King Remembered

Radio Atlantic

The Atlantic

Politics, News, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 30 March 2018

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In his last speech, known to history as “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop,” Martin Luther King Jr. began by remarking on the introduction he’d been given by his friend, Ralph Abernathy. “As I listened to ... his eloquent and generous introduction and then thought about myself,” King said modestly, “I wondered who he was talking about.” The facsimile of King that America would fashion after his assassination—saintly pacifist, stranger to controversy, beloved by all—might have provoked something well beyond wonder. To create a version of King that America could love, the nation sanded down the reality of the man, his ministry, and his activism. In this episode of Radio Atlantic, Vann Newkirk and Adrienne Green join our hosts, Jeffrey Goldberg and Matt Thompson, to discuss the truth of King in the last year of his life and after. Links - KING: Full coverage from The Atlantic of Martin Luther King Jr.’s life and legacy - “The Whitewashing of King’s Assassination” (Vann R. Newkirk, MLK Issue) - “The Chasm Between Racial Optimism and Reality” (Jeffrey Goldberg, MLK Issue) - King’s Three Evils (Martin Luther King Jr., May 10, 1967) - “The Civil-Rights Movement’s Generation Gap” (Bree Newsome, MLK Issue) - “Martin Luther King Jr.'s 'Letter From Birmingham Jail'” (Martin Luther King Jr., August 1, 1963) - “How Much Had Schools Really Been Desegregated by 1964?” (Martin Luther King Jr., MLK Issue) - “Martin Luther King Jr. on the Vietnam War” (Martin Luther King Jr., MLK Issue) - “Generational Differences in Black Activism” (Conor Friedersdorf, June 30, 2016) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	We misremember Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. We think of him as universally beloved rather than
0:06.0	embattled, be set by criticism from all directions. We mistake his calls for nonviolence as calls
0:11.2	for peace rather than disruptive enraged civil disobedience.
0:15.0	And we imagine his assassination 50 years ago
0:18.0	as a tragedy that struck King down at the culmination of his work
0:21.0	rather than at the beginning.
0:23.0	Time to set the record straight.
0:26.0	This is Radio Atlantic. I'm Matt Thompson, the at-Linnix executive editor, in a moment a discussion of King's life and legacy.
0:48.0	But first, a true story from the Atlantic staff writer Van Newkirk. Could they know about Martin was the beginning? Could you?
1:03.0	Could you lower those signs, please?
1:05.0	I have some very sad news for all of you,
1:10.0	and that is that Martin Luther King was shot and was killed tonight in Memphis.
1:15.0	On April 4, 1968, on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee,
1:23.5	the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed.
1:27.5	The assassination was a seismic event.
1:30.5	Its impact felt from the poorest slums to Wall Street.
1:34.0	It led to uprisons and riots in over a hundred American cities,
1:38.0	the most widespread in costly urban violence in American history since the Civil War.
1:43.2	When White America killed Dr King last night, she opened the eyes for ever black man in this country.
1:48.4	When White America got rid of Marcus Garvey, she did it and she said he was an extremist. He was crazy.
1:56.6	When they got rid of brother Malcolm X, they said he was preaching hate. He deserved what
2:01.1	he got. But when they got rid of brother Martin Luther King, they had absolutely
	...

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