← All Of It with Alison Stewart
All Of It with Alison Stewart
Juneteenth Special: A Biography of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
01:40:36
On Juneteenth, listen to our Full Bio conversation about King: A Life, the first comprehensive account of MLK in three decades.
Loading summary
Transcript140 lines
- [00:00]
Jonathan Eig
Sam.
- [00:27]
Alison Stewart
This is all of it from wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. On this Juneteenth, a day celebrating freedom, we are bringing you a special presentation about someone who continued the fight for rights a century after enslaved people were emancipated. We are discussing the first comprehensive biography of Martin Luther King Jr. In three decades. The book is called A Life by Jonathan Ig. You know Ig's bios of Lou Gehrig, Al Capone and his award winning book Ali. Armed with newly released FBI documents, discovered diaries, White House logs and audio recordings, IG has written a 500 plus page book. It is full of detail about the civil rights movement, but at its heart it's about a person. As the Chicago Tribune said in its review, I gets to quote the man, not the myth. Born in Atlanta, Georgia on January 15, 1929, then Michael King, the future civil rights icon was the second of three children. His maternal grandparents were church leaders at Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church, where both MLK Sr. And Jr. Would land. His paternal grandparents were proud people and sharecroppers. Their son didn't want to stay in the country and made his way to the city, became a powerful preacher and started a family. We begin with IG's process and then we will hear about MLK's fierce grandma, his ambitious and domineering father. And MLK was called Little Mike when he was a child. Jonathan, what did you have access to that previous biographers did not?
- [02:10]
Jonathan Eig
I had access first of all to a lot of new archival material, including a lot of FBI documents that had only been released within the last few years. Just in the last three years, there's been a huge dump of newly declassified FBI materials. But beyond that, I also had archival material from a lot of King's closest associates, his personal archivist, Lawrence Dunbar Reddick, who worked for a dozen years keeping tabs of all of King's activities, traveling with him, going to meetings. His papers were recently donated to a library in Harlem. I found tapes that Coretta King made in an archive that belonged a collection that belonged to her editor who worked with her on her memoir. So much stuff like that. I also found the autobiography of Daddy King, Martin Luther King's father, that had never been published, including the transcripts of the interviews he made while working on that. So I could go on and on. But I was really shocked at just how much new material there was for King.
- [03:16]
Alison Stewart
Who were you able to interview that could give you some first person recollections or remembrances?
- [03:24]
Jonathan Eig
This journey began for me, really, because I was interviewing Dick Gregory for a book about Muhammad Ali. And that's when I realized that Gregory and lots of other people who knew King were still around. So I quickly began canvassing the country, trying to interview as many people as I could. And, of course, many people were gone. Coretta Scott King passed away before I had this epiphany. But there were still dozens of people, including, you know, close friends like John Lewis and Harry Belafonte, Andrew Young, Reverend Bernard Lafayette, Reverend James Lawson, Jesse Jackson, Juanita Abernathy, and then some people who maybe listeners haven't heard of, like June Dobbs Butts, who grew up with King on Auburn Avenue in Atlanta, or Nelson Malden, who was King's barber in Montgomery. So hearing from people who really knew him was just an amazing opportunity. But I also found that because time had gone by, because they were older, they were able to speak more openly than they might have in years earlier. Especially, I think, since Coretta passed away, a lot of people were not inhibited about saying things that might have hurt Coretta's feelings. So I felt like I was getting a level of honesty and openness that maybe would not have been possible a generation earlier.
- [04:38]
Alison Stewart
MLK's estate has a reputation for exerting a lot of control over certain materials. What was your engagement with the estate?
- [04:47]
Jonathan Eig
I had a very little interaction with them. I asked them if they would give me interviews, and the King children declined to be interviewed. Then I asked them for permission to use extended quotations from some of King's speeches and sermons, and they declined to give me permission again. But other than that, you know, it really wasn't much of a problem. And. And I had plenty of support from other members of the King family, nieces and nephews who were. And as I mentioned, you know, friends of King's who were eager to this book. So I hope that the King family will read the book and appreciate it and see some value in it. But I did not have much interaction and they didn't give me much of a hard time either. So I should say that at the very least, they didn't try to obstruct anything that I was doing.
- [05:33]
Alison Stewart
My guest is Jonathan Eig. The name of his biography is a life. MLK's father, Michael King, and Michael's. Correct. We'll talk about that in a minute. Was born in 1897, one of 10 children. And you opened the book with a story about MLK's grandparents, Delia and Jim King, about young Michael, MLK's father, being struck by a white mill owner for not doing what the white mill owner said. Delia goes and finds the guy and beats on him. And MLK's grandfather went looking for the mill owner with a gun. But by that time, word had spread and a white mob went looking for him. So he had to hide out for months. Why start the book with this story?
- [06:15]
Jonathan Eig
I wanted to show that Martin Luther King, Jr. Came from a family that really suffered from the incredible injustices of racist American democracy in the south growing up in Georgia. But I also wanted to show that they were not willing to take it, that they fought back when they could and that they fought back as best they could. And the fact that King's grandmother Delia, was, who was a Bible reading woman, a woman who really took care of her neighbors even when she didn't have much to give, that she would stand up to a white man, a white mill owner, and physically confront him, shows incredible courage. But she also was wise enough to say, you know, don't tell your father about this, because if he goes and does the same thing, he'll get killed for it. And in fact, you know, she was right. The mob did come after this white lynch mob did come after Jim King, and Jim King had to hide out in the woods. And that's the moment really when Mike King decides that he's gotta leave Stockbridge. He's gonna move to Atlanta at the age of 12 or 13, starts walking toward Atlanta with his shoes slung over his shoulder so he doesn't wear them out, and decides he's gonna make a new life. That's the moment that really makes it possible for him to raise Martin Luther.
- [07:34]
Alison Stewart
King Jr. For Michael King, when did he feel a religious calling?
- [07:44]
Jonathan Eig
Well, I think to grow up in the south, to grow up in a family that comes from slavery, that's working as sharecroppers, where the black church is really the only institution that gives you a sense of power, a sense of faith, gives you something to believe in, that the days ahead might be better. I think it was almost unavoidable that he would grow up with a strong sense of religious faith. Now, his father, that is to say, Martin Luther King's grandfather, was eventually turned away from God because he became so bitter about the racist treatment that he had to endure. But Mike, Mike King found that, you know, the society was unfair, but the Bible promised fairness. Society was filled, was full of racial injustice, but the Bible promised justice. And he found that even the schools wouldn't educate him. He could learn to preach, he could learn to read the Bible. And he became a preacher, just sort of a wandering preacher before he even really knew how to read properly. So the Bible offered him a path out of this abject despair into which he was born.
- [08:47]
Alison Stewart
You also describe him at one point as having. He was burning with ambition. How did that manifest itself? What's an example of that?
- [08:57]
Jonathan Eig
Well, Mike King, who, again, you know, has terrible grammar, difficulty reading, moves to Atlanta and begins traveling as a preacher and signs up for school. He wants to go to school to learn how to read and write and is told, even though he's now 19, 20 years old, is told that he's going to have to sit with the third graders to learn to write, because that's what reading level he was at. And he did that. He sat down in this classroom full of third graders to learn how to read and write. And then one day, he's walking along the streets of Atlanta, and he sees a beautiful girl sitting on a porch and decides that's the girl he's going to marry. And he knows that she is also the daughter of one of the most prominent preachers in Atlanta. This is Alberta. Alberta Williams. And Alberta Williams is the son, is the daughter. I'm sorry, of A.D. williams, the leader of Ebenezer Baptist Church. So young Mike King thinks, wow, I'm going to marry that girl, and I'm going to marry my way into this big, proud black church, and maybe someday I'll be the leader of Ebenezer Baptist Church. And this is a kid who's, you know, just off the farm, really, who, his friends tease him that he still smells like the farm, still smells of manure. And he says, well, I may not. I may smell like manure, but I don't think like a farm boy. And I'm going to be something with my. I'm going to do something with my life.
- [10:15]
Alison Stewart
The family, though, because he is going to. Here's the phrase you hear a lot. Marry up a little bit, is they're a little skeptical. At least the mom is skeptical. What was there to be skeptical about about Mike King for Alberta's family?
- [10:33]
Jonathan Eig
Well, Alberta was an established young woman. She was educated. She was going to college. And here comes Mike King, fresh off the farm with one pair of shoes to his name. And he says he has intentions of marrying this woman. And they really, you know, I think they were. They were expecting a, you know, a Morehouse grad. At the very least, they were expecting somebody with some. Some kind of a more impressive resume. But Mike King was working on it. You Know, he enrolled himself at Morehouse. He began, you know, he had to talk his way in there because he couldn't pass the admissions exam. But he was full of ambition. And I think that the, the Williams family recognized that this was an up and coming young man.
- [11:14]
Alison Stewart
My guess is, Jonathan I. The name of the biography is King A Life. Let's get to the question which people are probably asking right now. Why do we keep saying Mike King and Michael King instead of Martin Luther King? When did Michael King, MLK's father, start going by Martin?
- [11:34]
Jonathan Eig
Well, Mike King, fresh off the farm, was trying to impress people. And as a lot of folks did in those days, they began changing their names, altering their names. And for black people in particular, at the time, it was common to just go by middle initials, because if you called yourself ML or JR or JP it made it harder for white people to reduce your name to something pejorative, to take James and make him Jimmy. So Mike King started calling himself ML King, and it's not even clear what the L stood for at that point. He had a brother named Lucius who had died as a child, so maybe he took the L for Lucius, but we don't really know. But we start to see that in the church programs. He's calling himself Reverend M.L. king. And then he travels to Germany early in his career as the pastor at Ebenezer. And he comes back from Germany having learned more about the great reformer Martin Luther, and starts calling himself Martin L. King, and then gradually begins adding the. The Luther. And he's Norton Luther King. So his son, young Mike, little Mike, as they call him, finds out one day, hey, guess what? We're. We're both changing our names. And, you know, Mike King Jr. Learns that he's now being. He's going to now be introduced as Martin Luther King, Jr.
- [13:00]
Alison Stewart
So Martin Luther King Jr. The King family, they settle on a street in Atlanta called Auburn Ave, sometimes called Sweet Auburn. And it's a street where black Americans thrived. How did Auburn Ave. Come to be, and how did growing up in this community shape MLK's sense of self?
- [13:22]
Jonathan Eig
A lot of people thought that Auburn Avenue, Sweet Auburn, was the greatest black street in America, certainly outside of Harlem. Many people thought it was that. And Mike King is really lucky to grow up there. Auburn Avenue develops because race riots in Atlanta forced black people to seek comfort in community, to build together. And Auburn Avenue became where they coalesced, where a lot of businesses started. And there was a feeling that if we can just build our own little community, we can have Some measure of protection from the next riot that emerges. And it really did become a very prosperous street. And lots of churches grew up around that street. You had insurance companies, you had hotels, you had photo galleries and all kinds of banks and insurance companies, all kinds of economic opportunities. So there was a sense growing up there that black people could take care of themselves, that they didn't have to rely entirely on white people for economic support. And as a result of that, the churches became very powerful and the church leaders who really couldn't be fired became vocal activists in terms of really fighting, pushing city hall, pushing the government to create more opportunities for black people, to open more schools to. And some of the discriminatory practices at places downtown. I remember when one of the newspapers was using derogatory language a great deal toward black people. Daddy King and other preachers led a protest movement saying that they were going to encourage black people in the community not to shop at any place that advertised in that newspaper until they. They stopped using those derogatory words. So there was a great sense of power in that community.
- [15:14]
Alison Stewart
MLK Jr had a really fairly lovely childhood. Both parents were involved. His grandmother lived with them. The father was powerful, maybe exerted too much power or influence. We'll talk about that a little bit later on. But there was this one story about him being forced. MLK Jr being forced to take part in a Gone with the Wind tribute. If you would share that story and explain why you included it.
- [15:45]
Jonathan Eig
Well, this is one of the fascinating moments in American history when great forces come together. Gone with the Wind was probably the most anticipated movie of its time, maybe the most anticipated movie in movie history up to that point. It was based on this giant best selling book. It starred Clark Gable and Vivian Leigh and it was going to premiere in Atlanta and where the movie, you know, the movie was set at this fictional plantation in, In Georgia. So they thought the movie should premiere in Atlanta. And Clark Gable and Vivian Leigh flew in from Hollywood on chartered jets and the entire city paved, you know, this huge welcome for. For the. For the Hollywood stars. And they planned this giant gala downtown where of course, only white people would be invited to attend the movie premiere. But black people were asked to serve as servants, as ushers. And also in one instance, they were asked to reenact some of these scenes from the time of slavery and to dress as slaves and to sing in choirs, black choirs. And Martin Luther King Sr. Agreed to have his church participate in this program to dress as slaves and to perform for the. For the white crowds coming to the Movie premiere. Now. A lot of black people in Atlanta were horrified by Daddy King's decision. They said that he was supporting this racist enterprise, supporting this racist movie. But Daddy King didn't care. He thought that there was that it was exciting. He enjoyed the access to the celebrities, to the power. And he said that he thought that much of what was depicted in the movie was accurate. So what you end up with is this is this choir from Ebenezer Baptist Church dressed in the garments of enslaved people singing for this white audience. And sitting in the front row singing along with some of these slaves hymns is Martin Luther King Jr. Dressed as an enslaved boy.
- [17:39]
Alison Stewart
We will continue our conversation with Jonathan Eig, author of King A Life, by discussing King's time at the HBCU Morehouse and what professors and theologians had the biggest impact on him. This is all of it. This is all of it. From wnyc, I'm Alison Stewart with our special presentation, a conversation with award winning journalist Jonathan Eigen about his Martin Luther King Jr. Bio titled a Life. We've arrived at King's college years. At first he was determined not to follow in his father's footsteps as a preacher. He did, however, follow his father's lead and attend the HBCU Morehouse. There, MLK would rethink his approach to religion thanks to some influential teachers and preachers. Morehouse is where MLK began to realize, as IG writes, quote, the central importance of the church in black life, understood the power of the preacher and glimpsed a future in which his talents might serve God and humanity. Here's more of my conversation with Jonathan Eig. Jonathan, was there ever any doubt that MLK Jr would attend Morehouse?
- [19:26]
Jonathan Eig
He was pretty well destined for Morehouse. It was a place of enormous pride, not just in his family, but in all of Atlanta. It was a place where young black men went to get educated, but also to get indoctrinated into the idea, into this community that was motivated to really fight racism, to destroy Jim Crow, to elevate the status of black people in America. So Martin Luther King Jr. Is really bound for Morehouse whether he likes it or not. You know, his father went there, his grandfather went there. And you know, he grows up as a kid seeing Morehouse professors in the community everywhere. And you know, he skips a couple grades in school. So he's ready for Morehouse by the age of 16. And he may not have been quite as well prepared academically, but emotionally and philosophically he was ready. And he took a lot of inspiration from Morehouse.
- [20:22]
Alison Stewart
You Note that his nickname was Runt because not only was he young, he was short as well. Was he able to be social and make friends considering how young he was?
- [20:34]
Jonathan Eig
Right. King is really small, even at his full height. Later as an adult, he's barely five, seven, maybe five, six and a half. So he's two, three years younger than his classmates. He's shorter than almost all of them, and he's trying on this new mustache to see if it makes him look a little more mature. And he's dressing in a very professorial manner. So sometimes kids call him Runt, sometimes they call him Tweed because he loves this tweed jacket, never takes it off, but it doesn't really seem to matter because he's incredibly charismatic. People adore him. Even with women two or three years older. He's charming, he has no trouble fitting in. And at one point at Morehouse, he starts a fight with an older student, somebody who'd actually been an army veteran. And King is actually takes to the street, they're rolling around on the sidewalk, wrestling each other, and they become best friends afterwards. King was really just an irresistible personality.
- [21:33]
Alison Stewart
He had several advisors and teachers who made an impression on him at Morehouse. He had one advisor, Walter Chivers, who was a sociology teacher. What were the seeds that he planted with mlk because he did keep in touch with them through his life.
- [21:53]
Jonathan Eig
Yeah, there were a lot of inspiring professors. And certainly the president of Morehouse, Benjamin Mays, was a huge inspiration too. But Professor Chivers really talked to King about economic inequality and tried to help him understand what it was like for poorer working class black people to try to get a foothold in society. And King grew up pretty well protected. He certainly wasn't wealthy by anything stretch, but he lived, you know, in a comfortable home. He had a pet, he had a dog. He had, you know, really no worries about money for the most part. So it was an eye opening experience for him. And this professor actually motivated King to seek summer jobs where he would work among working class people. He took a job as a box at a box company and at a mattress company. And it was, King said he did it because this professor really inspired him to think about the impact on society, for the underclass, for working class people, and just how difficult it was to be in particular, a black man in white America trying to make an honest living when your education was inferior, when you faced discrimination in the workplace and in the housing market and so many other things. So even though King might have grown up in a little bit of a bubble, he was Trying to learn what went on outside that bubble.
- [23:11]
Alison Stewart
What did he take away from George D. Kelsey, who taught religion and philosophy?
- [23:16]
Jonathan Eig
Well, King really began to see the possibilities for religion as a social force. He saw it a little bit in his own church where his father preached, but his, his father was mostly concerned with the. With bringing up the community, helping the congregation at Ebenezer to improve themselves and to think about how, as a group, they could help one another by patronizing one another's businesses. But King begins to study philosophy and theology and begins to think about how a more intellectual approach and a more political approach might really come to come to bear. You know, he's, he's kind of embarrassed by the way his father preaches, by the emotional way that he pounds the pulpit and shouts and, and sings. And King thinks that there might be another way, that maybe there's a way to combine religion and philosophy in a way that inspires people to. To really think about improving not just their own lives, but improving society.
- [24:10]
Alison Stewart
He is also influenced by Reverend Harry Emerson Fosdick, who was a Baptist minister who had a ministry in our listening area in Montclair, New Jersey for a long time and became a pastor at Riverside Church here in New York City. What attracted King to Fosdick and his methodology?
- [24:28]
Jonathan Eig
Well, we should say first of all that Fosdick was white, and he was probably the most popular minister in the country at the time because his radio, his sermons were broadcast nationally on the radio. And Fosdick was a real progressive. He preached a very engaging style of religion that really made you think about your own life, that it wasn't just, you know, pie in the sky, that it wasn't just worshiping God and it wasn't just following the rules of the Bible. It was using religion as a tool to change society, to think of yourself as a partner with God in the improvement of the universe. And, and his speeches, his sermons were really entertaining, really engaging. They, they, they personalized it and asked you to really think about your own life and not just to think about you, the afterlife or these philosophical concepts. And King would really absorb Fosdick's sermons. He would, he memorized them and without even knowing he was memorizing them, and would use them throughout the rest of his life. You'll hear a lot of Fosdick in all of King's most famous sermons. And you might not, King might not even realize, have realized just how deeply influenced by Fosdick he was.
- [25:34]
Alison Stewart
You address head on this issue of Martin Luther King Jr. Borrowing heavily from other people's work. It happened in graduate school. It happened with other minister sermons, as you mentioned. One, what was the perhaps most egregious example? And two, after studying his life, why wouldn't he do this? Why would this happen?
- [25:57]
Jonathan Eig
King did plagiarize a lot. There's no way to get around it. The most famous example is that he plagiarized massive chunks, probably the majority of his doctoral dissertation at Boston University. But it began much earlier. Even in high school, he finished third in a statewide speaking contest. I mean, first of all, let's point out that Martin Luther King, Jr. Only came in third place. But he turns out he plagiarized almost the entire speech that he entered the contest with. And I think some of it comes from having skipped a couple of grades in school. Some of his fundamentals as a writer were lacking. His fundamentals in math were lacking as well. But I think that kind of undercut his confidence as a writer. And then at the same time, you know, he came from a tradition in the Baptist church where it was common to hear other people's sermons and make them your own, to reinterpret them, to take some material from here and some material from there. I mean, some of King's greatest sermons, I have a Dream, is deeply rooted in the poetry of Langston Hughes. So King was not even really embarrassed about it. I think that he just saw that that was the way to be a preacher. He wasn't looking to be a writer. He wasn't concerned with originality of his text. He was concerned with moving audiences. And he did that very well.
- [27:14]
Alison Stewart
My guest is Jonathan Ig. The name of the biography is King A Life. Martin Luther King, Jr. Decides to go to Crozer Theological Seminary to do his graduate work. This is a break from his father's wishes and thoughts. A father who was. Is domineering a fair word?
- [27:35]
Jonathan Eig
Yes, domineering is a very fair word.
- [27:38]
Alison Stewart
When and how did the break between these two men and the way they saw the church and the way they saw the role of a pastor or a reverend, when did that begin?
- [27:50]
Jonathan Eig
I think it began really early. I mean, there are moments where King Jr. Is actually challenging his father on whether Baptists should be allowed to dance. He says, as long as your heart is pure while you're dancing, there's no reason why you shouldn't be able to dance, even with a girl. And that's a challenge. And. And then he's sneaking off to parties in college. He's even having some parties at the house when his father's not around. So there's always this push, pull. And, you know, Daddy King was aggressive in terms of punishing the kids. He spanked them, paddled them, sometimes on the front, on the front lawn so that the neighbors could see. And Even then, young ML Jr was, was resisting. You know, he would refuse to react when his father spanked him. He would refuse to shout out in pain. And he would refuse. Sometimes Daddy King would, would tell the one child to spank another child, you know, their siblings. And Martin Luther King would refuse to, to, to, to paddle his sister. So there was always this struggle. And Martin Luther King Jr. Wanted to be different, wanted to be better than his father, even though he certainly respected and admired him. And Daddy King did not want his son to go to seminary. He didn't think it was necessary. You don't need a fancy degree to be a preacher. But he didn't appreciate that Martin Luther King was interested in the philosophy and the theology, that he wanted to be a different kind of preacher.
- [29:10]
Alison Stewart
After the break, the woman who would be King's life partner and partner in the civil rights movement, a cause she championed long before she met him. We'll learn more about Coretta Scott after the break. This is all of IT from wnyc. You're listening to all of it from wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. Let's continue our conversation about the biography King A Life by Jonathan Icke. As a graduate student in Boston before Martin Luther King Jr. Met Coretta Scott, he was happily dating a lot. Even though his parents wanted him to marry a family friend in Georgia. He had other ideas and so did Coretta. Let's hear more about Coretta and Martin from Jonathan. I, I want to talk about Coretta Scott King now. But before coretta Scott King, MLK Jr. Dated around a bit. He had a relationship with a white woman named Amelia Elizabeth Moetz. So this was 49, 50. Segregation was the rule of the day. How open were they about their relationship, Amelia and Martin?
- [30:42]
Jonathan Eig
They were quite open. This was in Chester, Pennsylvania. So had they been in the Deep south, it would have been a very different story. But at least in Chester, they felt comfortable sitting on a park bench together, holding hands and strolling around this tiny little campus. And everybody on campus knew they were dating. In fact, everybody knew that Betty had been dating a professor and young Martin stole her away from this professor. So it was impossible not to notice them. And moreover, it became a subject of discussion because King was in love with and he was asking his friends, do you think I could marry a White girl. And how would that affect my career? How would that affect my ability to return home to the South? There were a lot of discussions, and he spoke to one of his mentors, J. Pius Barber, who was a minister, a black minister in the area around where he was attending school. And he said, what do you think? Would you marry us right now? And Barbara said, I think it would be a big mistake for you at this point in your life and your career. And King said, well, maybe love is more important than my career. And he thought about it, but he eventually decided that it was too much of a risk, and he broke things off with Betty.
- [31:57]
Alison Stewart
So once he realizes that he can't marry this woman for various reasons, including his career prospects, he begins looking to get married. What qualities did a preacher's wife need to have at the time? What. What was he looking for?
- [32:14]
Jonathan Eig
The interesting thing about King and his dating is that he never lacked for dates. He was always very active. He sometimes was dating. He was usually dating more than one woman at a time. And he really seemed to enjoy the company of women. But he also felt like he wanted to marry quickly and marry early, in part because it was good for a preacher seeking his first job to show that he was established, that he was settled into marriage, that he was going to be a good preacher with a good part of the community, that he was going to stay a while and raise kids. So it was. It was kind of part of the resume of a young preacher looking for a job. So by the time King leaves Crozier and moves to Boston in pursuit of his doctorate, he's dating a lot of women. And. And he's. And they're. They're very bright women. For the most part, they're college students, oftentimes graduate students. And he's making it very clear that he's looking for a preacher's wife, that he intends to return to the south and become a preacher, and that he's looking for a woman who wants to be his partner in this new enterprise.
- [33:17]
Alison Stewart
Well, what does that mean to be a partner at this time in the enterprise of being a preacher? Not just necessarily for him, just in general.
- [33:25]
Jonathan Eig
In the early 1950s, you know, not a lot of women were working out of the home. Most of them were when they got married, saw their jobs as being housewives and raising the children. And that was especially true for the wives of preachers, especially true for the wives of Baptist preachers in the South. So a woman marrying young ML King would know that she was likely going to be in this Role where her job is pastor's wife, and that this comes with great public role, public, public face where you're expected to be in church every Sunday showing off your. Your well dressed, well mannered children and that you're going to be on committees, that you're going to help with church social functions, but that you're not going to really have a career of your own. And that was difficult for some of the women that King met because these were ambitious women who were in graduate school and thinking about, you know, maybe the world was ready for a little bit more of an independent woman.
- [34:24]
Alison Stewart
Coretta Scott grew up in and around Marion, Alabama, a small town of about 3,000 people. She was one of three children. She went to Antioch College. She went on to a music conservatory in Boston. What was going on in Coretta Scott's life before she met mlk?
- [34:44]
Jonathan Eig
Coretta Scott was a couple years older than mlk, and she was a very serious young woman. She had gone to Antioch College, which was a white college that accepted black students, but primarily white. And she had been very active there on campus in social movements. She protested a barber shop that wouldn't cut black hair. She fought with the university because they wouldn't let black students do student teaching in white schools. She was more of an activist at that point than mlk. And I think that's a big part of what attracted King to Coretta when they met for their first date. I think he was blown away by the fact that she had been involved in all of these protests already because he hadn't done anything yet. He'd been focused on his schooling and he had not been a part of any organized protests. So I think that Coretta. That's what separated Coretta, because King had a lot of dates with a lot of beautiful, intelligent women, but none who had the resume that Coretta had.
- [35:39]
Alison Stewart
We actually found a 1960 WNYC interview where the interviewer asked Coretta Scott King to describe her first impressions of mlk.
- [35:49]
C
Well, I had known some things about him before we met, so I suppose I had some preconceived ideas. First, I knew he was a minister and I knew he was studying at Boston University for his doctorate. And I had been told that he was a very fine and promising young man and a very nice person. So I had these things in my mind when I met him. I thought he was a very fine person, a nice person, a likable person. When we had had a chance to talk and get to know each other a little, I thought he was very nice. And, of course, I think it was almost. I wouldn't say exactly love at first sight, but we like each other, I think, a great deal, and we seem to have had a great deal in common.
- [36:46]
Alison Stewart
You know, in the clip, she was said, oh, he was nice enough and we were friendly and we had a lot in common. It's sort of interesting because they were married for so long, but we'll talk about this later. He was not faithful. What do you think was the glue of their marriage?
- [37:05]
Jonathan Eig
I think the glue was the movement. I talked to Harry Belafonte about this a lot. Belafonte thought that they kind of had, like, a business partnership and that they loved each other and trusted each other and relied on each other. But Belafonte thought that King never got over his love of Betty Moitz, the white girl that he dated at Crozer, and that he loved Coretta in a different way and that sometimes it felt a little bit dry to him and that that may have been a function of her personality, but there's no question that King respected her. Her ambition, her intelligence, and her passion for justice. And that was really what I think kept them together more than anything else. And then, of course, you know, their. Their kids and their love for their kids that they shared. But. But in the beginning, and certainly in the early days, I think the glue was. There was the struggle for justice. One of the things that I. I often think about is that when King won the Nobel Prize, it was Coretta who said, we now have a greater responsibility to fight not just for justice in America, but all over the world, and to think about things like world peace and hunger, poverty, because the Nobel Prize gives us a greater sense of responsibility. She saw that as something that they both had to work up, live up to.
- [38:23]
Alison Stewart
My guest is Jonathan Eig. The name of the biography is King A Life. Coretta Scott and Martin Luther King, Jr. Marry in June of 1953. What did Coretta have to give up to become Mrs. Martin Luther King, Jr.
- [38:41]
Jonathan Eig
Coretta gave up a lot. First of all, most obviously, her singing career. She really wanted to be a concert singer, and she wanted to use her voice to raise awareness and to raise money for social causes. And that became. It became clear once she decided that she would marry King and move to the south, that that wasn't going to happen. There was no way she could have a concert career while raising a family, being the pastor's wife, and raising children in the Deep South. So she shifted for a little while, thinking that maybe she'd become a music teacher. That she could give piano lessons and voice lessons, but even that she didn't have time for and had to sacrifice over. You know, I found recordings that Coretta made while working on her first memoir just after her husband's death. And in these recordings she says over and over, and that too I had to accept. And that too I had to accept. And then once she became she, she came to realize that her husband was not faithful. That too she had to accept. And she discovered that very early, even before they were married, when they were engaged, she discovered that he was still seeing another woman. And she says even then that she had to learn to accept that.
- [39:49]
Alison Stewart
From your research, you know, it is clear that King strayed from his marriage and that she did know he was not faithful. He even had, and it seems he had a couple of ongoing relationships. There was even an apartment nearby home where he would stay sometimes and meet up with women. Later in his life, the FBI would seek to use this information to try to bully him into silence. Anywhere in your research, did he show or write why he did this? Did he show any kind of remorse or shame?
- [40:25]
Jonathan Eig
Well, he certainly expressed remorse, not specifically for this. He never addressed the affairs, but he talked about the guilt that he felt for his sins, for his failures, and it's clear that this was one of them. And he talked to friends about it. He talked to people like Ralph, Ralph Abernathy and Andrew Young. And they asked him, you know, why don't you stop? You know the FBI is trying to destroy your marriage. You know, they're, they're listening to your phone calls. They know about these other women. At one point, the FBI made a recording of some of King's conversations and some of his activities in a hotel room and sent it to Coretta. And when his friends asked him, you know, why, why don't you stop? You know, this is dangerous. You know that if it's exposed, it will destroy your reputation. And King just said he couldn't, he couldn't stop if he tried. And they really, the friends I talked to really couldn't explain that any more than just repeating what he said.
- [41:20]
Alison Stewart
My guest is Jonathan ig. The name of the biography is King A Life. The Kings moved to Montgomery, Alabama, where MLK accepted a position as a pastor at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. What was it about the congregation and Montgomery that appealed to then 25 year old MLK?
- [41:43]
Jonathan Eig
Once again, King broke from his father. His father said, don't go to Dexter. It's lily white and uptight. He said that it wasn't white of course, but it was a black church, but it had a reputation for being very conservative and being sort of hoity toity, and that's where the black college professors all attended. And Daddy King thought it was. It was too snobby for his son. But, you know, Dexter had a reputation for being a powerful church where. Where great ideas were exchanged, where people challenged authority. The prior minister there, Vernon Johns, was a. Was a legend, and he. He liked to make even his own congregation uncomfortable, pushing them to really think about what they could and should be doing to change the society in which they were living. So I think King was. Was really drawn to that. It was a big, prominent church with a great reputation. And of course, he didn't know that he was about to find himself in the center of this great storm of protest.
- [42:47]
Alison Stewart
Well, what did they see in him, this church? He's a young guy.
- [42:52]
Jonathan Eig
Yeah, he's a kid. And some of the. Some of the church elders thought he was too young and that there was no way that anybody was going to respect this. This kid. It didn't help that he was, you know, five, six and a half and looked like he was about 17 years old. But he. He quickly earned their respect because he was such a beautiful speaker and so brilliant. Combining, you know, philosophy with religion. I think they were really moved just by the power of his intellect more than anything else. And he was. He was just absolutely charming. He. He made the rounds. He got to know people. He shot pool with the teenagers and went to backyard barbecues and learned people's names and really just seemed to be a great listener. That's one of the things we forget about King even when he becomes this great leader of the civil rights movement, when he's, you know, got the pressure of the world on his shoulders. He's a great listener, and he's. He's a leader who understands and wants to. Wants to work with other people, not boss them around.
- [43:46]
Alison Stewart
The King's move to Montgomery in August of 1950. So this is two months after Brown versus Board of Education struck down school segregation. What impact would that ruling about schooling have on King's early trajectory as a civil rights leader? Even before he was a civil rights leader.
- [44:09]
Jonathan Eig
Yeah, even before he's a leader. A couple of big things happen that seem to create this momentum that will soon affect his life? First of all, as you said, Brown versus Board of Education is an earthquake that rattles America that says change is coming whether you like it or not. And all over the south, white segregationists are trying to figure out how they can preserve the power structure, preserve their all white schools, even if it means shutting down public schools in some cases. And black people are thinking, okay, the government agrees with us. Segregation is wrong. How do we keep fighting for more? How do we keep fighting for more integration? At the same time, roughly just shortly after Emmett till is murdered in Mississippi, and the images of his body at his funeral really shock America and again, force or compel a lot of black people to think that this is a moment where we can fight for change. And one of those people who happens to hear a lecture about Emmett till is Rosa parks, a young activist and seamstress in Montgomery who is ready to help lead that fight. And it just so happens that Montgomery becomes the epicenter of the next big protest. And that emerges when people decide that they're not going to take the treatment on those buses that, you know, Rosa parks refuses to get up from her bus seat, and Montgomery decides it's time to boycott those buses and to send a message that we're not going to take it anymore.
- [45:38]
Alison Stewart
Let's give people a picture of Montgomery. At this moment, you quote a black newspaper from 1953, and this is the quote. Montgomery is fast taking the lead as Alabama's most enlightened city. What was it about Montgomery, Alabama, that would have a newspaper write that about it and made it a fertile place for the civil rights movement to take root?
- [46:05]
Jonathan Eig
Well, Alabama had been one of the great or most horrendous states in the country when it came to enslavement. At one point, you know, the vast majority of the state had been made up of enslaved people. So by the time the 1950s come around, there are some signs of progress. You know, one of the minor league baseball teams is integrated, and some cities in Alabama are experimenting with integration of the buses. And there's a sense that Montgomery is perhaps a little bit more progressive than place like Birmingham just down the road a bit, and that fuels hopes. I think the fact that there are some small signs of progress in Montgomery really help set the way, pave the way for the Montgomery bus boycott. Because when the community decides to organize, there's already a sense that the machinery is in place, that we know how to motivate people, that we've got the potential here. There are several strong black leaders and naacp and other activists who have been fighting for voting rights, who've been fighting to try to integrate the buses and the schools, and that they're ready to really make a big commitment to come together and to really see if they can get Everybody to refuse to ride those buses after Rosa Parks arrest.
- [47:23]
Alison Stewart
It's interesting to think, though, that at this moment of the bus boycott, MLK wasn't really a leader in the movement. You even write that in 1955 he was looking for other positions. He'd gone to interview for a role at Dillard. His first daughter had been born just a few weeks before. Rosa Parks wouldn't move from her seat on the bus. Then the bus boycott began. Initially, how did he get involved with the bus boycott at all?
- [47:55]
Jonathan Eig
This is one of those great moments in history when you think about what might have been. Because King was very close to accepting a job out of town. He was thinking about moving to New Orleans. And then this bus boy begins. And they're looking for somebody who will step up as the official spokesman. They're not even asking for someone to lead the movement. They're just looking for somebody to stand up and give the big speech on the first day to see if people are ready to do this thing. And they turn to King not because he's the most famous or the most, you know, the bravest or the smartest guy in town. It's because he's new and he hasn't made any enemies yet. And they figure that maybe there won't be too much division, that people from different churches and different parts of town might all be willing to listen to this guy. And most people in town don't even know who he is at that point. Most black people are coming together to hear him speak for the first time. And this is really the moment when King finds his voice, finds his real identity. But he's not even sure he wants the job. He has a panic attack, like a few minutes before he has to give this speech because he's just really not sure what he's doing or whether he's doing the right thing.
- [49:01]
Alison Stewart
This led to a moment that Martin Luther King has described as the moment that God called him to lead. How did he describe it?
- [49:12]
Jonathan Eig
He finds out that he's going to be speaking at Holt Street Baptist Church. And as I mentioned, he's got, you know, just minutes to prepare. And he has a panic attack. Now he's got even less time to prepare. He rushes to this church with just a few notes sketched about what he might say. And as he gets there, traffic blocks him. He has to get out half a mile from the church and start walking. And it's only then that he realizes that this traffic is because the church is. Is packed. There are thousands in the. In the seats in the aisles and the rafters and thousands more spilling out onto the streets. There are workers setting up loudspeakers so the people outside this, outside the church can hear too. And King has to wedge his way into the church and gets up there to make this speech and has never faced an audience like this before. And that's when he really finds his way, his voice, he says. He begins by saying we're here for serious business and we're here to find out whether the Constitution of the United States means something. We're here to find out if the words contained in the Bible are really true and that we have an opportunity to prove to America that America is capable of embracing true democracy, embracing true justice. And if we are wrong, the Constitution is wrong. If we are wrong, God Almighty is wrong. And the crowd just explodes. They have never heard anything like this. And that moment, King really becomes the leader and becomes not just the leader of this bus boycott in Montgomery, but becomes a voice for a generation.
- [50:47]
Alison Stewart
Our guest today is Jonathan Eig, author of King A Life. We'll be back to discuss the pivotal year 1955. It launched the 20 something new Pastor and father into a leadership role he did not seek. I'm Alison Stewart. This is an all of it special on wnyc. This is all of it from wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. On this Juneteenth, a day celebrating freedom, we are bringing you a special presentation about someone who continued the fight for civil rights a century after enslaved people were emancipated. We are discussing the first comprehensive biography of Martin Luther King Jr. In three decades. The book is called King A Life by Jonathan. I've. Armed with newly released FBI documents, discovered diaries, White House logs and audio recordings, I've written a 500 plus page book. As the title suggests, the book is more than a retelling of King's achievements like the Birmingham campaign, Selma or the march in Washington. The book leans more towards Martin the man. In these moments, we've arrived at 1955. That was the year the King family arrived in Montgomery, Alabama. MLK watched as Rosa Parks refused to move from a bus seat and local black leaders geared up for a boycott and an economic fight, one they drafted the new pastor into leading. Here's my conversation with Jonathan Eig, author of A Life. Martin Luther King Jr. Had a team of advisors. I've sort of called them the Black Justice League who would be with him throughout the civil rights fight. Let's start with Bayard Rustin. He had brilliant mind, wrote many of the speeches was gay. How would you describe Rustin's role in King's work?
- [53:03]
Jonathan Eig
When King starts to become famous in Montgomery, you know, the northern media discovers him and they love this story. Here's this story, this brilliant, well educated, telegenic, photogenic black Baptist preacher from the south who's sticking it to the white Southern segregationist who's as bright as any Harvard professor and they can't get enough of it. So immediately other activists around the country see the attention that King's getting and they're thinking, we've got to make use of this guy. He can't just confine his talents to Montgomery. We need him in New York and Los Angeles, we need him in Oklahoma City and Chicago. We need to spread whatever he's doing, we need to do it everywhere because he's, he's electrifying and he's forcing white and black Americans to think about what can be done differently. And nobody really to that point has had this gift for speaking to both black and white audiences the way that King does. So Bayard Rustin arrives in Montgomery in the early days of the boycott, saying to King, I'm here to help, I'm here to sort of like, you know, I'm going to, to, to show you the way. I'm going to help you establish this and replicate it all around the country. And, and he's fascinated to see that King is, is using a lot of the language of Gandhi and non violent protest, but he still has a gun in the house. So it's Bayard Rustin who says, we're gonna have to do a little talking about that. We're gonna have to, you know, talk about your message and, and how we're going to take this national. But it's not just Rustin. It's a lot of people who are recognizing that this is a huge opportunity that King is offering.
- [54:39]
Alison Stewart
I would love for people to hear Bayard Rustin's voice a little bit. This is actually from the march on Washington in 1963. Before we play this, I know we're jumping around the timeline a little bit. Would you share with people what his role was in the March of 1963?
- [54:55]
Jonathan Eig
I should preface this by saying that Bayard Rustin was a former communist, he was openly gay. It was very difficult for him to take any kind of a visible role. In fact, when he was working in Montgomery, he had to live and hide out pretty much in, in Birmingham, stay away from the, from the spotlight because he was a liability. And he and others are part of the Reason why the FBI began to really pay attention to King and surveil him because they were concerned about him hanging out with people like Rustin. But Rustin is a genius organizer. He has experience and he understands logistics. He understands how to motivate crowds. And it's Rustin, more than anyone else, who pulls off the march on Washington, who literally, you know, hires buses and considers traffic patterns and recruits churches and gets people from all over the country to. To get there on time and to. And to pull off this, you know, perhaps the greatest march in American history. Bayard Rustin is the. Is the engineer behind all of this.
- [55:55]
Alison Stewart
It. Let's take a listen, friends.
- [56:00]
D
At 5:00 today, the leaders whom you have heard will go to President Kennedy to carry the demands of this revolution. It is now time for you to act. I will read each demand and you will respond to it. So that when Mr. Wilkins and Dr. King and the other eight leaders go, they are carrying demands which you have given your approval to. The first demand is that we have effective services, civil rights legislation, no compromise, no filibuster, and that it include public accommodations, decent housing, integrated education, FAPC and the right to vote. What do you say?
- [57:07]
Alison Stewart
Another person who was really important in MLK's orbit was Ralph Abernathy. He recruited King to be the head of the Montgomery Improvement Association. How did he help keep MLK on track?
- [57:23]
Jonathan Eig
Well, Abernathy was a great activist, a great protest leader in his own right, great preacher in his own right. If King hadn't been in Montgomery, it might have been Ralph Abernathy who becomes the leader of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. And they were best friends. It's fascinating to think that their friendship began when Martin Luther King stole a girl away from Abernathy. And yet they remained great friends. And Abernathy understood King in a way that very few people did. Abernathy was the one who intentionally would get himself arrested whenever King got arrested so that he could share a cell, because he understood that King really suffered enormous psychological strain when he was imprisoned, as maybe anybody would. But King in particular, Abernathy thought, really struggled with the isolation. And Abernathy wanted to be there with him. Abernathy really just wanted King to know that no matter how great the stress was upon him, that no matter how many people were gunning for him, no matter how much politics he had to play, that there was one guy he could trust. And Abernathy was always that guy that King could trust.
- [58:28]
Alison Stewart
I'm glad you brought up the arrests. How many times, approximately, would MLK be arrested during his lifetime. And what were the charges?
- [58:40]
Jonathan Eig
Usually King was jailed more than, well, about 30 times in his career. And when you think about that, it's extraordinary. And it's a reminder of the way that we have used incarceration throughout history to try to intimidate black people in general. But black leaders and anybody who might protest the status quo, it's shocking that one of our great, great protest leaders, one of our great patriots, would be arrested and jailed 29 times. And these were not always just sort of like overnight in a, you know, in a. In an urban jail cell. You know, he was driven two hours through the middle of the night on dusty, winding roads with a German shepherd in the back of a paddy wagon to Reidsville, Georgia, not knowing where or when he might be dumped on the side of the road, and then kept out of communication in prison several times where he couldn't reach his wife, couldn't reach his. His advisors and people wondered whether he' out. This is the way we treated Martin Luther King Jr. And it was intentional, obviously. It was meant as a way of. Of. Of trying to break his spirit. And he was often jailed for. For. For leading a protest, for kneeling in front of City hall once for. For a couple times for. For traffic stops, you know, for. For really things that clearly he didn't need to be jailed for.
- [60:05]
Alison Stewart
How did that weigh on his psyche?
- [60:09]
Jonathan Eig
King's friends said that that was the hardest part for him, that he really struggled with the time that he was spent in isolation. That, you know, and Coretta talked about this a couple of times. She said, for white people in particular, it's difficult to understand the fear that comes with being thrown in jail for a black person, especially a black person in the south, that when they have you alone and nobody's looking, you don't know what they're going to do. And you certainly know that this is a way that you can be made to disappear forever. And that every time King was incarcerated in that way, he had to know that this might be the way that they take him out for good.
- [60:47]
Alison Stewart
My guest is Jonathan Eige. The name of the biography is King A Life. I did want to ask about Stanley Levison, a Jewish lawyer from New York City who was a trusted advisor and helped fund the cause Cause, but also would prove to be a pain point for mlk, because in his life, Levison had been associated with the Communist Party. What's an example of great advice Levison gave mlk? And what's a time when maybe he cost MLK Something or created a problem. Whether or not they both knew it.
- [61:22]
Jonathan Eig
Levison was a brilliant advisor. It was really Levison who helped King with a lot of his writing, helped him organize his thoughts, helped edit his books for him, helped ghost write some of those books. But Levison was also key to the success, the financial success of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which was the organization that King led. It was Levison who understood the power of direct mail and how they could tap into fundraising without King having to go and give a speech. Until Levison really hit on the concept of direct mail, the only way the CLC made any money was for King to go out and give lectures. And that was incredibly time consuming and burdensome. So Levison's creation of the direct mail campaign is a key part of the success of the sclc. But Levison was also just a really trusted friend and advisor. They would have late night conversations about philosophy, about the approach to politics and approach to. To organizing. Levison, because he had experience as an activist, really understood the way power worked. But that doesn't mean that he was always a great advisor. And you know, Levison is partially responsible for the FBI scrutiny of King because he had these former communist ties, and he did not fully cut those communist ties, even though he said he had cut them. And that continued to bring scrutiny down on King. It continued to bring the federal government's pressure down on King. And then even at times, I think sometimes King was too radical and too progressive for Levison. When King begins speaking out on things like materialism and militarism and when he opposes the Vietnam War, Levison and Bayard Rustin, for that matter, too, are telling them, they think it's a mistake. And they don't really understand that King is a minister, that he's a preacher first, an activist second, and that he has to be true to his religious beliefs. And that's hard for these more pragmatic activists to understand.
- [63:20]
Alison Stewart
There's a great passage in your book from. I think it's one of the first times Levison meets King in 1956. I'm going to read this. Levison was impressed. He later recalled, he didn't seem to be the type to be a mass leader. There was nothing flamboyant, nothing even charismatic about him. He looked like a typical scholarly kind of person. Very thoughtful, quiet, and shy. Very shy. The shyness was accented, I felt, with white people. And even in his relations with me in the early period, there was not always a relaxed attitude. There was a certain politeness, a certain arm's length approach that you could feel the absence of relaxation. It was as if Dr. King's Southern background, largely with the black community, had its effect on him as far as thinking comfortably and easily in the company of white people. How did MLK grow into his role as a leader? To Levison's point, he was shy and he wasn't flashy.
- [64:26]
Jonathan Eig
Yeah, you hit on something really interesting here. To, to me, King is our great protest leader, our great conflict manager, and yet he's averse to conflict. Fundamentally, he is shy. He doesn't like for people to argue. He's constantly trying to avoid conflict with his father, with other civil rights activists. He seems like he's scared to death of Roy Wilkins of the naacp. And even with. And as Levi points out in that quote, it's particularly true with, with older white men. He's. King does not like to challenge them. And, and he has to really learn how to do this in a way that he's comfortable with. It takes him a while. And, and you certainly hear it in the wiretap conversations that, with. With the White House, you know, because King is. Is heard on the phone with LBJ in later years, we can hear him a couple times in conversations with JFK as well. And King is very sort of. Of respectful. He's not confrontational. He's not challenging them. He's not saying, you know, I want. If you. If you want this, I get this in return. He's not, you know, he's not cutting bargains like a politician would. He still thinks of himself as a. As a humble servant of God who happens to be in these positions where he's negotiating with authority figures and, and he's. He's learning to do it as he goes along in his own way, while still really being true to who he is.
- [65:47]
Alison Stewart
My guest is Jonathan Eig. The name of the biography is King A Life. When do you think Martin Luther King Jr. Hit his stride? When was he operating on all cylinders?
- [66:00]
Jonathan Eig
Wow. Well, he was most comfortable and most confident in the pulpit. I think that he loved speaking, loved giving sermons, and he recognized that his great talent, his great power was in the ability to focus the nation's attention. So the problem with that is that he doesn't really know when and where it's going to happen. He just knows he has to be willing to throw himself into situations of great tension, and that comes with enormous risk because he threw himself into the protests in Albany, Georgia, and came away with nothing. Then he decides that he's going to do it again. In Birmingham, that Birmingham they're going to focus on. And this is really. I mean, some people would say Birmingham was his greatest triumph, but it's. It's almost, you know, an accidental triumph, because what he's basically saying is, we're gonna. We're gonna create a firestorm. We're going to go in there and we're gonna protest all forms of segregation in Birmingham. We're going to try to ignite the community and try to get a reaction from the white leaders of the town and see if we can use that to force the federal government to give us voting rights, to give us. Us a new. Give us legislation that will, you know, create a gen. Some genuine sense of fairness in this country. But he's doing it by the. Flying by the seat of his pants. And it fails for a while in Birmingham, you know, they. They really can't seem to capture the attention of the nation until Bull Connor brings out the fire hoses and the police dogs. And that's when King is at his best, though, when he's reacting to what's going on around him.
- [67:33]
Alison Stewart
Why did white Americans at this time react to him positively? Those who reacted positively?
- [67:44]
Jonathan Eig
Yeah, they reacted positively in the most. For the most part, when he was focused on the south, when he was creating this very clear drama, this very clear sense of right and wrong. By taking the moral upper hand, King was able to show that black people were willing to suffer, not to break with America, not to overthrow America, but to join the American democracy, to be treated as full members of this society. And that was a really compelling argument. And then you see that he's willing to go to jail, that he's willing. He and his fellow marchers are willing to endure arrest, fire, cannon, water cannons, police brutality, that they'll put up with all of this. Why? Because they love America so much. And that morality tale is really appealing, at least to the northern whites. It also allows them to not focus so much on the segregation in their own communities because, you know, Birmingham looks so much worse than whatever's going on in New York or Chicago. So it gives them a feeling of security. And helping Martin Luther King fight racism in the south gives them a sense of nobility, that they're fighting for a just cause.
- [68:50]
Alison Stewart
I think we all know and learned in school of the big protests, the protests in Selma, Birmingham, Montgomery. What do you think is an equally important but lesser known protest or march or action where Martin Luther King Jr. Was successful?
- [69:12]
Jonathan Eig
Well, we focus on these big ones, you're right. And we ignore the fact that King was, was often speaking out on northern racism. He just wasn't getting the same attention because the northern white media preferred to focus on the south, where the issues were clearer. But when he comes to places like Chicago and talks about the school segregation there, the housing segregation, the job discrimination, these are issues that are still with us today. And we often treat them as if they were failures for King because he left Chicago without the kind of clear cut victory that he got in Birmingham or in Montgomery. But I think Chicago ought to be considered a victory for King. I think, you know, that's 1966. King comes and he forces the city to confront housing segregation and school segregation. And he even, you know, gets the city to commit to making fundamental reforms, but because those reforms are not followed up, that the city really fails to follow through on them. We think of King as having failed. But I don't think King failed. I think Chicago failed.
- [70:15]
Alison Stewart
You write in the book that people said he didn't understand Chicago politics, that that was actually the weak point in that protest. Would you agree or no?
- [70:26]
Jonathan Eig
Well, I think he understood it, but he wasn't prepared to really do anything about it. And maybe there was nothing he could have done about it. You know, the people around him said that you don't understand that many, many people in black community in Chicago are beholden to the mayor for their jobs, that there are thousands upon thousands of civil service workers who are not going to join your protests. There are many, many preachers who rely on largesse from City hall who are not going to join your marches. And King certainly knew that. But he thought that he could nevertheless create enough of a force in Chicago, enough of a drama that people would force change anyway. So it's true that it was much more complicated. It's certainly true that whenever he went into the north, and this includes New York and Philadelphia and Los Angeles, which is, you know, we refer to it as part of the Northern movement because it's not the South. But anyway, things got complicated for him there and he ran up against not just, you know, forces that were more, that were beyond his control, but he also ran into some sort of watered down support from the white community because it's easier for white people to send their money when, when it's a campaign for voting rights in Mississippi. And when those, when you start talking about segregation in, in and white flight in the north, people are a little less supportive, I guess.
- [71:49]
Alison Stewart
After the break, we will discuss MLK's blind spots, his mental health issues, and the toll the constant arrests and harassment took on him. This is all of it from wnyc. This is all of it. I'm Alison Stewart with a special presentation. Our show today is a conversation with Jonathan Eig, the author of the biography King A Life. It's the first comprehensive biography of Martin Luther King Jr. In 30 years. It was never easy for MLK. His belief in nonviolence and the teachings of Gandhi did not resonate with some others in the movement, like Malcolm X, who found King to be too accommodating and passive, as did many younger leaders. The old guard felt he made himself too much of the focus. And then there was the huge toll on his mental health. He was arrested nearly 30 times. And as Andrew Young, who joined King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference, told ig, King was scarred by one particularly brutal incarceration. Being transported to Reidsville Prison, a 200 mile ride in the back of a wagon with a German shepherd snarling. And as MLK began to expand his mission beyond civil rights and included the opposition to the Vietnam War, there was friction with President Lyndon Johnson. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was there to stir the pot. Here's my conversation with Jonathan Eigen. We should note that, and it's very clear in your book, and it's really interesting that the civil rights movement wasn't a monolith. You had Malcolm X and younger black power activists thinking that MLK was too passive and deferential. On the other end of the spectrum, even the NAACP wasn't always on board with Martin Luther King, Jr. What issues did the NAACP have with King?
- [74:13]
Jonathan Eig
The NAACP was constantly struggling with how to deal with King. They saw him as a threat in a way to their power because King was drawing support. King was always thinking about the possibility of creating a membership for his organization, which would have undercut membership in the naacp. And the NAACP always felt like King was getting too much credit, that they were the ones changing the laws and that King was just sort of the loudest speaker, that he was getting the attention. But the NAACP deserved the credit. So there was this constant struggle. Even in Montgomery when the bus boycott was successful. Thurgood Marshall pointed out that it was really the court victory that sealed the desegregation of the buses. It wasn't the marchers who did it. So some of it was ego for sure.
- [75:05]
Alison Stewart
You note that MLK grew up with a lot of female attention. His mother, his sister, his grandmother. Yet he did adhere to the patriarchal nature of the civil rights movement. Ella Baker was a really big part of it. Often felt overlooked. Rosa Parks wound up Financially unstable. Even though Coretta wrote, women have been the backbone of the whole civil rights movement, it really wasn't apparent in his inner circle. Why was that? Why didn't he champion women's rights as fundamental as black people's rights?
- [75:41]
Jonathan Eig
Sadly, our great hero of equality and justice had a blind spot, and that blind spot was women. He grew up in a very patriarchal society. The church at the time, the Southern Baptist Church, was particularly patriarchal, and they saw women as being, you know, in a role that was. That their role was meant to stay home and raise the kids. And. And Dr. King was really was really hampered by that prejudice. And he was surrounded by brilliant women. He was married to a brilliant woman. They tried to sort of wake him up, shake him out of that attitude, but they failed for the most part. And, you know, Ella Baker complained about it all the time. She said it wasn't just King. It was. It was the fact that the civil rights movement was. Was led predominantly by black Southern Baptist preachers and that they all shared that kind of a bias. And Coretta Scott King talked about it often and even in her own memoir, said that she, you know, appealed directly to her husband and said, you know, I want to be doing more. I want to be out there protesting. And he said, your job is to stay home with the kids.
- [76:46]
Alison Stewart
My guest, Jonathan IG. The name of the biography is King A Life. The stronger and more powerful that Martin Luther King, Jr. Got, the more intense the scrutiny was and the more dangerous life became for him. What kind of physical confrontations did he have? When was his life in danger?
- [77:10]
Jonathan Eig
King's life was in danger all the time. You know, early days of the Montgomery bus boycott, his home was bombed. Windows were shot out by a shotgun. Soon after that, he was stabbed in the chest in Harlem by a woman who seemed to have no real motive except that she might have been mentally imbalanced. And he received constant death threats. And then he also became under attack by the FBI, which knew that it was creating conditions by. By questioning King's loyalty to America, by calling him a communist, by calling him untrustworthy, calling him a liar, that they were creating more animosity, that they were creating the kind of conditions that might stoke a madman or an angry man to come after King and then try to kill him.
- [78:01]
Alison Stewart
In your book, there's the suggestion that he suffered from depression, that he really. All of this and the power, but also the responsibility began to take a toll on him. What were the signs that he may have had depression or at least his mental Health. There was a toll being taken on his mental health.
- [78:26]
Jonathan Eig
There's no question that he was suffering emotionally. He attempted to commit suicide twice as a teenager. And Coretta, in many of her writings, refers to his feelings as was having depression, anxiety, that he needed sleeping pills to get any rest at times, that he drank at times when he was unable to sleep. And, you know, we forget that he was hospitalized numerous times and. And talked about it, said it was exhaustion. But he was also heard on the phone with his advisors. And we hear these. We know these conversations because the FBI was listening in. We can read the transcripts saying that he just needed time to stay in the hospital longer. He was asking his doctors if he could stay there longer to rest because he just wasn't. Wasn't emotionally prepared to get back into the game. It's. Even when he won the Nobel Prize, he was in the hospital when he got the news, and he invited reporters to come to the hospital to interview him about winning the Nobel Prize. And he told them quite openly that he was in the hospital because he was exhausted.
- [79:24]
Alison Stewart
Did he ever consider walking away? Could he walk away?
- [79:29]
Jonathan Eig
I don't think his faith in God and his morality would let him walk away. He talked about taking a break, and his advisors were sort of conspiring to see if they could get him some kind of a. An academic fellowship in Europe that might get him out of the. The cycle for a while because they worried about him. They really thought he was becoming depressed and losing confidence and that he was at risk of, you know, just of breaking down. But King felt like he couldn't step back, that it would be. It would be a failure of his morals that God called on him to do this work and that he couldn't stop.
- [80:07]
Alison Stewart
By the mid-1960s, MLK and Coretta have four children. Two boys, Martin Luther King III and Dexter, and two girls, Yolanda, Yoki and Bernice. How often was MLK able to engage in the ordinary duties of fathering?
- [80:25]
Jonathan Eig
He wasn't home much, and it was rare that he would spend more than three or four days in a row at home in those years. And you can look at his calendars and see that he's traveling constantly, giving hundreds of speeches a year. And when he does come home, there's still all these demands of the office in Atlanta. And he's juggling just an incredible workload. He's juggling several women in addition to Coretta. Sometimes when he comes home, he goes to Dorothy Cotton's house before he goes home to see his wife and Kids, because Dorothy Cotton was his longtime confidant and that she had kind of a therapeutic effect on him. I think she was in some ways like the most calming influence in his life. And all of that meant that family life was very difficult and very tenuous for him.
- [81:12]
Alison Stewart
Is confidant a euphemism?
- [81:15]
Jonathan Eig
Yeah, it was his mistress. Dorothy Cotton was his longtime mistress and she acknowledged that to some of her friends in later years. And people who knew King have acknowledged that. But it was a secret that she kept all of her life.
- [81:29]
Alison Stewart
There was a period when MLK seems conflicted about whether to intertwine the civil rights fight with the anti war movement. Before we get into that, let's talk about his philosophy of nonviolence. What was the origin of this philosophy for him?
- [81:47]
Jonathan Eig
As a college student, King studied Gandhi and other non violent philosophers and really, I think, felt drawn to it. But it wasn't until he becomes an activist, until he's leading the bus boycott, that he sees the effectiveness. And once he begins to use it as a strategy, it also becomes a deeper philosophy and a way of life. And it ties in, of course, course, with the teachings of Jesus and the teachings of the Bible, which say that we should turn the other cheek and that we should love all of our brothers regardless of their nationality and that all of us are God's children. So King embraces that and he says there's no way that he can, that he can endorse violence of any kind, and that includes war. So there's no way that he can. He can talk about stopping the rioting, the police brutality, and not call out the war in Vietnam. So it's all part of one much broader, deeper philosophy for him. And that of course, leads to complications in his relationship with President Johnson.
- [82:54]
Alison Stewart
Let's listen to Dr. King from a news conference held at the Belmont Plaza Hotel in Manhattan in February of 1968 addressing the war in Vietnam.
- [83:05]
D
We need to make clear in this political year to congressmen on both sides of the aisle and to the President of the United States, that we will no longer tolerate, we will no longer vote for men who continue to see the killing of Vietnamese and Americans as the best way of advancing the goals of freedom and self determination in Southeast Asia. It is imperative that church and synagogue leaders, clergy and laymen come to Washington lest persons in the federal government think that men of conscience can be cowed into silence by attack on dissenters or by blunderbuss indictments. It is time for all people of conscience to call upon America to return to her True home of brotherhood and peaceful pursuits. We cannot remain silent as our nation engages in one of history's most cruel and senseless wars.
- [84:16]
Alison Stewart
Did it matter to MLK that he would lose the ear of the President, the support of lbj? As he came out against the war?
- [84:27]
Jonathan Eig
King's advisors were warning him that this was a big mistake, that he was going to lose support in the North. The war was still fairly popular at this point, remember. And LBJ was deeply enmeshed in the war. It was an obsession. It was causing him nightmares. And King didn't care. He felt like he had to do this because it was the right thing. And you know, something interesting that King's friend Andrew Young said to me was that King genuinely felt like he was a minister to lbj, that he was going to help LBJ understand and his own feelings, his own challenges that he was. He was ministering to LBJ when he talked about the war. That's how King viewed it. And I find that really fascinating that he didn't see it as a confrontation at all. He wasn't worried about losing LBJ's friendship. He was worrying about saving LBJ's soul.
- [85:14]
Alison Stewart
How did Dr. King feel about JFK's, his soul before, obviously, he was assassinated.
- [85:23]
Jonathan Eig
King's relationship with JFK was complicated too. He was disappointed with jfk. He thought JFK had made a promise to the black community that he was going to stand up for civil rights after winning the election, in large part thanks to the. To black voters. And he was frustrated that JFK was being a politician and not a moral leader, that he was counting his votes and holding off on proposing civil rights legislation because he was worried that he might lose support in the south among white voters. And this really frustrated King. He struggled with understanding why politicians could be so obsessed with, with polls and, and public opinion when they really ought to be focused on doing the right thing. And again, this goes back to him not thinking like a politician, but thinking like a, like a preacher.
- [86:08]
Alison Stewart
There's a third person we have to mention in this equation. J. Edgar Hoover.
- [86:13]
Jonathan Eig
Yeah. How did we not get around to that sooner?
- [86:16]
Alison Stewart
Well, we've done an entire bio series on J. Edgar Hoover with Beverly Gage, so our audience is probably caught up. But. So Hoover was obsessed with King to the point where he named him a primary target for intel gathering. And he thought King was a hypocrite because of his dalliances with other women. He was convinced that communists were pulling one over on civil rights leaders and that black power and communism were going to Become entwined. When did Hoover's targeting of King change the trajectory of King's career or the civil rights movement? Whether or not King knew about it?
- [87:00]
Jonathan Eig
I think the moment, the key moment, is really clear. It's right after the March on Washington. King gives his greatest, most famous speech, I have a Dream. And he seems like he is offering America a new way, a path out of its racist history, a path forward into a true united community of brothers and sisters. You literally, you see on tv, black and white people holding hands and singing in harmony. And King is offering us a new image of America. And that becomes an enormous threat to J. Edgar Hoover and others, certainly others within the FBI, but also others in the American power structure who want to preserve the status quo. And right after the March on Washington, the FBI produces a memo saying that King must be perceived now as our greatest threat. Whose greatest threat? Well, the white power structure's greatest threat, because he's clearly not a threat to American democracy as we understand it today. But it's all about who's in charge. And J. Edgar Hoover has. Has built his whole career on making sure that those in charge stay in charge.
- [88:06]
Alison Stewart
After the break, we'll discuss the last months of MLK's life. This is all of it. You are listening to all of it from wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. We conclude this special presentation with the last year of King's life, 1968. He was attempting to bring economic justice into his message, but his aides were dubious. The Vietnam War was continuing and there was some fatigue from white supporters when it came to civil rights. Here's the last installment of my conversation with Jonathan Eig, author of King A Life. King announces that in the spring of 1968, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the SCLC, would lead what he hoped would be a movement called the Poor People's Campaign. It would be a march and a protest in Washington, D.C. where a shanty town would be built as an act of civil disobedience. He called it, quote, the last nonviolent approach to give the nation a chance to respond. What led up to this decision to take this route and let's just leave it there.
- [89:38]
Jonathan Eig
King had been saying for years that the problem was not just the south, that it went far beyond that and that America had to confront racism, economic inequality, militarism, materialism, all of these things. He wanted to shift the civil rights movement to a human rights movement. And he thought that there was a chance to really change the dialogue and really reshape the whole American economy. The whole view of how we focus, how we treat poverty and how we treat hunger. He thought there was a chance to make America new again. And this was really also in part a response to the fact that he was, he was losing popularity in those years. America had turned against him in many ways as, especially as he began to speak out more on, on issues in the North. And when he began to speak out more on the Vietnam War, a lot of people felt like he should have just stuck to the south where he, where he was most qualified, in their view, to do his work.
- [90:38]
D
Work.
- [90:38]
Jonathan Eig
And, and King, instead of retracting and retreating, he doubled down on his beliefs. He went back to his core philosophies that come from childhood, from the Bible, from, you know, his, his studies as a seminarian. He went as far and as. And as wide as he could in, in trying to shake up the world and, and really give us a chance. And that's, that's what he was hoping for with this poor people's campaign. But at the same time, it, it felt like a desperation move to many that, that he was just taking one last wild shot at something when he appeared to be failing in Frank, to.
- [91:17]
Alison Stewart
Be honest, Bayard Rustin, architect of the march in Washington, longtime advisor, declined to be involved with the poor people's campaign. What did he see as the problem? Was he correct?
- [91:33]
Jonathan Eig
Well, if you're cynical about it, you might say he was correct. Rustin said that the best thing that King could do is focus on the south and getting more people registered to vote, and that if you got more black people registered to vote, you could change the balance of power. You could get local mayors, you get black people elected as mayors, you can get black people elected to state houses throughout the south. And you would shift the balance of power in Congress too, and that suddenly it would be much easier to pass really meaningful nationwide legislation to help the poor, to help black people gain civil rights, to help protect voting rights. And, you know, if you're taking the cynical approach, you might. He might have been right. That might have been the most practical thing for King to do. But at the same time, King is not a politician. He's not just interested in a crusade for votes. He's interested in challenging America to be a more moral society. As he said over and over, he's a fundamentally. He's a Baptist preacher at his heart and at his core, and that's what he's doing. He's asking us to really look deep within our souls, the whole soul of the country. And he's trying to save us.
- [92:35]
Alison Stewart
I was struck by a number in the book and you please correct me if my analysis is off. Even though he faced all these troubles, declining popularity according to the press, he was still a go to person in times of struggle. He was asked to come to Memphis in March of 68 because there had been the sanitation strike and some unrest following the arrest of four black teenagers. And you note that people waited hours. Some 10,000 people showed up for him. So I'm wondering how much of his, this sort of narrative of his troubles is from the press at the time, if that many people showed up.
- [93:15]
Jonathan Eig
That's a great point. I mean, King is 39 years old. He's been at this for 12 and a half years. And he's still, despite his controversies, despite the emergence of other voices like Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael, he's still the most powerful black man in America with a, with an ability to really move people and churches, black communities, they, they, they, it's like, you know, it's like a saint is walking in the room. When he steps into the room, they, they believe in him. And, and that's why when this strike erupts and sanitation workers in Memphis need help and they feel like they can't get the city to respond to their demands, even after sanitation workers have been dying on the job from unsafe working conditions. Who do they call? They call King. He's the only one that they think can rescue this situation. And he's getting those kinds of calls from all over the country, all the time. So he's still an incredibly vital, incredibly powerful force in American society. And especially he's still deeply beloved by most of the black community.
- [94:16]
Alison Stewart
My guest Jonathan Ig were talking about the biography A Life. MLK returns to Memphis on April 3rd. And you note that the local newspapers named his hotel the Lorraine and even named the exact room. The FBI often planted stories and tipped off reporters about King with information where he was staying. Was there any sense that they did so about the Lorraine?
- [94:41]
Jonathan Eig
Well, there's no question that the FBI was still harassing King. And just months before this march, in this proposed march in Memphis, the FBI sends out a memo saying that King must be considered the most likely black messiah. That if anyone is going to unite the black community to attempt to force significant change in American society, it's King. And he must be treated as a dangerous rival. He must be treated as somebody who's poses a threat to the status quo. And we must do everything in our power to obstruct him so that Means embarrassing him. That means trying to create divisions within the civil rights movement. And yes, it means publicizing where he's staying and trying to embarrass him. Him for staying at a white hotel the last time he was in Memphis and making sure everybody knew that this time he was going to be at the Lorraine Motel. Did that mean that the FBI wanted someone to assassinate him? I wouldn't go that far. But they certainly knew that they were creating conditions that could. Could make that happen.
- [95:45]
Alison Stewart
Where was Martin Luther King, Jr. Going the night of April 4, 1968?
- [95:51]
Jonathan Eig
He had just the night before, given his. His famous mountaintop speech. And the next day, he was headed, getting dressed to go for dinner at the home of another preacher in Memphis. And he was on his balcony, getting dressed, talking to some of the men down in the parking lot, joking around with them, asking a band leader, a saxophone player, to. To play one of his favorite songs that night at the rally for the sanitation workers. Joking with what? With Ralph Abernathy about what they were going to have for dinner that night and talking to his driver about whether he needed a jacket because it was getting chilly. And he seemed to be in good spirits.
- [96:29]
Alison Stewart
He only lived an hour after being shot in the head on that balcony at the Lorraine. Almost his whole life, he had said he wasn't really afraid of dying, even though he'd been stabbed, he'd been punched in the face, in the head, thrown in jail, beaten. But not necessarily afraid of. Of dying. Why not?
- [96:52]
Jonathan Eig
I think he felt like he was not afraid of dying because he knew he had given his life, however long it may be, to the commands of God, to the words of Jesus, that he had lived his life in an effort to make other people better, to make the world better. And that longevity is not everything. It's the quality of the life you lead. And that he had done everything he could to. To lead a moral and a godly life.
- [97:20]
Alison Stewart
King is often credited with holding the country together when it seemed like it would split apart. Is that a fair assessment?
- [97:29]
Jonathan Eig
I think it is a fair assessment. I think he was a voice for reason. He was a voice that black and white people could come to respect and at least listen to. You know, he almost forced you to listen, even if you disagreed with him. And he listened to others, too. He listened to the white segregationists. He debated with them. He listened to Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael when they disagreed with him. And he encouraged us to be better, to think more like a community, to look for what we had in common with one another. And that's why when he died, I think that the communities exploded because there was this sense that we had killed off the best of us, that we had snuffed out the life that was trying to lead us to a better place. And that's why you see riots and exploding and rebellions all over the country.
- [98:11]
Alison Stewart
Jonathan, is there anything about the legend of Martin Luther King Jr. That you hope your book corrects or puts an end to or maybe even just illuminates?
- [98:26]
Jonathan Eig
Most of all, I hope that the book helps people see that King was human, that he was a real person and that he struggled, that he had doubts, that he had joy and pain, and he knew he wasn't perfect. And we don't need him to be perfect either. I think too often we. We want our heroes to be saintly. And one of the problems that we have with King in celebrating him is that we tend to sugarcoat his story and we focus only on the simple messages. As a result of that, we talk about I have a dream and content of our character. And we forget that he was really challenging us to be. To be better. He was. He was radical, and he was not afraid to force us to confront our flaws. I think that. I hope that the book will. Will introduce King to somebody, to people in a way that they make. Make them feel that they could get to know him as a real man.
- [99:20]
Alison Stewart
When is the next time that there'll be a tranche of information or material released about MLK and his life?
- [99:26]
Jonathan Eig
I believe another dump of documents is coming in December from the FBI. And then in 2027, we're expecting a big moment when the tapes of King's recordings, the FBI's recordings of King from his hotel rooms and from his phones will be released. That information has been sealed. Nobody has heard those tapes. And that will be an important revelation.
- [99:50]
Alison Stewart
How are you feeling about that?
- [99:52]
Jonathan Eig
I'm feeling fine about it, to be honest, because I think one of the greatest reactions to this book is that people have been willing to accept and embrace King's flaws. That in some ways, I think people find him more inspiring when they know he wasn't perfect. And we've been well prepared. We know that he was not a great husband. We know that he had affairs with women other than Coretta. But I think we can handle that and still draw inspiration from his life.
- [100:17]
Alison Stewart
The name of the book is King A Life. It is by Jonathan Eig. Jonathan, thank you for giving us so much time.
- [100:24]
Jonathan Eig
Thank you. I enjoyed it.
- [100:25]
Alison Stewart
Thanks again to Jonathan Eig for his time and work. Simon Close did post production for the show and Jason Isaac was our engineer. I'm Alison Stewart. Thanks for listening. This is an ad by Regain Couples Therapy. Let's be honest, loving your partner doesn't mean you always like them. And guess what? That's normal. Regain offers couples therapy that's flexible, affordable and 100% online. Whether you're reconnecting or working through conflict, Regain is here to support you both. See why people wish they'd try couples therapy sooner? Visit regain.com couplespod to get 10% off your first month. That's regain.com couplespod I'm Ira Flato, host of Science Friday. For over 30 years, our team has been reporting high quality news about science, technology and medicine. News you won't get anywhere else. And now that political news is 24 7, our audience is turning to us to know about the really important stuff in their lives. Cancer, climate change, genetic engineering, childhood diseases. Our sponsors know the value of science and health news. For more sponsorship information, visit sponsorship.wnyc.org.