♪♪ Rob: Dr. Jonathan King has seen it all from the worst of segregation to the best of education.

Dr. King is the Vice President of Student Services at Lake Tahoe Community College.

Globally educated with four degrees, including Harvard, the International University of Japan and the esteemed Morehouse College in Atlanta.

Jonathan was born in a pivotal time and place-- Albany, Georgia in the heart and the heat of the Civil Rights Movement.

Jonathan was just three years old when his family made national headlines and became a catalyst for the Civil Rights Movement in Albany.

His mother Marion King was brutally beaten unconscious outside of the jail by two police officers while she was taking food to a family friend inside.

She was seven months pregnant.

Her beatings witnessed by young Jonathan and his sister.

Her unborn child was lost, stillborn from the attack.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., no relation, came to Jonathan'’s home.

Dr. King stayed with Jonathan's family and worked alongside Jonathan's father Slater King, a prominent business leader and Civil Rights activist in the South.

Dr. Martin Luther King deeply impacted young Jonathan and his legacy of creating a beloved community is alive in Jonathan today.

Annc: And now Rob on the Road, Exploring Northern California.

Rob: It is such a pleasure to welcome Dr. Jonathan King to Rob at Home from South Lake Tahoe.

Good to see you.

Thank you so much for joining us.

Jonathan: Thank you, Rob, just call me Jonathan.

Rob: I don't even know how all of that feels to you to hear in one... one piece, so much that you experienced as a child.

How are you today?

First of all, how are you right now?

Jonathan: Rob, I feel...

I had mixed emotions and I think any person of color or African American has gone through these experiences, they have mixed emotions.

On the one hand, there is an intense anger of what we had to go through that we shouldn't have gone through.

There's a sense of awe that there are certain people in our society, um, who carried that load and carried it with grace and honor.

I think of my parents initially, and as a kid, you don't think about that.

You just think that's what they do, but it's not until you become an adult and you look back, you say, "“Oh my God, how could they have been that fearless?

How could they have stood up against, like, the Ku Klux Klan?

How could they have, you know, showed up to a bombing and seeing one of your... your... your elders or somebody in your family get hurt or even killed?

"” Right?

And then there's a sense of irony.

How, you know, we went through this back in the 60s and the 70s, but then we're kind of still there.

We're still, you know, in this quagmire.

You know, King talked about the beloved community a long time ago and he had his faith that got him through it.

And many of the African Americans that are still standing are standing because of their faith.

But at the same time, we wonder how long, how many more years do we have to put in to actually get to that place?

Rob: You experienced extreme trauma as a child.

Um, as the nation watched, what was going on with the Civil Rights Movement, you were at one of the ground zeros in Albany, Georgia, and you had to see something that no one should ever have to see or experience.

And that is what happened to your mom.

Jonathan: Right.

She was about seven months pregnant and all of a sudden-- it came out of nowhere-- one of the cops walked up to her and said, "“You're not moving fast enough.

"” And then he struck her in the face and knocked her to the ground.

And all of a sudden, we've got two children running around screaming and I'm looking at my mother and the next thing I see another cop walks up to her and uses his boot and kicks her directly in the stomach.

And she lost consciousness at that moment.

And for me as a child, I didn't know what to expect because we looked up to policemen, to a certain degree.

When you're five years old and you're looking at television programs and your parents want to tell you that, "“Hey, the cops are the ones protecting you"” that's when it all went out of the window for me.

Like, when I saw that cop kicked my mother in the stomach and she screened and she went unconscious, I went unconscious, you know, like in terms of not knowing what to even think.

And when I process this, when I try to go back to that day, I don't even know-- I don't remember even driving home.

That's how bad that was.

I guess it was so bad for me at that age, it was-- I just had to block that out of my head.

Right?

Because here it is your mother, the person that is your protector is lying out on the ground, pregnant woman and unconscious.

And then the next thing you know, she's in the hospital.

Father can't even see her right away.

He gets the news, and this is the first time I see a grown man cry.

And the thing about it is they didn't talk about that trauma to us.

So, imagine a child is experiencing the trauma, but not even knowing that they're going through trauma.

And then the hardest thing-- I tell this story-- was about two months later going to the hospital wanting to pick up my baby brother.

We were so-- it was almost like going back to the prison and expecting to see something, expecting to see Ella Mae come out of jail or to get the... the lunch.

And I go to this hospital expecting to see my little baby brother... and we pull up and we're waiting.

And I'm thinking my mother, in my head, is going to come out of the door with the baby in her arms, and I see first this door slowly open up, and then I see her being carried in a wheelchair and they pull the wheelchair up to the door of the car, and I'm sitting in the back and I'm looking just like, where's the baby?

Where's my bro-—where'’s my little brother?

And then they put my mother in the front seat and they slowly shut the door.

And there's nothing said between my mother and my father.

And I asked, "“Mommy, where's... where's the baby?

Mommy, where's the baby?

"” And the car starts rolling down the street and we go all the way home.

And there's no discussion between my mother and my father.

And there's no discussion between my parents and me, and I could not process that.

We never, ever talked about the death of that baby.

Rob: Ever?

Jonathan: We never, ever talked about that baby.

Rob: Oh... Jonathan: We never talked about the burial of the baby.

What happened to the baby?

Where is the baby?

We never as a family talk about that.

Even when I became adult-—an adult, we never talked about it.

So, this is the kind of trauma when we talk about racial trauma that lasts for a lifetime, we talk about PTSD, post-traumatic stress syndrome.

There's a book out by Joy DeGruy, Dr. Joy DeGruy, who talks about Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome.

So, patch up all of those things collectively in the Black community from slavery to now, that have not been resolved, that is major.

When you talk about what Blacks have gone through, don't say, "“Oh, those Blacks, you know, this, that, and the other.

"” Those Blacks are amazing, that they were able to survive that kind of trauma for that many years.

And many African Americans don't, and have not received the mental health counseling or support for all of that trauma that is built up in their families and themselves.

Those experiences happened.

And, you know, it's interesting how it just came to my... to... to... to my, um, to my conscious about this... this episode, about my brother.

We never talked about it and that is weird.

But I think it was so painful in my family, we couldn't talk about it.

So, it's still there...

Rob: Wow.

Jonathan: What happened to my parents.

Yeah.

Rob: I mean, Jonathan, that is... that is life altering on every single level that you can imagine.

And by the way, your mom ended up becoming a judge.

Jonathan: My mom was one of the most amazing women I've ever met.

And when I think of a woman who could be knocked down by policemen, kicked in the stomach, lose her child, and not retain any hate toward those cops; that to me is amazing.

She never dwelled on that situation with the police.

She forgave them.

That's the incredible thing.

She forgave those guys because she knew that they were overwhelmed by their own hate.

I think if you're a person of faith and you understand that people are, um, people have their own vices, they have their own weaknesses.

I feel sorry for those policemen that were trained and taught to be hateful.

What kind of life would you live if you were that hate-filled?

So, in a way I kind of forgiven these policemen as... as her son, I have forgiven them.

But I definitely would like to know, did you reflect on this and did you atone?

Are you remorseful for what you did?

That would make me feel much better to know that, yes, you know, I am remorseful.

I reflected on this.

What I did was a hateful thing and I renounced that.

I called them, you know, our spiritual transformations can happen, but I do forgive those policemen.

I have to, I have to.

I-- for me to go around and be trying to do a reverse hate would do just as much harm to me than to them.

Rob: That experience when you were a child and what happened to your mother, played out on a national stage.

Um, and Dr. Martin Luther King came to your home, stayed in your home, press conference in your yard.

Do you remember that?

Jonathan: Yes.

I remember him coming to our home because in those days there were no hotels you could stay in.

We were in a very small town and all of the nice hotels were owned by whites.

So, he wasn't going to stay in a white hotel.

And it was just in those kinds of days, you pick the phone up and you would call somebody and say, "“Can he stay at your house?

"” And you say, "“Sure!

He can stay at our house, not a problem.

"” You will make room, you know.

And we were all in that together.

So, for him to stay in our house, I feel just immensely blessed.

And to see that he was in our backyard, giving a press conference is an amazing thing.

You kind of pinch yourself like, god, this man was in our backyard in the old days, having a press conference with, I mean, international media.

It does give me a great sense of delight to know that Dr. King stayed in her home and, you know, Dr. King was a cool guy.

You know, we always see the... the... the kind of, um, serious side of him, but he loved to tell jokes.

He loved to crack jokes.

He loved to, you know, he... he liked to get dressed up.

They said when he was in college, he was a great dancer.

He was a... he was... he was a partier.

Right?

And, um, the thing about him was he loved children.

And they said one of the few times they saw him cry was when he walked through this very poor neighborhood in Albany and... and it was so depressing that he broke down and began to cry.

But normally he had that kind of rough, very serious exterior.

You know, he looked like he was always kind of on the verge of being angry, but King was a very sweet, downhearted man and he loved children, and you see loved his own children.

And he loved to play pool as well.

You know, he went to the pool hall and was better than the guys who played pool in the pool hall.

That's how good he was.

So, he was a man of all seasons.

You know, he was a great, you know, dresser, he dressed to the nines, you know.

Um, he knew how to hang out with people, talk with people and he knew how to converse in a way where he could make everybody understand what he was trying to say in a very elegant way.

So King was a man of all seasons and he was my first superhero.

You know, we didn't have heroes back then, but King was the man.

But I can tell you right now when King got killed, when he got assassinated, it was almost like all... the lights in my life went out for a minute because I felt that he was the epitome of Black greatness and it was taken out within a second.

And I felt like, who can take his place?

I don't think anybody can take his place.

Had there been maybe 50 other Kings walking around like that?

Maybe I wouldn't have felt as bad, but I felt bad for him and his family.

And I felt bad for African Americans as a race of people.

I felt like now we're not going to go anywhere.

We'd been on this ship and moving forward, we've been achieving all of these goals together and collectively, but when he died, it just like all the lights went out and I was depressed.

And it was the first time...

Cause I had mixed emotions about Dr. King, because I wasn't getting a lot of positive feedback from my friends, my white friends and my white teachers and society in general.

But I was-- on the other hand, my parents loved him.

So, they... they... they really esteemed him.

But that was the first time that I went into my closet and I shut the door and I cried.

I broke down like a baby and I cried that this beautiful man had been shot and killed because he was Black.

Because he was Black.

So that was a dark day for me.

What he was doing was trying to uplift humanity, not just Blacks, but everyone.

Rob: You know, I, um, I have to say that I heard someone say this and it rings so true to me today.

And that is that America never atones for its deepest sins.

And...

I hear the through -line of that in this... in this interview that, uh, that... that this country must take a stand publicly and admit its wrongs, and then do something about it.

What would that look like to you?

And can it be done?

Jonathan: That is a very, very deep question that I don't feel I'm qualified to answer.

You are right-— Rob: What would it take for you?

Jonathan: Do you really want to know what I would like to see as atonement?

Rob: Yeah, I do.

Jonathan: The beloved society that I would like to see, Rob, is what I felt in Canada.

If we could get to that level, you know, where, you know, we think that all whites are a certain way, but they're not.

And I think it's programming whereby I lived in Canada for a total of seven years, and I felt like there was more of a brotherly sisterly love with them right off the bat without me having to strive for it.

I felt more welcomed there as an African American.

I felt like I could go into people's homes and we could just talk just like I talked to my Black friends.

And they had never met a Black person before or had never been around a Black person.

That is, I think, the starting point for this country.

We have to get to know each other.

We don't have-- in Canada they don't have the same level of segregation that we've gone through.

You don't go and look for a Black neighborhood per se.

Everybody's sort of spread out and you live in the same areas.

We don't have that in America.

We have so much to do to rid ourselves of those segregated boundaries.

Rob: I think about everything you saw from birth until, my goodness, if we just go to when you saw your superhero assassinated, I mean, just those 11 years are a lot of horrific trauma and... and you were a kid.

I mean, I just can't stop thinking about you in that closet crying.

Jonathan: Because of the trauma we were already going through, I know that my parents were in their closets.

They were also crying, but they didn't want us to see them weep because we had already worked enough in private.

Right?

They didn't want to see-- they didn't want us to see them at a stage of being hopeless in a situation like that.

So that's why we had to fight a lot of these battles on our own that we didn't even know how to communicate with each other, you see?

Like, have we had some kind of mental health therapy when that happened to my little baby brother, that could have been a way that my parents could have comforted me and told me, "“Hey, everything's going to be okay.

Let's talk about this.

Let's talk about, you know, your brother.

What's going to happen to him.

Let's... let's plan for the burial.

"” None of that was discussed.

Rob: Yeah.

Because they probably couldn't process it either.

Jonathan: Couldn't process it.

Rob: It was too painful.

Jonathan: Right.

Yes.

Yes.

So, it was a hard 11 years, but things did get better.

And I think some of those things happened because of the laws that were passed and some of those things happen because the awakening started happening amongst, you know, Southern whites.

They realized that time was up.

And so, it's a different South right now.

When I go flying to Atlanta, it's a different place.

It... it's really amazing to go from a place where there were no Black politicians, right?

Um, there were no Blacks running corporations or working in corporations.

You know, the highest jobs you could have when I was about six or seven years old was being a postman.

That's the highest job that you could get.

That's why my father had to start his own business because he didn't want to be a postman.

But the beauty of them being able to get educated outside of the South was what turned it around.

And that was the touchstone for bringing on the changes in the South was because some of those good whites in the South said, "“Hey, you guys can come up here and get educated.

We'll give you scholarship money.

"” You know, "“You... you can come be with us and learn from all these great philosophers.

Oh, you want to learn about Gandhi?

Come on up here and do it.

"” And that's what King did.

King had to leave the South to get educated up there and see how things were in order to say, maybe we can replicate some of this for the South.

If he would've thought that was not possible, he would have never gone back down South, but he had an inkling in his mind that there were enough good white people in the South to turn it around.

And so, the change of the guard really was, was quick.

You know, after that first year I was desegregating the school, the first one of... one of the first few Blacks to desegregate the school system.

Things began to move quickly.

I remember it was like overnight.

"“Okay.

Well, you know, they weren't that bad.

They didn't tear the school up like we thought they were going to do.

They didn't bring any guns to school or whatever.

"” Right?

We were just good old Black kids trying to get ahead.

And... and... and then as that... as that six came in and the next year it was 12, and the next year it was 40, and... and... and it goes on and on and on.

But at the same time, what it turned, uh, into later was white flight.

You see?

So now Albany is predominantly an all-Black town.

So here we go again, right?

It'’s another form of segregation.

Oh, you don't want to be with Blacks?

Oh, well, yeah.

Okay.

So, they're taking over our school system.

Let's... let's go maybe 70 miles out and start our own school system.

And so that's what we have now in the South.

People still have that racial programming of not wanting to be around Blacks because they feel like they're a different breed.

They're not like us.

I don't want my daughter to marry one of them or whatever.

Right?

We have to get around that kind of thinking.

So, this is the time of introspection and the time of reckoning.

We're having a racial reckoning in America and I'm so happy it's here, Rob.

I am so happy it's here because you know what?

Because we're having the reckoning, we're going to have to change.

It can't stay the same.

So, as we're moving in that direction of a... of a more united world, we're going to have to have more united hearts so that we can have this beloved community that can stretch from the... from the United States all across the world.

And I think that we can be leaders because we are probably the most diverse society amongst all the nations of the world.

People are looking to us for that answer.

They're looking for us to model that.

And I have faith that our new young millennials will be able to model that new kind of love that can show the world that is possible.

Rob: I love that.

I love that.

I would like to ask you if you had the opportunity, what would you like to say to your mama?

Jonathan: Oh God, you'’re asking such throbbing questions.

Rob: But if you could sit-- if she were here and not me on the other side of this screen.

Jonathan: I would just like to hug her... and just tell her...

I really... am so happy for the sacrifices that she made for me and my family.

That she was able to go out there under such hideous conditions and, you know, take on that kind of trauma and not be angry about it and still be a great mother.

Right?

I'm glad that she fought.

She fought with every ember of her body to get me into that school.

And as someone said the other day, you know, um, "“Your mother was a champion because she wanted to make sure that every Black kid got what white children got, and that's why she made those sacrifices.

"” So, um, I miss her, but I love her, and my adoration for her is ongoing.

It will never end, never end.

Rob: I think we should dedicate this show to her.

Jonathan: Thank you, Rob.

I appreciate that.

I really do.

Rob: And she raised a good son.

Jonathan: Thank you for the compliment.

I don't deserve it.

Rob: Yes, you do.

Jonathan: I've done a lot...

Rob: Yes, you do.

Jonathan: Of things in my life.

But thank you so much, Rob.

I appreciate that.

Thank you for inviting me on the show.

Rob: All right.

Thank you so much, Dr. Jonathan King from South Lake Tahoe.

And it is great to talk to you here on Rob at Home.

We will see you next week, same time, same place, and you always can come back here anytime you want to, you hear me?

Jonathan: Thank you, Rob, I appreciate it.

You take care.

Rob: Bye-bye.

Jonathan: Bye-bye.

♪♪