“The Kneeling Man” – with Leta McCollough Seletsky

SpyCast

Education, News, History

4.4 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 11 July 2023

⏱️ 68 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Summary Leta McCollough Seletsky (Website; Twitter) joins Andrew (Twitter; LinkedIn) to share the story of her father, the famous “Kneeling Man” – The man knelt next to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at his assassination at the Lorraine Motel in 1968. Leta is a litigator turned essayist and memoirist. *Nominate SpyCast for a People’s Choice Podcast Award HERE!* What You’ll Learn Intelligence The life and times of Marrell “Mac” McCollough The CIA connection between father and daughter Black power and the counterintelligence program (or, COINTELPRO) The conspiracies surrounding Dr. King’s assassination Reflections Coming to terms with the past … and present Small but important steps of progress And much, much more … *EXTENDED SHOW NOTES & FULL TRANSCRIPT HERE* Resources SURFACE SKIM *Headline Resource* The Kneeling Man: My Father's Life as a Black Spy Who Witnessed the Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., Leta McCollough Seletsky (Counterpoint, 2023) *SpyCasts* The Counterintelligence Chief with Alan Kohler (2023) The Third Option – US Covert Action with Loch Johnson, Part 1 (2022) The Third Option – US Covert Action with Loch Johnson, Part 2 (2022) The Birth of American Propaganda with John Hamilton (2021) Juneteenth Special: African-American Spies (2021) *Beginner Resources* “I Am A Man” Dr. King and The Memphis Sanitation Workers’ Strike, M. Gailani, Tennessee State Museum (2020) [Short brief] Martin Luther King Jr., The Nobel Prize (n.d.) [Biography] COINTELPRO: United States Government Program, N. Frederique, Encyclopaedia Britannica (n.d.) [Short article] *EXTENDED SHOW NOTES & FULL TRANSCRIPT HERE* DEEPER DIVE Books The Sword and the Shield: The Revolutionary Lives of Malcom X and Martin Luther King Jr., P. E. Joseph (Basic Books, 2021) An Unseen Light: Black Struggles for Freedom in Memphis, Tennessee, A. Goudsouzian, C. W. McKinney, et al. (The University Press of Kentucky, 2018) The Heavens Might Crack: The Death and Legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., J. Sokol (Basic Books, 2018) The COINTELPRO Papers: Documents from the FBI's Secret Wars Against Dissent in the United States, W. Churchill & J. V. Wall (South End Press, 2001) Primary Sources The King v. Jowers Trial Findings, U.S. Department of Justice (1999) Final Report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, United States Senate (1976) Report from Vietnam, Walter Cronkite (1968) “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” Speech, Martin Luther King Jr., AFSCME (1968) "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence" Speech, Martin Luther King Jr., American Rhetoric (1967) COINTELPRO Records Collection, FBI Records: The Vault (n.d)

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to The CyberWire Network, powered by N2K.
0:11.0	Welcome to Spycast.
0:15.2	The official podcast of the International Spy Museum.
0:18.8	I'm Erin Dietrich, your host, Dr. Andrew Hammond's content partner.
0:23.2	Each week, we explore some aspect of the world of intelligence and espionage.
0:28.5	It's past, it's present, or it's future.
0:32.6	Coming up next on Spycast.
0:35.1	And so I would come home from school and read the newspaper.
0:37.6	And I was paging through the newspaper, and I saw an article, you know, about Disassnation.
0:44.3	And oh, you know, look, it says here that there was a black police officer who was a mole
0:49.0	in this militant group called Invaders, and then I see my father's name.
0:58.5	Lita McCola-Suletski is this week's Spycast guest.
1:05.7	She came on the show to share the story of her father, the famous kneeling man, who
1:10.0	was seen down by the side of Martin Luther King, Jr., who was struck down by an assassin's
1:14.9	bullet at the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4, 1968.
1:21.4	Meryl Mack McCola was attempting to stem the flow of blood from Dr. King's wound with
1:26.6	a borrowed towel.
1:28.5	Lita grew up fully aware that her father was the man in the photograph beside the civil
1:32.3	rights leader in Nobel Prize laureate, which she didn't find out until many years later
1:37.7	was that her father was actually an undercover spy working with the Memphis Police Department.
1:44.1	Lita is a former litigator who went on to become a national endowment for the arts creative
1:48.4	writing fellow.
	...

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