- Hi, I'm Hermene Hartman.

Welcome to N'DIGO Studio.

Today, Jonathan Eig is with us.

He's a native New Yorker, but he now lives in Chicago.

He's a graduate of Northwestern Medill School of Journalism.

He's written for the top newspapers in the country.

Dallas Morning News, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Magazine, New York Times, Washington Post.

He lives in Chicago and he's the author of a new book about Dr. Martin Luther King, "A Life."

He gives us some new information, some new news.

He's a master storyteller, and along the way he has written a book about Muhammad Ali.

It is a biograph and it is considered the best sports book ever.

The book on Dr. King is epic.

It's new information, new information, new things to talk about.

And today we're going to talk to Jonathan about the new book And today we're going to talk to Jonathan about the new book on Dr. Martin Luther King.

That's For Real... Funding for this program was provided by Illinois Student Assistance Commission The Chicago Community Trust.

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Chicago.

Gold Coast and Downers Grove.

Commonwealth Edison City Colleges of Chicago.

Broadway in Chicago.

Welcome, and thank you for being with us.

- Thank you, Hermene.

- So tell me how the book came about.

What was your inspiration for a new book on Dr. King after 55 years of his death?

- Yeah, you know, I was interviewing a lot of people from my Muhammad Ali book who happened to also know Dr. King.

People like Dick Gregory and Harry Belafonte, and Andrew Young and Reverend Jackson here in Chicago.

And as I was talking to them, I realized that there's a limited window of opportunity, really to interview people who knew Martin Luther King really well.

Knew him personally, knew him intimately, - Worked with him.

- And worked with him, traveled with him, friends of his from childhood even were still around, schoolmates.

And I just thought, "What a great opportunity."

And we hadn't had a King biography at that point in something like 35 years, if you can believe it.

And in that time, we've kind of turned him into a monument and lost sight of his humanity.

- We've made him a saint.

- Yeah, and I wanted to write a book that created a more intimate portrait.

So that's what I set out to do six years ago.

- And you talked about his entire life from childhood.

Dr. Michael Dyson, friend of ours, says that Dr. King was the best American.

You say Dr. King is an American founding father.

Explain that concept to me.

- I agree with Dr. Dyson that he may be the greatest American ever born.

To accomplish what he did without political power, without money, but I think we should also think of him as a founding father, because the Constitution is a living and breathing document.

And when the Constitution was created, it was not accurate.

It did not really provide equality for all.

It did not provide freedom for all.

And Dr. King came closer to anybody in the history of this country toward pushing us toward delivering on the promises of the Declaration and the Bill of Rights.

So I think he deserves to be considered a founding father.

Not perfect, but truly heroic.

- He forced the Constitution and he challenged it.

- That's right.

- Did he not?

- He absolutely did.

- Okay.

- He challenged us to live up to the words.

- Live up to it, for our country to live up to it.

- That's right.

- In spite of the racism, in spite of all of the problems we have, this is the document that we live by.

- That's right, and King's genius was that he said it was the Black people of America who were going to help fulfill the promise of American democracy.

The people who've been treated the worst are going to show us the way.

- And indeed he was right.

- He was.

- A short career, 13 years, but got a lot in, got a lot in.

- Yeah, we forget that he was only 26.

- Only 26.

- When he led the Montgomery Bus boycotts.

- When he started.

- Yeah.

- And only 39 when he passed away, when he was assassinated.

So when was the surprising thing, as you did extensive research on King, what was the surprise that you learned about him?

- There were a lot of surprises.

One of the biggest to me was just how much he suffered, how emotionally sensitive he was, and how it got to him.

You know, we think of him as being fearless, and he was, but that doesn't mean that he didn't struggle to overcome his fears.

- He suffered from depression.

- Suffered from depression, he attempted suicide twice as a teenager.

And then throughout his life, as an adult, he was hospitalized numerous times for what, that back then they called exhaustion.

But what others, including Reverend Jackson, described as depression.

And I think it's important to recognize that, that our heroes have feelings.

The other really important discovery that shocked me was just how aggressive the FBI was in trying to destroy him.

And that played into his struggles emotionally.

- Why did Hoover, J. Edgar Hoover, who was Director of the FBI, why did he hate King so much?

He hated King.

- Yes, he did.

- Was it hate or was it fear, or was it both?

- It's both, he was absolutely a racist.

He belonged to racist institutions.

His school, his college growing up had these horrible racist pageants.

And that was deeply bred within him.

But more importantly, I think he was kind of what we would now call a white Christian nationalist.

He believed that the way to run this country was with the white Christian people in charge, and that it should be a part of the American system of government.

And that's why FBI agents were required to attend church, and required to attend these kinds of programs to teach them the right way.

And King posed a threat to that.

King posed a threat to the establishment, to the power structure as it existed.

And that's what scared J. Edgar Hoover.

He did not want to share power.

And he saw that if King could unite the community, if he could rally white Americans too, to get behind his movement, that it might actually shake up this country's power structure.

- Might change it.

- Yeah.

- Might change, as he did.

- Yes, he did.

- As he really did.

So it was a, in one sense, it was really a legitimate fear, 'cause he could see what King was changing the structure of the American system.

- You could make an argument that J. Edgar Hoover was right, that he knew what was coming.

- King was thrust into leadership, almost modeled into leadership.

He graduated from high school 15 years old.

He was in college, Morehouse, his father was a minister and was preparing him really to take over Ebenezer.

Talk about how that, how he was really groomed, if you will, for leadership.

- It's a fascinating moment in history.

And Daddy King and, and Mama King, as everyone called them, deserve a lot of the credit because they were advocates.

They were civil rights activists before people called them that.

But they were fighting for change, and Martin Luther King Jr. grows up in this environment where he sees that everybody has a responsibility to push for that change.

That's the message he gets at Morehouse.

That's the message he gets in church.

That's the message he gets when he goes to seminary, that it's not just about praying to God, it's about forging change in the community and using religion as a tool to forge change.

So it's part of his upbringing.

It's there, it's baked in from a very early age.

And he really embraces that.

- Yeah, he was really groomed for leadership.

However, he didn't want to be at his father's church.

So he goes to another church, to a new church, fresh start for him.

Talk about that.

- His father did not want him to go to Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.

- That's right.

- In Montgomery.

He said it was too hoity-toity.

And, you know, Daddy King was a working man, you know, grew up on a farm and he didn't think that a silk stocking church was right for his son.

But Martin Luther King Jr. often stood up to his father, and did his own thing.

And he just happened to find himself in the perfect place at the perfect time when the Montgomery Bus Boycott began.

He was new in town, he hadn't made any enemies yet.

So they asked him to be the official leader, to be the spokesman for the movement.

- He was the young minister.

- He was the young minister, and he had a reputation for being a pretty good speaker.

You know, pretty good.

- King ended segregation in America.

That's really the hallmark.

And he ended it with nonviolent tactics, of course, that he studied from Gandhi in India.

His philosophy was, and this is a quote, "That a Negro would wear white Southerners down with the ability to suffer."

That's a heck of a concept.

"I will wear you down with my suffering to make you do right."

Was he mistaken often for non-violence as passivity?

- As the time went by and as he found the movement succeeding, and as more younger African American leaders came in and wanted to push harder and found his approach, his nonviolent approach to be old fashioned, yes, they accused him of being weak.

They said, you know, "We need to fight for our rights.

we're not going to ever win by waiting for the white community to give us what we want."

And and that was hard for King.

And yes, it was a lot to ask the Black community to keep suffering, to sacrifice themselves, to put their lives on the line in the fight for civil rights.

You know, that's a lot to ask, but King led the way and put his own body on the line and- - And he was steadfast on non-violence as the winning tactic.

- Absolutely, I think he felt like, A, it was Christian, it was, you know, from Gandhi.

But it was also the best tactic.

He had the ability to speak to Black southern audiences.

He knew that how to reach them.

He was raised in the church, but he could also speak to northern intellectuals, he could speak to northern liberals, because he had this philosophical grounding.

And nobody else really had that ability to speak to all audience.

It was the same speech, the same message, the same sermon.

But everybody could find something to embrace in it.

- He was probably the best speaker we've ever seen in this country, he was magnificent.

- I would agree.

- Now let's go to Hoover.

Let's talk about the information that you found.

So the tapes were sealed for 50 years, and so now the tapes have been revealed.

And you studied those tapes, you revealed some of those tapes.

What did Hoover went to look for communism in Dr. King, but he found something else.

Talk about the sex tapes that he found.

- That's right, and just to be clear, we have transcripts of the tapes.

The tapes won't be released until 2027.

But we have the transcripts and people who've listened to, who've read the transcripts, say they're accurate.

People whose voices are recorded there, like Andrew Young, Bayard Rustin said that those transcripts were accurate.

- Jones?

- Clarence Jones.

- Clarence Jones.

- Right.

So what we hear, first of all, that King was not a communist, that's obvious.

And once the FBI acknowledged that the wiretaps were put in place because they were afraid that he was consorting with communists, and that the Communist Party might influence the civil rights movement.

Once it became clear that he was not doing anything related to the communist activity, they had also at that point heard him on the phone with women, girls, girlfriends, I should say, women who were not his wife, who he seemed to be having flirting with, and having relationships with.

So that escalated the campaign, the surveillance campaign.

That became the obsession, not just of J. Edgar Hoover, but of the Kennedys, of President Johnson and other members of the FBI.

We can't just blame this on J. Edgar Hoover, because there were a lot of people supporting this, and members of the news media knew about it too.

And they could have blown the whistle, but they didn't.

- Why?

Why didn't they?

- Some of it I think was gossip.

They enjoyed having this gossip, they enjoyed having power.

They felt like information is power and they can use this against King if they ever need it.

And then some of it is just flat out racism.

- With this information, talk about the wiretappings.

The wiretappings were done in the hotel rooms.

Wiretappings were done at his home.

- [Jonathan] Right.

- So he was really under attack with the wiretappings.

They were trying to use him for manipulation, for control.

And King never acknowledged it.

- No, he knew what was going on.

- He knew, but he never publicly acknowledged it.

- No.

- And it did not prevent him from doing what the work that he was really trying to do.

- That's right.

Imagine waking up every morning knowing this could be the day that some newspaper decides to print the story that they've been leaked by the FBI.

Imagine every day, this is the day that, you know, J. Edgar Hoover goes public with this stuff.

He had to live with that cloud hanging over his head all the time.

- How do you think in history, how does this settle with who King was?

King was sexually active, cheated on his wife.

How does this settle?

- The irony of it to me is that having these tapes, and having these FBI surveillance actually makes him greater, in my view.

Because what we hear on the phone, what we listen when we read these transcripts, is a man who's wrestling with doubt, with weakness, right?

He says, "People aren't listening to me anymore.

I'm worried about all this bad press I'm getting.

I'm depressed, I need a vacation."

And yet he never gives up.

In fact, he only doubles down on his beliefs.

He says, and you can hear his advisors saying, "Don't go to Chicago, nothing good can come from this.

Stick to Montgomery, stick to Birmingham.

Stick to the places where you know what to do.

Where the enemy is clear.

In Chicago, you know, you're gonna run into forces you cannot really appreciate."

And he says, "I have to go to Chicago, because it's the right thing to do.

Because the segregation, the discrimination is just as bad there as it is in the South, and I need to go and call it out."

Same thing happens with Vietnam.

His advisors are saying, "You're going to shoot yourself in the foot talking about Vietnam.

You're going to lose your influence."

And he says, "I have to do it, because that's the right thing to do."

- So that's where I see the philosophy of King coming greater than the theology of King, is that he did come to Chicago.

He came to Chicago to eradicate the segregation that perhaps we didn't even know.

- Talk about King coming to Chicago and meeting with at Mayor Daley, who was really the most powerful politician, other than the president, in the Democratic Party in America.

Talk about that confrontation.

- It's an incredible moment in American history, and Chicago history too, because it was a moment of opportunity, where King comes dealing fair and square with the mayor.

And says, "I'm coming, here's what I'm doing.

Here are the things that I hope to accomplish here.

I want to put an end to segregated housing.

I want to put an end to slum conditions in these neighborhoods, I want to see the schools integrated, and here's how we're going to do it."

And he has a concrete set of policies that will change the city of Chicago, and could have changed cities all over the country.

And King gets, of course, snubbed, increases the protest, increases the pressure, and is treated miserably here.

You know, he's hit in the head with a brick.

He marches through Marquette Park and Gage Park and has these Nazis protestors and young white kids, you know, holding up signs that are as vile as anything he's ever seen in the deep South.

And yet he keeps, continues.

And he presents Chicago one more time with an opportunity to make reforms.

And the mayor says, "Yes, we're going to do this."

And then as soon as King leaves town, he ignores all of those things.

- He considered the Marquette Park march the worst that he'd ever seen.

(crowd cheering) - [Reporter] During these marches, King and other demonstrators were struck by bricks and bottles.

- I've been in many demonstrations all across the south.

But I can say that I have never seen, even in Mississippi, Alabama mobs as hostile and as hate filled as I've seen in Chicago.

- That's right.

- Andy Young's car was burned up at the Marquette Park.

But we got a light outta that.

We got Father Michael Pfleger, he was in that.

- That's right.

- He was there.

And he came from that.

Those were some turbulent years in Chicago.

There were six aldermen, six Black aldermen who said, "King go home."

Daley had a firm grip on the churches, Black churches in Chicago.

He told the ministers not to let King in.

There were only a few that did.

Clay Evans of Fellowship would allow King in the pulpit.

So Daley was really trying to cut King's legs off his, like, stop it.

King moved into the West Side- - Right.

- On Hamlin to showcase the slum landlord living in Chicago.

What came out of King, because if you look at it, and this is what Jesse Jackson says, if you look at it short term, King lost, if you look at it long term, King won.

I say that that was the beginning of Harold Washington's election.

That was when independent politics really came forth in Chicago, and you saw the northern change.

It was king in the south, right to vote, right to vote in the north.

Yes, we had it, therefore we thought it's okay.

But King came to highlight, "No, it's not.

You're not living the full life."

- That's right, I agree with you.

And I think that a lot of people said, a lot of people who I interviewed for the book said to me, you know, King really didn't understand these factors in Chicago.

He didn't understand that not all the Black churches were gonna get behind him.

He didn't understand that a lot of Black people owed their jobs to the mayor and to the patronage system, and they weren't gonna come out and march.

So in many ways they were right.

And that King learned a valuable lesson from that.

And I think, in the aftermath, what people, like Reverend Jackson, what people like, you know, all the political leaders emerge.

- Andrew Young.

- Andrew Young, and Harold Washington learned is that we're going to have to take to the ballot box.

We're going to have to get our leaders elected here, because we're not going to be able to force the kind of pressure that King was forced in the South.

That's not gonna work here.

And you see, in the aftermath of King's death, all over the country, especially in northern cities, Black mayors starting to get elected.

Black councilmen get starting to get elected 'cause the battleground changes to the ballot box.

- So he, King believed that if we assumed Black political power, that the change that we needed would come.

You agree with that, disagree with it?

- I do agree with that.

- King was right?

- I think that was King's vision and King was right, and we saw that bear out in the seventies as elections became a new lever of power.

- Do you think, that as Hoover was harassing King, that maybe some of the reports that Hoover received from the FBI agents, might they have been exaggerated just to calm Hoover down?

- That's absolutely a possibility.

So we can hear, or we can read the transcripts of his conversations with women.

We know he was flirting with these women.

And I believe those transcripts are accurate.

But anything in a memo that's not a transcript, we have to judge with some skepticism.

We have to remember that all of these FBI agents were trying to please the boss, and that they would write things that they thought would get the boss off their back.

So we have to judge all of that with a grain of salt.

- One of the things that fascinates me about King.

Is his fund raising..

There were no grants.

There were no foundations.

There were no corporate dollars.

But he kept going.

No matter what he kept going.

Talk about Kings fund raising abilities.. - Yeah lets remember that in those last years, When he began coming north, When he began talking about The Vietnam war His popularity real saged.

And um... Support finachial support really few off.

I found this one great memo from the ford foundation.

Saying were going to need to see a five year plan.

If you want money from us.

And five year plan, Ah king barley had a five day plan Most of the time he was, you know Dropping Into to these Exposive situations Pretty much parachuting in And donig the best he could.

And really he relied on his own voice, To raise money, he traveled around the country, giving speeches and sermons And he had a little bit of success with mailers...

He brought in some money that way.

But it was not a... required much of Kings own time.

- It was faith based.

- It was pass that the Hat in the church.

- That's right.

He never had a membership Um.. they had a CLC So King really had to Pass the hat day after day.

It was exhausting.

- And so you had some large Fund raisers That was one of the things that Harry Belafonte did And some of those fund raisers were right here in Chicago.

The amphitheater Where Belafonte pulled everybody together Form Hollywood that he could and they performed, and those dollars went to King But that was really kind of the hype Talk about Birmingham, what happened in Birmingham?

'Cause that's where some change to America came as they marched across the Pettus Bridge.

- Yeah, you could argue that that's King's most significant movement, that that's the moment where he really changes America, because it leads to the passage of such significant legislation.

But again, you know, we talked about King as this parachute artist that he's dropped.

Birmingham isn't working for a long time.

And it comes after a series of other failures he's had in Albany, Georgia and St. Augustine.

And people are saying, "Oh, you know, King's lost it.

He hasn't had a real success since Montgomery."

And Birmingham is flopping, again, in part because some of the Black church leaders weren't behind him.

And they were running out of people to get arrested until they brought in the kids and asked high school students to join the lines, and put them in the face of peril, which, you know, offended a lot of people.

You know, you can't put your kids' lives on the line.

But that's what turned it around.

And then, you know, Bull Connor and his police dogs and water cannons really shocked white people in the north in a way that they hadn't been shocked before.

So again, it's King improvising, and being willing to take those chances that makes Birmingham such a success.

- That's the genius of his leadership, is he could improvise.

And it was situational analysis, what do we do now?

Not necessarily a plan, but situational analysis.

Let's accommodate what we see bringing the kids in.

That was a Jim Bevel initiative, is to bring the kids in, lock them up in jail.

We will fill the jail cells until you can't fill them anymore.

It took King three attempts to cross the bridge.

It wasn't, let's march today.

It was also let's go get the nuns, let's go get the priests, join us in the march.

And people from all over America came to the march.

That was very significant.

One of the things that's most impressive about King is how he used the media.

He used the media as a tool.

The press in the South was not necessarily covering King, but the New York Times was, CBS came.

Talk about Coretta Scott King.

They wire tapped her too.

- That's right.

- And you had opportunity to listen to some of those tapes.

What was revealed to you?

- Well, one of the reasons I really wanted to write this book is to give Coretta her due.

She's often just treated as the woman behind the throne.

You know, the power, the behind the throne.

But she's much more than that.

She was a true activist in her own right.

In fact, I think that's why King fell in love with her, was because when they met, she had more experience as an activist than he did.

She'd been to Antioch College, she'd been involved in protests on campus.

She'd been to the Progressive Party National Convention.

She was a serious force to be reckoned with.

And King really respected that.

At the same time, it was complicated.

- Last question, what do you think is Dr. King's greatest speech?

- Wow, there's so many, obviously.

- I know.

- And speech that I think that sums up his life is actually the Beyond Vietnam speech- - That's right.

- at Riverside Church.

- Riverside.

- And he didn't write that one and it's not a sermon.

But it sums up his philosophy.

And it's saying that I cannot be true to my Christian beliefs if I'm going to pick and choose the things that I fight for.

I have to fight for all of the things that I believe in.

And he's giving people the courage to say, you know, stand up for your true beliefs.

You don't have to be a politician.

You don't have to do the practical political thing.

You can fight for what you truly believe.

And that's a message that I think, you know, really gives me goosebumps.

- I agree with you that's the greatest speech.

I have a dream is the Iconic Speech.

- Really, if you really wanna know the King philosophy, it is the Riverside speech that you must listen to.

I think one of the critical things to know, to remember, to recall as we assessed Dr. King, is the changes that he brought about was private citizen.

Martin Luther King, not elected Martin Luther King.

- Yeah, and it's so much more extraordinary.

- Yes.

- To think about how much he accomplished without political power, without money, without weapons, you know, with peace and love, and the Bible, and with boots on the ground, it's extraordinary.

- One man can make a difference.

- Absolutely.

- Thank you.

Thank you for being with us.

Thank you for a great interview.

And you should read about Dr. King in a masterful storytelling way in Jonathan's book.

Thanks for being with us today.

- I'm tired of marching, tired of marching for something that should have been mine at birth.

I don't mind saying to you tonight, I don't mind saying to you tonight that I'm tired of the tension surrounding our days.

I don't mind saying to you tonight that I'm tired of living every day under the threat of death.

I have no martyr complex.

I wanna live as long as anybody in this building tonight.

And sometimes I begin to doubt whether I'm gonna make it through.

I must confess, I'm tired.

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