlines and soup lines,
and it was very, very important to him to have this,
(07:45):
certainly this religious upbringing that was going to be at
the center of all of his work and teachings, and
then certainly his approach to how he would go about
looking to change the country, which was in the depths.
We're talking about, of course that he was born in
(08:06):
nineteen twenty nine in the depths of depression, but also
truly in the depths of America's racist past. I mean,
this was a time of complete segregation, before any of
the major court decisions that would come much later later
in the nineteen fifties and sixties that would help the
(08:29):
civil rights movement move forward. But this was a time
when America was two nations, one white and one black,
and certainly he faced discrimination in every aspect of his life,
as most black people in that time did.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
We're speaking of the life of Martin Luther King Junior
and the MLK Holiday, which is upon us with historian
Tennessee Davis. He's the author of the Don't Know Much
series of books, as latest is titled The World in
Books fifty two Great Short fifty two Works of great
short nonfiction. His website is don't Know Much dot com.
(09:09):
You talked about his education, Martin Luther King Junior. Is
the fact that he entered Morehouse College at the age
of fifteen, which is kind of jaw dropping, But in
those days, in that segregation, was what was his education like?
Speaker 1 (09:26):
Well, first of all, he was grew up in a
segregated community. But a really interesting thing happened in his
life when he was before he went to college. Just
before going to college, he actually came north to work
in a tobacco farm in Connecticut. And we don't think
(09:47):
of Connecticut being the home of tobacco farms, but indeed
it is. There are tobacco farms in Connecticut and Massachusetts,
and there always have been. I think some of them
still will exists. But it was a period when he
really understood for the first time what the difference of
(10:09):
his completely segregated world was from the white world. He
had gone to by train, and when he rode the
trains from New York to Washington, or I should say
going to Connecticut, he didn't have to ride in a
(10:30):
segregated car. He went to restaurants in Hartford, Connecticut that
were not segregated, so anyone could eat there. And this
was an eye opening experience for him when he was
very young. Going back to this question of church, I
should just also asked that he memorized hymns and Bible
(10:52):
verses by the time he was five years old. The
church was, of course the center of his universe. The
time he became a singer in the choir, he had
a great He was a great reader, by the way, also,
and he remember singing in the church choir when he
(11:16):
was going to They were premiering the film Gone with
the Wind in nineteen thirty nine, and he went to
sing as a member of his church choir, but he
was dressed as a slave for the all white audience
at the Atlanta premiere of Gone with the Wind. So
it's just a reminder of these were the times in
(11:37):
which he grew up. So all of those things are obviously,
you know, really important shaping events to a young man,
a young an adolescent. And as I mentioned then, this
trip to Connecticut was very very important to him because
he just saw that there was a very very different
(12:00):
world in America at that time.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
You've repeatedly talked about the church, Martin Luther King Junior
being part of the choir, his education, his love of books.
I imagine all of these things obviously contributed to him
ending up being one of the great orators of our time.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
There's no question about that when we and one must
not read these speeches, even though they are wonderful to read,
but to hear Martin Luther King speak. I never heard
him in person myself growing up, and of course I
was growing up a young man during during the time
(12:44):
of the Civil Rights movement, and doctor King was often
on the television. Of course, we all saw the march
on Washington and the speech that he gave there, his
most famous speech. Indeed, I have a dream speech of
August nineteen sixty three. There are very very few people
(13:07):
in my life who I've heard give a speech of
that caliber and delivered with the emotional intensity, and certainly
a lot of it came from his training as a preacher.
Very difficult to think of him not being a person
(13:27):
who was certainly rooted in Biblical phrases, rooted in the
biblical sense of poetic sense of the Bible. So those
words on paper are very, very meaningful, but when you
heard them from his voices, extraordinary.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
The impact of that speech August twenty eighth, nineteen sixty three,
the March on Washington, the I Have a Dream speech.
Would the civil rights movement progressed the way that it
did for those next five years until his death without
that speech and its.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
Impact, it's hard to imagine, imagine it. So it's such
a defining moment in American history, and the event itself,
the March on Washington, where two hundred and fifty thousand
people at least were gathered, and it was a very
very integrated audience, and there were a number of very
(14:29):
very prominent white speakers there and white participants in that march,
as well as very very important other black leaders besides
doctor King. It was really an extraordinary moment like few
others in American history. But you know, we've kind of
(14:50):
skipped the head here to the March on Washington, we
have without talking about what was essentially the event that
put him on the map and made him a national figure,
and that is, of course, the Montgomery bus boycott of
nineteen fifty five, famed as the bus boycott that began
(15:16):
when Rosa Parks was arrested in December nineteen fifty five
for refusing to give up her seat on a city bus.
Now entered in sort of the legend and law of
American history. But it did happen, and it wasn't because
she was just tired. She was a very very active
participant in the local NAACP, the civil rights organization that
(15:41):
had begun in nineteen eleven, and the boycott was going
to be led of the bus system was going to
be led by doctor King. Primarily he was at that
point the pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery.
He would only later go on to Ebenezer Baptist where
(16:04):
his father had been the preacher, but being in Montgomery
at that moment, he was asked to take the leadership
role because he was not that well known in Montgomery,
and they thought, well, it'd be better to have somebody
who's not so well known here lead, and he was
(16:26):
of course dis launched him international prominence. The boycott, which
meant that most black people in Montgomery refused to use
the public transportation system, was very very powerful. It lasted
for three hundred and sixty three and eighty five days
(16:48):
more than a year. And is also during this time
that doctor King's house was bombed. He was also arrested
for traveling thirty miles per hour in a twenty five
mile per hour zone and he was jailed, and that
also helped add to his national prominence. He was starting
(17:13):
to attract national media and because he was such a
forceful speaker and so eloquent and so passionate about this
idea of overturning segregation of these buses, and that being
(17:36):
part of a much larger movement. But this is really
where the peaceful, nonviolent resistance of the civil rights movement
almost begins on a national scale. So that's why it's
so important to go back and we think about Rosa
Parks and we sometimes forget, well doctor King was there also.
(17:57):
He would not yet, Doctor This was absolutely the moment
that propelled him into national prominence.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
We're speaking with historian Tennec Davis. He's the author of
the Don't Know Much series of books. His latest is
titled The World in Books, fifty two Works of great
short nonfiction. His website is Don'tno Much dot com. You
mentioned his arrest there and how because of his ability
to write, and his style started to kind of change
(18:25):
public opinion a little bit. Tell me about the letter
from Birmingham jail.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
Okay, that's really a significant one, and we have to
keep going back to this importance of religion and his
Christian faith in his work. Right after the bus boycott,
before we get to the letter from Birmingham, King sounded
(18:51):
something called the Southern Christian Leadership Conference the SCLC in
nineteen fifty seven. And this was, as the name implies,
it was a group that was really using Christian principles
and trying to harness the moral authority of black churches
(19:12):
to conduct these nonviolent protests in the service of civil
rights reform. And so it's a very very important organization
in King's life and in the life of the civil
rights movement. And of course, as time went by, these
(19:33):
movements became more focused on there were all the questions
of all the segregation not only in the South but
throughout the country, but primarily in the South, and the
focus really moved towards a voting rights that the only
way that the life for black people was going to
(19:58):
change in this country was to overcome the know the
laws known as Jim Crow laws which kept so many
black people from voting even though they had the right
to vote since the end of the Civil War, at
least black males did, and later on black women. But
this really became the key in many respects to the
(20:25):
to the movement, the attempt to create a more of
a movement to win voters' rights that would really be
able to be the way that black people could have
a voice in the future of the country and a
legitimate voice in the country.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
His his philosophy of protest. You called it earlier non cooperation.
We've learned it as non violence resistance. I guess all
of that and everything he had done to that point,
and up with him winning the Nobel Peace Prize in
nineteen sixty four, how did that alone affect his influence
(21:09):
not only here in the United States but internationally.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
Well of course by that time, and the Nobel Peace
Prize came in nineteen sixty four. By that point, doctor King,
because of the marches, because of the bus boycotts, because
of the Washington speech, and his prominence. Now politicians like
(21:34):
the Kennedys were coming to him to approach him. They
were sympathetic the Kennedys that was to his mission to
Doctor Wright, doctor King's movement. Doctor King, like many other
(21:55):
black leaders at the time, thought that the Kennedys were
being a little bit too him. Robert Deaf Kennedy was,
of course President Kennedy's Attorney General, so very very much
involved in the legal aspects of the civil rights movement.
He felt that they were moving too slowly, and that
(22:15):
was a feeling that was shared widely. Of course, after
John F. Kennedy's assassination November nineteen sixty three, Lyndon Johnson
becomes president. Even though a Southerner from from the heart
of Texas, Johnson was perhaps more accommodating and more interested
(22:36):
in seeing racial justice has come about, and Johnson, with King,
became the prime movers of the most much of the
legislation that changed, seriously changed the rights and roles of
black people in America. We started out on the Nobel
(22:58):
Prize there already had to drop in some of the
other things, but because of course, really put doctor King
on a different level of world renown as opposed to
just being a prominent American leader, he was now considered
(23:19):
truly an international face of the movement and the Peace
Prize when it came to him in nineteen sixty four,
was a tremendous, tremendous honor that he continued to talk
about and actually goes of course to Oslo to accept
(23:44):
the award and gave yet another great speech while he
was there and accepting this award. And he had come
to receive the Peace Prize on the half of the
whole nonviolent movement. Of course, that was the essence of
(24:06):
the Nobel Peace Prize, devoted to promoting world peace. And
here was a non violent movement.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
I know even thirty minutes wouldn't be enough with you,
because I always learned so much. I'm ben fascinated by
your ability to explain all of these events in depth.
One more final thing before we get into Martin Luther
King junior holiday, we skip ahead to April fourth, nineteen
sixty eight, the assassination of Martin Luther King Junior, Memphis.
(24:36):
How does that event change the civil rights movement?
Speaker 1 (24:39):
First of all, we have to remember, and I lived
through these times, man, am a little bit older than you.
By the mid sixties, of course, because of the Vietnam War,
because of the racial injustice in this country, Doctor King's movement,
nonviolent movement had taken a different path. We saw a
(25:04):
tremendous amount of racial rioting in some of the urban
centers of America, from watts in Los Angeles to Newark,
New Jersey, Detroit. There had been violent riots because people
had just become fed up. They had taken too much,
(25:24):
they had taken enough. And of course we had a
whole long, hot summer of rioting in nineteen sixty seven
going into nineteen sixty eight. Actually, the President Johnson at
that time put together a commission to investigate the causes
of this, and the causes were obvious. There was segregation,
(25:47):
there was unemployment, there was discrimination. The police had become
an onerous presence in the black community. And the Kerner Commission,
as it was called, Presidential on Violence in Urban Violence,
said the nation was moving towards America was moving towards
two nations, the one black, one white, separate and unequal.
(26:11):
And that was a tremendous turning point. And it's just
after that that Martin Luther King organized began to organize
what he called the Poor People's Campaign. As I said,
the issue of economic justice was just as important as
racial justice, and he was preparing that campaign to go
(26:32):
back to Washington. When he went to Atlanta to actually
support a sanitation workers' strike, most of the sanitation workers
were black men, and that is, of course where he
was killed in April nineteen sixty eight in Memphis. In Memphis,
(26:54):
I'm sorry, I said Atlanta. That's correct.
Speaker 2 (26:56):
In Memphis. January fifteenth, nineteen twenty, his date of birth,
we celebrated, as you mentioned, the third Monday in January
this year happens to be Inauguration Day. All I remember
about Martin Luther King Junior Day for some reason, I
always think of Arizona, but they weren't the only state
that kind of was against recognizing Martin Luther King Junior
(27:20):
Day as a national holiday. In our final couple minutes here.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
That's correct. Just to go through the history very quickly here,
the idea of a holiday for Doctor King went back
to nineteen seventy, when some states had already begun to
recognize Doctor King's birthday as state holidays, and many governors
(27:45):
were beginning to call for a national holiday. I think
New York was among the first to establish a Doctor
King holiday, and it was thirteen years of arguing and
resistance before the holiday was signed as a national holiday
(28:07):
into law by Ronald Reagan. Arizona was finally the last
to agree to make what was now a national a
state holiday as well, and it was the influence really
of the National Football League. They were going to pull
the Super Bowl, which was planned for Arizona, out of
(28:28):
Arizona if the state did not agree to make doctor
Martin Luther King's birthday a state holiday as well as
a national holiday.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
Last thing, finally, briefly, Martin Luther King Junior Day. How
is it different an observance compared to other federal holidays.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
Well, it's I think it's a day that because it's
fairly recent and because the wounds in many ways are
still very much with us. When I say wounds, I'm
talking about the racial disparities in the country. I mean,
obviously this is at the core of a lot of
(29:09):
the debates we've been having. I think, you know, when
Barack Obama was elected president, we thought, gee, we've moved
past all that history. But of course the past is
never dead.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
Tenneth C. Davis historian, author of the Don't Know Much
series of books, among others. His most recent is titled
The World in Books fifty two works of great short nonfiction,
and his website is Don't Know Much dot com. Ken
always appreciate your time, thanks for sharing some of it
with us and your knowledge.
Speaker 1 (29:43):
Thanks so much, Manny. It's always a pleasure to talk
to you.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
And that has been I heeart radio communities. I'm Manny
Muno's Until next time.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
M
Welcome to iHeartRadio Communities, a public affairs special focusing on
the biggest issues impacting you this week.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Here's Many Munio's Hello, and thank you for tuning into
this week's program. As you heard, I am Manny Muno's
and this is iHeartRadio's Communities. The Reverend Martin Luther King
born January fifteenth, nineteen twenty nine. We commemorate his life
this year on Monday, January twentieth. But why this man's
(00:31):
life is celebrated? Why does he specifically have a national
holiday honoring his life? It's bringing an expert to talk
about it. Kenne FC Davis is a historian the author
of the Don't Know Much series of books. His latest
is titled The World in Books fifty two Works of
great short nonfiction. His website is don't Know Much dot com.
(00:53):
Ken always a pleasure. I appreciate the time.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Thank you for having me, Manny. It's always a pleasure
to talk to you as well. And I'll start it
off by saying happy New Year to you as well.
As we're still in the early weeks of a new year,
and let's hope this one is better than the last one.
But this is always a good time to think about
a start, a fresh start as we turn the page
(01:19):
on the calendar.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Without question, thank you and happy New Year to you
as well. Let's start off with Martin Luther King Jr.
And how his early life shaped his views on civil rights.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
It's a really important and interesting question. First of all, Manning,
most people don't know that Martin Luther King was actually
born Michael King Junior. His father was also Michael, his
father and grandfather of both ministers, ministers and preachers in
the most prominent, perhaps most prominent church certainly in Atlanta,
(01:55):
and one of the most prominent black churches in the South,
the Ebenezer Baptist Church. And to answer your question right
off the bat, there are very few individuals in all
of history, you know, when we get away from president's,
politicians and generals, who have changed the country and changed
(02:18):
the world in some respects. And Martin Luther King is
one of those Americans who certainly is on that list.
And that is why he is one of the few
people who is honored with a national holiday his extraordinary events.
He was born January fifteenth, nineteen twenty nine. Of course,
(02:39):
we mark the holiday on a is a the third
Monday in January. I believe that's it. Ironically, this year
it is also Inauguration Day, so a little bit of
a different spin on things. He grew up, as I said,
the son of a very very prominent minister in one
of the most prom Black churches in America in Atlanta,
(03:05):
and one of the real turning points for him, at
least in his early life, was going to more House College.
And he actually started more House College when he was
only fifteen. He talked about maybe not being really prepared
for that. He had been skipping grades through high school
and went to college early. But he in going to Morehouse,
(03:30):
which was a very prominent black college founded much earlier
in history in Augusta, and very important in the history
of black colleges and universities in America. But while he
was there he read Henry David Thereaux's essay called on
(03:53):
Civil Disobedience for the first time. On civil disobedience was
the Row, of course. Perhaps more famous is the author
of Walden, in which he retreated into a cabin in
the woods for two years. He was very very He
King was very influenced, influenced by this pamphlet. It is
(04:17):
one of the books by the way that I include
in the world and books, so it is has been
an influential book throughout history, also influenced Gandhi, the leader
Indian independence, so important book in American history and world history.
And Thoreau was writing about his decision to not pay
(04:40):
taxes and go to jail rather than support a war,
and that was the war in Mexico that would be
support flavoring. So this was an idea that really appealed
to the young Martin Luther King, by the way, I said,
his name was Michael at birth his father, and he
(05:04):
went to the Middle East to the Holy Land at
a certain point, had a kind of profound experience there,
and his father decided to change his name to Martin
Luther King, after the great leader of the Protestant Reformation.
So it's interesting, a little bit of I guess trivia
(05:29):
you could call it, but still an interesting one. He
became convinced that non cooperation with evil is as much
of a moral obligation as cooperation with good is. And
he felt that nobody had been more eloquent and passionate
and getting that idea across than Threaw And so as
(05:51):
a result of that, he came to understand this idea
of civil obedient non cooperation, but nonviolent civil disobedient, nonviolent resistance,
and that was going to be the key, of course
to his approach to the civil rights movement, which was
(06:15):
obviously at odds with other leaders of the time. But
he certainly became the most prominent, most famous, most notable
civil rights leader of his time, of course, until his
death in nineteen sixty eight by assassination.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
I want to get into a lot of what you
just discussed there and the differences between him and some
of the other civil rights leaders of the day. You
mentioned the church several times there in his early upbringing,
this kind of religious awakening, when he and his father
went to the Holy Land. Talk to me about that role,
the role that the Christianity and the Church played in
(06:56):
influencing his approach to activism.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
There's no question that this is the center of his
early life and early years. It was the center of
his existence. As I mentioned his not only his father
was the minister of this very significant church, but also
his grandfather. It was the center of his life. He
(07:22):
writes about in his own autobiography later on, about growing
up and not in tremendous poverty, even though it was
the Great Depression. He certainly talks about growing up during
the period when people were on breadlines and soup lines,
and it was very, very important to him to have this,
(07:45):
certainly this religious upbringing that was going to be at
the center of all of his work and teachings, and
then certainly his approach to how he would go about
looking to change the country, which was in the depths.
We're talking about, of course that he was born in
(08:06):
nineteen twenty nine in the depths of depression, but also
truly in the depths of America's racist past. I mean,
this was a time of complete segregation, before any of
the major court decisions that would come much later later
in the nineteen fifties and sixties that would help the
(08:29):
civil rights movement move forward. But this was a time
when America was two nations, one white and one black,
and certainly he faced discrimination in every aspect of his life,
as most black people in that time did.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
We're speaking of the life of Martin Luther King Junior
and the MLK Holiday, which is upon us with historian
Tennessee Davis. He's the author of the Don't Know Much
series of books, as latest is titled The World in
Books fifty two Great Short fifty two Works of great
short nonfiction. His website is don't Know Much dot com.
(09:09):
You talked about his education, Martin Luther King Junior. Is
the fact that he entered Morehouse College at the age
of fifteen, which is kind of jaw dropping, But in
those days, in that segregation, was what was his education like?
Speaker 1 (09:26):
Well, first of all, he was grew up in a
segregated community. But a really interesting thing happened in his
life when he was before he went to college. Just
before going to college, he actually came north to work
in a tobacco farm in Connecticut. And we don't think
(09:47):
of Connecticut being the home of tobacco farms, but indeed
it is. There are tobacco farms in Connecticut and Massachusetts,
and there always have been. I think some of them
still will exists. But it was a period when he
really understood for the first time what the difference of
(10:09):
his completely segregated world was from the white world. He
had gone to by train, and when he rode the
trains from New York to Washington, or I should say
going to Connecticut, he didn't have to ride in a
(10:30):
segregated car. He went to restaurants in Hartford, Connecticut that
were not segregated, so anyone could eat there. And this
was an eye opening experience for him when he was
very young. Going back to this question of church, I
should just also asked that he memorized hymns and Bible
(10:52):
verses by the time he was five years old. The
church was, of course the center of his universe. The
time he became a singer in the choir, he had
a great He was a great reader, by the way, also,
and he remember singing in the church choir when he
(11:16):
was going to They were premiering the film Gone with
the Wind in nineteen thirty nine, and he went to
sing as a member of his church choir, but he
was dressed as a slave for the all white audience
at the Atlanta premiere of Gone with the Wind. So
it's just a reminder of these were the times in
(11:37):
which he grew up. So all of those things are obviously,
you know, really important shaping events to a young man,
a young an adolescent. And as I mentioned then, this
trip to Connecticut was very very important to him because
he just saw that there was a very very different
(12:00):
world in America at that time.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
You've repeatedly talked about the church, Martin Luther King Junior
being part of the choir, his education, his love of books.
I imagine all of these things obviously contributed to him
ending up being one of the great orators of our time.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
There's no question about that when we and one must
not read these speeches, even though they are wonderful to read,
but to hear Martin Luther King speak. I never heard
him in person myself growing up, and of course I
was growing up a young man during during the time
(12:44):
of the Civil Rights movement, and doctor King was often
on the television. Of course, we all saw the march
on Washington and the speech that he gave there, his
most famous speech. Indeed, I have a dream speech of
August nineteen sixty three. There are very very few people
(13:07):
in my life who I've heard give a speech of
that caliber and delivered with the emotional intensity, and certainly
a lot of it came from his training as a preacher.
Very difficult to think of him not being a person
(13:27):
who was certainly rooted in Biblical phrases, rooted in the
biblical sense of poetic sense of the Bible. So those
words on paper are very, very meaningful, but when you
heard them from his voices, extraordinary.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
The impact of that speech August twenty eighth, nineteen sixty three,
the March on Washington, the I Have a Dream speech.
Would the civil rights movement progressed the way that it
did for those next five years until his death without
that speech and its.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
Impact, it's hard to imagine, imagine it. So it's such
a defining moment in American history, and the event itself,
the March on Washington, where two hundred and fifty thousand
people at least were gathered, and it was a very
very integrated audience, and there were a number of very
(14:29):
very prominent white speakers there and white participants in that march,
as well as very very important other black leaders besides
doctor King. It was really an extraordinary moment like few
others in American history. But you know, we've kind of
(14:50):
skipped the head here to the March on Washington, we
have without talking about what was essentially the event that
put him on the map and made him a national figure,
and that is, of course, the Montgomery bus boycott of
nineteen fifty five, famed as the bus boycott that began
(15:16):
when Rosa Parks was arrested in December nineteen fifty five
for refusing to give up her seat on a city bus.
Now entered in sort of the legend and law of
American history. But it did happen, and it wasn't because
she was just tired. She was a very very active
participant in the local NAACP, the civil rights organization that
(15:41):
had begun in nineteen eleven, and the boycott was going
to be led of the bus system was going to
be led by doctor King. Primarily he was at that
point the pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery.
He would only later go on to Ebenezer Baptist where
(16:04):
his father had been the preacher, but being in Montgomery
at that moment, he was asked to take the leadership
role because he was not that well known in Montgomery,
and they thought, well, it'd be better to have somebody
who's not so well known here lead, and he was
(16:26):
of course dis launched him international prominence. The boycott, which
meant that most black people in Montgomery refused to use
the public transportation system, was very very powerful. It lasted
for three hundred and sixty three and eighty five days
(16:48):
more than a year. And is also during this time
that doctor King's house was bombed. He was also arrested
for traveling thirty miles per hour in a twenty five
mile per hour zone and he was jailed, and that
also helped add to his national prominence. He was starting
(17:13):
to attract national media and because he was such a
forceful speaker and so eloquent and so passionate about this
idea of overturning segregation of these buses, and that being
(17:36):
part of a much larger movement. But this is really
where the peaceful, nonviolent resistance of the civil rights movement
almost begins on a national scale. So that's why it's
so important to go back and we think about Rosa
Parks and we sometimes forget, well doctor King was there also.
(17:57):
He would not yet, Doctor This was absolutely the moment
that propelled him into national prominence.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
We're speaking with historian Tennec Davis. He's the author of
the Don't Know Much series of books. His latest is
titled The World in Books, fifty two Works of great
short nonfiction. His website is Don'tno Much dot com. You
mentioned his arrest there and how because of his ability
to write, and his style started to kind of change
(18:25):
public opinion a little bit. Tell me about the letter
from Birmingham jail.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
Okay, that's really a significant one, and we have to
keep going back to this importance of religion and his
Christian faith in his work. Right after the bus boycott,
before we get to the letter from Birmingham, King sounded
(18:51):
something called the Southern Christian Leadership Conference the SCLC in
nineteen fifty seven. And this was, as the name implies,
it was a group that was really using Christian principles
and trying to harness the moral authority of black churches
(19:12):
to conduct these nonviolent protests in the service of civil
rights reform. And so it's a very very important organization
in King's life and in the life of the civil
rights movement. And of course, as time went by, these
(19:33):
movements became more focused on there were all the questions
of all the segregation not only in the South but
throughout the country, but primarily in the South, and the
focus really moved towards a voting rights that the only
way that the life for black people was going to
(19:58):
change in this country was to overcome the know the
laws known as Jim Crow laws which kept so many
black people from voting even though they had the right
to vote since the end of the Civil War, at
least black males did, and later on black women. But
this really became the key in many respects to the
(20:25):
to the movement, the attempt to create a more of
a movement to win voters' rights that would really be
able to be the way that black people could have
a voice in the future of the country and a
legitimate voice in the country.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
His his philosophy of protest. You called it earlier non cooperation.
We've learned it as non violence resistance. I guess all
of that and everything he had done to that point,
and up with him winning the Nobel Peace Prize in
nineteen sixty four, how did that alone affect his influence
(21:09):
not only here in the United States but internationally.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
Well of course by that time, and the Nobel Peace
Prize came in nineteen sixty four. By that point, doctor King,
because of the marches, because of the bus boycotts, because
of the Washington speech, and his prominence. Now politicians like
(21:34):
the Kennedys were coming to him to approach him. They
were sympathetic the Kennedys that was to his mission to
Doctor Wright, doctor King's movement. Doctor King, like many other
(21:55):
black leaders at the time, thought that the Kennedys were
being a little bit too him. Robert Deaf Kennedy was,
of course President Kennedy's Attorney General, so very very much
involved in the legal aspects of the civil rights movement.
He felt that they were moving too slowly, and that
(22:15):
was a feeling that was shared widely. Of course, after
John F. Kennedy's assassination November nineteen sixty three, Lyndon Johnson
becomes president. Even though a Southerner from from the heart
of Texas, Johnson was perhaps more accommodating and more interested
(22:36):
in seeing racial justice has come about, and Johnson, with King,
became the prime movers of the most much of the
legislation that changed, seriously changed the rights and roles of
black people in America. We started out on the Nobel
(22:58):
Prize there already had to drop in some of the
other things, but because of course, really put doctor King
on a different level of world renown as opposed to
just being a prominent American leader, he was now considered
(23:19):
truly an international face of the movement and the Peace
Prize when it came to him in nineteen sixty four,
was a tremendous, tremendous honor that he continued to talk
about and actually goes of course to Oslo to accept
(23:44):
the award and gave yet another great speech while he
was there and accepting this award. And he had come
to receive the Peace Prize on the half of the
whole nonviolent movement. Of course, that was the essence of
(24:06):
the Nobel Peace Prize, devoted to promoting world peace. And
here was a non violent movement.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
I know even thirty minutes wouldn't be enough with you,
because I always learned so much. I'm ben fascinated by
your ability to explain all of these events in depth.
One more final thing before we get into Martin Luther
King junior holiday, we skip ahead to April fourth, nineteen
sixty eight, the assassination of Martin Luther King Junior, Memphis.
(24:36):
How does that event change the civil rights movement?
Speaker 1 (24:39):
First of all, we have to remember, and I lived
through these times, man, am a little bit older than you.
By the mid sixties, of course, because of the Vietnam War,
because of the racial injustice in this country, Doctor King's movement,
nonviolent movement had taken a different path. We saw a
(25:04):
tremendous amount of racial rioting in some of the urban
centers of America, from watts in Los Angeles to Newark,
New Jersey, Detroit. There had been violent riots because people
had just become fed up. They had taken too much,
(25:24):
they had taken enough. And of course we had a
whole long, hot summer of rioting in nineteen sixty seven
going into nineteen sixty eight. Actually, the President Johnson at
that time put together a commission to investigate the causes
of this, and the causes were obvious. There was segregation,
(25:47):
there was unemployment, there was discrimination. The police had become
an onerous presence in the black community. And the Kerner Commission,
as it was called, Presidential on Violence in Urban Violence,
said the nation was moving towards America was moving towards
two nations, the one black, one white, separate and unequal.
(26:11):
And that was a tremendous turning point. And it's just
after that that Martin Luther King organized began to organize
what he called the Poor People's Campaign. As I said,
the issue of economic justice was just as important as
racial justice, and he was preparing that campaign to go
(26:32):
back to Washington. When he went to Atlanta to actually
support a sanitation workers' strike, most of the sanitation workers
were black men, and that is, of course where he
was killed in April nineteen sixty eight in Memphis. In Memphis,
(26:54):
I'm sorry, I said Atlanta. That's correct.
Speaker 2 (26:56):
In Memphis. January fifteenth, nineteen twenty, his date of birth,
we celebrated, as you mentioned, the third Monday in January
this year happens to be Inauguration Day. All I remember
about Martin Luther King Junior Day for some reason, I
always think of Arizona, but they weren't the only state
that kind of was against recognizing Martin Luther King Junior
(27:20):
Day as a national holiday. In our final couple minutes here.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
That's correct. Just to go through the history very quickly here,
the idea of a holiday for Doctor King went back
to nineteen seventy, when some states had already begun to
recognize Doctor King's birthday as state holidays, and many governors
(27:45):
were beginning to call for a national holiday. I think
New York was among the first to establish a Doctor
King holiday, and it was thirteen years of arguing and
resistance before the holiday was signed as a national holiday
(28:07):
into law by Ronald Reagan. Arizona was finally the last
to agree to make what was now a national a
state holiday as well, and it was the influence really
of the National Football League. They were going to pull
the Super Bowl, which was planned for Arizona, out of
(28:28):
Arizona if the state did not agree to make doctor
Martin Luther King's birthday a state holiday as well as
a national holiday.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
Last thing, finally, briefly, Martin Luther King Junior Day. How
is it different an observance compared to other federal holidays.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
Well, it's I think it's a day that because it's
fairly recent and because the wounds in many ways are
still very much with us. When I say wounds, I'm
talking about the racial disparities in the country. I mean,
obviously this is at the core of a lot of
(29:09):
the debates we've been having. I think, you know, when
Barack Obama was elected president, we thought, gee, we've moved
past all that history. But of course the past is
never dead.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
Tenneth C. Davis historian, author of the Don't Know Much
series of books, among others. His most recent is titled
The World in Books fifty two works of great short nonfiction,
and his website is Don't Know Much dot com. Ken
always appreciate your time, thanks for sharing some of it
with us and your knowledge.
Speaker 1 (29:43):
Thanks so much, Manny. It's always a pleasure to talk
to you.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
And that has been I heeart radio communities. I'm Manny
Muno's Until next time.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
M
Host
Manny Munoz
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