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Jonathan Eig · In These Times with Rabbi Ammi Hirsch

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I'm Rabbi Ami Hirsch of the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in New York and
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you're listening to In These Times.
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I think of Martin Luther King frequently.
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He was an American hero and a master orator.
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Few other religious leaders or any public speakers could
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captivate a crowd the way he did.
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I regret that I never had the opportunity to meet King, but reading Jonathan
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Pulitzer Prize winning book, King, a life.
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Is to come closer to understanding King, the man,
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I feel like to reconnect with King and to see him as a person after we've
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celebrated him to the extent that we, you know, we lost sight of his humanity so
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that I'm really glad that I took this on.
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Jonathan, I get a pleasure to have you with us.
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Welcome to in these times
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Thanks, Ami.
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I'm excited to talk to you.
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we were talking, uh, before we started recording, you know, my brother, you
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spoke with my father doing research on this fantastic book of Martin Luther
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King that I want to speak with you about.
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But I, uh, we're almost kind of family or.
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At
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That's nice of you.
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I like to think so.
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my brother thinks very highly of you.
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Well, it's mutual.
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So I want to talk to you about Martin Luther King and the black community and
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the relationship between American Jews and the African American community.
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first, what, what drew you, you're a biographer.
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What drew you to wanting to write biographies?
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I am referred to now as a biographer, but I never thought of myself that way.
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I was a journalist for the longest time, and really all I ever wanted
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to do was be a newspaper reporter, and I sort of accidentally stumbled
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into writing biographies, just as the newspaper industry was collapsing,
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so it worked out pretty well.
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I, um, You know, I wrote my first book was a biography of Lou Gehrig.
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And since then, I've done other books on people like Jackie Robinson and
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Muhammad Ali and Martin Luther King.
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And, um, I guess I like biography in part because It's, it's a really
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sort of easy way to approach history.
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You're looking at just one life and you can use that life to examine
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lots of different themes and lots of different aspects of history.
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It, you know, you write, you have to write them chronologically.
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So it takes a little bit of the thinking out of it, but I still
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mostly think of myself as a reporter.
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I like to go out and do interviews and.
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Gather notes and do research and write a story.
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The biography just happens to be a really good format that I've fallen in love with.
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How, how many years were you a practicing journalist?
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Oh man, I started when I was 16 years old in my hometown paper and I, uh, I worked
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at the Wall Street Journal up until 2006.
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So that's a good, uh, you know, 25 years or so that I worked as
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a, as a newspaper guy, including, you know, the college years.
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So, your biographies here, uh, first of all, you have three athletes, Muhammad
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Ali, Lou Gehrig and Jackie Robinson, a gangster, Al Capone, and Martin
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Luther King, a great American hero.
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How do you select your topics?
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That's the hardest part.
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Um, because obviously there's an endless.
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Array of options.
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And I try to find something I'm passionate about this.
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These books take me five or six years.
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So it has to be something that you really want to live with and somebody
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who you, uh, don't mind having in your head for, for five or six years.
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And also something where I feel like.
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We don't know enough about them, that there's something new to say,
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or that we've misunderstood them.
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And, and that was certainly the case with, with King.
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I felt like we had lost sight of him as a person, and lost sight of him as a
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radical, lost sight of him as a religious leader, uh, and just turned him into Mr.
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I have a dream.
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So, I sort of have this formula, you know, Am I interested?
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Am I passionate about it?
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Is there something new to say?
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Will people care?
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Does it matter with what's happening in the world around us today?
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And that's how I try to come out about my subjects.
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That's really interesting.
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I'd like to follow up on that because, uh, so many, I guess millions of words have
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been written about Martin Luther King.
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And what did you feel when you started the book that you had to add
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everything that was already written and known about Martin Luther King?
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And by the time you finished the book, Were you happy that you
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actually added something that was historically significant?
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Yeah, that's a great question.
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Um, you know, I'd read a lot of the books on King.
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I'd read Taylor Branch's trilogy.
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I'd read David Garrow's book.
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I've read lots of books that talk about different aspects of King's life.
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And I felt while I learned a lot about the civil rights struggle,
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I didn't really come away.
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Feeling like I understood King, that I got in his head, that I
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I guess what occurred to me is I was working on my Muhammad Ali book, and I was
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interviewing people who knew both Ali and King, and I was having these conversations
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with people like Dick Gregory and Harry Belafonte and Andrew Young and Jesse
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Jackson, and they were describing Martin Luther King in ways that, like, were
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shocking to me, to be honest, that, you know, that he was a messy eater, that he
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smoked cigarettes, that he was deeply sad at the end of his life, that, that he felt
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like no one was listening to him anymore.
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Like, things that I had no clue.
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And that's when it occurred to me that this was the last time that it might
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be possible to write a biography of King that included living witnesses.
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And then of course, in addition to that, it had been more than 20 years since those
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books that I mentioned, the Taylor branch book and the David, the David Garrow book.
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So there were lots of new archival materials available as well, including
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new FBI transcripts of conversations that were recorded on his phone
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lines, tons of personal letters that people around him had written.
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So there was just a wealth of new material.
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And you know, am I happy?
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Did I come away feeling like it was worth the time?
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A hundred percent.
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And moreover, like more than any book I've ever written.
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This book received an emotional response from readers, like, people in tears, I
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don't know, this isn't me bragging about my writing abilities, it's the fact
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that people were yearning, I feel like, to reconnect with King and to see him
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as a person after we've celebrated him to the extent that we've You know, we
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lost sight of his humanity so that I'm really glad that I took this on because
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I felt like King needed to have some of that, you know, mythology scraped away.
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Like, there were just too many layers of paint built up on his story.
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I should say, I'm glad that, uh, you decided to go ahead with it too,
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because it's just a fabulous book.
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If I can ask you about, since you mentioned the FBI, uh, phone tabs,
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there was a certain reluctance I think in the Taylor Branch, uh, biography.
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And I've heard, I don't know if it's true or not, but I understand that there was
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a certain reluctance to use FBI material that was wiretapped on King, especially
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as it related to of his excesses, both in language as well as relationships.
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Is that true?
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What was a lot of the information that you spend time on that
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was gleaned from FBI wiretaps?
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Was, was a lot of that known in advance?
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And did you have any hesitation to use that material?
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That's a good question.
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There's an ethical question there.
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If we feel like these are tainted goods, that the FBI was wrong in
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recording King's private phone calls, and if they were invading his
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privacy, as a biographer, am I Yeah.
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Perpetuating that unethical behavior by using this material.
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And I've debated that in public actually with, you know, readers of the book.
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And I think it's worth considering, but first of all, Taylor branch and
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David Garrow both use some of this and there's more, more has come online.
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More has been released by the FBI since those books came out.
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So the question for me was, am I going to ignore that stuff?
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It's absolutely true that King had.
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Affairs with women other than his wife and, and we know that the transcripts
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of those conversations that the FBI recorded are accurate because people
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like Andrew Young have read the transcripts and they were on those
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phone calls and they said that the conversations are accurately recorded.
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So I felt like it was important to use for a couple of reasons.
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One is to be honest with the readers that I'm not.
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Giving you this whitewashed version of his life.
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I'm telling you the truth that he had flaws also so that you could see how
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much he suffered and how effective the government was in trying to destroy him.
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And then finally to reveal the racist and antagonistic work of the FBI
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to show that this is what they did to try to break up the civil rights
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movement, to try to drive King out of business, even to push him to suicide.
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Um, I think we, as a society, have to take ownership of that, that our
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law enforcement officials conducted this campaign to try to stop a
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great moral leader because they saw it as a threat to the status quo.
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They saw it as a threat to the power structure as it existed at the time.
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So that's an important part of the story.
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How do you evaluate?
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King's flaws in balancing what he accomplished and his manifest
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greatness in, in my views.
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You know, in Jewish tradition, there is no perfect person.
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It's just a foreign concept in Judaism.
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Even the great ones are flawed and often deeply flawed.
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And I think what, uh, the thrust of Jewish tradition is that what makes someone
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great is not the absence of flaws, but overcoming flaws for greater purposes.
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want to get into some of Martin Luther King's personality, both his
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flaws and admirable qualities, but is there anything that you discovered?
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Is there anything that you wrote about that tempered
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impression of King's greatness?
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Well, there were lots of things, but in the end, my appreciation of
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his greatness only grew over time.
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And I think you, you know, you, you raise a good point and you're the rabbi here
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that our prophets were often flawed.
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And in wrestling with their flaws and wrestling with their doubts with
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their own weakness, they were at least trying to make the most of their
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lives and trying to devote themselves to something bigger than themselves.
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And I think that's what was so special about King.
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And I was really worried, to be honest, that Readers would not want to face
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those flaws that they would prefer just the sanitized version of King's life.
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But I felt like it was important to be honest.
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I felt like that we would see his greatness and greater
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relief if we saw his flaws.
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And there were plenty of things that disturbed me, you know, starting with
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plagiarism at a very early age, you know, even in high school, he was
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plagiarizing speeches that he, you know, he entered a public speaking contest
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and plagiarized the speech, um, and then plagiarized his doctoral dissertation.
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And of course it was never faithful.
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To any women in his life, much less his wife, and he was, you
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know, he was also sexist in terms of his approach to leadership.
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He didn't promote women into roles of responsibility.
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So there were plenty of things about his behavior that gave me pause, but it
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didn't take away from his accomplishments.
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And in some ways, it only made me appreciate more how courageous
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he had to be, knowing that the FBI could expose him at any time.
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for these affairs, knowing that any day he might wake up and see on the front
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page of the newspaper, you know, a picture of, of he and a woman coming out
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of a hotel room or something like that.
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And yet he carried on and continued to be an antagonist, continued to
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provoke the government, continued to speak out on causes that, you know,
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made him increasingly unpopular.
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So I think the flaws are essential to understanding his life and his work.
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You wrote that he had a tendency towards insecurity and, uh
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Which was surprising to me.
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I hadn't realized until I read your book what a difficult period the last
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year of his life was and how heavy Uh, the burden was and how disappointed
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he was in America as well as in the response that he was getting.
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just this, you know, this tendency to insecurity somebody who comes
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across in public is so confident.
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It's kind of jarring.
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Yeah.
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Did that surprise you?
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And do you find that common in public personalities?
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How
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Yeah.
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You know, if you get.
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Beneath the public persona well enough, you're going to see that almost
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anybody has insecurities, and King didn't really hide them all that well.
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You know, he attempted suicide twice as a teenager, and he was hospitalized
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numerous times for exhaustion.
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In fact, you know, some of it's staring us right in the face when
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we look back at the course of his life on the day that he got the news
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that he won the Nobel Peace Prize.
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The call came in to him in the hospital, and he'd just taken all these sleeping
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pills because he couldn't get any rest.
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And when the phone call came, he thought he was hallucinating, because
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he'd just taken these sleeping pills.
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And reporters started showing up at the hospital to interview him.
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Congratulations, Dr. King, you won the Nobel Peace Prize.
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What are you doing in the hospital, by the way?
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And he would say, Well, I'm just tired.
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So it was right there to see all along.
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And even the fact that like, look at look at his career, look at the fact that
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he's our greatest protest leader, right?
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And he hates confrontation.
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He hates being in conflict with people.
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It gives him such anxiety.
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He can't even say no to his own father.
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He can't stand up to Roy Wilkins of the NAACP.
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And yet here he is, you know, putting his life on the line.
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Facing the water cannons, you know, going to jail 29 times to go to
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jail as a black man in the South was not just a symbolic protest.
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It was risking your life because you might disappear behind those
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cell doors and never be seen again.
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And he knew it 29 times.
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So the fact that he has this anxiety, has this doubt, has this tendency
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toward depression and continues to.
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Put himself on the line again.
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It's just, I think it puts his courage in greater relief.
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do you explain that?
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You, you write about how he was sincerely afraid of.
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Imprisonment of going to jail.
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He didn't like the isolation, let alone the threat of never emerging.
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Was it just a, a product of the enormous force of will that he had to overcome
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that or that a common trade in political leaders or civil rights leaders?
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I don't know.
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I think it has something to do with his faith in God more than anything.
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I think he believed that he was called to this work and it really didn't matter.
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What happened to him?
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He had a bigger responsibility here.
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You point out that his ambition at the beginning was to be a scholar.
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And what I found fascinating is you write that in the seminary, he received A's in
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philosophy and C's in public speaking.
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The greatest orator in the history of America, arguably.
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Yeah.
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I think it was the teacher's fault.
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I think they were white Northern people who had not never been in
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a black Baptist church and didn't appreciate what he was doing.
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Didn't appreciate the roots of how he was, um, speaking and how it.
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was inspired by preachers he'd seen growing up.
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This just wasn't their vocabulary.
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So I, I blame the teachers for those poor grades.
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I think he was, he was a great public speaker from a very early age.
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Where does that come from, in your view?
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I mean, you take the speech, the famous one, I Have a Dream speech, you know.
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He departed from the text in mid speech, and that's the part that
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people consider to be the greatest of all, maybe the greatest speech
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ever delivered in public life, but certainly one of the great speeches of
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the 20th century that changed America.
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And, uh, it wasn't originally in the original text.
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No, he improvised that part.
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He, he, he decided that the speech part of the, of the performance was over.
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And now it was time to go to church and it was time to deliver a sermon.
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And he'd been practicing sermons since he was like five years old.
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He used to.
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Practice sermons over his pets, you know, in the, in the backyard of his house.
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He would preach eulogies for, you know, for dead birds that
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he found in the backyard.
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He, he grew up Sunday church was a great education.
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He would travel from church to church around his neighborhood, listening to the
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different styles of different preachers.
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And he would practice in his dorm room, even as an undergraduate.
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People would hear him echoing from out of his dorm room.
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Let, let justice roll down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.
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Like he would be practicing this stuff as a kid, right?
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So he did not come to that date, August 28th, 1963, the March on
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Washington, and just suddenly give the greatest speech in American history.
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He'd been building his whole life and practicing.
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And I mean, he practiced in front of the mirror to get every nuance, right.
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And that's just a master at at his craft working, working magic.
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Yeah, that's a good way to put it, uh, because, uh, can replace innate talent.
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And he had innate, even genius in oratory.
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But it has to be refined.
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So it's that Malcolm Gladwell's 10, 000 hour thing, he had, he had all
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those thousands of hours of practice.
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Absolutely.
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I'd like to, uh, talk to you about, uh, some, uh, modern coming out
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of the civil rights movement.
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What succeeded?
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Where do you think King made a difference in terms of American history?
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And where would he, say that, uh, he either failed or didn't
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accomplish what he set out to do?
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I think he got us closer.
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First of all, let's be, let's start with the positive.
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Um, he got us closer than we've ever been to overcoming the racism that's
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at the core of American society.
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That is the, the long running after effects of slavery.
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We came closer in the mid sixties than ever to feeling like we might.
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Put that behind us, turn a corner and embrace justice for all.
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And that we didn't make it all the way is not a reflection on his failures.
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It's a reflection on our failures that, you know, we made progress.
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And then we saw this, this backlash, this, this loss of ground, you know, King said,
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the arc of history bends toward justice.
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And, um, sometimes it feels like it's bending back the other way.
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I think that at least King.
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And the civil rights movement brought us the sense of hope
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that this country could change.
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And of course, you know, we've seen progress since then.
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And I asked John Lewis, you know, do you feel like we've lost ground since then?
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And he said, no, of course not.
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We've made huge progress since the 60s.
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It just feels sometimes like we're losing ground.
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And even in the last years of King's life, he was saying he felt like we were
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losing it, that he was disappointed that his dream that he talked about at the
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March on Washington was turning into a nightmare, that there was this pushback.
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Every time that progress was made.
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America pushed back in fear, in anger, and the sermon he was planning to
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deliver at Ebenezer Baptist Church, if he'd lived one more week, was going to
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be called Why America May Go to Hell.
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So he was feeling pretty pessimistic toward the end of his life, and um, that
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doesn't mean that he was giving up, it just means that he was feeling like there
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was still a lot more work to be done.
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You, uh, wrote that towards the end of his life, King favored reparations.
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He would have been in favor of reparations had he lived for, uh, another 20 years.
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Yeah, I think he wrote about it several times and said that it was the moral
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thing to do it, forget about the money and he kind of mocked those people who said
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that you can never put a dollar amount on the suffering of the people endured.
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But he said, we do that all the time and litigation, you know, someone
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loses a loved one in a plane crash.
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We can't put a dollar value on the loss of that life, but we
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do our best to come up with it.
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So don't talk about the money.
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The issue for him was really the morals and it's.
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It gets back to something that we talk about in the High Holidays, right?
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Atonement.
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That if you don't atone for your sins.
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Then you can't ever truly move on.
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You can't apologize without owning it.
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And some of the reason for reparations, in his view, was just to own it.
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To admit your failures, to ask for forgiveness, and to begin healing.
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Did he have a specific concrete plan reparations would be delivered?
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No, he never got that far.
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The other thing that really struck me, uh, the end of his life, you write
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here, towards the end of your book too, you say that approach had changed.
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For years, I labored with the idea of reforming the existing
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institutions of society, a little change here, a little change there.
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Now I feel quite differently.
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I think you've got to have a reconstruction of the entire
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society, a revolution of values.
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What did he mean by that?
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I think he was becoming, you know, even more radical.
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And his radicalism was rooted in his Christian faith.
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But he was beginning to feel like American society was turning much too
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materialistic, much too militaristic, and that a fundamental change in
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values needed to take place so that we began to see ourselves as all
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part of one cloth, and that meant fundamentally changing one another.
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The economic structure, really, I think he was talking about capitalism to a
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large degree that it was going to continue to drive inequality unless we took
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some fundamental steps to reform that.
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And, you know, the thing that I think frustrated him was that he was, of course,
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very effective in passing legislation a little bit here, a little bit there.
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Um, as he said, Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act, those
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are more than just a little bit.
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Those were some of the most important laws ever passed in this country.
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But what he began to feel is that.
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Most Americans hadn't given anything up in order to give black people
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the right to vote or the right to sit at a lunch counter or the right
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to ride in the front of a bus.
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Nothing had really been sacrificed.
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And in the north, in particular, as white families began to move out of the
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cities and segregation became even more hardened, that it was going to take
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some kind of a bigger change that it was going to take something like, you know,
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guaranteed jobs and guaranteed income and guaranteed health care to really begin to.
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Address the inequalities in society.
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So he was becoming more radical and, um, certainly more
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radical in his economic views.
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It really is radical.
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In the passage I just read, you conclude with, um, that he
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concluded only a small part of white America supported racial justice.
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Most Americans, he said, are unconscious racists.
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That's kind of language of many civil rights activists today.
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You know, we don't normally associate that with Martin Luther King in the
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60s, it gives a preview of what people think today in the language they use.
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that accurate?
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Yeah, I think it is accurate.
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I think we don't think of King that way because we have whitewashed his
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legacy, you know, in celebrating him, we've taken the parts of his
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story that make us comfortable.
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So we talk about, I have a dream and we talk about content of our character and.
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That makes us feel good.
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Like, King was, King was a moderate.
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King wanted us all to get along, and we intentionally overlook the fact that
23:50
he was becoming increasingly dismayed by the, the inequality that, that was,
23:55
um, only growing, and the racism that was becoming more entrenched in many
24:00
ways, and I think that's one of the unfortunate side effects of having a
24:05
national holiday in his honor, is that we, we simplify and we pick and choose the
24:09
words of his that we want to listen to.
24:11
And yet it's this moderation, this very moderation, that allowed him
24:16
to be as successful as he was.
24:18
He won the hearts of white Americans as well.
24:22
Yeah, moderation is not the first thing that I would think of when I think
24:25
of what made people open their hearts and minds, you know, when King starts
24:29
speaking out, even in the early days of his career in Montgomery in the 1950s.
24:35
His message is, is pretty radical, but it's a, but it's a message filled
24:39
with love and hope and inclusion.
24:41
Uh, but he's still saying that this country is racist and it needs to change.
24:45
And I think he's able to shine a light on the injustice.
24:50
It's not that he's, he's watering it down.
24:52
It's not that he's softening the image for people.
24:54
But he's saying that we want to show you this injustice.
24:57
We want to show you how cruel society is and how badly people are being treated.
25:02
Not to burn down.
25:04
The system not to take a wrecking ball to American democracy.
25:08
We.
25:09
The black people in America want to join that democracy.
25:11
We want to make it stronger.
25:13
So it's this very hopeful message.
25:15
And it's of course, rooted in his faith in the Bible.
25:18
It's rooted in the constitution.
25:20
So I think it's a message of hope and optimism.
25:23
That's radical at the same time.
25:27
In, uh, I think it was 1967, he made a very famous speech, uh,
25:32
opposing the war in Vietnam.
25:34
Do you think that changed the trajectory of his work?
25:38
It was very severely criticized, one, on, on the merits of his arguments,
25:43
but also as a, just as a strategy he shouldn't be focusing on Vietnam, he
25:49
should be focusing on civil rights.
25:51
I think it was kind of the, um, the low point for his popularity, but it
25:57
was not just that because even in 1966.
26:01
When he moved to Chicago and began speaking out on housing, um, and
26:06
hiring segregation there, um, his popularity really took a dive.
26:12
Sixty six percent of Americans in a Gallup survey said they
26:15
disapproved of King in 1966.
26:17
And that was before he began really speaking out
26:19
aggressively on the Vietnam War.
26:21
And that only made it worse, uh, because the war was still popular at that time.
26:25
So King suddenly It's getting this pushback from white Northern liberals,
26:30
even who are saying like, Hey, we gave you the civil rights act.
26:34
We gave you the voting rights act.
26:35
Come on, like cut us some slack.
26:38
And King is infuriated because he feels like, you know, he has
26:42
this responsibility to speak the truth and people want him to just.
26:46
You know, today the equivalent would be like, shut up and dribble.
26:49
Like just stick to what you're good at, right?
26:52
Stick to voting rights, stick to desegregation laws.
26:55
Don't, don't tell us what to do here in Chicago.
26:57
Don't talk about Vietnam.
26:58
And when he gave that speech at Riverside Church in 1967, the one
27:02
you're referring to, the New York times, the Washington post, everybody
27:05
just pilloried him that they said he was, he was unqualified to speak on the
27:10
issue and didn't have any clue what he was talking about and was only going
27:13
to hurt his own cause from doing that.
27:15
Did it?
27:15
Did it hurt his own cause?
27:16
Yeah, yeah, he lost a lot of supporters, lost a lot of funding from the North
27:21
and his own friends and colleagues were saying like, you're killing us,
27:25
you know, you're, you're making it harder for us to get our work done.
27:28
And King.
27:29
You know, had to explain.
27:31
We, we know exactly what he said because the FBI was recording the calls.
27:34
He told one of his best friends, like, don't you know who I am at this point?
27:37
Don't you know that I'm not trying to do what's politically wise.
27:40
I'm trying to do what's morally right.
27:44
That's not how most people operated.
27:46
And a lot of people couldn't really understand that.
27:48
Let me ask you about his relationship with the Jewish community and, uh,
27:54
with Israel and maybe extrapolate now to modern times as well.
27:58
He had a very positive relationship with the American Jewish community.
28:02
It's something that I grew up with myself.
28:04
My, my father was a colleague of Martin Luther King.
28:07
many Jews were active members of the civil rights movement.
28:14
What was the relationship?
28:15
What did King feel about the American Jewish community, about
28:19
Judaism and about his supporters?
28:23
I think King felt a great.
28:24
kinship with the Jewish community.
28:27
He grew up not really knowing very many Jews and certainly in seminary
28:31
and even at Boston University.
28:33
I don't think he had any great close Jewish friends.
28:37
Once the movement began, there was a great influx of supporters
28:41
from the Jewish community.
28:42
And King really appreciated that and got to spend time and talk.
28:46
And especially with, you know, rabbis like your father and others,
28:50
you know, he, he engaged in these.
28:52
great theological conversations, you know, King really loved the philosophy.
28:57
He loved the history of religion.
28:58
He knew a lot about the old Testament.
28:59
Almost all of his favorite Bible quotes were from the, from the Hebrew prophets.
29:04
So I think he very much engaged in very much appreciated that support.
29:08
And I think that he saw a certain kinship, obviously, you know, even in
29:12
the early days of his protest in when he was still in Montgomery, the newspapers,
29:17
the black papers in particular, were calling him Alabama's Moses.
29:21
So there's clearly this connection between The enslaved people of Egypt
29:25
and the enslaved people of America.
29:27
And I think that you can speak better to this and your father could speak
29:30
better to it than I could, but I think there's a sense among American Jews
29:34
that we do share a common bond in that our history includes slavery and
29:40
that, um, once that is a part of your, your identity, that never goes away.
29:49
King was forceful.
29:50
I don't know how often he said this, but I do remember reading
29:54
and actually seeing a clip as well.
29:56
Um, Yeah.
29:56
On insisting Anti Zionism was a form of anti Semitism.
30:05
Did he speak about that often, and how strongly did he believe that?
30:08
Is that accurate?
30:10
I believe it's accurate that he said that.
30:11
It's not very well sourced, but I've done a fair bit of reading on it, and
30:15
I think that it's an accurate quote.
30:18
He didn't say it very often, and I don't think he ever said it
30:20
publicly, and he was very careful.
30:22
in talking about the Middle East and about what was happening in Israel
30:27
during his lifetime, because I think he just recognized the complexity of it.
30:32
But he was definitely, you know, a supporter of Israel and
30:35
a supporter of American Jews.
30:37
And like I said, you had really strong relationships with, with
30:41
people in the Jewish community.
30:43
Do you feel that the diversity, equity, and inclusion and efforts are an extension
30:53
of Martin Luther King's philosophy?
30:55
Do you think they do justice to his cause, or do you think they've
31:00
departed in certain significant ways from his philosophy?
31:05
I think anything that is working toward black dignity and the
31:09
recognition of the impact of racism is very much a part of King's legacy.
31:14
I think he was Fighting for dignity and equality.
31:18
And those are things that should be universally embraced.
31:22
So, you know, now DEI seems to have become a bad word for many people.
31:26
Um, I think that we're facing this very bizarre, yet another powerful
31:31
backlash to, to racial progress.
31:34
And that's.
31:36
infuriating.
31:37
But I guess it's helpful to remember that King faced that in his own lifetime,
31:40
saw it over and over again, saw even, you know, after the March on Washington,
31:44
this incredible backlash where you get a bombing of the church in Birmingham and
31:47
you get the FBI increasing surveillance.
31:50
So It's not new, and it's, it's kind of, I guess, unfortunately, part of
31:55
the way people respond to progress.
32:00
Help me out here.
32:00
I remember reading, uh, Kendi's book on how to be an anti racist
32:05
and He has a passage there where he says the most threatening racist
32:09
movement is not we talked about white supremacy But the regular Americans
32:14
drive for race neutrality Isn't that what Martin Luther King wanted?
32:20
Is it true to say that Martin Luther King wanted a colorblind society?
32:26
Granted, it might, there might be different approaches on how
32:30
to get there, but wasn't that the whole thrust of his philosophy?
32:34
And I'm not sure, I think, maybe this is semantics, but I don't think he's
32:37
calling for a colorblind society.
32:39
He's not saying we should forget people's history, he's not saying
32:42
we should forget, uh, that we have to come from different cultures.
32:46
We should not forget people were enslaved.
32:49
I mean, would Jews want to forget that we were enslaved?
32:52
Would we want to be treated as in a colorblind society
32:55
is just like everyone else?
32:56
No, we're proud of our identity.
32:58
And the fact that we were enslaved is a core part of who we are
33:02
and what forms our identity.
33:03
And I think King was saying the same thing when he said he looked forward
33:07
to the day when people would be judged by the content of their character
33:11
and not the color of their skin.
33:12
He wasn't saying that we should forget.
33:14
Yeah.
33:14
The color of their skin.
33:16
He was just saying we shouldn't judge people according to that.
33:19
So I think there's an important distinction to be made there.
33:22
In no way was King saying that we should forget about our history and
33:25
no way should we forget about the pain inflicted on members of the community.
33:31
He was saying that we should not judge people based on those characteristics
33:36
or on the color of their skin.
33:37
I completely understand that.
33:38
Of course, I agree with that as well.
33:40
But in terms of what were the aspirations, wasn't the aspiration
33:45
to reach a society that would be race neutral, that wouldn't evaluate people
33:50
based on skin color, but on other qualities, merit, personal qualities?
33:56
Yeah.
33:56
I think that's the, yeah, that's what he's saying is that we
33:58
shouldn't judge people based on that.
34:00
But, but I think too often people will, will take that quote and they will
34:05
use it to say that we don't need or shouldn't have affirmative action or
34:09
that we shouldn't have any scholarships that are designed for students of one
34:14
race or ethnicity as opposed to another.
34:17
And that's not what King was saying.
34:19
Mm hmm.
34:21
Jonathan, let me ask you, what, what happened to the Black Jewish partnership?
34:28
It seemed, and in, in reality it was, in very many respects, so close, so
34:37
bonded together for a certain period of time, and then seemed to depart,
34:43
and first of all, is that right?
34:46
if so, why did it happen, and how do you think we can improve
34:52
their relationship between the Black and the Jewish community.
34:55
Well, that's a tough one.
34:56
And I'm not really, you know, my expertise kind of ends in 1968.
35:01
But I will say that one of the things you see happen in 1968 after
35:04
the assassination of King is that the civil rights movement shatters,
35:08
and it's not just the assassination that does that, but it's part of it.
35:12
And a lot of the white Northern liberals, including the Jewish community who had
35:17
been engaged in the civil rights movement.
35:20
Went separate ways, began to get involved in other issues.
35:23
A lot of people began focusing on the war in Vietnam.
35:26
You know, young college students who might have gone South to volunteer
35:29
to do voter registration suddenly were engaged in anti war protests.
35:33
And then by the 70s, we see the Civil Rights Movement really
35:36
losing its sense of cohesion.
35:37
And we see the shift going toward electing more black officials, especially
35:42
in in local government at first.
35:45
And it doesn't have a core anymore.
35:48
And I think the black Jewish.
35:51
bond that had formed in the sixties is suddenly shattered like so
35:55
much of the rest of the movement.
35:58
And I don't know that black Jewish relations are any worse than, than
36:03
any other, you know, um, relations right now, but I guess it's, it's
36:07
more striking because we had this very strong connection in the sixties.
36:11
And I think that we've seen that fall apart.
36:13
And I think, especially since October 7th.
36:16
Uh, we've seen even more tension in that arena, and that's, you know,
36:22
something that a lot of people are, are struggling with right now.
36:25
But I don't know that the answer is other than like finding a way to continue
36:29
to speak and to remember, and to work on the things that we have in common.
36:34
And I think there is still a great deal that we have in common.
36:36
We have to make sure that it's not just history that we have in common, though.
36:40
We have to actually engage in one another's lives so that we feel like
36:44
we're part of the same community.
36:45
And, and that's.
36:46
That's getting harder.
36:46
I feel like.
36:48
It's getting harder across the board in America, right?
36:50
As America itself polarizes, it's hard to keep these coalitions together.
36:54
Absolutely.
36:56
My last question to you is, so what do you make of race relations
37:01
now in America, and can we expect better times in years to come?
37:07
Yes, we have to expect better times.
37:10
We can't lose hope.
37:11
And that's the thing that I feel like I'm in a low place right now.
37:15
I see what's happening in this country and it just makes me incredibly sad.
37:22
We seem to be losing ground.
37:23
We seem to be becoming more divided.
37:26
We're not speaking to each other, not just black and white.
37:28
We're just not speaking to anybody we disagree with anymore.
37:31
We see a lot of focus right now on racial division.
37:35
We see people just.
37:38
looking for fights, looking for reasons to disagree and
37:41
just a real sense of distrust.
37:43
And I don't lose hope though, because I look at Dr. King and I
37:48
feel like if he didn't lose hope, you know, how can we lose hope?
37:51
This guy was stabbed in the chest.
37:53
His home was bombed.
37:55
He was arrested 29 times.
37:57
He had his own government trying to destroy him.
38:01
And he continued to believe that progress was possible.
38:06
And he said, we have to stay awake.
38:10
As things change, we have to stay awake and never lose the ultimate hope.
38:16
I try to stay strong by remembering that.
38:20
With that, I want to thank you for your time.
38:23
Thank you for putting in, you said it took about six years to write.
38:27
I'm very glad you put the work in.
38:29
Thank you.
38:30
and, uh, it's a major, uh, addition to our understanding of a very important
38:35
time in, uh, American history.
38:37
I want to thank you for that.
38:38
Keep writing.
38:39
We'll read whatever you, uh, produce next.
38:42
What are you working on next?
38:44
Um, my next book, uh, I like to joke that, you know, I've now written books about the
38:48
most famous American Muslim in Muhammad Ali, the most famous American Christian
38:53
in Martin Luther King, and now I'm going to go after maybe the most famous
38:58
American Jew and that's George Soros.
39:00
Oh, wow.
39:02
Well, and how, how far along are you on the, uh,
39:05
Mmm, I'm about a year in.
39:06
year.
39:07
And so you've got another, we've got another five years or so to wait.
39:10
Well, maybe.
39:11
I don't know.
39:12
I'm writing as fast as I can.
39:13
right.
39:13
Well, that's what I wanted to say, right?
39:16
Right.
39:16
As fast as you can.
39:17
We, we want to read it
39:19
Thanks.
39:20
Thank you.
39:20
Thank you for the work that you've done.
39:21
And, uh, I thank you for spending this time with us.
39:25
Thank you.
39:32
Jonathan has written an epic biography of Martin Luther King.
39:36
For me, it provided another opportunity to spend time thinking about the great man.
39:43
I've always felt a deep and unspoken connection to King.
39:47
Although I never met him, I feel as if I know him intimately.
39:52
I was raised on family stories of the friendship that King and my father shared.
39:56
Portions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
40:02
were drafted in my father's office when he was the director of the Reform
40:05
Movement's Religious Action Center.
40:08
I have no recollection of the March on Washington.
40:11
I was four years old at the time.
40:13
But I do remember vividly where I was on April 4th, 1968, I heard the first radio
40:20
news bulletins of King's assassination.
40:23
I remember like yesterday my father's stunned reaction, and it has
40:28
stayed with me throughout my life.
40:30
Some years ago I attended a rabbinical conference in Atlanta.
40:34
I took the opportunity to visit the Martin Luther King Center on Auburn Street.
40:39
I walked into the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church.
40:42
King was co pastor with his father here for the last eight years of his life.
40:47
The building is small, the sanctuary modest.
40:50
It is now a museum.
40:51
The church has built a big new beautiful building across the
40:54
street with a magnificent sanctuary.
40:58
I walked into the small church sat in a pew in the fifth row.
41:03
It looked exactly the way it did when Martin Luther King preached.
41:07
It was the same piano, the same organ, the same choir chairs, the same modest
41:13
pulpit from which so many of the soaring words that changed America were delivered.
41:18
And they were playing on the loudspeakers sermons delivered from
41:21
that pulpit by Martin Luther King.
41:24
I absorbed the miraculous eloquence.
41:27
I don't want a long funeral.
41:31
In fact, I don't even need a eulogy more than one or two minutes.
41:37
I don't know how long I'll live and I'm not concerned about that, but I hope
41:42
I can live so well that the preacher can get up and say he was faithful.
41:49
That's all.
41:49
That's enough.
41:51
That's the servant I'd like to hear.
41:53
Well done by good and faithful servant.
41:57
You've been faithful.
41:59
The moment I heard those words in that rhythmic, symphonic, utterly
42:02
unique voice, sitting there alone with the great man in the fifth
42:06
row of the Ebenezer Baptist Church.
42:10
I was overwhelmed with emotion.
42:12
It was as if he were there.
42:13
It just he and I, the King and I. There was no other person in the sanctuary.
42:20
It has been said that preaching is the proclamation of truth through personality.
42:26
You can truly sense the presence of God flowing through the
42:28
personality of Martin Luther King.
42:31
As great as his political speeches were, he was even greater as a preacher.
42:38
There is a special blessing that Jews are urged to recite when
42:40
encountering a wise Gentile sage.
42:44
The Talmud records the following.
42:45
Our rabbis taught, Upon seeing the sages of other faiths, is bidden
42:51
to say, Blessed be he who imparts of his wisdom to his creations.
42:57
Blessed be he who has imparted his wisdom to us through his faithful
43:01
servant Martin Luther King.
43:04
His season was short.
43:06
He was cut down in the summer of his life, but his shadow is very long.
43:12
Jewish tradition recognizes that public figures lead perilous lives.
43:17
The Talmud emphasized that leadership is one of the actions
43:20
that shorten a person's life.
43:24
Martin Luther King lived in turbulent times.
43:27
He was often discouraged and discontented.
43:30
There were few moments of peace between the fire and the fury of momentous events.
43:35
But it is not in the still calm of life that great characters are formed.
43:40
Greatness is achieved through contending with difficulties.
43:43
Great necessities call out great virtues.
43:46
It is the drama, the tension, and the stress of seasons of turmoil
43:50
awaken qualities which would otherwise lay dormant and carve
43:54
out the character of the hero.
43:57
Perhaps on one level, King would have preferred to have lived a life of ease,
44:02
a life of peace, a life of tranquility.
44:05
Until being thrust into the national limelight almost against his
44:08
will, During the Montgomery bus boycott, wanted to be a scholar.
44:13
He yearned for a life of academia, even throughout the monumental years
44:17
of his civil rights leadership.
44:20
Alas, a tranquil life and a long life were not his destiny, and King sensed it.
44:27
He shared that premonition most famously, but not for the only time.
44:31
On the evening of his assassination, when he spoke about the Promised Land, he felt
44:36
the presence of God flow through him.
44:39
And he often spoke about how he placed himself in God's hands.
44:43
The Book of Proverbs states, A king's heart is in the hands of God.
44:49
His was a prophetic life.
44:51
Prophets do not seek the easy highway of consensus.
44:55
They take a different, more difficult road.
44:58
A road less traveled.
44:59
A road with bumps and curves and hidden dangers lurking behind
45:02
every corner and bend in the road.
45:06
Martin Luther King rejected a life of popularity and easy accommodation.
45:10
I do not determine what is right and wrong, he said, looking
45:14
at the budget of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
45:17
I have not taken a poll of the majority opinion.
45:21
Ultimately, a genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus.
45:26
but a molder of consensus.
45:29
In their lifetimes, prophets are scorned.
45:32
They hold up mirrors to society that reflect and magnify our shortcomings.
45:37
People do not want to see their moral warts.
45:39
It is only later, much later, that we can appreciate the
45:43
enduring value of the prophet.
45:46
And it is only later, much later, only looking back, can we sense God's
45:52
purpose and God's presence in the life and time and words of the prophet.
45:58
is not in the separate details of our lives is not one action, one
46:02
righteous deed, one mistake, one speech that gives shape to our purpose.
46:08
But it is in life's total arc, is in the total bent of our lives
46:13
that we are ultimately judged.
46:16
The arc of the life of Martin Luther King was right.
46:18
It bent towards righteousness.
46:21
I envision him just where he said so often that he wanted to be.
46:25
At the right or at the left of the throne of glory, and I envision the
46:30
Almighty One consoling him with the words that he so often spoke about
46:34
wanting to hear on his day of judgment.
46:38
Well done.
46:40
Well done, my good and faithful servant.
46:48
Until next time, this is In These Times.