iranian fear. but with the association and the process and the backlog to facing the course.

>> good evening. welcome l to but making moves and i will encourage you fit

those that came down and as an editor over eight magazines.

but those who are covering a huge night and my gratitude had -- gratitude on --dash

that you cannot cannot go against the city.ight their plit

and bring pressure to negotiate a fair settlement on the strike. so the invitation went to some of the staff aides were dead set against him going to memphis. in particular andrew young you see him on the left and once again in the middle of the ride is hosea williams. they argued vehemently that it would be a mistake for king to go to memphis. he said it would distract him from the poor people's campaign at a critical moment the campaign was well underway.

and he said he was afraid on the strike would lead to two and two with lead three and there would be the equivalent of a kind of a, he wasn't persuaded. what's happening in memphis is part of the poor people's campaign. they do full-time work for the wages and they are just the kind of people we are trying to help in the campaign and it would be kind of a stop on the way to

washington. >> people like this and the least i can do is go around there [inaudible]

to the motel he checks in and starts meeting in earnest with people in memphis, administrators, local black power group and others to try to build support for a march on the following monday. that night he delivers the mountaintop speech and you may have heard it's a well-known speech. it is known in part because it was the last speech of his life and you can wonde wonder if he t been assassinated the next day if he would be remembered that it would still be remembered because i think it was one of his most moving speeches

especially in the finale of the speech. she talks about dying a violent death and coming to terms with it into his life. i'm going to play the last bits of the finale of the mountaintop 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 lord. how in 1631 to go to abolitionists to follow the example of jesus have sacrificed themselves for the cause of freeing american slaves.

james earl ray had arrived in memphis. i'm not going to take much time to talk about james earl ray because i want to keep this introduction as soon as possible. but i will say that the book profiles james earl ray and it describes his actions april 3 and april 4 in 1968 and also describes the uncanny series of lucky breaks and enabled him to murder king. the next day, april 4, things

are at the hotel he meets with some aid and is in a melancholy mood. through all of the troubles in the challenges that he faced at times you may know this story. his room at the motel was on the second floor. the room opened up to a balcony and at 6:00 he is invited to dinner at the house of a local minister and goes to the balco balcony. he talks to some of his aides in the parking lot below and james earl ray is across the street in a house, fires his rifle, the

bullet strikes him on the right side of his face and he drops instantly to the floor of the balcony. the ambulance rushes him to st. joseph's hospital and he is pronounced dead at 7:05 p.m.. so what are we to make and how should we sum up martin luther king's life? there's lots and lots you can say about that. about how to do that, as 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 at least not in not in a e would dedicate his life to when he finished his phd studies at boston university and what he saw himself at the time he would be a preacher. he would be in some ivory tower somewhere, but it wasn't something that he envisioned doing becoming a national figure, champion on the national stage of the civil rights movement. you probably know the story about what happened in montgomery. the bus boycott and he was sent to the national spotlight.

one event led to another, one campaign led to another. his commitment t deep end and te pencil by 1968, he saw himself in different times he has redefined who he was in his vision and at the time in 1968, he was speaking out passionately against the vietnam war and he was advocating what many people would consider to be a radical program to end poverty once and for all. he was doing tha that at a timet was raising his disability as a controversial figure all the while knowing that he was risking his life.

to a greater and greater degree. they talk about the depth of the commitment. >> at that point in his life there was no way he was going to stop. he wasn't going to take a sabbatical. back then he wanted to die but he said very clearly the night before that he wasn't ready. and as any time anything you say

[inaudible] >> reference to the sabbatical, king being offered a majestic riverside church in new york city if what fulfill a dream team on hand -- dream he longed had because he was determined to push ahead with the causes that were dear to him. now renée and i will have our turn to discuss -- i will hear her questions and respond and then we will open up the conversation to all of you. [applause]

good evening. thanks for the great presentation. the night doctor king was assassinated 50 years ago this coming wednesday, for a lot of people it is something they know from history books but some of us remember that evening very vividly. talk about but few remember in 68. >> i was in my hometown of jacksonville tennessee, and this is a personal aside. my sister was getting married two days later and was supposed to get married in memphis. they moved at the last minute to

jackson in my hometown and because there was a dusk to dawn curfew and it was supposed to be a wedding in the evening in memphis on april 6, i was preoccupied with that. but as soon as i heard the news, i was shocked and distressed and quite concerned about what the implications would be for the movement that i was preoccupied with helping to reorganize the wedding that was two days later. >> i was 5-years-old and it happened to be my father's birthday. my mother was in the kitchen cutting the birthday cake and my father was in the bedroom and i suddenly heard him screaming. i looked at the tv and i couldn't figure out what was going on.

she looked at the tv and just sink down in to the chair. it was a common hysteria where everyone was upset but also a blinding silence that falls like it lasted for days and days. how many books have been written about king every year there's dozens and hundreds of books about king was made you decide to focus on this small but crucial period?

>> none of the other books, and i did read them, none of the other books looked in detail at what happened and i thought it would bring part of the story to life in a way that no one else had done and i also thought that it would show or if he will paint a portrait that would make it more compelling to people if they could see his words in the last few hours of his life in this. and i also thought it was a revealing period of his life under enormous pressure and the way he was responding to pressurthepressure and the circs around him told you something more about him than you knew from some of these other works that were out there.

>> we have these images of the eye of ihave a dream speech in e montgomery 65 but who is martin luther king in the beginning of 68 going into the spring of that year? >> he has changed quite marked markedly. it was not only emphasizing the kind of campaign that have preoccupied him for the first decade of the activism that was segregation and votin the voting rights act and the south, so he had pivoted only that he was championing new causes and poverty and opposing the vietnam war but he also changed and his

tactics were changing. he was becoming more confrontational and engaging in mass civil disobedience. that's what he was planning. in birmingham he had done that but he was going to the nation's capital to confidant the lawmakers in washington in a very direct way and that is different from what he had been doing until then. >> that doesn't sit well with the supporters either. >> there was a lot of dissension first within the largest civil-rights community some people thought his opposition to the war was a mistake from the civil rights and it was mixing the two causes and it would undermine his influence in promoting civil rights.

people who thought the campaign was a mistake or that it would backfire, these are some of his closest aides with the members of the board of the leadership conference. .. to the civil rights movement and it might actually lead to lawn order candidates prevailing in the election which was scheduled for that very year. they are also concerned about alienating lyndon johnson as well. they expected king to be

utterly loyal to him. they had shepherded that civil rights legislation through congress with the 1964 and the rights of 1965. he thought the king owed him allegiance. so when i started speaking out against the war. he took it very personally and so the fear was that johnson would no longer be an ally of the civil rights movement and indeed he was extremely unhappy with the outspokenness on the war. even in the black community. there was a sense that the movement was getting torn down. the focus should have been what the initial mission was which was to eliminate segregation. and people felt like now

you're talking about this campaign. given the fact that poverty affects african americans disproportionately isn't that always part of the overall mission. he did talk about poverty and economic justice it was not his focus. it was much more the racial bigotry in the south. he was laser focused on poverty that's what the difference was. within the civil rights movement and the supporters within the southern christian leadership conference who thought the mission should be tightly focused on the civil rights as it had been defined until 1967 or so. and have moved to the north the people went in to proceed

in fighting for african-american rights and for the more narrow issues of economic advancements for african-americans and not to seek this kind of broad federal response to poverty. it's interesting because you have that quote in the book work king says what's the point of getting a seat at the lunch counter he is joining those two things together and we have to fight for civil rights. but it is broader. a lot of people didn't see it and that was the quote. what does it profit a man to be able to set at a desegregated the desegregated lunch counter if he can't earn enough to pay for a hamburger and a cup of coffee.

that is typical of the kind of clever political systems that they would have to make a point and yes he have moved to the issue of economic justice. it's easy to forget that. he was only 39 years old. but he was tired by 1968. he had been through a lot. it spent almost all of his adult life in the public eye this is a warier martin luther king in this book. he is exhausted. these exertions for this point. have taken a toll and 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 campaign. he had been speaking at that pace. he wasn't sleeping well. he was smoking too much. he often was not feeling well. he was not in good physical shape. i think he was going to forward given the conditions. something i found interesting in the book was that we talked about the media savvy. women seen a lot of attention on the never again movement which has been led by teenagers. they are so young. but the king had his own motives in mobilizing young people especially in birmingham. talk a little bit about that.

that was a tough decision for them because they were afraid in birmingham that they might expose these children to real harm they expected a brutal response from the police and so there was a risk of injury to the mostly high school kids that joined him in the protests in birmingham. birmingham became a kind of morality play in a sense because you saw these young people who were being attacked by a police dogs and being sprayed by fire hoses and that was on the evening news on television. it was a risk they were willing to take. they actually did have a powerful influence. on the american public to watch those scenes.

it's also the reinforcement that the idea of the social movement being led by teenagers is not new and then about halfway through the book somewhat ominously we meet james earl ray. why did you choose that. it's definitely about the background. in prison centric -- sentences. why did you want to devote that to james earl ray. i didn't think you could really understand all the sudden why he would murder king unless you do something about him. it's never really clear why he serves this. it's never been clearly established.

what his motive was. i think the reader deserve to know what his motive might have been. he came from us poor dysfunctional background. his family was messed. he was penalized as a kid himself. his parents and his mother wasn't alcoholic. and left the family and so on and so forth. i don't know. i don't want to draw any conclusions from anyone's background but i thought if the reader knew all of that they would bring at least some intelligence so that they could try to evaluate for themselves where this guy came from.

that was motive enough. he have not shot anyone. they held them up with a gun. i thought that was interesting to note because then you see what happens when he gets to memphis. how in the world could this inept criminal pull off this extraordinary leader and so i think it helps to know you realize how lucky you have to be. how lucky he have to be to make it all fall into place. so that he could actually shoot king.

all of these things fall into place. what you don't do is get into the conspiracy theories. it has has been swarming around for a half-century. that territory has been so thoroughly mined by some people. the u.s. house committee. with some authors. i just didn't think i could bring anything new to it. i read these accounts 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 talk a little bit about the detail and what was happening in the audience. and what was happening with king. talk about that approach. the decision that were not just can replay the speech but we will try to go deeper. the answer there is in order to quote a lot of that speech i would have had to have a copyright license they are tough.

i did ask for a license and it wasn't granted. i wasn't able to quote very many from the speech. i could quote only a minimum amount which is allowed under the fair use doctrine. that is the explanation for that. i would've preferred to have more of what you heard today here in the finale of it. i have to paraphrase that. some people say that early drafts said they thought they have not diminished the chapter that much. i hope that's true. he was a master order. i would've liked to have more of his words and his verbatim in that. you had access to archives. that previous authors have not. what were you able to find in those files. there were two things there. by digging really deep into some archives the transcripts

of the house select committee. some police files in memphis records in a library i was able to unearth some details that others have at least not printed. i think it brought to the the story to life and also revealed some new facets of what happened in the 1968. and also i was lucky enough to have access to some archives of that have only recently been opened and there were archives into libraries in atlanta one was the papers of william rutherford which would've been the last executive director of the southern christian leadership conference before he was assassinated. the material was very helpful.

in telling me more about the poor people's campaign. and what have gone wrong with the poor people's campaign. what was happening there they were trying to raise a lot of money because they were going to house the poor people in a makeshift camp of tents in 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 the expenses and logistics of maintaining a camp like that. they have to raise a lot of money. and also they were trying to recruit thousands of poor people from the inner cities of america and especially from the impoverished rural america. the results were not encouraging they were behind schedule in both respects and raising money and in

recruiting volunteers and so the rutherford papers tell you a lot about the problems that they were having and memos and so on within the sclc. plus this is not was not a smooth ride operation. things always came together at the end. it was the nature of our campaigns they often had to be quick on our feet and they were often not will settled before we got in the midst of the campaign but still there is an enormous amount to do with very little time left the poor people's campaign was to start on april 22 and you see king detouring to memphis. he is going to be detained in memphis. you can ask yourself whether

the poor people's campaign would have unfolded smoothly or not with all of the problems they were having. there is a version of martin luther king and referred to as refrigerator magnet martin it was reduced to uplifting quotes what he really got from this book was humanizing at and taking the lacquer off of martin luther king and showing him the faults and all. there was a smoker. he didn't sleep well. he played practical drugs. -- practical jokes. it was kind of bringing him back to us and set upon him a point him down off the mountaintop. some people would like to think that king was a saint and he was perfect in every

way and idealized human beings but he was a human being. he have some have some of the frailties of a human being and i wanted to paint him as he was. i think it actually enhances it shows him as a farmer impressive person that he did had frailties like anyone. and talked about the fact that he have affairs and people were scandalized less that he have affairs then he was actually talking about them. you have that in your book as well. i interviewed a mistress georgia davis he was a woman of standing in the civil rights movement herself she comes to memphis on the night of april 3. to lead -- lend moral support

to him. i felt i have to tell that story. given the narrative on the last 31 hours of king's life i did not think i could admit that his mattress -- mistress shows up in the middle of that. there was a chapter in the book where i profile her in as i thought there is kind of an eyewitness to history she was there in kings last hours in could tell what his emotional state was like and what his preoccupations were and what he was trying to do then so i was delighted that she was going to talk to me but it did mean that i discussed that he was having an extra marital affair is no secret. it wasn't only ralph. many of his best biographies written about his affairs as

well. >> because those exist. there's always really great things that don't make in the final edition. the interesting thing you found out that you were able to get to it. there are a couple stories i don't want to repeat. i use all of the best materials. i can't think of anything offhand. except for things i don't really want to discuss. what surprised you most in the research. one thing that surprised me. was the failure of the memphis police. briefly the story there is there was no protection by the memphis police on the first two visits.

there was the right and all the more threats against king. the police did provide a four-man security detail protected from the moment he arrived at the airport until 5:00 on the first day. and then the police security was disbanded at that point. there was no more security for him on april 4. and the reason i decided was they were just indifferent to king. the police director testified later they didn't protect them on the first two visits. he was just another person involved in the memphis laboratory strike. we protected them for a day. he's on his own now. that surprised me greatly. i think police protection could've saved his life. i go into that in the book.

even though he was so disorganized in the poor people's campaign. we will ask you to come to the microphone as you would or maybe some capacity. the conspiracy crackpots have and to talk did talk about that.

how the protection was stripped. are you aware of that. you're saying it's not previously revealed though. i don't know of anyone has reported as i did the secret of events that led to the police detail at being stopped on april 4. i don't see any reason to assume that there would be less police for part of the conspiracy. i get so convincing why would they have bothered to give him police security at all. it only raises questions. they been part of the conspiracy they would not had been security for him. i don't think it is logical to infer that he didn't have security on april 4 but he did for seven hours on april the third. that indicates any kind of

security. and raising that alan by that he was chasing the tire. you have seen those interviews no doubt. his alibi is tile total nonsense. he admitted and most everybody who has looked at this carefully has invented this character named raul that did not exist. they have made him a patsy. and changing the tire is another story that has never been verified i think there is some question about whether that actually happened. no one at was ever able to document that. they would announce those who were rioting on his behalf.

did they call for the arrest and prosecution for those who did those acts. what he did there he said it was wrong of the people to riot and he condemned them for writing but he also went on to say that he thought that those young people the victims of poverty and difficult lines and often 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.

>> i admire him and i hope we have other people who step up to the plate like he did. but i have a question about the poor people's campaign. in the garbage workers. did he have any support from the laborers like the unions they were so separated and they couldn't see the chronic good for all workers. do you know what i'm trying to say with that. with the unions and how to the impact and what impact did they have with the white laborers at the time.

any money coming in from the unions at the time. they did have some union support a staunch supporter of king. and his union contributed to this southern christian leadership conference. he was along the supporter of unions he was the coming increasingly supportive of unions and once he embraced the cause of poverty with greater attention because they thought that unions would be part of the answer for solving the problem of poverty. he also criticized unions especially in the south but for the exclusive policies where they didn't allow african-americans to be members of the union and the even excluded them from various training programs in

and that kind of thing. it was somewhat of a mixed message. but he have some union support by no means across the board were all that union supporting him. are there other questions. come on down. in response to that last point about the poor people's campaign. i was living in atlanta at the time that it was being organized. and the vision of the poor people's campaign they would

come in caravans from all over the south from all over the country. from poor white communities in the south. everywhere to try to produce a unified campaign as they compared it to the bonus marchers of 1932. we heard that this was not going well. they needed hundreds of communities or at least dozens of communities hundreds of people to converge on washington and some kind of

organized way. it's an unbelievable -- unbelievable organizing challenge. whether it would have come together if dr. king had lived. his work in chicago had been somewhat disappointed and i think it's probable there was a gathering in washington. i haven't been doing that well. there is one other element they were bringing people of many ethnic and different

racial backgrounds back together to try to unify them for the purpose of protest and some kind of coherent message that they were going to deliver to congress. good african-americans and the people of puerto rican background you have white people from appalachia so the idea that you can combine all of these different ethnic backgrounds into one unified message was another challenge they face.

i am interested in a civil rights question. you get into all of the dimensions of him as a human. as a writer what would you say would be a moment where you felt the most personal connection to king i think i would say that one i can't that while i can understand his courage i think it's towards the end of the speech you see his courage facing

death and coming to terms with it and being willing to talk about it so openly and billy felt a great emotional identity with him. or compassion with him. and i think i was thinking about that and the enormous pressures he was under. the night before he was killed i think that's the moment it was a very good question. interesting. they used to do eulogies for each other. they thought about how may they would be harmed. i'm king says in the speech. from the century before.

we will have to face horse in the physical death so others will not know the psychological death bigotry. and one of the most famous ones of the speech. the crowd sort of says the champion has dropped it. with the arc of it all. i think part of what i wonder about if the noise carried in a way that is precognition of his own death. how that comes to a moment here especially when he really echoes it and speaks directly to it in public at that moment i'm not sure some people say he imagined what was ahead. but clearly he felt it.

he didn't feel it deeply. the threats were becoming more constant and more menacing. no doubt that was waiting on him. i think he must've been aware that there was more and more hostility towards him. what he was saying and doing it was a premonition but as you heard injured young say. he knew he was going to die. it wasn't a matter of if it was only a matter of when. i think he was convinced that his days were numbered. >> it speaks to his courage.

i wondered if you are writing a book about the 31 days after his death was there before would there be for a five or six important things that we should know about. that is another good question. i have to speculate. what would've happened if he would've lived. was there a turning point in the immediate problem of the sanitation workers. the strike was settled in the mayor never agreed to negotiate with the union but the city council took it upon himself to negotiate.

that would happen very quickly within a week or two. as you may recall they went on national television to announce that he was not going to run for reelection 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 couny 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]. [inaudible conversations]