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Dr. King's sister discusses the impact her brother's assassination continues to have 40 years later. (4:05)
 

Tavis: Christine King Farris is the sister of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and an associate professor of education at Spelman College in Atlanta and the most senior member of the Spelman faculty, I might add. She is also a lecturer and author whose books include "My Brother Martin." She joins us tonight from Atlanta. Mrs. Farris, what an honor and a blessing to have you on this program, and Happy King Day to you.

Christine King Farris: Thank you; and I'm so pleased to be on with you.

Tavis: Well, I thank you for saying that. Let me start by asking you, it's been so many years now we've been celebrating the King Holiday. What do you make of it these many years later and how do you typically spend the King Holiday?

Farris: Well, we decided, along with my sister-in-law, Coretta Scott King, that it should be a day of service. So on that day we have a commemorative service at Ebenezer Baptist Church and then in the afternoon we participate in some kind of service activity in the community.

Tavis: You mentioned your sister-in-law, Coretta Scott King. I wonder whether or not it ever gets easier. I recognize that you never close on the death of a loved one like you close on a house, but how to you navigate past the death of your sister-in-law?

Farris: It's been very difficult because she was the sister, really, that I never had. And we were so so very, very close and it's been quite an adjustment, and I'm still trying to adjust to it.

Tavis: What do you make of the fact - you mentioned, of course, that Ms. King was the sister you never had. You of course say that because you had two brothers, AD and Martin. You were the only girl in that family. First of all, what was it like being the only girl in that family?

Farris: It was a challenge, (laughter) trying to keep up with those two boys. We stayed together a lot of the times and I found myself trying to keep up with them and do some of the things that they did. It was a challenge.

Tavis: A lot of folk don't know, you certainly do, that as a kid, Martin was a prankster, was he not?

Farris: Oh, yes. Both of my brothers were. The one that comes to mind, my grandmother had a fur piece that she wrapped around her coat or whatever, but on the end of it, it was like a fox with gleaming eyes and so forth. So the boys and I went out in our front yard. We had a broomstick and we tied that fur piece around the broomstick, got behind the hedges, and as passers-by would approach, then we would just shake that stick out like a snake or something coming out.

And the cries of amazement and even anger, so much so on until one man was so upset that he came past us and went in the house and found my father and told him about it. And of course we were taken care of after that.

Tavis: I like how you phrase that: we were taken care of.

Farris: Yes.

Tavis: Let me go back to a moment ago in our conversation when we talked about, again, your being the only girl in that family. So your mother and father are gone now; Martin and AD are gone now; Coretta Scott King is gone now. Indeed, one of Coretta's children, Yolanda, is now gone. What do you make of the fact that for whatever reason, you are the last person in that immediate family to still be with us? We're grateful that you are, but you're now 80 years old. You don't look like it, but you're 80 years old now, you're the last one here. What do you make of that?

Farris: I'm still trying to make something of it. I ask that question all the time, why am I left here and what am I to do? And it just occurs to me that I must try to carry on as best I can, following my brother and Coretta, my father and mother. So I guess that's why I'm here, to try to carry on as best I can.

Tavis: Part of your legacy, as I mentioned in the introduction, is being an educator. You've been at Spelman now on the faculty for over 45 years; you are the most senior member of the faculty at Spelman. Tell me about your life and how you got into education, and how you started your journey at Spelman.

Farris: Well I was always interested, I guess, in education. My mother was a teacher and I just wanted to teach. I started out in elementary school and moved on into college where I am now, and that is the one thing that keeps me going. Some days I may not feel as good as I feel on other days, but once I get in that classroom I forget all of that and it's behind me and I enjoy working with students so much. So it's really a blessing that I am able to continue my work with students at the college.

Tavis: Tell me about what it has meant for you for 45 years now to be a Black woman teaching Black women at an all-Black woman's college. I know there must be great - I see your smile on your face already. There must be great joy in having the opportunity to have done that for so long.

Farris: Oh, yes, it is. Of course I do have some men, too; Morehouse men can take my course and so they come. And it's really a challenge working with young people, and I think that's why I can keep going, really, because I associate with them and really, I'm motivated. They motivate me.

Tavis: They motivate you, but I can only assume that there must be a great thrill, even today, 45 years later, that Spelman women and Morehouse men, the great thrill they must get in being taught by the sister of Dr. King.

Farris: Oh, yes. They ask me questions all the time and I share with them things about growing up with him and all.

Tavis: Of course, Dr. King went to Morehouse. What do you recall about your baby brother going off to college at Morehouse at age 15?

Farris: Well, how did he get there? You see, we were so close together; he was just about a grade behind me. And so I was graduating from high school and I guess he thought that he wasn't going to be behind me. So they gave a test and he took that test and he passed that and he came on to Morehouse as I was entering Spelman. So we shared our college years together.

Tavis: There's an old adage, Mrs. Farris, as you know, that says you can choose your friends but you can't choose your family. Your family is given to you; you get a chance to choose your friends. When did you know that there was something special about your brother? And I think most of us want to think that there's somebody special in our family, that we're all special, but there is, obviously, in retrospect, something awfully special about your brother.

When did you figure out, when did you know, that there was something unusual, something special about a guy who was, like any other kid, a prankster when he was growing up. But when did you know that there was something uniquely different about this guy Martin, your brother?

Farris: Well he became interested in the ministry as soon as he entered Morehouse. I began to see that he was going to do something because, like, we would go to parties and dances, and I remember that first year, the first few months of college, he would not go with us. He's sitting there reading books or reading the bible and I'm trying to say, come on, because we were very close.

I knew then that he was approaching something. I didn't know what it was. I think that he had so much inspiration from my father, my grandfather. They were both freedom fighters. And so he observed all of that and I think that that was a part of him.

Tavis: For a family that has spent so much time in church and in service to the community through the church, your family, clearly hit by violence in ways that a lot of families are today. But again, the parallel here is how much your family has been about peace and about nonviolence, and yet violence hit your family in two or three different ways. How have you navigated your life trying to figure out what that means? A family so much about peace and yet hit by so much violence.

Farris: I don't question it because I doubt that I would find the answer, but it's normal for those questions to arise. But since I've been taught and I believe in a higher power, so I know there's some reason. And often I am asking, these days especially, after my sister-in-law left us, why am I still here? And there must be some reason. I don't know what it is, but I have to keep on doing what I think that they would have me to do, and that's to serve and do the best that I can in that regard.

Tavis: This year, of course, we commemorate the 40th anniversary of the assassination of your brother. April 4th, 2008 will commemorate or mark the 40th anniversary of his assassination there in Memphis. As many times as you and I have talked, I've never asked you this question for whatever reason. Let me ask it now.

I wonder whether or not it becomes more difficult to contextualize what this experience means when you can't ever get away from it. I can imagine there has not been a day in your life, given the public's fascination with your brother, and legitimately so, but I can only imagine there's never been a day in your life in the last 40 years that you have ever had the solitude to get away from it because of what he meant to us and what he meant to the world. How do you, again, navigate your journey when you can't even get away from it?

Farris: No, there's no way to get away from it, so you just do the best you can to adjust to it. Every way you turn you're always running into something as a reminder. There's just no way to get away from it. I've not been back to Memphis since we went pick up my brother's body. I cannot go. And of course they're having a great celebration in the spring and some of my family will be going.

I haven't decided, because that was such an awful scene when Bobby Kennedy sent a plane and Earl Graves was the person responsible for seeing that we got on the plane and everything. But all I can remember about Memphis was looking out from the window and all of those basically mostly Black people were standing there just in awe and in solemn reverence.

And the guard stood there, a military guard, I guess, with long pistols trained on those innocent people. It was such a horrible scene. It was kind of a misty, rainy day. And then shortly thereafter, then came my brother, AD, Andy, Ralph Abernathy, and they all came on the plane to join us. They came on just crying like babies. So I have that feeling about Memphis, and it isn't a pleasant one.

Tavis: So for 40 years, if I heard you correctly, you have not gone back to Memphis one time and you're still trying to figure out whether you might go back this year?

Farris: That's right.

Tavis: I should mention as a programming note, since Mrs. Farris mentioned Memphis, that we will be, this TV show, pleased to say we will be in Memphis for the entire week of the celebration, the celebration of his life, commemoration of his passing, of course. We'll be in Memphis for that entire week with this broadcast, live from Memphis, starting that Monday night. The 4th, as I recall, is on a Friday, so we will start broadcasting from Memphis that Monday in April and wrap up our shows later that week.

On that Friday, the 4th, I'll be headed to Atlanta to join Ms. Farris and her family. Her son Isaac runs the King Center there. I'll be joining Ms. Farris and all the King kids and family for a special celebration which I think will be carried live on C-SPAN on Friday at Ebenezer, on the actual anniversary, April the 4th, since Mrs. Farris mentioned that.

Mrs. Farris, as you well know, last week - switching gears here - last week there was quite a dust-up around your brother, as I mentioned earlier in this conversation, that it's hard to get away from his life or his legacy. Barack Obama has taken on the campaign trail to represent Dr. King rather consistently. He sees himself, as he should, as part of the Kingian legacy, as I certainly do. And Mrs. Clinton, of course, had some comments to make. I won't rehash all of that, but what did you make of this back-and-forth about your brother last week?

Farris: It was very interesting, but I think it's political, it's politics, and sometimes when we engage in political activity, we don't always think - well, I won't say straight, but (laughter) sometimes it overtakes us, so. It was very interesting and will continue to be because I think as the campaign continues we may run into some other things like that.

Tavis: That was very diplomatically put. If you ever decide to leave Spelman, there's a job waiting for you at the United Nations. You'd be an awfully good ambassador with that answer. I take it, then, from that answer that you have taken your brother's lead and taken Mrs. King's lead, Coretta Scott King, in staying out of the endorsement business?

Farris: That's exactly right. Exactly.

Tavis: So you're going to stay out of this all the way through?

Farris: I'm going to stay out of it all the way. My brother taught us he did not endorse any candidate, and so I will not endorse a candidate.

Tavis: Okay, I hear you're not endorsing and I won't press that. What do you make of the fact, though, that in the 40th year since his assassination that there is a woman being seriously considered, there is a Black man being seriously considered? I think he'd have to smile at that, yes?

Farris: Oh, yes, that's quite rewarding. It's really something to know that our country has grown to accept even a Black man to run for president. That's far beyond what we would have imagined, and even a woman for president? So we are moving.

Tavis: I wonder how you deal with, 40 years later, obviously, the longer he is away from us, the more government files come out, the more nasty stuff we hear and read in those files. I love Dr. King and everybody who watches this program knows I say all the time as far as I'm concerned he's the greatest American we ever produced and I stand by that anywhere, any day. And yet I'm not his sister, I'm not his brother. So I wonder how it is that the longer he stays away from us, we learn or hear, at least in these files, more and more negative stuff about him. As his sister, how does that impact you?

Farris: It has great impact on me and I think about what my father used to always say to my brother. He said, "Just be careful what you do and where you go." He said, "Even when you go to the bathroom, they know it." And it was very clear. I often think about when my brother, when we went to Oslo for him to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, that should have been one of the happiest moments in his life.

And he couldn't be but so happy because he was so afraid that any day J. Edgar Hoover would do something more to embarrass him. Just before he left, J. Edgar Hoover called reporters and everything and said that Martin Luther King was the most evil, notorious man, and my brother could not really enjoy receiving that Nobel Peace Prize because any day he didn't know what would come out. So he had to live under that kind of cloud and fear.

Tavis: The more I talk to, and as you well know every chance I get to talk to you or Mrs. King, now gone, but every time I got to chance to sit and have dinner or talk to her - wherever I come around anybody who spent time with Dr. King - Andy Young, CT Vivian, Wyatt Walker, any of them; Dorothy Cotton, Clarence Jones - I want to just sit and talk. I'm always interested to learn more about this man, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

And yet the more I talk to people, to your point now, Mrs. Farris, the more I learn, the more I hear how he battled with depression. And when I say depression, for all that he had done, for all that he was doing, had such a burden on him for his people. There was such a love for his people, such a commitment to serving his people, that even with all that he did do in his short 39 years and all that happened because of what he did, he was never really at peace because he just didn't think he was doing enough.

Farris: That's it, and that's what I say. What should have been one of the highest moments in his life, and yet he lived in fear not knowing what was going to happen. Couldn't be at ease.

Tavis: Tell me about how you - tell me about your family. I don't want my time to run out here without hearing more about the life that you have navigated for these 80 years. Tell me more about your husband and your family.

Farris: Okay, my husband and I are still together (laughter) and having fun.

Tavis: How many years now?

Farris: Oh, we have celebrated now 48 years.

Tavis: Wow.

Farris: So we've had quite a time together. We have two children. My daughter's the youngest and she's a professor at Spelman College, and of course, Isaac, my son, is working at the King Center. And then of course we're a very close family, with all of our other family, with Bernice and Martin, Dexter, and my brother's children; AD's children, Alveda and Vernon.

Tavis: I can only assume that the loss of Yolanda was as much of a shock to you as it was to all the rest of us.

Farris: Oh, it was. That was the furthest thing from my imagination. Yolanda was just working and working and when Dexter gave me the call and he said, "Aunt Christine, Yolanda has fallen and I can't get her up, I can't get her to breathe." It was just - I couldn't imagine. And then he said, "But here's the balance, so I'm taking her on to the hospital." And he said, "I'll call you."

By that time, when he got to hospital about 20 minutes later, he had all of us on the phone - Martin, Bernice, my daughter, Isaac - all of us were on the phone and he said, "I'm going to let the doctor speak to you all." And of course I was being optimistic that the doctor would say, "Well, we're working on her."

And he said, "But I have to tell you that we did everything we could and we couldn't revive her." And that was just a crushing blow, because no way would I have anticipated that Yolanda would have been leaving us.

Tavis: Let me close our conversation with this question. I think I know the answer, but I don't want to assume, I don't want to pre-judge. I want to give you a chance to answer in your own words. For you to have been blessed to live these 80 years and to have endured all that you have endured, to have loved and served the way that you continue to, that strength had to come from somewhere. So to what do you attribute this strength that still holds you up today?

Farris: My abiding faith in God. I was taught that from my parents and from my brothers, and so we just believe that God is on our side and whatever happens, it is because he wills it so. And so without that belief, I am sure that I could not have made it. But any dark days, I know that there's a bright cloud somewhere.

Tavis: Christine King Farris, the sister of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the last remaining member of that King family. What an honor and blessing it is to still have her here with us in the land of the living, and what an honor to have her on this program for the full show tonight. Ms. Farris, what a blessing to have you here. Thank you so much for your time and have a wonderful 2008.

Farris: Thank you so much.