tavis: good evening. from los angeles, i am tavis smiley.tonight, a conversation with scholar jonathan reuter -- jonathan rieder on a discussion about martin luther king fighting against jim crow. thank you for joining us on the conversation about the moral courage of dr. king coming up right now. >> there is a saying that dr. king had that said there is always the right time to do the right thing. i just try to live my life every day by doing the right thing. we know that we are only halfway to completely eliminate hunger, and we have a lot of work to do. walmart committed $2 billion to fighting hunger in the u.s. as we work together, we can stamp hunger out.

>> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. take a on april -- tavis: on april 12, 50 years ago, martin luther king allowed himself to be arrested and put in the birmingham, alabama jail cell where he read a newspaper that quoted moderate what energies as saying that thewere extreme and untimely. at the time, he wrote an

eloquent letter in response. sociology professor jonathan rieder has taken a closer look at that pivotal document in a new o'connell the "gospel of treating -- in a new look called "gospel of freedom." we start by asking what it was that made you want to dissect this letter. i at the most basic level, have always been drawn to the letter. it has a aureus complexity. kingee the high-minded with these fancy philosophic notions and you also see one bristling with indignation. one moment he is taking you in to a voyage deep into the white southern soul -- i wonder who

worships there and who is their god? then he takes whites into the recesses of like boehner ability. it is fast -- recesses of black vulnerability. i felt i needed to say more about the tough substance of dr. king. in many ways, "letter from birmingham jail" is his fullest statement about race in america. if you know how to read the letter in light of all of his other performances and appearances, unique kenyan new and it is a -- you meet king a new and it is a surprising one. his view of social change, the role of moral up here, the limited role of moral appeal by itself the change white hearts. statement tremendous about black self-sufficiency

that people don't understand is so central to the core of dr. king. all of those things are in the letter, a treatise on civil disobedience. it is more than that. that is the sense in which it is so full. the stage foret those who want around 50 years ago are for those who have forgotten the events that led to him being arrested on good friday 50 years ago. what was happening in birmingham and how he found himself in jail to begin with? >> he decided to go to birmingham after what was seen a failure in albany, georgia. they thought in birmingham they would do it differently. it would be more -- they were learning as they went. they were going into one of the most frightening racist towns in the whole country. so they felt that cometh they cracked birmingham, they could crack jim crow. i won't go through the whole story, but, if in those weeks leading up to jail, things

weren't going well. the black people of birmingham and the black clergy were not responding to his call to go forward. and you hear a very frustrated king who is disappointed with black people before he is disappointed in the clergyman in a letter. a few weeks before all this happens, god is telling moses why are you having the children of israel complained to me to take them to the promised land? they have to go there themselves. and then you hear king saying i can do it alone. you start to hear the -- i can't do it alone. you start to hear the frustration and him. they may lose, after all they llve ambled, they have gone oa in antifamily decides that he wi ginto court arrest

because he needs to jar the people of birmingham forward. was it planned? didn't happen that way? >> there is -- did it happen that way? >> there is some speculation. for all of his passion and narrative, he identified more with jesus than with moses. he views himself as suffering on the cross that he would suffer for his people so they could be redeemed. that was built in from the beginning. but even in the last few days, he was unsure. but it was ralph abernathy, his colleague, on thursday before good friday, who gives an incredible version of were you there when the cross of five my lord? and then will you join my disciples martin luther king and ralph abernathy tomorrow?

innocence, ralph abernathy was ahead of king because king was faltering -- in a sense, ralph abernathy was ahead of king because king was a faltering profit. he was a very human profit. -- human prophet. ands: i love the back story these prophetic moments in history. but there is even a story on how he got a newspaper. how he gotory of access to a newspaper. >> there is some debate on this . but i found a rare tape of dr. king preaching. it's the first time he addresses a mass meeting after he gets out of birmingham jail. so on april 22, you can hear him delivering a version -- a version of "letter to arming from- "a letter to

birmingham jail." they have to bring you breakfast and they have to bring your lunch and they say, reverend, i know what you're talking about and tomorrow i will bring you a paper. >> talk about his reaction when editorial by these white clergyman who are saying, centrally, that is ill-timed. this is not the right strategy. to me more about the letter or the op-ed piece and then his response to it. >> it is really important to understand the mood he was in. depression,ed into a kind of handing. he was in bad shape. in jail for the first

time without ralph abernathy in the cell. he described himself as a terrible moment. but he reads the letter and suddenly he is i early out of the valley and up the mountain again on a tide of indignation. he is furious. he is exasperated. lawyerarence jones, his and friend, and king has been in solitary, he can see that king is in a sniff and that he has been writing, jotting down things on the margins of newspapers and on toilet tissue because he had no writing utensils. and jones is thinking, oh, my lord, i thought he had lost it. he was so angry. you have to understand the indignation at these white clergyman saying why did we wait, that it's untimely and that it precipitated violence.

why would thinking you waste your time answering? why answer a bunch of white clergyman? it's what we expected from them. but that theory at the treatment of his race -- but that fury at the treatment of his race and the indictment of violence, saying why didn't he wait, that put him forward. for years, he has been saying that there comes a time and now is the time. and the fact that it is clergyman who represent the enlightened clergy in alabama that he is an extremist? what was happening to make these white clergyman put something like this in the local newspaper?

>> there are eight of them. there was a local rabbi. there were the catholic priests. and the rest were from every domination of protestantism. al eight of them had signed statement condemning george wallace's speech in january. so they thought themselves as moderate in context of alabama. they were the online info, as it were. folk, as ithtened were goo. so to see that what king was doing to create ill will among the races, it tells you something about the mindset of even the moderates who were the abject of "letter from birmingham jail."

king explodes on the phone at robert kennedy and kennedy is so taken aback that he hands the phone over to burke marshall. this anger that had been building, frustration over moderate whites saying go slow, be cautious, don't push things, was all embodied in the eight white ministers who basically said nothing about love the negro because he is your brother. these are clergyman simply ising protest is extreme, violent, it causes bad feelings. a new be -- wait because administration will come along and it just got to king. as white walker put it, his cup of endurance runneth over. that is why the letter is so important t.

it was not just the clergy. it was his view of the kennedy administration and a nation that was not willing to become indignant over the affection of their black brothers and sisters. >> let's move to another group that you mentioned earlier in this conversation. the african-american preachers, black preachers, negro, colored at the time. this is a part of history that isn't known so well. there is a sense that king was the crème de la creme and that every black church in america welcomed him and that he could always get in on its inside of a lack church. indeed, -- in a black church. indeed, it in alabama, there were all kinds of black riches that would not come near dr. martin luther king. even during vietnam, everybody shunned him. but at this moment, at this

breaking point in the city of birmingham, which was so bad at the time, it was called bombing him. talk to me about what the black clergy in that city -- not all, but certainly most of them -- to their sense of running away from king. >> there are many levels to this, as there always are in clergy politics. that was very much there. andrew young estimated that they had the support of about five percent of the black churches in birmingham. tavis: 5%? that means 95% of the preachers in birmingham were not with him. >> and i am not a mathematician or a social scientist. talk about a world of trouble and hurt. king had fred shuttlesworth, another prophetic and fearless man. we don't want to forget that king was piggybacking on

shuttlesworth's movements who had been fighting the clan and o'connor and racism ever since the mid-1950s. so there was fred charlesworth church and a couple here and there. but recently, they only had four or five of these churches in which to have their mass meetings even. there were also issues were the major guy in black that just -- black baptist ministerial association, who is this guy to come into our town? just because he comes in from atlanta and says to jump we are supposed to say how high? and for the black professional classes and religious bodies that opposed king, the set up was not utterly with consultation because king and shuttlesworth were really afraid that cometh this got out out, they would not be able to pull it off. they would have to keep it secret. a lot of complexity.

it's not like the african- american community said, come here, dr. king, you are our leader. tavis: so he is the recipient of a newspaper that is snuck into the jail cell. he reads this treatise from this why clergy and starts making notes in the margins of the paper and for the paper in the jail cell. and clarence jones comes into the picture. his attorney who has been on the show it a number of times. he ends up sneaking this letter out of the jail cell, we are told. tell me about plants and dr. king and how the letter got out. >> clarence begins to smuggle .ut some of these jottings he was being asked to stuff these jottings into his pants.

there is a little bit of comedic theater going on here. it out to wyatt tee walker who is really the man who supervises the production of the letter. tote walker is able decipher king's scrawl. he is making these arguments and their are at -- and there are arrows and arabesques. they're trying to figure it out. there is a 17-year-old woman from a gala, georgia who is typing it up. dr.they are saying that king can preach good, but he can't write because they can't figure out what he is saying. grandioses a document with a backstage that is a comedic and logistical nightmare in some ways. in a few days, king has access to other people than clarence jones. so they have a draft back to him to revisit and the rest we know his history in some sense. , all walker, andrew young

the people who were close to him will say, in many respects, they didn't understand how important the document would need and it appears that some of these initial jottings of king were actually thrown out. the woman was typing them up and some of it were thrown out. they were trying to liberate lack the book, not a socialism treasonous -- a socialism treatise. tavis: talk to me about the moderate person in birmingham, for that matter, across the nation, why that ended up being the focus of king later. >> i think this is the critical question to grasping the radicalism of his analysis, even in 1963. many people see him as getting

more radicalize as time goes by, but certainly in town he did. in substance, writing this letter, why the moderate? we have to remember that he starts out trying to sway the moderate. he is the diplomat in the first half of the letter gave he wants to justify nonviolence and get them to understand why lacks are impatient. so there is a kind of diplomatic effort. but then he shifts radically to chiding and chastising, both in the promising and -- both in diplomacy and chastising, there is this thing that is underneath. he did not think that very many whites had much empathy. he was not naïve about the power of moral appeal to change hearts absent social protests durin. he did not have faith in the

piety, but in black people's bottomless vitality that went back to the slaves. and what he says i believe the stumbling block to the liberation of black people is not the clan, but all the decent white people, the appalling silence of white people. and that is the first time he uses the word -- we will have to repent. it is there in a typical king way. it is modulated. that voice is there all along because, as he sees it, the sin is not only racism, but all the people who sit on the sidelines and are indifferent to the suffering of you have -- of humanity get it is an exact parallel of what he preaches to lazarus.

a rich man, but he walked by, was suffering, sore covered, give the beggar at his door, and did not recognize him. this is where king's radical christianity focuses on the good people for their appalling silence. and it is the moderates who are the stumbling blocks. so who does he mean? he means the core of american culture. he doesn't come out and say god damn america. but the content of it is very close to that in the letter. if you think of the substance of the message. tavis: i'm glad you went there. when people hear that phrase these days, they think of jeremiah wright and all the trouble he got into during the obama campaign when fox news took that comment and didn't let it in a kenyan context, in a context.n a kingian you are right that it is kingi

an to the core. the reason i raise it is because i have raised this issue before on this program and elsewhere. as we move toward the 50th anniversary later this summer -- we have 50 years now since the letter from a birmingham jail. care to guess which will get most exposure? why is it that we don't want to wrestle with this side of king, but we will revel in that "i have a dream" prose year in and year out, but not wrestle with the rest of who he was and is? >> let me back up one second and say that one of the things i tried to show in "gospel of see -- oncentz you you see the exceptional nation

i have a dream that america went it would be a land where my children can be judged by the content of their character. what is he saying? that country doesn't exist now. the prophetic denunciation is there now very 100 years after the emancipation proclamation -- the second part is just as tough if you look at it. and he ends with the slave notion. that nation, we won't be able to sing "my country'tis of the" until we test together. it is less dreamy than it's made out to be. i think the answer to your fundamental question is, like king saul, what is the sin -- like king saw, what is the sin of why people not caring about fellow humanity? people like the dreaminess because it is easy. it is unsettling. what does that dreaming today in 2013? what does the letter mean in 2013? it means i cannot be like the

iba nori for lazarus. the guynot be like poor lazarus.lazarus - it is his analysis that says that church, after he takes on white moderates, the white church in -- remember, he is -- he is saying, in a racist society, moderates are not the same. it is the white modesty is most concerned about and he is saying that we have a nation that does not feel the empathy the that king feels when he sees not just the starting in and -- when sees the starting in india as well as the poor kids in marks, mississippi. tavis: the new book from professor jonathan rieder is

gospel of freedom." you can go online and read "letter from birmingham jail." go online right now and read the letter. good to have you on this program. that is our show tonight. until next time. keep the faith. >> for more information on today's show, visit tavis smiley at pbs.org. tavis: hi, i'm tavis smiley. join me next time for a conversation with stephen stills. that is next time. we will see you then. >> there is a saying that dr. king had that said there is

always the right time to do the right thing. i just try to live my life every day by doing the right thing. we know that we are only halfway to completely eliminate hunger, and we have a lot of work to do. walmart committed $2 billion to fighting hunger in the u.s. as we work together, we can stamp hunger out. >> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> be more. pbs.