Americans Reflect on Evolution of King's Legacy

CORY BOOKER (D), Mayor of Newark, New Jersey: Well, King was a part of a very expansive movement that involved countless African-Americans, white folks, Christians, and Jews. And my parents were a part of that movement.

My mom helped organize a march on Washington for the Urban League when she was living in Washington, D.C. So, I grew up with these stories. But I think, most importantly, my parents made me understand that the struggle for justice didn't begin with King, nor did it end with King. It is a long river, a long struggle, a long journey that has begun at the founding of this nation, when these incredible ideals were put forth in a very vicious, very violent, very bigoted reality, and that the history of our nation is the history of ordinary people doing extraordinary things to make real on that dream.

King was a phenomenal example of this. But what my parents taught me is that my brother and I had to grow up to continue the legacy and continue the fight.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And how much does the work you do, the challenges you face today in Newark, is that connected to the kind of things that Martin Luther King was focused on?

CORY BOOKER: Well, everything that I am is a result of the struggles of great Americans before me, all the freedoms that I enjoy. I drink deeply from a well that I did not dig.

And my generation lavishly enjoys the fruits of the labors of other folks in previous generations. So, what we do in Newark, I think, in my team and my community is remember that, incorporate it and metabolize it into our very being, and try to help it fuel us in our fight for justice here in the city of Newark.

And I'm inspired every day when I meet people, humble folks whose names you'll never hear about, who do extraordinary things to continue that cause of the evolution of our country to become a truer, bolder representation of itself.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Professor Camille Charles, you've not only studied Dr. King and what he was working on; you've looked at the economic opportunities for -- for African-Americans, other minorities in this country. How much of what he was fighting for do you believe has been achieved?

CAMILLE CHARLES, Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies, University of Pennsylvania: Well, I think it sort of depends on whether you want to take a glass-half-full or glass-half-empty approach to that.

So, we're certainly better off in a lot of ways than we were 40 years ago. But, in other ways, I think we still have a lot of work to do. So, the income gap between whites and blacks is smaller than it was 40 years ago, but black men in particular continue to earn about 80 cents to the dollar of comparable whites.

And we're looking at persistently segregated neighborhoods in many cities across the United States, and, as a consequence, re-segregating schools. On the other hand, there's an expanding black middle class that is nothing like we've seen in -- in the past. And the proportion of the black population that lives in poverty is still too big, but it's much smaller than it was then.

So, it is sort of good news/bad news, depending on what your vantage point is.

How much is the King legacy alive for you and for your generation?

JOHN MCWHORTER, Senior Fellow, Manhattan Institute Center For Race and Ethnicity: Well, it depends on what you consider his legacy to be.

It definitely is for me, in terms of thinking about what needs to be done to alleviate the kinds of problems that Professor Charles just mentioned.

But what does worry me is that I think that, for a lot of people, King's legacy is roughly that he led a bus boycott, that he went to jail in Birmingham, that he made a big speech in Washington, and he got shot. And, so, it's all the dramatic things that sit in the memory the most, where it's really, for me, the most interesting part of King's legacy is the painstaking, grinding negotiations with the powers that be, or the powers that were, that led to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. That stuff was really hard.

And it doesn't make for good theater, that part of things. But those were the sorts of things that really did provide the kind of lives that we younger black people are leading. And what worries me is that I think some people see that wonderful speech at the March on Washington, or they think about King in jail, and there is an idea that what creates change is drama, and so that to complain, to talk about the things that are wrong in a fierce and articulate voice is, alone, a kind of activism, rather than getting back to the kinds of real grassroots kind of work on a national level that King was involved in.

And, so, my sense of King's legacy, I think, is a little more mundane in terms of the sorts of things I imagine, which is him sitting with his lieutenants, and, you know, hashing things out with President Kennedy and the attorney general Robert Kennedy. That, to me, is what is amazing, because who else was going to do that at that time?

And notice that it's hard to say that, on a national level, anybody is doing that sort of thing today.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Professor Carson, is that a -- is that a part of his legacy that's -- that's generally not recognized or not appreciated?

CLAYBORNE CARSON: I really don't think so.

I was at the March on Washington. And I spent much of my younger years in that movement. And I know that there were a great many people who were doing the serious work of community organizing. And there are still a lot of people doing that kind of work.

I think that what Cory Booker, my former student at Stanford, the kind of work that he's gotten into, it comes out of community organizing. You don't -- you don't change a city unless there are people at the grassroots level doing that work.

We have Barack Obama, who came out of community organizing. And this wasn't in the '60s. It was in the '80s and '90s that this organizing is going on. So, I think it's still going on. And I think that many of my students, they -- you know, it's not the same kind of thing. And I think he's right in the sense of, it's not as dramatic often to go in and change a school, to go in and change a neighborhood, as to have large marches and rallies.

But, even in the '60s, that was only part of it. You know, in between the rallies, there was a lot of organizing that needed to go on. And there were people doing it. And I think that young people understand that the struggle wasn't just Martin Luther King. Martin Luther King did what he did because Rosa Parks did what she did.

And so many other people whose names we don't remember today, they were the ones who provided the grassroots strength that made it possible to have the mountaintop moments like the March on Washington and the great marches and rallies.

And I -- you know, I think that younger people understand, at least most of them, that it wasn't just about these mountaintop moments.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Mayor Booker, what about that? And what's the toughest, the hardest part, especially of the economic goals that Martin Luther King was so focused on? What's the toughest part of that to work on today?

CORY BOOKER: Well, I have to agree with the two previous speakers. I mean, I think King's voice and the things he said and the things he fought for are so important, so critical.

But, really, what we need today is his spirit, is people that are willing to roll up their sleeves, stop talking about the problems, but be willing to do something about them. As he said quite eloquently, it is not the vitriolic words and evil actions of the bad people, but the appalling silence and inaction of the good people.

So, I get very frustrated in being here in many ways on the front lines of the fight for the American dream, right here in a city of greatness, where people are trying to continue that legacy. There are very complicated problems. But there's a lot of solutions out there and things that are working.

Here in Newark, we have some great educational innovation that is going on that has better performing test scores than the suburban areas do. Here in Newark, we're slashing violent crime by almost 50 percent this year already because of extraordinary work in neighborhoods and advances in policing.

This is the important work that we have to do. And the challenge to America, so we won't devolve like great empires like Rome did, is will we be willing to make the same kind of sacrifice, a spirit of energy and of excellence? This is an important day for us to remember for us to in many ways gain inspiration and strength. But tomorrow is another day that's just as urgent and just as important. And we can't get trapped in talking about the past, but have to get energized in doing something about our future.

JUDY WOODRUFF: John McWhorter, what would you add to that?

JOHN MCWHORTER: Well, I would just say that I am a great admirer of Barack Obama and Cory Booker. And I think that both of them are doing the kind of work that needs to be done.

But I wish that there were more of a sense that that is the kind of work that needs to be done everywhere in the country, and that that is how we are finally...

JUDY WOODRUFF: Just a minute. John McWhorter, I'm going to interrupt you, because I think we may have lost the video, I think, from Philadelphia.

JOHN MCWHORTER: Oh.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Is that right? I'm sorry. We can hear you.

JOHN MCWHORTER: Should I stop talking or keep going?

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, we want to hear what you have to say, but we would also like to look at you while you're saying it.

JOHN MCWHORTER: Well, I wonder if they could restore the feed and we could come back to me.

JUDY WOODRUFF: We're working on that.

CLAYBORNE CARSON: I think that that's part of the -- the positive that has come out of celebrating the King legacy, is that I think, at least for that part of King's life that had to do with civil rights reform, we have united as a nation around that.

I don't think Barack Obama would be the leading candidate without that kind of transformation of American life. I think that the real test is going to be in this campaign and the campaigns in the future the extent to which people readdress the unfinished business of Martin Luther King.

One of his last sermons was unfinished dreams, in which he talked about how his dreams for America were incomplete at the end of his life, that he was at that point still discouraged. And I think he would be discouraged coming back and seeing that some things have changed dramatically, in terms of the elimination of the Jim Crow system.

But some things would be very familiar. War, the -- as I said, the gulf between rich and poor, those things would be very familiar to him. And he would be pressing all of the candidates to take a stand, a strong stand, on these issues.

JUDY WOODRUFF: I'm going to come back now -- I think we do have a signal from Philadelphia.

John McWhorter, thank you, and apologies for interrupting you a moment ago.

JOHN MCWHORTER: Oh, that's OK. Thank you for coming back to me.

I will just say it real quick. And now there it is again. This is my voice.  Should I use a different voice?

I just wanted to say that, when people say that there needs to be a national conversation on race, for example, it seems to me that what that really means, in code, is that white people need to get down on their knees and realize something again, as they did in the wake of what Dr. King did.