MLK in Kansas City Share this story Published January 18th, 2021 at 6:00 AM Above image credit: During one visit to Kansas City during the 1960s, Martin Luther King, Jr. sat for an interview with longtime Kansas City broadcaster Walt Bodine and his colleague Bill Griffith. (Courtesy | LaBudde Special Collections, UMKC University Libraries)
She had been sent to get an interview and she would get it, but not without some help. Her assignment: talk to the Black minister, civil rights leader and 1964 Nobel Peace Prize winner – Martin Luther King, Jr. – who had just flown into Kansas City.
“I saw him in the airport corridor,” said Helen Gray, the first Black woman hired as a reporter by the Kansas City Star-Times.