Short History Of... - Martin Luther King Jr

Episode Date: May 26, 2024

A pivotal figure in the American civil rights movement, Martin Luther King Jr played a crucial role in challenging racial discrimination in the United States. Believed to have been one of America’s greatest ever orators, his speeches inspired millions, and galvanised support for racial equality. But despite his successes, his message of egalitarianism and advocacy of nonviolent protest was met by many with opposition and rage. So what set King on the path that would change the lives of millions? Why did the FBI begin its campaign of surveillance against him? And what is his legacy today? This is a Short History Of Martin Luther King Jr.  A Noiser production, written by Nicola Rayner. With thanks to Lerone A Martin, Director of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute, Stanford University. Get every episode of Short History Of a week early with Noiser+. You’ll also get ad-free listening, bonus material, and early access to shows across the Noiser network. Click the Noiser+ banner to get started. Or, if you’re on Spotify or Android, go to noiser.com/subscriptions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. It is April the 17th, 1944, and a high school student is standing at the pulpit of the First African Baptist Church in Dublin, Georgia. A modest red brick building, it is packed for today's high school oratorical contest.

Though he's not physically imposing, he carries himself with a confidence beyond his 15 years. He grew up singing as a soloist in his mother's choir, and he's been watching his father, a pastor, speak to the congregation for as long as he can remember. Performance is in his blood. As he speaks, his audience hang onto his every word. It's clear the content is deeply important to him. Titled The Negro and the Constitution, his speech argues that the promises of freedom and equality enshrined in the U.S. Constitution are not being fulfilled for African Americans.

Black Americans today, he says, are still bound by shackles. Americans today, he says, are still bound by shackles. Looking out at the packed pews, he catches the eye of his teacher, Sarah Grace Bradley, who gives him an encouraging nod. The teenager concludes his speech on an optimistic note, sharing his dream of a world where black people can stand shoulder to shoulder with white. A better, fairer world. At the uplifting conclusion, his audience leaps to their feet in uproarious applause. Even so, he doesn't win the speaking contest.

But he's still buzzing from the experience as he heads home with Miss Bradley and another student from his high school. The three of them step out of the crowded church to make their way to the nearest bus stop to start the long trek back to Atlanta. They pass through the quiet African-American neighborhood where the church is the center of the community. Here the low-rise homes are far more modest than the grand historic houses occupied by white families a stone's throw away. With a journey of some 140 miles ahead of them they're pleased to

see the bus when it finally arrives. It's not too full, so they start off sitting together, chatting happily about the day. When the bus stops about 80 miles from Atlanta, more people embark. A cluster of white passengers approaches the group to claim their seats from them. It's the usual way of things in America's racially segregated South. The two students exchange a look with Miss Bradley, who stands swiftly. But the pastor's son is reluctant to give up his seat. His hesitancy angers the driver, who curses loudly and orders them to move more quickly. After the high of the contest, it's a humiliating comedown.

The boy, whose name is Martin Luther King Jr., stands for the rest of the journey, shaking with rage. He's experienced racism many times before, of course, but something about this incident makes him determined to change things. Those in attendance at the church that day had no idea that they were witnessing the first public speech of a boy who would arguably become America's greatest ever orator. A pivotal figure in the American civil rights movement, King's leadership played a crucial role in challenging racial segregation and discrimination in the United States. His speeches inspired millions and galvanized support for racial equality and justice, and his work led to significant victories, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting

Rights Act of 1965. Even so, his message of egalitarianism and advocacy of non-violent protest was met by many with opposition and rage. But what set him upon the path that would change the lives of millions? Why did the FBI begin its covert campaign of surveillance against him? And what, in a world still riddled with racial bias, is his legacy today. I'm John Hopkins. From the Noiser Network, this is a short history of Martin Luther King Jr.

On January 15, 1929, in a house on Auburn Avenue, Atlanta, a baby boy is born to the preacher Michael King and his wife, Alberta. But though the world will one day know him by a different name, the infant is initially called Michael, after his father. He's known to his loved ones as Little Mike, the middle child between older sister Christine and younger brother Alfred Daniel, known as A.D. The neighborhood of Sweet Auburn is a place where black businesses flourish, and the inhabitants feel relatively safe. Atlanta, like much of the American South, is segregated under Jim Crow laws, a collection

of state and local statutes that legalize racial segregation in schools, public facilities, transport, and housing. African Americans throughout the city and the South in general face systemic discrimination and pervasive social inequalities. In 1931, Michael King Sr. takes over from his father-in-law as pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Sweet Auburn.

Little Mike grows up listening to his father's resounding sermons. During a trip to Germany in 1934, King Sr. learns more about the Protestant Reformation leader Martin Luther. Inspired by his teachings on equality and justice, he changes his own name, and that of his oldest son, to Martin Luther King. King Senior remains an influential figure throughout Junior's life. An imposing, disciplined person, he physically punishes his children. But though his eldest son receives his own beatings without tears, he hates it when his father orders him to spank or whip his siblings. It is perhaps Alberta, his mother, who is responsible for

little Mike's sweetness and patience, as well as his deep love of reading and of music. But though the household is comfortably middle class, it doesn't take him long to learn that the world outside the family home is deeply unjust. Lerone A. Martin is the Martin Luther King Jr. Centennial Professor in Religious Studies and Director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University. Some of his earliest memories are wrapped up in the experiencing, the scourge of white supremacy.

His earliest friends as a little boy were white children who one day the mother told him that the children could no longer play with him because he was an N-word. There was an incident where he was in the store with his mother and out of nowhere, an adult white woman smacked him in the face and told him, you're the little N-word who stepped on my foot. This wasn't true. He has another experience going to downtown because his father is going to buy him new shoes. He goes into the shoe store. The shoe salesman tells him, we don't serve African-Americans here. If you want to be served, you'll have to go to the back. King Sr. says that he'll remain where he is, or not buy shoes at all. But the shopkeeper is equally resolute, and in the end the pair leave.

In high school, King becomes known for his flair for public speaking, though his successful attendance of an oratorical contest in Dublin, Georgia, is marred by the bus journey back. King, his teacher, and another student are forced from their seats by white passengers. The memory of his fury from this incident stays with him. He later writes it is the angriest he has ever been in his life. he has ever been in his life. At just 15, King begins his studies at Morehouse College, an all-black university in Atlanta where his father studied before him.

Known for his snappy suits, King wins the nickname of Tweed. He is also noticed for his easy way with the opposite sex, another quality of his that will endure all his life. During his college years, he becomes deeply committed to addressing African-American inequality and decides to join the ministry. When he reads about Mahatma Gandhi, the Indian lawyer and activist, the idea of non-violent resistance begins to take hold. the idea of non-violent resistance begins to take hold. After receiving his Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology from Morehouse, King starts his studies at Crozer Theological Seminary, a small graduate school in Chester, Pennsylvania.

Up here, in the North, life is more integrated. He's taught by white teachers and studies alongside white students, reading Plato, Rousseau, Hobbes, Locke, Nietzsche, and more. In one class, he studies how to structure sophisticated sermons and move his audience with the three Ps, proving, painting, and persuading. King puts those powers of persuasion into practice when a white student holds a gun to his head, accusing him of messing up his room.

Responding calmly, King refuses to file a complaint against the student afterwards. Though he works hard, his teachers don't always reward his conscientiousness. He receives top marks in philosophy, but King is awarded Cs for public speaking. Partly it's thought because his white professors are not taken by his black Baptist style. Still, he works tirelessly on his delivery. His interest in Gandhi deepens, and he takes to his heart the Greek word agape, a love that makes no distinction between friends and enemies. But King manages to have fun at Crozer, too.

He plays pool and cards, drinks beer and smokes cigarettes, something that becomes a lifelong habit. arts, drinks beer and smokes cigarettes, something that becomes a lifelong habit. Graduating with the highest grades in his class with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Divinity, King is rewarded with a gleaming green Chevrolet by his parents. But the new gift takes him far from home again. This time, in 1951, to Boston University in pursuit of a doctorate. While he's there, he meets Coretta Scott, a talented student at Boston's New England Conservatory of Music. He meets her and she says that she's a little, you know, not too impressed with him physically. He's only about five, seven, but they have a wonderful first date.

They have a conversation. And after the date, King says, I'm like Napoleon and I've met my Waterloo. That's what he tells her. And he says, you have everything that I want in a wife. And she says, how can you say that? You know, we've just met one another. But he's very clear that Coretta is what he sees as the absolute perfect life partner. And from there, their romance flourishes. King and Coretta marry on June 18, 1953, at her family home in Alabama.

Since no hotels will accommodate them, they spend their wedding night in the guest bedroom of a funeral parlor. After completing his last year at Boston, though yet to finish his dissertation, King ignores his father's request to return home to Atlanta. And though Coretta hopes to move permanently to the North, they head instead for Montgomery, Alabama. There, King has been offered a job as the highest paid black minister in the city. It is a place where he feels he can make a difference in the fight against segregation. But he has no idea how soon that will happen. The newlyweds' new home is a city characterized by stark racial divisions. Once known as the cradle of Confederacy, Montgomery's slave market had been one of the biggest in

the country. King takes up his new position as minister of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, a small red brick building with a neat white wooden tower. He and Coretta live in a wood-framed parsonage on South Jackson Street in the West End neighborhood. Each morning, King rises early to work on his doctoral dissertation and hones his sermons in front of the mirror. He also joins the Montgomery chapter of the National Association of the Advancement of Colored People, or NAACP, a civil rights organization committed to combating racial violence and discrimination. a civil rights organization committed to combating racial violence and discrimination.

In June 1955, Boston University awards him a Ph.D. in systematic theology. Racist etiquette at the time requires black people to address white people as Mr. and Mrs., but allows white people of all ages to refer to black people by their first names. It allows white people of all ages to refer to black people by their first names. So it is an act of resistance that King asks white people to address him now as Dr. King. In August the same year, Emmett Till, a 14-year-old African-American boy, is brutally murdered in Mississippi for allegedly whistling at a white woman. His beaten body is dumped in the Tallahatchie River. His mother insists on an open casket at his funeral in Chicago so the world can see what has been done to her child.

But when Till's killers are acquitted, outrage spreads across the globe in what will become a crucial moment in the quest for civil rights. Later that year, the Kings are joined by their first child, Yolanda. Shortly afterwards, elsewhere in Montgomery, a 42-year-old seamstress concludes a long day of work in a downtown department store. A woman by the name of Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat on a city bus, which at the time was indeed the law.

And from there, the NAACP and the Women's Political Council decides that Rosa is the perfect person to rally around this cause. Persuaded by his closest friend, 29-year-old Baptist minister Ralph Abernathy, King lends his support to the cause. The Women's Political Council spends the weekend mimeographing leaflets which call for a one-day boycott of Montgomery's buses by the city's black residents. On Monday, December 5th, King rises at 5.30 a.m., as usual. But as he does so, he hears Coretta shout in the living room.

She's caught sight of the first bus of the day coming down South Jackson Street. Usually packed with black commuters, the yellow bus is empty. King leaps into his car and drives around the city. Throughout his hour's journey, he sees no more than eight black people using the buses. he sees no more than eight black people using the buses. The city's African-American population shares cars or takes taxis to work, but most of all, they travel on foot. The same day, Rosa Parks is charged at court under a state law that offers bus drivers unlimited powers to enforce segregation.

As hundreds gather in the courthouse to support her, she is fined $10 for her act of defiance. That afternoon, a group of community leaders who support the boycott meet to form a new organization called the Montgomery Improvement Association. King becomes its president. He's perfect in the eyes of many people because he has a PhD, he's educated, and he's new in town. He doesn't have the same web of commitments to the local power structure that some others have.

And he's also a minister, so he's not dependent upon the city or the state for his income. dependent upon the city or the state for his income. So he is elected the leader. And from there, King is introduced into American public life and his life is forever changed as the nation is forever changed. On the journey to a mass meeting at Holt Street Baptist Church that night, King is struck by anxiety. Just 26 years old, he's overwhelmed by the task ahead. And as he arrives at the church, he's unprepared for the enormity of the crowd. Four or five thousand people spill out into the

yard of the church and three blocks around it. Loudspeakers are being set up outside in preparation. It takes King 15 minutes to get from the door to the pulpit. But once there, though he's had only 20 minutes to prepare the most important speech of his life so far, something catches fire. He speaks of the fear and anguish in the community and the long history of suffering. He praises Rosa Parks and shares his vision of the non-violent pathway ahead. The reaction that night is thunderous in its approval.

The civil rights movement has found a new voice. So, the story starts. Better Man. Now playing in select theaters. At first, the demands of the boycott are modest. Its leaders don't challenge the continuation of segregated seating, with white passengers at the front of the bus, black passengers at the back. They ask for more of a first-come, first-served approach, more courteous treatment by bus drivers, and for black drivers to be hired for routes in African-American neighborhoods. But even these modest demands are refused by the city and bus company officials. The boycott continues for 381 days, far longer than anyone expects.

King leads mass meetings and church services, while Montgomery's citizens carpool to ensure that everyone gets to work. As the pressure to stop the boycott endures, the fighting gets more personal. Rumors are spread about King, that he's in it for the money or working with the communists. The FBI are notified and begin to monitor him. On January 26, 1956, he is arrested for driving 30 miles per hour in a 25-mile-per-hour zone. He's frisked, bundled into a police car, then thrown into jail. But a throng appearing outside puts pressure on the chief jailer to release him. A day or two later, King's phone rings at home.

The angry speaker uses a racial slur and tells him to leave town in three days, or they will blow up his house. King hangs up and paces the room of the parsonage. What should he do? Is he prepared to die for his cause? It is at that moment, King later says, that he hears the voice of God telling him to continue, to stand up for righteousness. The spiritual experience gives him the strength to persist in spite of persecution. gives him the strength to persist in spite of persecution.

It is January 30, 1956. Coretta King is in her living room, chatting with a neighbor. Tonight her husband is out, attending a meeting at his friend Ralph Abernathy's church. At the back of the house, the King's seven-month-old daughter, Yolanda, known affectionately as Yoki, sleeps in her crib. At quarter past nine, there is a lull in the conversation, and the women sit upright at the sound of footsteps outside. There is a thud as something is flung onto the wooden porch. There is a thud as something is flung onto the wooden porch. Before they have time to react, a huge explosion shatters the windows and fills the air with thick smoke.

Coretta's first thought is for her child. She and her friend race down the hallway, through splintered and twisted woodwork, to the back of the house. Coretta sweeps her baby, who is by some miracle not only unharmed, but still asleep, into her arms. As the three of them flee outside, Coretta sees how lucky they've been to escape with their lives. There is a crater on the front porch. One of the front pillars has split and the mailbox has been torn from the wall.

One of the front pillars has split and the mailbox has been torn from the wall. As sirens scream from a distance, someone calls King at Abernathy's church. While Coretta cradles Yoki, neighbors and friends start to join her outside the house. Many of them are clutching weapons, guns and knives. There is fury in the air. White's policemen show up on the scene, along with a clutch of reporters, while the fire department deals with the smoldering building. At last, King himself arrives, pushing through the crowd,

stricken until he catches sight of his wife and child. He exhales in Coretta's arms as the family embrace. He and Coretta retreat to the back of the house for a few moments of privacy. After they have spoken, King checks over the house with the mayor, the police commissioner, and the fire chief while Coretta waits outside. But the crowd is restless. There are raised voices, a scuffle, a sense of the righteous anger about to spill over. Coretta holds her baby close and watches her husband as he comes out of the house. He straightens his tie, runs a hand through his hair. Somehow, in his suit and overcoat, he still looks immaculate.

It's clear he has decided to speak. The crowd quietens as, in his melodic voice, he urges for calm. He tells those with weapons to return home, emphasizing that the problem cannot be solved with violence. He reminds them that loving their enemies is the solution. The shout comes from the crowd, God bless you, brother King. It's too late for the family home, but King's speech has prevented further destruction. it further destruction. Despite promises from the police that night to keep King safe, none of the white supremacists responsible for the bombing are ever identified and arrested. But King's courage and commitment pay off, garnering international attention for the

Montgomery bus boycott. A ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court marks the successful end of the boycott on December 20, 1956. Just over a year since he saw the empty bus rumble past his house, King walks to the corner not far from his home and boards a city bus. He takes his seat near the front. In January the following year, King is named chairman of the organization that becomes known as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, or the SCLC, a key player in the

fight for equality for African Americans. A month later, he appears on the cover of Time magazine, and in May that year he delivers his first national address at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. He also writes his first book, Stride Toward Freedom, a memoir of the Montgomery bus boycott. But now he's in the public eye, his life is rarely peaceful. On September 20, 1958, during a book signing in Harlem, New York, King is stabbed in the chest by a woman suffering from mental illness. Rushed to Harlem Hospital, King is attended to by a team of doctors who remove a 7-inch

letter opener from his torso. If he had so much as sneezed, he is told, he wouldn't have survived. King heals sufficiently to return to his schedule of travel, speech-giving, and participating in civil rights demonstrations. February 1960 sees him move his family from Montgomery to his hometown of Atlanta. There, King devotes more time to the SCLC and becomes assistant pastor to his father at Ebenezer Baptist Church. At home, the family grows, with the birth of his sons Martin Luther III and Dexter, who are later joined by another daughter, Bernice.

King continues to work towards his goals, but his next campaign in Albany, Georgia, is unfocused and fails to replicate the success of the Montgomery bus boycott. The government's interest in the movement is anything but weakening, however. In March 1962, the Attorney General and brother of the President, Robert Kennedy, authorizes the FBI to begin electronic surveillance of Stanley Leveson, a friend of King's with alleged ties to the Communist Party. Leveson's contact with King is included in their scrutiny, and in the months that follow, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover deploys agents to find subversive material on King.

The FBI also pays close attention to another civil rights leader. Malcolm X, with his symbolic rejection of the surname given to his family by white slave owners, becomes a prominent leader of the Nation of Islam. to his family by white slave owners, becomes a prominent leader of the Nation of Islam. In contrast to King, he advocates for more militant and confrontational tactics. Both men are carefully followed, and those watching them have no regard for their privacy. When King turns to the arms of women other than his wife, the FBI knows all about it, though it's not until later that they will reveal their hand. His imperfect marriage aside, King continues to campaign. In 1963, his help is requested by like-minded activists in the city of Birmingham,

almost 150 miles from Atlanta, where King's brother A.D. now lives. One of the most racially discriminatory cities in the United States at the time, Birmingham has earned the nickname Bombingham from the frequency with which black homes and churches are targeted with explosives. The city's Commissioner of Public Safety is a man called Theophilus Eugene Connor, known by the nickname Bull. A stocky man, often pictured in a straw-brimmed hat, Bull Connor is a staunch segregationist known for his collusion with the Ku Klux Klan. King's campaign in the city begins with a sequence of non-violent protests, focusing on desegregating the downtown stores in the city. He knows from experience that media attention is crucial for gaining traction in campaigns.

And when he and Abernathy are arrested for marching and demonstrating without a permit, the spotlight turns firmly in their direction. King is arrested for the 13th time out of what will eventually become a total of 29. He and Abernathy are taken to Birmingham jail where, on the instructions of Bull Connor, they are put into solitary confinement. In the dark, King begins to write in the margins of the newspaper he has with him. He writes the letter from Birmingham jail as a response to eight ministers who had come together, an ecumenical group, if you will, Protestants, Catholics, as well as rabbis,

who write and tell King that they agree with his claim about freedom, but they disagree with his methods. And so King sits down in this dark, dank jail in Birmingham and pens a response to these ministers explaining why he is in Birmingham. He's there because injustice is there. He explains his method, nonviolent direct action, that he is dramatizing for the world to see the kind of violence that happens every single day in Birmingham because African Americans want to be treated with equality. Continuing his letter on napkins and sandwich wrappers, he argues against waiting for change and emphasizes the urgency of the fight for civil rights. Oppressors, he argues, never willingly grant freedom.

It is a demand that must arise from the oppressed. pressed. Although it is not published in the press until a month later, King's letter becomes a seminal text written by a modern political prisoner. Meanwhile, outside the prison, the campaign continues. Because King is in jail, because so many adults are in jail, there's no money to bail everyone out. The movement decides that they're going to draft children into the march and into the demonstrations. And so children leave school and participate in these demonstrations. Bull Connor really plays into King's hands by engaging in violent actions against the demonstrators, by using water hoses and dogs to stop and prohibit the demonstrators. And these images go around the world.

Everyone, as America's in the midst of the Cold War, trying to engage in geopolitics that says that America and capitalism and democracy are the way to go, not Russian-style communism. These images of human beings being bitten by dogs and sprayed by powerful water hoses because they want to have equality these images go around the world russian newspapers cuban newspapers eastern european newspapers began to land blast america for saying you claim to be the land of the free in the home of the brave and look how you're treating your citizens the images shock the world and consolidate the support of both black and white Americans behind the movement. But King and the SCLC are criticized by some, including Malcolm X, for putting children

in harm's way. Eventually though the campaign is a success. Bull Connor loses his job, the whites-only signs on drinking fountains and in restrooms are removed, and downtown stores become much more open to the city's African-American population. President John F. Kennedy even gets on board. On June 11, 1963, in a televised address, he calls on Congress to consider legislation that would end segregation in public facilities. In support of the proposal, a March on Washington takes place in August.

We often think of it as the March on Washington, but the full name was the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. This was a march that was planned to dramatize and to demonstrate to the country and to the world the support for the 1964 Civil Rights Bill. And the march is extremely successful. 250,000 people on the National Mall, everything from everyday local people to a celebrity contingent from James Baldwin, Josephine Baker, Marlon Brando, Charlton Heston, and the list goes on. The march culminates with a speech given by King on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

Taking the podium in front of the 19-foot-tall marble statue of Abraham Lincoln, he delivers a carefully prepared speech to the biggest crowd he's ever addressed. At some point, when the journalists think he's done and the TV networks begin to cut away, King starts to improvise. He decides, some say at the behest of the gospel singer Mahalia Jackson, to go off script and share the details of a dream he has shared before, but never to an audience of this size. The I Have a Dream speech is born, changing the world forever with its poetry and power. It is not a speech that shies away from repetition, but each recurrence of the words, I have a dream, builds in power,

like waves of increasing strength crashing on the shore. When King declares his hope that his four young children might dwell in a country where their worth is determined not by the color of their skin, When King declares his hope that his four young children might dwell in a country where their worth is determined not by the color of their skin but by the quality of their character, the crowd's applause is near deafening. In the White House, President Kennedy murmurs that King is damn good. But not everybody likes what they hear. The FBI's J. Edgar Hoover takes his surveillance of King to the next level,

despite no proof that the civil rights leader is a communist. Now, the FBI is able, because of a thorough investigation and thorough infiltration of the Communist Party USA, they are able to determine that King is not a member of the Communist Party USA, they are able to determine that King is not a member of the Communist Party, that the civil rights movement itself is not being controlled by the Communist Party. But yet when King gives the I Have a Dream speech in 1963 I have a dream speech in 1963, and Hoover sees the response that the nation and the world has to this address and to this march. Hoover presses forward and decides to push the domestic intelligence division of the FBI to try to discredit Martin Luther King Jr. They don't have the evidence at all that he's a communist,

but they decide that he is a danger to the American public. And they write a memo two days after the March on Washington, which famously stated that King is the most dangerous Negro in the country. most dangerous Negro in the country. King, meanwhile, and other civil rights leaders are cautiously optimistic after the March on Washington and the subsequent meeting with President Kennedy. But just three months later in downtown Dallas, the president is shot dead. The death of JFK causes King to reflect on the likelihood of something similar happening to him. One of the earliest moments we have of him

talking about his own death is in 1963 when President Kennedy is assassinated. He is watching the funeral on television and he tells his wife, Coretta, he says, you know, that's what they're going to do to me. He's very clear about the risk and about the dangers around his own death to the point where his friends say that he starts to joke around about it a lot. Some people were uncomfortable about it, but I believed it was his own way of trying to adjust himself to it, to accept it, but also to get those around him to also to be prepared for it and to accept it as well. After Kennedy's death, his Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson takes over the presidency.

Johnson uses the language of the March on Washington, as well as Kennedy's assassination, to help push through the 1964 Civil Rights Bill. King attends the Congressional debates about the bill, and his meeting with Malcolm X at this time marks their only public encounter. His advocacy contributes to public support for the bill, which, when signed into law by President Johnson, outlaws discrimination based on race, sex, religion, or creed. But in February 1965, less than a year's time, Malcolm X will be assassinated in New York at the age of 39. In October 1964, King is staying in an Atlanta hospital, having checked in for exhaustion. But in the early hours of the 14th, he is woken by a call from Coretta with incredible

news. He has won the Nobel Peace Prize. At the age of 35, King becomes the youngest man and only the second African-American to receive the prestigious award. He shares the $54,000 that comes with the accolade among leading civil rights groups, including the SCLC. For some in the FBI, though, the honor is an outrage. Anonymously, they send a tape recording to his home, which they claim contains evidence of sexual indiscretion. It's an attempt, he believes, to force him to commit suicide.

But King refuses to be cowed. The following year, he visits the White House again to discuss voting rights with the president. Despite theoretically being allowed to vote, black people encounter

substantial barriers to exercise that right in the southern states. These include literacy tests and poll taxes, charges that must be paid in order to vote. President Johnson advises King to wait until things have settled down after the previous year's legislation. But as readers of his letter from a Birmingham jail know, King believes the time for waiting is over.

On January 2, 1965, King arrives in Selma, a small city in central Alabama, the stage for his new campaign. Here, fewer than 250 out of the 15,000 African Americans of voting age are registered to vote. But a defining moment in the campaign occurs while King himself is back in Atlanta, mobilizing support. On Sunday, March the 7th, civil rights activists attempt to march from Selma to Montgomery, a journey of more than 50 miles, which starts with crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

The sheriffs and the local police viciously beat marchers and viciously trample them with horses and with billy clubs and gas. And this kind of vicious violence helps again to turn the world's attention to Selma and everything that is happening there to prevent African Americans from voting. The lawlessness that is happening there. And King uses it to his advantage. And the world's attention is on Selma.

In the wake of what becomes known as Bloody Sunday, the events in Selma draw national attention. Marches in support of the cause take place all over the states, applying more pressure on President Johnson to take action. On March the 15th, the president addresses Congress, calling for the passage of legislation to end voting practices that discriminate against black Americans in the South. Their cause must be our cause too, the President says. Really, it is all of us who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome.

Watching the address, King weeps. A triumphant march from Selma to Montgomery can now take place. It is March the 21st, 1965. A cool but sunny day in Selma. The small city is swollen by thousands of visitors. An enormous crowd gathers outside the Brown Chapel AME church, an imposing twin-towered building. Press helicopters hum low overhead. towered building. Press helicopters hum low overhead. From his position on the steps of the church, Martin Luther King Jr. surveys the crowd. There is a crackle of anticipation among the diverse assembly. Civil rights veterans, religious leaders from all faiths and denominations, priests and reverends, nuns and rabbis, black and white, all preparing to march together.

There are white-collared clergymen, bearded beatniks, eclectically dressed college students, as well as elderly men and women, teenagers and even babies. But today, their safety has been assured by the president himself. has been assured by the president himself. King notes the National Guardsmen and Policemen on foot and in cars parked alongside the unpaved red sand road. He takes a breath and begins to speak. But his words are interrupted by the sudden movement of several army jeeps plowing straight through the cluster.

Terrified, people leap away from the vehicles. With a quick glance to check that everyone is safe, King completes his speech and the crowd sings a rousing rendition of We Shall Overcome. It won't be long now. The throng is restless, many of its number jostling for King's attention. A five-person delegation from Hawaii pushes through and presents him with a lei, or garland, to place around his neck. Thanking them, King makes his way down the church steps, where the marshals are arranging people into columns, six abreast. Women and children are placed in the middle for their safety. The sweet scent of the garland accompanies King, as he finds his own place at the head

of the procession. Forming a line with other civil rights and religious leaders, he links arms with his dear friend Ralph Abernathy. And then they start to walk. With the press of the crowd jostling behind them, they pass identical rows of low-slung brick housing on this usually quiet road. A helicopter buzzes above. An army truck rumbles ahead of them. The atmosphere is celebratory,

but with Bloody Sunday still fresh in their minds, there is an anxiety, too, about what may lay ahead. Turning right onto Alabama Avenue, they pass silent white residents standing on the sidewalks. Then the procession turns onto a busier, thrumming thoroughfare, the US Route 80 towards Montgomery, 54 miles away. From a nearby record shop, there's the blare of loudspeakers playing a song called "'Bye Bye Blackbird,"

eliciting jeers from white onlookers. And now a black Volkswagen drives by, its doors and fenders covered in signs scrawled with racial insults. But King keeps his gaze ahead and his step steady. The marchers sing again as they continue towards the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Now they're close enough to see the bridge's name in black writing loom above them, a name that memorializes a Confederate general and reputed Ku Klux Klan leader. King notices the pressure on each of his linked arms tighten a

little as they pass under the bridge's steel arch. But then, minutes later, they have crossed it and jubilation sets in. The highway stretches out in front of them, glowing almost pink in the afternoon sun. The march lasts for five days, covering a distance of around 54 miles. The protesters camp at various points along the route, with accommodation provided by local supporters and churches. When the events culminate in a rally in Montgomery, King delivers a speech expressing hope, determination, and the certainty of eventual victory in the struggle for civil rights. It becomes known as How Long, Not Long. And this march and this speech helps to push through the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Act of 1965. And it is also one of the last major large marches to occur in the civil rights movement. Because from there in 1965, and once King has now helped to be an important figure to bring about legislation in 64 and 65, now King starts turning to issues such as economic exploitation and poverty and war

and access to good education and access to good housing. And that does not receive the same amount of support across this country as his previous campaigns. So from 1965 we can see Selma as a high point of the civil rights movement but also as a moment where we start to see enthusiasm and partnership begin to wane. After Selma, King is involved in the organization of the Chicago Freedom Movement to address housing discrimination and poverty. He speaks out against the Vietnam War and plans the Poor People's Campaign to address economic inequality. In April 1968, he travels to Memphis, Tennessee to support striking African-American sanitation workers who are protesting unsafe working conditions.

who are protesting unsafe working conditions. And so on April 3rd, he gives his famous and unfortunately last sermon, and he talks about going on the mountaintop and seeing the promised land, and says that I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land. And many people see that as really as foretelling his death. At six in the evening on April the 4th, 1968, King and Abernathy are preparing to leave their motel for dinner before a mass meeting. As Abernathy returns briefly to the bathroom to put on some aftershave, King steps out onto the balcony of the second-floor room in shirt sleeves. It is dusk, the end of a warm spring day. As he tucks in his shirt, King jokes with aides in the parking lot beneath him.

His driver warns him that the evening will get cooler, so he turns to get his coat. But then a shot sounds. Abernathy, rushing from the bathroom, sees King slumped on the floor. He reassures him that it will be alright, but he later accounts that his friend's eyes tell him it has happened. King is rushed to hospital, but pronounced dead at 7.05pm. His children hear of the death of their father from a news bulletin that interrupts one of their favourite television shows. When they run to their mother, she's on the phone. Hanging up, she tells them that there has been an accident. In the days after King's death, riots erupt all over the United States. His funeral is held at Ebenezer Baptist Church,

where he'd served as co-pastor with his father. Loud speakers project the service to the tens of thousands gathered outside. Afterwards, King's coffin on a mule-drawn wagon embarks on a solemn journey through the streets of Atlanta to Morehouse College, where another memorial service is held. Among the attendees that day are James Baldwin, Mahalia Jackson, Robert F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, and Rosa Parks. The prime suspect in King's assassination, James Earl Ray, a 40-year-old white supremacist and

career criminal, is arrested on June 8. He is apprehended at London's Heathrow Airport after being on the run for two months and is extradited to the United States to stand trial. Though he confesses to the crime, Coretta believes that Ray didn't act alone. She later voices her belief in a high-level conspiracy surrounding her husband's murder. surrounding her husband's murder. After his death, King's family is dogged by tragedy. In 1969, his brother A.D. is discovered dead, floating in his swimming pool. Five years later, King's mother, Alberta, is shot and killed during a service at Ebenezer

Baptist Church. His father dies from a heart attack in Atlanta at the age of 84. But Coretta works tirelessly to keep the flame alive. She founds the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change and fights to establish Martin Luther King Day, a U.S. national holiday on her husband's birthday on January 15. That battle, though, is an ugly one. Almost two decades after the assassination, conservatives bring up the allegations of King's links to communists, as well as FBI evidence of his infidelity to Coretta.

His wife denies any knowledge of the latter, staying faithful to her husband to the end. King was ahead of his time and imagining a world in which he never saw. He talked to us about his dream, something he had never seen, but he was able to dream and conjure up a world where people of color were being treated equally.

And he was light years ahead. But when it came to his treatment of women, King was very much so a man of his time. He was light years ahead when it came to race, but he was a man of his time when it came to gender. race, but he was a man of his time when it came to gender. The most concerning allegation about King comes to public attention in 2019, when the biographer David Garrow publishes an article in which he alleges that the FBI had evidence of King witnessing and potentially encouraging a sexual assault. sexual assault. I am aware that my dear brother and friend David Garrow wrote an essay in which he talked about records that the FBI had about supposedly King being involved in a sexual assault. And David has done tremendous, amazing, path-breaking work on Martin Luther King Jr.

But I disagreed with his essay for a couple of reasons. Number one, the source material. The source material was a handwritten note on a summary of a transcript supposedly taken from Martin Luther King Jr.'s hotel room. So the source material was very shaky. Secondly, it seems to me that we know the FBI was bent on discrediting King. If the FBI is listening and has microphones in King's room and they are hearing a sexual assault occur, it seems to me if that was happening, they could have easily informed local police and security and would have had the opportunity to discredit Martin Luther King Jr. while in the midst of committing a crime or witnessing a crime. had a structure in place where agents were rewarded for coming up with supposed dirt and information on subjects, especially Martin Luther King Jr. And that structure incentivized agents to make up things and to create things and to embellish things.

The complete transcripts and audio recordings of the incident in question, as well as others involving King, are not scheduled for release until 2027. But many have questioned the validity of the evidence and argue the claims are no more than attempts to discredit him. Today King continues to be known throughout the world for his tireless efforts as one of the most important civil rights leaders of all time, and for the significant advancements in racial equality and social justice he helped to secure. In the United States, almost a thousand cities and towns have streets bearing his name, and his work forms a key part of the education of millions of students across the nation.

Through his powerful speeches, unwavering dedication, and commitment to non-violent resistance, King paved the way for a more inclusive and equitable world, inspiring the generations that followed him. and equitable world, inspiring the generations that followed him. All of us won't be able to preach like Martin Luther King Jr. We won't be able to put together words and phrases in a way that can shoot electricity through human beings and their hearts. But one of the things that we can take away from him that all of us can emulate and seek to cultivate within ourselves is hope for the future and commitment.

That Martin King hoped for a better future. He never let that go. And he was always committed, even when that commitment was politically inconvenient. But if we can take from King this courage and this commitment, then his life will bear witness both now and forevermore into the future. Next time on Short History, I will bring you a short history of Mount Rushmore. It is a deeply complex space, and it is one that I don't think anyone looks at with pure views or pure joy. I don't know that it feels symbolic to a lot of Americans in the way that, for example, the Washington Monument

or the Lincoln Monument feels because it is this complex space. And because I think that there are a lot of Americans who feel that our national parks, our national spaces are really one of our treasures to be celebrated and shared with the world. And in some ways, this is defiling that beauty. And so it is, in some ways, the perfect embodiment of the deeply complex and deeply divided American story. That's next time. To be continued...