American History Hit - Dr Martin Luther King Jr

Episode Date: January 16, 2023

Dr Martin Luther King Jr was one of the figureheads of the civil rights movement in America. On 28th August 1963, he made one of the greatest English language speeches of all time, I Have A Dream. A quarter of million people, who had gathered in the National Mall after the Great March on Washington, in support of African American civil and economic rights, heard his dream of racial equality. Tragically gunned down at only 39 years old, the fight for equality that he began, continues today. On today's episode, Charles Woods III tells Dan Snow about Martin Luther King Jr. Mixed by Thomas Ntinas, Dougal Patmore and Benjie Guy. Produced by Charlotte Long.For more History Hit content, subscribe to our newsletters here.If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts, and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Want to explore even more history? Sign up to History Hit, where you will discover history from around the world. From the American Revolution to prehistoric Scotland, there is plenty to discover. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries, with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe to bring the past alive. It's a sweltering hot day in Washington, D.C. on the 28th of August, 1963. The Great March on Washington, advocating for African-American civil and economic rights,

has culminated in the gathering of a quarter of a million people on the National Mall. They have come to hear civil rights activists make speeches on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, among them a Baptist minister from Atlanta, Georgia. Martin Luther King Jr. had risen to national prominence, overseeing the bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955, instigated after Rosa Parks, an African-American woman was arrested for not giving up her seat on a segregated bus to a white person. King prepares to speak, that he is standing on the steps of a monument to Abraham Lincoln,

100 years after the 16th President of the United States signed the Emancipation Proclamation, is not lost on the man. King has a proclamation of his own, that black people in America are still, not free. The crowd cheers and applauds as he tells them about his dream of racial equality. Kings I Have a Dream speech, delivered by one of America's great orators, if not the greatest, is the standout moment of the March on Washington. To many there, a historic and life-changing experience. King and the March on Washington are credited with propelling the U.S. government into action on civil rights, creating political momentum for the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the

Voting Rights Act of 1965. But the struggle for true equality was far from over, and indeed continues on to this day. Hello everyone. I'm Don Wildman. Welcome to American History Hip. This episode is dropping on the third Monday of January, which can only mean one thing. Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a day to celebrate the life of one of our greatest Americans, a towering figurehead of the civil rights movement in America. Minister, orator, activist, tragically gunned down in his prime at the age of only 39 with so much more to give. But what a legacy he left. While progress has been made,

the peaceful protest against inequality that he advocated is still practiced to this day. Today on American History Hit, we have an interview from our sister podcast, Dan Snow's history hit, and we're sharing Dan's interview with historian Charles Woods III, all about Martin Luther King Jr.

Enjoy, and happy MLK Day. Okay, Charles, thanks so much for coming on the pod. When Martin Luther King electrified the world with that speech on the mail, how established was he within the civil rights movement at the time? Was he already a kind of dominant figure? Well, he was a known figure, and I'll say that the Southern Christian Leadership Conference have been founded a few years prior. But King really hadn't had a successful civil rights campaign since the Montgomery bus boycott.

That was in 1955 and 1956. The SCLC, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, was in Albany, Georgia for about a year. and didn't receive any successful civil rights gains. And so King was known in the civil rights community because of the success of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which changed so many things with its Supreme Court legislation. But people really weren't behind King around the time that he gave his speech. Tell me about his background as a Baptist minister.

What is it to those of us who haven't attended those services and aren't steeped in that language, that delivery? Was he typical? Are all Baptist ministers that eloquent? Or did he stand out as an orator? Oh, King stood out as an orator on every regard. He also stood out as a scholar, okay? And so a lot of times King doesn't get the credit that he deserves as being one of America's greatest scholars. We graduated high school at 15 years old, went straight into college at Morehouse University. Morehouse College, which is in Atlanta, is an HBCU, historic black college university, where he went on to get his undergrad. Then he went straight into graduate school. He was a young doctorate. He got a doctorate in theology very early on. And so everyone knows him for his speaking, but he was a great mind as well. And so people tend to kind of keep King in his civil rights box, but he was a dynamic mind and should be respected for it. In terms of pioneering the methods of resistance, did that come from King?

Well, you know, like I said, he was a very learned man. He studied extensively. And so, you know, we always hear about him getting. his philosophy from Gandhi, right? That nonviolent resistance. But that foundation got molded even more by a man by the name of Bayard Rustin. Bayard Rustin was one of the organizers for the March on Washington where King spoke

the I have a dream speech. And Bayard Rustin was a pacifist. You know, we have these stories about King that a lot of people don't know, but one of those stories was that King had several guns in his household. Let me say it like that. I want to say he had an arsenal, but he had several weapons, guns, and his household

because during this movement, the civil rights movement, you were attacked from all sides. Sometimes those attacks were Molotov cocktails. Sometimes there were shotgun blasts through your window. Sometimes they were pistol shots. Whatever the case, you always had that plan

B to protect yourself, right? And King was along with that plan B. As a lot of the other leaders, but Bayard Rustin, who was a pacifist, helped King modify that nonviolent resist and he told him that being something that you put on when you go out to march. This has to be something that you apply to your life. You make it part of your livelihood. And so at that point, King

took all of the weapons and things out of his house because he really began to truly adopt that non-violence philosophy. So you said that's interesting. They were subject to violence. Is that when he became a campaigning activist? Because he talks about the humiliations of his childhood living in segregated Atlanta. Would he have experienced, obviously segregation, but personally did this family experience violence against their home or in their community? Yes, so just growing up in the segregated South during that time period was enough for African Americans during this time period to have experienced violence, to seem violence happening to other people. That ideal of black people staying in their place.

And so when blacks were not in their place, a lot of times violence was taken upon them. Now, there are stories about King's mother being stabbed, other things that happen at Ebenezer Baptist, church where his father preached. But under my own recollection, I can't think of anything where he outspokenly talked about violence that they may have suffered or somebody in their household. But that would have been endemic in Georgia at the time for that community. Yes, any other the major cities in the South or any other southern states, that was something that ended up becoming part of everyday African-American life. If not you experiencing it yourself, you've seen someone else experiencing while you're out,

you know, living your day-to-day life. And apart from the, I mean, violence, there was institutional discrimination. I mean, he was a famous incident. He made him very angry as an adolescent. He was forced to move to the back of the bus or to make way for white people to sit down at the front. Yeah, so during this time period,

and we talk about this a lot at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, the bus life for an African-American during this period in the state of Alabama was just a real lesson in second-class citizens. show. If you were African-American, you had to get on to the front of the bus, pay your fare, exit off the bus, and then enter in through a rear entrance. And they really gave the power to the bus driver. So the bus driver also had a sign that said white on one side, colored on the other side, that he can move at his discretion. And so a lot of times if that bus driver chose to put

that sign at the furthest place where it can go, it meant that he just wasn't picking up black people that day. And so, you know, we hear about Rosa Parks. We hear about this incident with King, local leader here, Reverend Fred Shottosworth, they all have stories and instances of confrontations with bus drivers in their respective cities. And to me, that was a daily reminder of your second-class citizenship, just trying to get to work or the school in the morning. You had to deal with these segregation ordinances. And then also you had to deal with the, you know, however those bus drivers decided to treat you that day as well. So you mentioned Rosa Parks there. The Montgomery bus boycott, I guess, just before Christmas in 1955.

start with Rosa Parks refusing to move from her seat on the bus, and was King involved with Rosa Parks at stage, or did he join soon afterwards? It's funny that she asked that. So here at the Institute, we talk about other women who refuse to give up their seats on Montgomery buses prior to Rosa Parks. And so you have women like Aurelia Browder, Claudette Colvin, whose name has come out more recently. She just wrote a book. But those were individuals who did not give up their seats on Montgomery City buses, but we don't know their names because they didn't build the movement around them. And so Rosa Parks was chosen strategically to do what she did. And it was because she was already a member of the NAACP and she was a field secretary for them. Her job was to log

sexual assault accounts of black women to white men because those black women could not go to the authorities with those accounts. They know that nothing would happen. And so Rosa Parks, being good at her job with the NWACP, they literally ran a grocery store owner out of town by boycotting his business because he had sexually assaulted one of his employees. And so the reason why Rosa Parks, and we know who Rosa Parks is today, is because she was chosen to do what she did. Now, I say chosen because it was a strategic move. The NWACP knew that they were going to attack these segregated bus ordinances. The question was how, or with who, right? And so Claudette Colvin, who was a young lady who refused to give up her

seat prior to Rosa Parks, the rumor was that she was a 15-year-old pregnant woman. She was a young mother, but at the time of her arrest, she was not pregnant, but she was 15 years old. She did cuss out the police officer that arrested her. You know, maybe she was a little too fiery because of that. We had one woman that was very elderly. They didn't think that she would live through the trial that may have ultimately went to the Supreme Court. One of the young women, they said, was maybe too dark skin.

But what you need to know is that the NWACP was thinking about these things, and Rosa Park ended up fitting the bill. Before Rosa Parks even made bail, they had. the flyers and things ready to start the Montgomery bus boycott because it was her and the community just loved her. One of the other things that I mentioned about that is that the Montgomery Improvement Association, which was the organization that was newly formed where they put King at the presidency of that organization. Now, King is a new preacher at this time at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. He's new to Montgomery. He's taking over the pastorship of this particular church. And it's a known church. It's right downtown.

is not too far from the Capitol building. And they chose him to be the leader of the Montgomery Improvement Association because he was not from Montgomery. He was literally a foreigner. And they knew that if all of this kind of blew up in their faces and they were never successful, King could go back to Atlanta and go back and co-pastro at his father's church and not really lose a step in his own life and his own livelihood.

And so he was strategically chosen for that. What they realized later was that they chose a very dynamic speaker. They chose a very smart young man. Those things kind of, you know, showed their head a little later. And so how did the bus boycott work? And what did it achieve? So the bus boycott, so they were able to keep that bus boycott up for over 382 days. So over a year, they carpooled, they walked, they did whatever they could to get to their jobs and to school.

And ultimately, almost putting the bus company out of business, the fact that these people wanted to change the segregated bus ordinances end up going all the way to the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court ruled that segregated bus seating on public buses was unconstitutional and needed to change. And so because of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which is really considered to be the thrust into the modern civil rights movement, I have to say modern civil rights movement because black people have been resisting, you know, all of the things that have been happening with them in this country since the beginning. And so we talk about sitting movements, we talk about boycotts, but those type of things have been going on for years and years before the Montgomery Bus Boycott. But the fact of the matter is that Montgomery Bus Boycott was the thrust into the modern-day civil rights movement sprung by the death of Emmett Till that happened in Money, Mississippi in 1955.

It was the death of that young man who gave motivation to start the Civil Rights Movement in Montgomery, Alabama, and other places. similar to what you kind of saw with in 2020 with the depth of George Floyd. I compared George Floyd and Emmett Till a lot because they were both basically martyrs that started movements that ultimately are going to have sustainable change. I'm talking to you in Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama. Mark Luther King came to Birmingham, 63, just before the march on Washington that we're building up to. Was Birmingham one of the toughest nuts to crack for this movement?

It exactly was. It was the most oppressive, racist, segregated city in the United States at that time. You had a city leader in the city of Birmingham by the name of Theopolis, Bull Connor, who was a very powerful antagonist. And he really took the fight to the black community here in Birmingham, even though the black community a lot of times was not fighting back. It was Bull Connor, who was a very powerful antagonist. And he really took the fight to the black community here in Birmingham. even though the black community a lot of times was not fighting back. It was Bull Connor who ultimately gave the movement its biggest thrust without him probably even knowing it. But Bull Connor started off his career as an announcer here at Rick Woodfield. Rick Woodfield being one of the oldest professional baseball field in the country. And he would call the Birmingham Black Baron games. And as he would call those games, you know,

he would say things like if they hit a home run, and it went into the black section. He would say, oh, you know, he hit that into the cold, the cold area. You know, like he would make these races and just oppressive statements in his calling the games that he became real popular, and that caused him to run for office. And he ultimately won as a public safety commissioner, which is the person that's in control of the fire department and the police. And so Martin Luther King Jr. and the SCLC had a campaign in Albany, Georgia, and this was still in the 50s. that was not successful.

And so Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, who was the leader here in the city of Birmingham when it comes to the civil rights movement and also co-founder of the SCLC, he's the one who called King and told King that you need to come to Birmingham. Like, it's time for us to crack the hardest egg, I guess you can say. And what Shuttlesworth understood is that wherever King went, the media came as well, right? And so if you wanted to show the world how bad it is in the South or African, Americans, Birmingham was the place to do it because everywhere aspect of life in Birmingham was segregated.

And so King accepted to come to Birmingham to do what's known as Project C, C standing for confrontation. And the SCLC joined forces with the Alabama Christian movement for human rights, which is Reverend Fred Shutterworth's group, as well as other preachers and leaders in the city of Birmingham. And then they went on to start Project C. And that's what brought King to Birmingham in 63. And so the idea of that confrontation is that you openly violate the kind of the most unjust, the most egregious laws. Yeah, so, you know, while King was here in Birmingham, he wrote his famous letter from a Birmingham jail. In that letter, he does talk about how, if you know a law is unjust, then you have to openly defy that law in the public, and you have to purposely break the law. And so a lot of times this is what was a part of the civil disobedience of the civil rights movement.

Breaking laws that you know are unjust, doing things like sit-ins where you basically sit-in at that lunch counter that you know is not going to serve you because you're black. And you're breaking the law to highlight that the law is unjust. And King talks extensively about why that is important. And the importance is really that if the law is unjust and you know they're going to break it anyway, you have to do it in a way that brings light to the fact that that law is unjust. It's such an extraordinary piece of writing. He talks about the Boston Tea Party. he talks about things, Adolf Hitler and resistance him, like things that whites, I guess, who's his audience, though? Is it international? Is it white kind of liberals or centrists in the northern states? Like, who's he trying to talk to there? Well, you know, honestly, the events that took place here in Birmingham, once King was brought to the city and, you know, King was swiftly incarcerated here.

And then this is when he wrote his letter from a Birmingham jail. And as he's incarcerated, they started to organize the children here in the city of Birmingham. to pick up where the adults weren't willing to start. And so in that letter from a Birmingham jail, especially, it was a response from eight clergymen who wrote an opt-ed into Birmingham news that basically said what King was doing in the city of Birmingham was untimely, that Birmingham was already kind of changing, and that, you know, King should wait and kind of come back and see the progress that Birmingham's going to make. And so in response to those eight clergymen, two of them being rabbis,

King responded in a way to tell them why a wait for African-American is usually a never, and he eloquently tells them why it's important that the events that are happening in Birmingham continue to happen. But also in the letter from Birmingham, so you got to think that. So you got these eight white clergymen that he's responding to in the letter, right? So that's his audience in one sense. In another sense, though, he talks about this kind of moderate liberal. He talks about individuals who really don't have to get involved.

that they can live their lives, they can go on and do everything that they wanted to achieve with their life and their goals and never have to get involved in the civil rights movement. He talks about those people that are kind of on the fence, right, or kind of what we call straggling the fence, trying to figure things out because he said in there, he said he's not worried about the, you know, white supremacists. He's not worried about the stup racist that's going to be in his face. You know, he knows where they lie. He knows how they think. He knows what they feel. But that he's always kind of being diplomatic with these moderate kind of white liberals who really are not getting involved and are kind of, you know, just being a little wishy-washy because he doesn't know where they lie. And that they're able to kind of go either way that they want to go when they feel like it instead of standing up and making a choice and a decision and then fighting for that cause. And so that's really his audience. His audience are really those individuals who could be white allies who really just have not gotten them.

They know the things that they're seeing is wrong, and they see that change is necessary, and things have to change in this country. But they're really not doing anything about it, you know. And so that's really one of his main audience, especially in the letter from Birmingham jail, is to get those people kind of, you know, off their butts and get them involved in what's going on. They already feel strongly about it. They're just not doing anything.

American History Hit will be back with more after this short break. Well, they decide to do something a few months after writing that letter from his prisoner. So he's bailed out, I think, by Trade Unionists, right? But so a few months later, he takes part in the March on Washington, the March for Jobs and Freedom. We often forget the full title. But what was the idea behind this big March, the nation's capital? Every march, you know, they have a goal or outline that they're trying to achieve.

And it was several, so I'm not going to run them off. But it was basically a March from Washington for jobs and freedom. And it was a march that was really trying to. trying to put pressure on the Kennedy administration to sign the Civil Rights Act. That was one of the main goals of the marks to put pressure on our legislative body and the president to make real change in this country when it came to policy and laws that were created to affect African Americans disproportionately on certain issues. So like, for example, housing. The March on Washington called for a housing type of committee or something to be created. to investigate racist practices in housing

and how blacks aren't getting equal amount of loans and things of that nature. And so when it talks about freedom and jobs, the jobs aspect, it was asking for or looking for an economic response to a lot of the things that blacks were going through at that time. And so they felt that if African Americans were properly educated, if they were properly employed, right,

with a living wage, that a lot of the issues that the black community were dealing with could be alleviated. And so March on Washington called for that and many more things, and King ended up becoming basically the keynote speaker for that event. Let's talk about that famous speech. It was one of many speeches that day. Why do you think that's the one that stood out? It was a glittering cast.

Like, why him and why that moment? By this point, you know, everyone's pretty familiar with King's oratory skills. You know, we know that he's an excellent speaker. And so, and like you said, several people spoke that day. You know, John Lewis recently passed away, who is also a beloved civil rights leader here in the United States of America. He had one of the most controversial speeches that day. His original speech was really critical of the Kennedy administration, and so they asked

them to change some things before he got up there and spoke. Now, the thing that's really interesting about the King speech that day that I have a dream speech is that's not the speech that he was set to give that day. He had a totally different speech already written and writing that he was going to give that day. But right before he got up to speak, his favorite gospel singer, Mahalia Jackson, sang his favorite gospel song right before he got up to speak. And as she was going to sit down and he was coming up to the podium, Mahalia Jackson told Martha the King Jr. to tell them about your dream.

And she said, tell them about your dream. And she said that because she had heard King give that I have a dream speech several weeks prior, here in Birmingham, Alabama, at the famous historic 16th Street Baptist Church for some other event that was going on. And so she heard the I Have a Dream speech and she enjoyed it and she told King to tell him about your dream. And so Martin Luther King Jr., if you watched the footage of that speech, in the beginning, he freestyles a few things, right?

Kind of just talking about freedom and some other things. And then he just rose right into the I Have a Dream speech off the top of his head, right? no paper in front of him he was not reading he is reciting what he had internally and it turned out to be probably the biggest greatest thing that King ever did right

he basically highlighted what his ideal of a pluralistic a integrated a everybody represented type of society what it looks like in his mind's eye you know we always think about that famous line

about his children being judged by the content of their character but not the color of their skin. I know I said that backwards, but this idea of what the society could ultimately look like is what King put in everyone's imagination with that speech. And because he's such a great speaker and such a great orator, and like I said, he's a scholar in his own right, that speech is amazing because of how he basically pulls in the whole country, right? So he talks about the hills of Georgia, and he talks about these other places, right? He's bringing in the whole country into this center where everybody can be here together,

where everybody is represented, where everybody is happy and understands the true creeds and the true rhetoric and philosophy that this country is founded upon when everybody can realize what those words were that our fault follows put down for all of us to be not only created, equal, but for all of us to be able to realize the freedoms that we have and that we hope to be able to achieve in our individual lives. And King was very serious about putting that in the forefront. The civil rights movement was less about colored drinking fountains and colored bathrooms and, you know, if I'm walking down the street and the white man's coming towards me and

I have to step off the curb. Like, it was way more than just changing those aspects of what it is. of what it was. The civil rights movement was much more about being able to recognize this demographic of the population, being able to recognize their full citizenship as a citizen

of this nation, right? Being able to realize all of the rights that you have and be able to exercise all of those rights. We got everything we needed with the 13, 14th, the 15th Amendment, right, during Reconstruction. Black people voted in mass

during Reconstruction. But the powers came and squashed that. So we had everything we needed. It was just that somebody messed up our 14th Amendment, which is due process of law, and took that due process away. So you could take my vote away, but

you're not giving me the due process to say why you're taking that away. And so they skipped over the 14th Amendment to disenfranchise African Americans and put them in those boxes that oppressive, segregated box. And so King really just wanted people, everyone in this nation to be able to exercise their full

rights and citizens of this country. The activism of King and the whole movement, it won. There was significant civil rights legislation. Was the march important? Was King's rhetoric important? Did it move the needle? Did it convince politicians? Did it bring white America into a better understanding of what this was about?

I believe it did. I believe it did. I believe that King and the civil rights movement as a whole really allowed America to take a look at itself. Now, the problem with the civil rights movement, and I don't want to limit any that King was able to achieve. But King understood that legislation doesn't change

the minds and ideas of the people, right? And so because the legislation can kind of force the needle, it still doesn't change how people think about what's going on. And King understood that. And so ultimately it became important

to not only get the legislation passed, but it also became important to build groups, to build coalition, to build things where the different demographics of the nation are coming together, right, to see something happen or to make a change or to make a decision about something. Some of that is the idea that King started to think about as he moved forward. And then, you know, prior, and I know we're really talking about the March on Washington,

but prior to King's death, it's really illustrated how his philosophy began to shift a little bit, right? It became the shift a little bit because now it was less about. legislation and more about action. So he really became a staunch proponent of the poor people's campaign. So now instead of just talking about civil equality, now we're talking about economic equality. Okay?

And then the other thing is that he started to become, and this had a little bit to do with Bayard Rustin, that guy I told you about before, that was one of the main organizers of the march on Washington, who was also a pacifist. Now King also started to speak out against the Vietnam War. Those were shifts in how you bring things across, right? It was a shift in the subject matter that's important for the day.

And so for me, King really started to step out of his own box. Once he felt like some of these gains were made, now it was time to move on to the next thing. And that next thing were helping to change the ideas and the minds of the people, right? starting to deal with some things that you can see some real examples of equality, like getting blacks and white men to be on equal with the dollar that they make at a job, right? Those things are ultimately what King was thinking about or was about upon his death. The 1964 Civil Rights Act in particular has been called on the single grace bits of legislation in U.S. history,

and it was followed by others. But, yeah, as you say, he went on to further. battles, and that's what led to his death in 68. He was campaigning. I guess tell me how many times did he escape death before the fateful day in spring, 1968? Oh, man. I mean, that's a tough question, and I could give you numbers. King was arrested over 30 times. I would say that every time King ever was incarcerated or arrested, it was a potential that he could have lost his life. So that's just one instance. If you go to his parts in his house in Montgomery, where he's, he lived as he was pastoring Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.

There's a literally a hole in the brick of his porch where someone threw a Molotov cocktail at his house and it blew the blast went off right there, but it didn't affect the rest of the house anywhere. You could count that one that he, you know, was able to allude death. Maybe his most famous one was when the young lady stabbed him in the chest. I believe it was in New York as he was signing autographs or maybe it was like a book signing or something of that. And she came up to him and said,

hey, are you Martin Luther King Jr.? He said, yes, ma'am. This is a black woman, by the way. And she took out like a letter opener and stabbed him in the chest. And they told him, the doctors told King that if he had sneezed, he would have lost his life.

And that's actually the beginning of his from the mountaintop speech, right? Oh, the great speech, yeah. One of the, oh, man, that one is powerful. I mean, really, really powerful. But, you know, he said if I would have sneezed, he could have easily lost his life. So I'm not really sure the full answer to that question.

You know, how many times was he able to elude death? And then, unfortunately, March 29, 1968, finally, his luck runs out and he's assassinated. What did that do to the movement that he was one of the leaders of? Oh, man. I mean, I think it's safe to say that it almost eliminated it completely. Now, there are plenty of leaders that are continuing to do great work, who continue to do great work after King's death. Names come to mind like Joseph Lowry,

the other leaders of the Poor People's Campaign, Jesse Jackson and others, they went on to continue the work. But for the masses of people that were behind the movement and behind King, it totally stapled the movement. Once King was assassinated, you saw several major cities erupt in rioting,

civil unrest, because people were hurt, right? You killed the biggest proponent of nonviolent civil disobedience and you kill them in a very violent way and people did not know how to deal with that and young people went to the streets

older people cried and prayed and tried to do what they could to help the young people process what happened but for me it almost completely flipped the movement right

because you got to think right around at the same time 1966, you had the Black Panther Party who's coming on the scene. When King is killed, that organization is just really getting to start really getting his ground, you know, getting his footing. With him being assassinated, I think it gave even more fervor and even more legitimacy to what the Black Panther Party was preaching and trying to get the black community to understand, right? And so in one way, it did stifle the civil rights movement as a whole.

His death gave way to other modes of thinking and other modes of ways that you could stop the oppressive nature that black people were experiencing in this country. But ultimately, it was an eye-opener. It was a very blatant, open reminder of what black life was. still was at that point for black people in the United States. Thank you very much, Charles Woods. How can people find out more about your organization, both there in the U.S. and around the world? You can go to our website, www.bcri.org.

My organization is the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, B-C-R-I.org. Please just stay, you know, connected to us. We have several things going on. And we also have a virtual program platform that people can tune in and see the great discussions and talks that we're having about multiple subjects, all the way from critical race theory to disproportionate gaps that exist in the United States, the wealth gap, education gap, mass incarceration gap. We'll be discussing all of those issues to really help not only our United States viewers, but also our international viewers, have these difficult discussions and conversations. and conversations so that we ultimately may be able to have progress in this world. I've been to organization several times,

and it's opposite the 16th Street Baptist Church is on that famous square. It's where history was made, and there's plenty in the building as well. Hello to ground. Thanks for coming and making it on the podcast as well, man. Thank you very much indeed. Thank you. No problem. Thanks for listening to this episode of American History Hit. I hope you enjoyed it.

Please don't forget to like, review, and subscribe wherever you get your podcast. I'll see you next time. This podcast includes music from Epidemic Sound.