[inaudible conversations] and journalists tennessee.

>> good evening. on behalf of the boston public library, i'd like to welcome you all to the central library and tonight's author talk. before i introduce our speaker tonight, i have a few >> and to introduce our speaker tonight please silence electronic devices and your cell phones. [inaudible]

we will have a question and answer session following the talk and if you have a question richard and i will be happy to bring a microphone to you. so the award-winning investigativeli journalist is a twitter writer for the boston globe and the writer. [applause]

>> thank you for the introduction and to the boston public library for sponsoring this event and c-span for covering it. can everybody hear me okay? and a stellar communist will be joining me later inam the program and will have questions for me and she and i both will take questions from the audience so that is the format and i will s start for 25 minutes with the introduction

of the highlights can be given to you then we will open the conversation for your question i brought a f few photos and some audio clips and excerpts while i was working on the on the morning of april 3 martin luther k king jr. right in memphis tennessee.

with his close aides from the left and on the far right with flight 381 from atlanta airport there was a bomb threat directed specifically and the passengers on the plane were evacuated and dogs were brought in and it turned out to be a false alarm. but the plane arrived late over an hour and is in

settling as that may have been with those garbage workers with a bitter strike and was back speak and to lead a march also in support of the workers. and turning into a riot that had broken away from the march broken windows and looted

stores and police responded with tear gas and guns and clubs and in the aftermath, was condemned by politicians with his nonviolent movement that he was inciting violence some saidir now he decided he had to return to memphis and the march so there he is arriving

back and had another worry that he was on the verge of launching his people's campaign that would bring thousands of poor people to washington to demand sweeping legislation with out of poverty in america. and for the poor people's campaign has gotten off to a slow start the organizing and fundraising going well and was behind schedule.

and somehow he had to revitalize the campaign so coming to memphis was not the ideal time for him because it was a detour from a critical moment. so my book takes the subtitle the time when he arrived at the memphis airport 10:30 three in the morning until he is assassinated at 6:01 p.m. the next day. precisely 33 hours and 20 minutes. the title has a double meaning. first it refers to his resolve

in order to restore as a nonviolent leader. and second it believes to that comment of the federal government and then to all americans to keep them free of poverty and it affirms the right to life liberty and pursuit of happiness into the christian concept that jesus sacrificed himself to relieve community from sin and then

applied it to his own life he believes his sacrifice with the pursuit of economic and racial justice would have value in the christian sense. so how is it intervening in a dispute of the garbage workers of the municipality and to

launch the poor people's campaign.g and then was inspired this was a protest of veterans to converge on washington demanding early payment of the bonus not to be paid as late as 1945 but during the depression that they were in dire financial straits but nonethelessto what he aim to do

with the poor people's campaign. so he was threading massive militants for thousands of people that would flood the streets with those demands ever met with a far-reaching program for those once and for all and then crisscrossing the

country. without legislation he proposed with the protest so to spotlight those very issues with the poor people's campaign and would do that. so what is happening with low

wages with dreadful working conditions these are to strike leaders are to talk about the grievances that i have. >> but now if you go wash her hands? so? got tired >> so the workers decided they

had to form union and started local 1733 with the state employees union filing their grievances to the city they didn't get a satisfactory response and they were planning to strike in the summer of 1968. but the weather had something to say about that and the timing with the sewer and drain division were sent home so the white workers were kept on the job and were paid a full days work. on the next day two of the garbage workers took refuge in

the back of the truck like the one that you see here out of the rain with a mechanical malfunction it pulled the two men into the jaws and killed both of them. so those back-to-back events, racial disparity of those workers on january 31 and the horrific death that so outraged those workers that union leaders decided the time was right to strike and they calledo the strike february 12 and 1100 of the 1200 walked away from their jobs.

it did not take long, just a matter of days before what started as a labor dispute ascended to portions of the major racial confrontation. and the workers quickly adopted a slogan i have a man that seems pretty mild but in the jim crow south and had a residence african-american men often not addressed as mr. or by the last name they were often called boy which is the difference of man. so here is a deep-seated

constraint on the racial bigotry in the workplace for the department of public works at the time. the supervisors were virtually all white the workers in the street collecting the garbage were were virtually all black. so it was obvious the strike had reached an impasse by march, the mayor in memphis took a hard-line and you had seen him here because his position was simple that says it is against the laws of the state of tennessee for public employees to strike and i am

not negotiating with lawbreakers. i don't negotiate with the strikers only when they returned to their jobs. also a politician was elected a few months before, and he had extensive african-american support. so he was responding to what he thought the white constituency wanted to take a hard line on the strike but his closest friends, a minister from the methodist church was the mayor during the strike and came to the conclusion that the mere suffered from tunnel vision

that he meant to do the right thing but was taking a very legalistic approach to the strike and that he did not appreciate that the large portions that were at work that were shifting social political and racial gait and that the strike itself was an expression of what was happening with those large forces so when they tried to persuade the mayor he had to take a more conciliatory approach to the strike, and was frustrated with what he tried to do, here is an account his account account. [inaudible] i said you are a compassionate

person -- people were applauding him and i was one of the few voices. they deserve a fair shake breaking the law you cannot strike against the city. >> once the >> that once the replacement workers showed up on the job and then to pick up a large amount of the trash that is soon became apparent the strike was at an impasse. so some of the leaders in the african-americanmu community

decided they needed to bring king to memphis and to address the rally and it was spotlight and bring pressure on the mayor for the settlement of the strike. so the invitation went to king and his staff needs. in particular andrew young, you see him and then bernard lee on the right and andrew young in particular that it would be a mistake to go to this and he said it would distract him from the poor people's campaign at a critical moment that was well underway.

and he said he was afraid that one strike of the to to them that leads to three then the civil rights equivalent of mission creep. king was not persuaded and said i'll just go for one visit then datasets. and he said what's happening in memphis is something that is part of the poor people's campaign. because i need to go down there to help these people who are impoverished or people that do full time work part-time wages and just the type of people and trying to help in the campaign and memphis will be a stop on the way to washington. so here is what andrew young has to say about that too and

fro between king and himself on this >> people like this and the least i can do is go around there [inaudible] >> so trapped he is back, he

arrives at the airport and checked in at the lorraine hotel, and starts meeting in earnest with people and memphis ministers and the local white power group and others to try to build support for the march that he is planning on the following monday. but that night he delivers the mountaintop speech it is a well-known speech that was the last speech of his life but it would be it would be one of those moving speeches with the finale of the speech and talks

about his dread of dying a violent death and talks about coming to terms with that kind of death into his life and does so more openly and the emotional way than he ever did before. i'm going to play the last bits of so i will play the last bit now the of that mountain top speech .

[inaudible] people would get to the promised land you may know the last time my eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the >> with the battle hymn of republic how in 1631 abolitionist with the cause of freeing american slaves you have to think that the battle hymn of the republic had importance for king so to

think about his own mortality so meanwhile james earl ray arrived h in memphis. i will not take time now to talk about james earl ray because i want to keep the introduction as brief as possible. but to describe his actions and memphis april 3 and 4th. and with that uncanny series of lucky break that enabled king one -- ray to murder king. so on the next day, april 4 he is at the hotel meeting with his aides.

and with the troubles and challenges facing at the time. so his room at the motel was on the second floor. . . . . . . down in the parking lot below across the street in a rooming house fired his rifle and it strikes king on the right side of his face.

kaine drops sensibly to thee floor of the balcony. the ambulance rushes him to st. joseph hospital. he is pronounced dead at 7:05. so what are we to make of it how should we sum up martin luther king's life? there is lots he could say about that. i'm sure you have your ideas about how to do that. when i worked on my book i was intrigued especially by what you might call his personal odyssey. he wasn't always destined in his mind. he was a civil rights advocate not in the way he would dedicate his life to it.

he was leaving boston and finish his ph.d. studies at austin university and a at that time he would need a preacher. he thought he might be a theologian and some ivy tower somewhere but it was not something he envisioned doing as a national figure a champion on the national stage of the civil rights movement. you probably know the story of what happened in my amar'e. there was a bus boycott -- ed buss boycotted he was catapulted to the national spotlight. one event led to another and one campaign led to another.

his commitment deepened and deepened and deepened so by 1968 he saw himself in different terms and it redefined who he was and his vision. the time in 1968 he was speaking out passionately at against the vietnam war and he was advocating what many people would consider a radical program to end poverty once and for all. and he was doing all that at a time he was all the while knowing that he was risking his life to a greater and greater

degree. so andrew young talks about the depth of king's commitment by the spring of 1968. >> it was a blessing because there was no way he was going to stop. he wasn't going to take a sabbatical. he was going to push it to the end, not that he wanted to die or he was ready to die but he said area clearly the night before that he was ready to die. his conscience wouldn't let him. and you know at any time anything you say against him could he death. >> so the reference to the sabbatical king offered the

interim pastor that the majestic riverside church in new york city it would fulfill the dream that he long had to be a theologian in residence buddy turned the invitation down because it was determined to push ahead with the causes that were dear to him. that concludes my introduction. renee and i will have our turn to discuss it. i would like to hear her questions i will try to respond to your questions andnd as i sad we will open up the conversation to all of you. thank you. [applause]

>> good evening. thanks, joe. a really great presentation. the book references the night before king was -- 50 years ago this coming wednesday. a lot of people know it from the history books and films but some of us and i was very young at the time remember that evening very vividly. talk about what you remember about april 4, 1968. >> i was actually in my hometown of jackson tennessee and this is a personal aside. my sister was getting married a few days later and she was actually supposed to get married in memphis. they move the wedding at the last minute to jackson my hometown because there was a

dusk to dawn curfew in memphis and was supposed to be a wedding in the evening on april 6. i was preoccupied with that but asas soon as i heard the news i was shocked and stressedew and s quite concerned about what the implications would be for the civil rights movement but also i was preoccupied with helping to reorganize two days later. >> i was five years old and it happened to be my father's 36th birthday so my mother was in the kitchen cutting the birthday cake and my father was in the bedroom. i heard him screaming and i looked on the tv and it just said i'll attend but i was so young i couldn't quite figure out what's going on. the same time i heard my grandmother downstairs screaming as well and my mother came from

the kitchen and she looks at the tv and just sink down into the chair. it is fixed inn my mind the way it does because it was the first time i ever saw my parents cry. the house went into a hysteria where everyone was upset but there is also this blinding silence that fell like it lasted for days and days and days. i don't know if my parents hadn't been so upset it would be such an indelible memory. in a lot of ways it's one of the earliest and clearest memories i have. so many books have been written about king every year. dozens of books about king. what made you decide to focus on the small but crucial period of his life? >> there were many other books and i did read them.

other books look at the detail at what happened in narrative way and i thought it would be bringing a part of the story to life if i did the close of narrative in a way that no one else had done. i also thought secondly that it would show king if you will to paint a portrait s of king that would make it more compelling for the people if they could see what his actions were in the last few hours of his life in memphis. also thought it was a particularly revealing period in his life because he was under enormous pressure and the way we responded to pressures and the circumstances around it really told you something more about king then you knew from any of the other works that were out there.re >> my next question is we have frozen images of martin lutherr

king and his speech in 1963 in the selma montgomery march in 1965 but who is martin luther king in the beginning of 1968 going into the early spring of that year? >> he changed quite markedly. he was no longer emphasizing the kind of campaign that had preoccupied him for thee first decade of his civil rights activism which was desegregation and the voting rights act in the south. he had pivoted and not only was he champing new causes, the causes of party and opposing the vietnam war. also his tactics were changing too. he was becoming more

confrontational more willing to engage en masse civil disobedience for a long time. that's what he washe planning in washington and in birmingham he had done that but he was going to confront the lawmakers in washington. in a very direct way and i think that's different from what he had been doing tactically and tell them. >> that didn't sit well with all of his supporters either. >> there was a lot of distention first within the larger civil rights community. some people thought his opposition to the war was distracting attention from civil rights and it was mixing the two causes and it would undermine, undermine his influence in promoting civil rights. also they thought the poor

people's campaign was mistaken people thought that it would backfire and some of his closest aides and members of the board of the leadership conference were saying it was a time of great tension in the country. there were protests against the vietnam war and the inner cities of america. they thought the protest he was planning with only pardon the resistance to the civil rights movement and might actually lead to law and order candidates prevailing in the election which was scheduled for that very year 1968. there was quite a bit of internal discord over what he was doing. >> there was also concern about alienating clinton johnson as well who was seen as somewhat of an ally. >> went in johnson he became utterly loyal to him because

johnson as you probably remember had separated the civil rights legislation and 50 sigrid -- desegregation in 1964 the voting rights act of 1965 so he thought king owes him allegiance. when king started speaking out against the war calling it lyndon johnson's war he took it very personally. the fear was that johnson would no longer be an ally to the civil rights movement and indeed he was extremely unhappy with king's outspokenness on the war. >> even in the black community there was the sense that they media was getting -- king was spreading himself too thin and the focus should have been what the leadership council's original message was and people felt like well given the fact that poverty affects

african-americans disproportionately in some way wasn't that always part of the overall mission? >> he did talk about poverty and economic justice but it was not his focus. his focus was much more on racial bigotry in the south. now he was laser focused on poverty. so that is what the difference was. there were people within the civil rights movement and supportersil within the southern christian leadership conference who thought the mission should the tightly focused on civil rights c. he had moved to the north but there were people, which was fine. peopleo wanted to proceed in

fighting for african-american rights and for the more narrow issues of economic expands meant for african-americans and not to seek this kind of broad federal response. >> you have that quote in the book what king said is what's the point of getting a seat at the lunch counter if you can't afford to buy hamburger so joining those two things together. civil rights is broader and a lot oft people didn't see that. >> a lot of people didn't see that and his q exact quote was profit a man to be able to sit edited the segregated lunch counter if he enough pay for a hamburger and a cup of coffee. that is typical of the soliloquy since he would have to make a

point and he had moved to that issue economic justice. >> something in the look martin luther king was only 39 years old, relatively young man but he was tired by 1968. he had been through a lot. he spent almost his whole adult life in the public eye. we saw much more weary martin luther king in this book. >> yeah. 13 years since montgomery had taken a toll. he had been hospitalized several times for exhaustion. he was especially worn out in early april of 1968 because he had been on the road to promote the poor people's campaign.

all over the country he had been speaking at a torrid pace. he wasn't sleeping well. he suffered from insomnia. he was smoking too much. he often was not feeling well. he wasoo not in good physical shape yet he was going forward with i think remarkable stamina. >> something i found in justin in the book as you talk about king's mediaha savvy and right w we have been seeing a lot of attention on teenagers. king had his own motives in mobilizing young people especially in earning him. talk a little bit about that. >> that was a tough decision for them because they were afraid that they might expose -- the

expected a brutal response from the police in birmingham so there was the risk of injury to mostly high school kids who joined him in the protests in birmingham. that was the reasoning. i think birmingham became a morality play in agh sense becae you saw these young people who were being attacked by police dogs and being sprayed by fire hoses. that was on the evening news on television. >> unit that would have an impact. >> kenya that would have an impact and it actually did have a powerful influence on the american public watching those scenes unfold on their tv screens.

>> the idea of a social movement being led by teenagers and then halfway through the book somewhat ominously in chapter 13 we meet james earl ray. why did you choose to devote to chapters to james earl ray? the first half is about ray's background this harsh life in prison sentences and parents. why did you want to devote that to james earl ray? >> all of a sudden at the end of the book ray would murder king embassy knew something about its which was not clear. he was racist but it was never clear why. >> i leave it to the reader to draw some conclusions. it's never been clearly established what the motiveat ws but i think the reader deserves

to know at least some back around afraid on what his motive might haveig been. he came from an extraordinarily poor and dysfunctional background. hisdy family was a mess and thee was crime everywhere and his family. he was really penalized as a kid himself. his parents, his brother was an alcoholic and his father was into crime and left the family and so on and so forth. i don't want to draw any conclusions about anyone's background but i thought if the reader knew all of that it would give them some intelligence so they would know where this guy came from. some people say that was motive enough but he hadn't been a

killer and he hadn't shot anyone. he had held people up with a gun but he hadn't actually injured anyone. he was a bungling criminal and i thought that was interesting to know because you see what happens when he gets to memphis. people ask how in the world would this in that criminal pull off killing this extraordinary leader. i think it helps to know. it also you realize how lucky he had to be which is the theme of that last chapter to make it all fall into place so that he could actually shoot king. it almost feels double colin a kind of way. if you want to make all of those

illusions i believe it up to you. what you don't do in the book is get to the conspiracy theories which have been swirling around around. why did you decide to avoid that? >> i decided to avoid it has the territory has been so thoroughly mined by so many people and agencies. the fbi and the justice department and the u.s. house committee on assassinations investigated authors and i just didn't think i could bring anything new to it and i am satisfied that ray kill king and enough we will ever know for sure if there were conspirators and the house select committee.

you mentioned though the mountaintop speech that is able in 1968 and you read the whole chapter of the speech. you devote a whole chapter to the speech but you don't focus on a great deal to talk about the detail on what was happening in the audience and what was happening with king and ralph abernathy. talk about the approach and the decisionec to try to go deeper. >> into order to quote a lot of that speech i would have had to have a copyright. >> and they are tough. they are not free in granting copyright licenses. so i did ask for licenses and it was not granted. i was not able to quote from his speech protected only quote a minimum amount.

that's the explanation for that. i would preferred and what you heard in the w finale of the speech. >> parts of the speech you can actually quote. >> a couple of people who read the early drafts of the later drafts said it hadn't diminished the chapter that much but i hope that's true but he was a master orator and i would like to have had more of his words verbatim. >> you have access to archives. talkinge about what you would find in those files. >> well there were two things there. the first by digging really deep into some archives for instance the transcripts of the house select committee on assassinations some police files

in memphis some records with the library was able to unearth some details that others had had them printed. ithe revealed some new facets of what happened in 1968. also i was lucky enough to have access to some archives that were open. they were archives and libraries in atlanta and one was the papers of william rutherford who was the last executive director of the southern christian leadership conference before king was assassinated. that material was veryed helpful and telling me more about the campaign and what had gone wrong with it and what was going wrong

with it. >> talk about what was going wrong with it. >> what was happening there was they were trying to raise a lot of money because they were going to house poor people in the makeshift camp of tents and washington and they would have to house them for weeks and maybe months and they would have to feed them and they would have to pay for all of these logistic expenses of maintaining a camp like that. also they were trying to recruit thousands of poor people from the innero cities of america and rural areas of america. the were not encouraging. they were a hind schedule and raising money and recruiting volunteers so the rutherford papers tell you a lot about the

palms they were having with memos and so one. >> this was not a smooth running operation. >> things always came together at the enday. that was theas nature of our campaign. they often -- we often had to be quick on her feet and things were often not well settled before we got into the midst of the campaign but still there was little time left. the poor people's campaign was to start on april 22 and to see king going to memphis on april 23. he was going to be detained in memphis until the march. so you can ask yourself whether the poor people'sth campaign wod

have unfolded smoothly or not with all the problems they were having. >> you refer to refrigerator magnet martin where so many reduced to quotes and he's a monument. what i got from this book was humanizing him and showing him as a -- that his marriage was having problems and he w was a smoker and he didn't sleep well but he played practical jokes and imitated other preachers. it's kind of bringing him back to us pulling him down off the mountain top and pulling him back to be with us. >> yes it is. many like to think that martin luther king was a saint and he was perfect in any way in an idealized humanan being but he d

the frailties are somee of the frailties of the human being. i wanted to paint him as he was. i think it actually enhances his importance and it shows him as a far more impressive person and that he did have for lps like anyone. >> and when ralph abernathy wrote his book and talked about the fact that martin luther king had affairs and people were scandalized. not the fact that he had affairs that the abernathy was talking about them. >> i interviewed his mistress of georgia davis who is the woman of standing in w the sole rights movement herself. she comes to memphis late on the night of april 3, actually the early morning of april 4. i felt i had to tell that story

given my narrative for the last 31 hours of king's life. his mistress shows up in the middle of that period and there's a chapter in the book in which i profiled her. she is kind of an eyewitness to history. she was there in king's last hours and you could tell what is emotional state was like and what his preoccupations were and what he was trying to do then. i was delighted that she was willing to talk to meo but it dd mean thatha i discussed that he would had a marital affair. but that's no secret. many of his best biographies wrote about it as well.

>> there are always sees great things it does make it into the final vision. what did you find out that you weren't able to get to the story for the book? >> there were a couple of stories that i don't want to repeat. >> it's just us, come on. [laughter] >> i can't think of anything offhand except things that i don't want to discuss. >> was surprised at the most in your research? >> one thing our surprise at learning is the memphis police protected king. recently the story there is there was no protection in his first two visits to memphis on march 28 but then there was the riot and there were threats againsthe king. the police did provide a

security detail to protect him from the moment he arrived at the airport until 5:00 the next day that hen was there on april april 3. the police security was disbanded at that point. there was no security for him on april 4. the reason i decided the police director testified later that they didn't protect him on his first two visits because they didn't seem as all that consequential. they said he was just another person involved in the memphis garbage workers strike. i think it was that indifference. they said well we protected him for a day and he is on his own now. that surprised me greatly. i think police protection could have saved his life and i go into that in the book. another surprise for me was we talked about how disorganized

and what trouble the poor people's campaign was. i don't think anyone reported it or at least i'm not aware of it if they did. so there were two surprises. >> i think we are ready to take questions. >> all right, questions? i would ask you to come to the microphone if you would please. >> the matter of the police protection being stripped from him the conspiracy crackpots have talked or did talk about that how the protection was stripped. are you aware of that? >> i am.

>> it's not revealed though. >> well i don't know of anyone who supported as i did the sequence of events that led to the police detail being stopped on april 4 but i don't see any reason to assume the bear were these conspiracies. no evidence has ever emerged that there were and i think it's so convincing. why would they give you security at all and then abandon it? if they would have been part of the conspiracy there never would have been any security for him. i don't think it's inferred from thet fact that he had security n the april 4 but he did on april april 3 and if that indicates any kind of conspiracy in which

the memphis police played a part. >> he was changing a tire and he tried to explain himself. >> he comes through as -- . >> i'm pretty sure and most everyone who has looked at this carefully saved this character rove did not exist and it made him kind of a patsy. and changing the tire is another story that had never been verified. i think there is some question about whether that actuallyy happened. no one was ever able to document that happened. >> to your knowledge to king ever denounce those who were breaking windows and setting fires text it eads announced those?

>> what king did their was he said it was wrong of the people riot and he condemned them for writing but then he also went on to say he thought that those youngho people were themselves victims of poverty and victims of difficult lives often in very dysfunctional families and the answer to that was not simply punishment but the answer was to do something about the underlying conditions that caused these people to act out in that way. he did say both. he did say both. >> thank you. >> hi.

i have a question as far as the poor people's campaign and the garbage workers but at the time did martin luther kingdi have ay support from the labor workers like the unions. they hadt been so separated and they couldn't see the common good for all workers. do you know what i'm trying to say? were they unified or was it just segregated? you know the unions, how did they impact in what impacted they have and the white labor groups. did martin luther king have any money coming in from the unions at the time and what part did

they play? >> yes he did have somee suppor. the united autoworkers was a staunch supporter of king and his union contributed to the southern christian leadership conference. king was a long supporter of unions. he was becoming increasingly supportive of unions. once he embraced the cause of poverty with greater attention because he thought that it would be part of the answer for solving the problem of poverty. he also criticized unions especially in the south is not only in the south for their exclusive policies where they didn't allow african-americans to be members of the union and the excluded them from various training programs. it was somewhat of a mixed message the basic way king had some union support.

by no means were across-the-board all unions supporting him. >> thank you. >> other questions? come on down. >> in response to that last point about the poor people's campaign i was living in in atlanta at the time it was organized and not personally involved but i knew what was going on. the division of the poor people's campaign was people wouldld come in caravans and mae drawn by mules and so on from

all over the south, from all over the country but including poor white communities in the south as well as poor black communities everywhere to try to produce a unified campaign. but compared to the bonus marchers of 1932. certainly wee heard in the early months of 1968 but this was not going well. it's an incredible -- incredible organizing. you think about they needed hundreds of communities or at least dozens of communities across the country to send hundreds of people to converge on washington and sometimes it is in unbelievable organizing

challenge. whether it would have come together if dr. king had lived i can't say it wouldn't have let you know chicago had been somewhat disappointing. i think it's probable that the poor people's campaign would have been only halfway there as it was. they did go ahead and there was a gathering in washington. >> it was a nightmare to make it all happen and it hadn't been going that well. there was one other i element in which they were bringing w peope of many ethnic and different racial backgrounds altogether in trying to unifyre them for the

purpose of protests and some kind of coherent message that they would then deliver to congress. so you had african-americans. you had people of puerto rican background. you had mexican-americans and american indians. you had all kinds, and you had white people from appalachia in various parts of the country so the idea that you could combine all these different ethnic racial backgrounds into one unifiedag message was get anothr challenge that they faced in making a successful campaign in washington. >> thank you.

>> hi. i'm interested in -- as renee said you humanized him in the book and you get into all the dimensions of him as a person in his final moments. as a writer what would you say would be maybe one moment where you saw a personal connection to king and when you yourself having lived as best as a writer can in his skin, the moments as a price to? >> that's a good question. i think i would say when i came to understand his courage. i think it's toward the end of the mountaintop speech. you see his courage facing death and coming to terms with that and being willing to talk about

it so openly. i really felt a great emotional compassion for him. i think it w was thinking about that and the enormous pressures he was under the night before he wasd killed. i think that's the moment. that's a very good question. >> something that's interesting. they talk about king and abernathy and they used to do eulogies for each other in thought about their death. obviously theyme were tracking steps behind them from time to time king says from his speech and teddy parker from a century before.

some suffer physical death so others won't have to suffer -- death. the crowd started. [inaudible] he said the arc of justice is long but bends towards justice. he always carried hisn pickup mission of his own death. how it comes to a moment here especially when he really echoes that and speaks directly to it in public. i'm not sure. some people say he imagine what was ahead but clearly he felt it here so deeply. >> he did feel it deeply. thee threats are becoming more constant and more menacing and

he had a bomb threat in atlanta. no doubt that was weighing on him. i think he must have been aware that there was more and more hostility because of what he was saying and w doing. you could say it was a premonition but as you heard andrew young say they knew they were going to die. it was not a matter of if, it was only a matter of when. i think he was convinced that his days weree numbered. >> it speaks to his courage. thank you. >> thank you. >> thank you was also very interesting and i have a question. i wondered if you were writing a book about the 31 days after his

death. where there four, five or six important thing so we should know about? >> that's another good question. i would have to speculate, you mean what is to happen or speculate what would have happened if he didn't? >> was there a turning point in the immediate problem of the sanitation workers? >> the strike wase settled. the mayor never agreed to negotiate but the city council took it upon themselves to negotiate. the mayor could have vetoed the settlement. the workers did get increasing wages. they got assurance that the working conditions would improve and they did and also their unions record -- were recognized

>> how many days? >> that would happen quickly within a weekouck or two. as you may recall the night of march 31 lyndon johnson went on national television and announced that he was not going to run for re-election he was sort of lesson the picture. it really fell by the wayside. what would've happened if king would have left. it is a speculative question. it was draining the u.s. treasury. and money was going for guns more and more. so actually there had been a war on poverty.

they had supported and congress have approved. and they have to cut the funds even for the war on poverty that was underway. because of the demand for money. to prosecute the war. with immediate response to his assassination did anything they did not have a bright future. they became the face of the slc.

he have a certain strength but he did not have king's strength. so the slc. faded as a force in the american life and then there was a. of time when they were so much political upheaval in the country over the vietnam war and other causes the democratic convention and you may remember how chaotic that was. inside the convention and outside the short answer is there was a progress.

it really didn't i have not yet read the book with the poor people's march. in your reading of that success. his notes and his archives. thinking back with a march on washington. how successful that was and how it had been deemed impossible leading up to. but has been such a success. did they reveal do they reveal anything about the relationship and 68 and the union's and all of those that

team of people who had put together the 1963 march. and is there anything in there about the sclc's later relationship who actually was the mastermind behind the 63 march. deftly could have a plan pull off the poor people's march. the march on washington had universal support. it was a critical organizer of that. but the march on washington head nothing like that kind of solid support of the leaders with the organizations i'm not sure at this point. i don't think he was in favor of it.

i know he was opposed and they both fought that the march on washington was a mistake for the reasons that they discuss. that was one important difference. i don't think they were supporting the poor people's march. because a lot of those leaders did not agree that it was a wise policy. it was a wise strategy to have the poor people's march. thank you very much all for coming.

[applause]. [applause] [inaudible conversations]

>> since 1980 the number of people going to jail has tripled and their sentences have increased by 156%. as you peel back the onion and you try to figure out what the heck has happened, what you'll find is most of it is due to untreated mental anonymous and substance abuse disorders.

the book "chasing king's killer" is about the death of martin luther king jr. and his assassin james earl ray. the author james swanson was interviewed by "associated press" writer jesse holland. >> host: this is an absolutely fabulous book especially now that we are coming up on the 50th anniversary of the