- Thank you very much for writing the book and I'm looking forward to reading it.

The question is, where was Martin Luther King, Dr. King in 1968, and can you speculate about where he was headed in his quest for a better world?

- Yeah, and you know, it's a great question.

You know, in 1968, as we know, he was in Memphis for the sanitation workers strike where his advisors told him not to go, they said it was a local issue and it wasn't worth his time.

And he was at the same time busy planning the Poor People's Campaign, which was really where he wanted to go next.

And again, advisors were saying, "Not a good idea.

Stick to voting rights, stick to the South.

That's where we're most effective.

We can raise a lot of money in the North if you just stay in the South."

But he refused to do that.

He wanted to move beyond civil rights to human rights.

He wanted to talk a lot more about income inequality, and just the structure of capitalism in America.

I think he was pushing us toward a more of a, you know, European-style social democracy.

He wanted to see guaranteed wages, guaranteed jobs, and he was gonna camp out in Washington as long as it took until that happened.

But at the same time, he was having a really hard time recruiting people to come to Washington for that Poor People's Campaign, so he was under a lot of stress, a lot of strain, and the fundraising was off for his organization, so.

You know, one of the great questions of speculation is, you know, what would he have done?

Would he have continued?

Was he too depressed to keep going on?

- Could he have continued?

- Could he have continued, right, because the organization was struggling.

And you know, the civil rights movement was moving on in many ways, it was changing in many ways, you had these more radical factions.

You also had a lot of people just starting to move into electoral politics more and losing interest.

And a lot of the white supporters of the civil rights movement were moving on to Vietnam protests, so it's not clear how King would've adjusted to all of that.

- Like so much, as we talked about, like so much of the myth, we've forgotten how challenged he was- - That's right.

- There at the end.

- Yeah, there's a really good documentary called "King in the Wilderness."

And those last years of his life really did feel like he was in the wilderness.

- Amazing.

Hi.

- [Audience Member] Hello, Jonathan.

Thank you so much for the book.

It's a wonderful book, I read last year.

- Oh, I like all those Post-it Notes in there.

- [Audience Member] Yes, yes, yes.

It's a great, great, great book.

I read in "Variety" that your book is gonna be getting adapted by, and Spielberg's gonna be producing the book.

- [Jonathan] Maybe, we're hoping, I mean- - [Host] Tell us about that.

- Yeah, so Chris Rock read the book and decided he wanted to direct a film, and he asked Steven Spielberg to produce, and Spielberg said yes, so we are working on that.

We'll have to keep our fingers crossed.

Hope that it happens.

- That's pretty good.

(audience applauding) - Yeah.

Not bad.

Not a bad team.

- Yeah.

- Just hoping, just wondering what are you hoping for the adaptation, and yeah, just, yeah, well, yeah, what you're hoping for it, so.

- Of course, there have been films in which the King story has been told, right?

This would be, again, a little bit like a challenge, how do you differentiate the telling of the story?

- Yeah, there hasn't been a king straight=up biopic.

"Selma" is probably the most recent movie- - "Selma," right.

- That really looked deeply in his life.

And the new Bayard Rustin movie has a lot of King in it.

I don't know what to expect, and I just hope that they treat it with honesty, and nuance, and subtlety, and not too sensational, you know?

But you know, I haven't had any of my books turned into films or TV shows yet.

Some of them are in the works.

- [Audience Member] Right.

- Fingers crossed.

But you just have to hope that like, people bring the same passion to it.

But it's also, it's in some, it's like, it's, you know, you raised the baby and now it goes off on its own.

- [Host] When they turn the book into the movie, it's no longer yours, right?

That's the old line.

You just have to hope.

- Right.

- [Host] But of course, with those guys in charge of the production, if that's in fact what happens, pretty good hands.

- Very good hands.

- [Host] To be in.

Congratulations.

- Thank you.

- [Host] Dan.

- Yeah, I finished the book this weekend.

I've read all of your books, they're all fantastic.

- [Jonathan] Wow, thank you so much.

- Thank you for that.

It dawned on me this weekend that if he was still alive, he would be in his 90s.

- [Jonathan] Right.

- [Host] 94, right, 94?

- [Jonathan] He would've just turned 95.

- Jut 95, yeah.

- What do you think he would think of today's politics and situation?

- Right, what would he think of Donald Trump?

(audience laughing) Take 30 minutes to answer.

(audience laughing) - Yeah, right.

Oh man, what a great question.

When you go home tonight, check out, Google "The Boondocks" episode where King is actually in a coma for all these years and he comes outta the coma, and he responds to what he's seeing around him, and he's not a happy person.

(audience chuckling) But I think it'd be, it's so hard, it feels like we're living on a different planet than he inhabited, and maybe that's in part because we lost him.

But I like to look at the examples of the people who surrounded him, like Harry Belafonte, who remained a radical all into his 90s.

Like his sister, like Coretta, like John Lewis, people who never stopped struggling.

- [Host] John Lewis, right.

- And I feel fairly certain that King, I like to think at least that King would've never stopped struggling.

- [Host] And one of the King kids just passed away, right?

- Yeah.

- [Host] Within the last two weeks.

- Yeah, his son Dexter passed away.

- I believe, but the other King- - He has two surviving children, right.

- Surviving children.

What's your sense of, how much of a, talk a bit about them in the context of this book.

- Well, they decided not to be interviewed for the book.

- Yeah, right.

- And I haven't heard from them since the book was published.

I hope that they might read it and find something of value in it, but it's hard to read about your parents, you know?

It's hard to read about your parents as flawed humans, so I understand that.

- [Host] It's hard to read a perfect story, it's really hard to read an imperfect story.

- Yeah.

- [Host] All right, yes.

Okay, Carl, last question.

- I have a friend in New York whose mentor was Abe Briloff, a famous accounting professor at Baruch.

And my friend, Charlie Dreyfuss, who's now 80, talked about Briloff being Harry Belafonte's accountant, and how Belafonte was surreptitiously supporting King in his efforts, and I'm wondering if you came across that, if that's valid or not, and that King was ultimately, as part of the FBI activity was audited or examined, and that one of the Briloff's proudest moments was they couldn't find anything that got Belafonte or King in trouble that way.

- That's a great question.

Yeah, King was hugely helped by Belafonte.

Belafonte was deeply concerned that the King family didn't have enough money.

He paid for all kinds of things for the family, a housekeeper, babysitters.

He bought a life insurance policy for Dr. King, which was really all they had when he was assassinated 'cause King had saved nothing.

He had donated every penny of his income or his book money to the SCLC or to his church.

And the accountants did a great job, because the, Alabama did come after him for taxes, and a white jury ruled in King's favor that he did not owe his taxes.

And I just wanna add that- Oh, what was I gonna say?

Oh, you know, Belafonte really was one of the great heroes.

I know he's a famous guy, but I still don't think he's gotten all the credit he deserves for everything he did.

He raised money for bail for people when they were arrested, and during the Birmingham protest, he rallied Hollywood to support the civil rights crusade, and Belafonte was a really good friend and ally to King.

- And he was one of the people on your list who you said, "I better talk to him soon."

- He was one of my first interviews and one of my favorites.

He spent like, three or four hours with me in his apartment.

And he's the kinda person who could say, you know, sometimes when people are famous and you know this, they go on autopilot, they say the same thing over and over.

- Yeah.

- Belafonte would stop and say, "Let me think about that."

And he would really think.

I said to him, "What did you guys do when you were bored?"

And he said, "et me think about that.

You know, Martin would come over here a lot and we would just sit around and listen to records."

And I said, "What kind of music did you listen to?"

And he said, "Let me think about that."

(chuckling) "You know, I took him to a jazz club once.

I think we went to hear Lester Young.

And he really didn't like bebop that much, so when we put on records, we put on movement songs.

We put on Peter, Paul and Mary and Lead Belly, and he'd sing along."

And I said, "Was he a good singer?"

And Belafonte just laughed and said, "He was a loud singer."

(Jonathan and audience laughing) - Love that, that's great.

Well, we're gonna let Jonathan go get ready for tonight.

He has some other stuff this afternoon.

Please give him a big hand.

(audience applauding) It is great to have him here.

- Thanks.

- Wish him success.

We'll see you soon, thanks very much.

Great.