MLK Biographer Jonathan Eig on King's Early Life, Radicalization & How Racism Still Kills

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🗓️ 30 May 2023

⏱️ 24 minutes

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Summary

In Part 2 of our interview with journalist Jonathan Eig about his new book, King: A Life, the first major biography of the civil rights leader in more than 35 years, he talks about King’s early life and father; King’s formerly enslaved grandparents; the FBI’s push for him to abandon colleagues who were communists; and his opposition to the Vietnam War and launch of the Poor People’s Campaign just before he was killed. “We need to remember the radical words he spoke, and not just the safe ones,” Eig says. In Part 1, we looked at how the book draws on unredacted FBI files, as well as the files of the personal aide to President Lyndon Baines Johnson, to show how Johnson and others partnered in the FBI’s surveillance of King and efforts to destroy him, led by director J. Edgar Hoover. Eig also interviewed more than 200 people, including many who knew King closely, like the singer, actor and activist Harry Belafonte. The book has also drawn attention for its revelation that King was less critical of Malcolm X than previously thought.

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0:26.8	be matched dollar for dollar. Thank you so much.
0:33.8	This is Democracy Now.org the War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. As we
0:41.2	continue with part two of our conversation with the author of the first major
0:45.9	biography of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in decades. Jonathan Eyck's King, a
0:52.4	life was published this month and draws on unredacted FBI files as well as the
0:59.3	files of the personal secretary of President Lyndon Johnson that show he and
1:05.7	others partnered with the FBI surveillance of King in efforts to destroy him
1:11.0	led by FBI director Jay Edgar Hoover. But I want to back up and begin at the
1:17.2	beginning of the book King a Life. Begin with the opening line of the prologue
1:23.1	which reads, on December 5th, 1955, a young black man became one of America's
1:30.0	founding fathers. He was 26 years old and knew the role he was taking carried a
1:35.9	potential death penalty. The place was Montgomery, Alabama, former capital of
1:41.5	Alabama slave trade. Jonathan Eyck, if you could take it from there the
1:47.8	significance of this moment and why you call Dr. Martin Luther King a founding
1:55.0	father. Martin Luther King Jr. was the son of a sharecropper. His father, Martin
2:01.7	Luther King senior Mike King as he was known most of his childhood in early adult
2:06.6	life, was born on a farm in Stockbridge, Georgia where they were picking cotton
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