And thats been probably seven or eight years since then. And whats really neat is that jonathan had decided to kick off his tour for his new book. His book just came out yesterday and that here at the jimmy president ial library, which is really, i think, great. This is his sixth book. Hes just as i said about jackie robinson, lou gehrig, muhammad, al capone as as the foursome who really did the push to get the approval of the Birth Control pill. But the thing that the thing that you see in jonathans writing is an amount of research that goes into it. And i think he comes by that naturally his dad was accountant so a stickler for details and his mom was a community activist. And so if you think about and think about the subjects hes written, jackie robinson, mohammed ali, Martin Luther king, i think he gets that from her. Well, hes been a reporter at the new orleans timespicayune, dallas morning news, chicago magazine, the wall street journal. He has taught at Columbia College and lecture was at northwestern university, the Washington Post calls his new book the most compelling account of kings life in a generous motion. And so i think were in for a treat tonight. So it was important. I think for us to have just right person to interview Jonathan Valerie jackson is that person you she is always referred to as former first lady of atlanta which is true, but it really doesnt tell her story i mean, shes grown up she grows up in virginia is the one of the First Americans students admitted her high school she goes to college gets her in Business Administration goes to the Wharton School of business probably the finer school of business gets her mba gets her mba there she goes on shes an advertising executive a Regional Marketing executive for an airline she when she married mayor Maynard Jackson who was the first African American mayor of the city of atlanta. She served as an advisor. The citys Economic Development program bringing national convene events and programs to city, and then if i were to go on and list every board and committee and commercial that she is on heads, youd never hear anything from jonathan tonight so join me in welcoming Valerie Jackson and jonathan i. Say evening good evening and of all things that he mentions, my favorite thing to is to read and talk to authors, which ive been doing for over 20 years. Well, im so happy to be here. Jonathan its so good to see you again. I think the last time we were together, i was interviewing you on your muhammad thats right book. And we a wonderful time. As a matter of fact i commented to you about how many tabs i had to put in the book because. Youve got even more of this. Listen, i look, i was trying to be discriminate. I was halfway through the book and i noticed that almost every page had a tab on. I said, wait a minute valerie, you got to slow down here. Got the description nating. Right. Well, this is discrimination all right. And that was after i slowed down. But what this really means is that this is a very comprehensive, rich book that contains so much Important Information that you really i cant resist underscore and highlight and think so which color marks the corrections . Im not. I think going to ask me which ones are the f. Yeah, ill get to that later. Right. Right. Anyway, there have been so many books written already about Martin Luther king. Ive got at least eight or nine on my shelf, not counting. And not to mention his that, he wrote about himself too, about ten of those. So the first question one wants to know is why did you think there was a need for yet another Martin Luther book . Two reasons. Mainly, one, it had been a long time since the last king biography 40 years when the Steven Lomazow colbert the trumpet sound came out. And since then weve had other great books about civil rights, about king, obviously the Taylor Branch trilogy. But thats covers really in the king years. David garrels book is not a biography. Its wonderful. But 40 years between king biographies is ridiculous. Thats much too long. And in that time, obviously, theres a lot more material, not just fbi material, but archival material thats come into play. And at the same time, there were people alive who knew dr. King and this was really the spot where i could get around in, interview them before it was too late. Obviously, when i was here in atlanta and for my ali interviewing people like john lewis and andrew young, i just gravitated toward asking them, you know, what was dr. King like . Because ali and king met a couple of times, i began asking them, you know, how they got along. Really. I was just curious to talk. People who knew Martin Luther king jr and you know, were here at the carter center. Jimmy carter was born four and a half years before Martin Luther king. So jimmy carter could still be with us. I mean, sorry, jimmy carter is still with us. Guy, right . Right. Martin luther could still be with us. His older sister is still us. So i just realized that this was an Incredible Opportunity to meet people who knew him and to to him and record their stories one last time and. Like you said, there are so many things, personal papers, a, that Coretta Scott king had written that included a lot of things about. So there a great deal of information that had not been out there before that you have brought to the front. But i must say that the poor portrait of king that emerges from your book may be troublesome to some people. But you said that you wanted to recover the real man from the mr. Hagiography. And i had to look at it. But even though i know what it means to the audience, what you meant by you wanted to recover him from the hagiography that surrounds often one of the things thats happened especially since the National Holiday was implemented, is that weve turned him into this almost ideal lobbyist figure and. You know, we teach beginning in kindergarten, this vision of dream of king, beginning with i have a dream and. We often dont get much more sophisticated than that. And in the process of doing that, i think we lose sight of his humanity. We lose sight of the fact that he had feelings he suffered, that he had doubts and that he wasnt perfect. And we dont need our heroes to be perfect. We just need them to be brave, idealistic and and moral. He was all of those things. So i wanted write a book that you could feel like you believed that this was the real man and not the cardboard cutout that weve been getting for so long. Tell us a little bit about Martin Luther king as a young man. Michael. Yeah, mike a little mike as he was called because his daddy was big mike grew up here in atlanta, of course, auburn avenue and he was, of course, the preachers son and had to was under constant scrutiny as a result that and grew up the bible before he learned to read and also you somewhat privileged compared to i talked to a lot of people who knew him who said that he didnt seem to be as bruised by growing up in the racist south as some of the others because he had this little bit of a bubble, you know, auburn avenue considered, you know, like the miracle mile. It was it was a special place where people are known businesses and had powerful churches and had some power within the community to negotiate with politicians. And king had this, you know, educated set of parents and his father came from sharecropping. He wasnt always educated be educated himself by the time he got to atlanta. And, you know, all of these influences really prepared. King to be who he was. So how did he come come from being michael to now Martin Luther well, his father began his father was born michael king with no name in stockbridge. His when he moved to atlanta, he began calling himself m. L. King. And its not even that he had a middle name. I think a lot of at that time felt like initials, a little bit of dignity and it was it was a trendy thing at the time, just to call yourself by two initials and it appears that he did it really just because he was rising in the world and he wanted to be a little more professional. And m. L. Sounded a little bit more professional. And then he began calling himself martin and marvin at one point in the 1930 census, hes listed as marvin king that might, just might have been a mistake by the census taker. We dont. But then he travels to and learns more about Martin Luther and comes and turns the l to luther and a very gradual process. Its not until his wedding invitation goes out that he begins to call himself martin looking for the first time, and then a few years. After that he begins using Martin Luther king and then tells his son, by the way, name is changing, too. So why Martin Luther was the significance . Why would he choose . That name of Martin Luther was the great protestant reformer from germany who stood for religious independence. Standing up for your beliefs for, you know, for principle over over practicality. Well, he didnt really want to be a minister did he know he was his father for a long time, assumed that he was going to be a minister yeah but well its interesting though i was really struck by this i found and autoblog raphe that daddy king Martin Luther king jr senior was referred to as daddy king. I found autobiography that he wrote that was never published. And in that autobiography he talks about how he really didnt pressure his kids to become preachers. But martin junior his brother eddie became preachers. Daddy king said he wanted them make money. He was really he was really more concerned with them. You im sweating quite a bit here. This happens to me often. So dont worry. Youre not making me nervous. I didnt mean no, but. In this autobiography, that was never published. Daddy king, that he really wanted them to be businessmen, lawyers. He was really concerned with their Financial Security and thats so interesting to me because, you know, daddy can, grow up. As i said, sharecropper, son and. I think that his ability to get off the farm and go to atlanta and remake himself was was a was a changing experience for his entire family. And he was also concerned with his childrens safety. You know, the idea that Martin Luther king junior would become the leader of a protest movement in montgomery to begin with, really him. And he went to montgomery several times and said, youve got to stop this. Youve got to come home, knock this off because youre going to get killed. So dan king, like most parents, was protective of his son, wanted to be financially stable and, you know, we often hear that he pressured his kids to become preachers. But according to unpublished autobiography, its not true of the the one thing about his childhood that struck me in the book was when they had the premiere of gone with the wind here in atlanta, big, big premiere. You know and what the problem it was segregated so blacks were not allowed to to attend you know as guest unless were being a chauffeur or a waiter but the family had a great choir at Ebenezer Baptist church. And im not sure if if daddy king made the suggestion or if they reached out to him. But somehow or another were invited to perform, not to be a guest, but to perform at the premiere and they did. Tell me, what role did he play . Well, Martin Luther king jr played. He was as an enslaved boy and sat in the front row of the choir the entire choir was dressed in slave togs and. They performed for this all white audience of these rich benefactors, these rich moviegoers, clark gable flown in on a private jet. This the biggest event in atlanta history at that time. And it celebrated slave culture and daddy king decided to bring his choir an alberta king. His wife led that choir. And our friend, the dearly beloved june dobbs , told me that the rest of much of the community was furious with daddy for allowing his choir to perform at the premiere of gone with the wind. But daddy king, the response was a lot of that movie is true and its a kind of a big deal. I think he got caught in the excitement of the celebrity, but the thought and theres a picture of it you cant quite make young Martin Luther king jr, but you can see the children in the front row at, the hollywood premiere and Martin Luther king is one of those children in the front row. Well, aunt june, june main, its aunt one of the six dropped sisters who were all outstanding women in their own right, john dobbs, whom a street is named after here, as you might know, had six daughters and theyre all excelled i mean, its mother was a french professor, but the grandfather dobbs was very upset about the king family performing in this performance. And june said that basically daddy king led a combination of proto house and accommodation. Yeah. To be able to operate in the city and, to develop grace with the white leaders. Grandfather dobbs didnt. That was a good enough reason. But anyway, well move on from that or get it now in his he he actually ended up going to seminary right tim at school of ministry and had a have a little in terms of he was an eloquent speaker but his writing left to be desired so he often had a handicap talk how he plagiarized. Well as it says to it i didnt want to say that to be blunt here. Were among friends. Listen, as i said before, i think its important that we acknowledge that our heroes dont have to be perfect or else whos going to expect anyone to be a hero to lead . Whos going to a position of leadership . If you have to be perfect of us are perfect. So he skipped several grades at school. It really set him back and had to account for it and it affected his his his performance all through high college. And then also i think theres a somewhat of a culture there are some experts in the room who can chime in on this or dispute me, but i preachers dont the same attitude about plagiarism that College Professors have because. They borrow from other preachers and they repeat and thats part of the beauty of of the of the church. Its part of the beauty of sermons, is that theyre like jazz musicians. They hear a phrase, they borrow a phrase, they make their own. So Martin Luther king grew up practicing sermons long before he practiced writing high school or college dissertations. So he began plagiarizing an early age. Id the fact that he plagiarized his doctoral dissertation dissertation is well known. It was reported years ago by professors stanford i discovered and im sure im the first one to discover this, that he also plagiarized the High School Speech contest that he entered and finished in third place. So the Martin Luther king finished third place in a public speaking. Thats shocking enough. Yes. Maybe if he hadnt plagiarize said and written his own, he would have won. Yeah, he got bad grades in english. I was surprised at that. Im going to move on now because theres much to cover and i want to kind of get to as much as i can. King was influenced by several great minds like Reinhold Niebuhr philosophers like Friedrich Nietzsche and gandhi. Of course, in addition to the religious ministers that he studied, who were some of the most influences. Do you believe on dr. King and why . Well, if were just talking academics, i was gonna say jesus obviously is probably the most important influence other than his parents, maybe more than his parents, but Benjamin Mays, morehouse has to be at the very top of the list. I would put Benjamin Mays as greater influence than thoreau, niebuhr and gandhi, even because Benjamin Mays offered a vision that was just subtly different enough from what his father offered from what Martin Luther king senior offered. Martin Luther King Jr was like a lot of us a little embarrassed. His father, he was a country preacher. His grammar wasnt good. His speeches were very his sermons were very emotional, you know, he shouted and he stomped. And young. Martin felt like he wanted to be where than that. And he wanted to be more of an outright activist he wanted to make if he if he was going to be a priest a preacher, he was going to use it to fight jim crow, not just to lead his community and uplift his community, but to get on the front lines. The fight against crime. Benjamin mays offered vision of how to do that. Benjamin mays combined mind the preaching and the the intellectual rigor and the discipline to to do something with yourself. He said, you know, morehouse, morehouse men had a responsibility. And i think Martin Luther king really felt like thats the kind of man wanted to be. Well, Benjamin Mays was my maynards hero. Also is one of mine, too. I met him. He was a wonderful person. And favorite quote is from benjamin. He means and it is. And im sure that dr. King probably this, too, if you believe something, you must act on it. If you dont act on it, its not a belief. Its an opinion. I like that. Well, all right. I dont mean not in my book. Im making a list of all the things i regret that are not in the book. And on the list. No. All right. Whatever. Were familiar with a lot of the names associated with dr. King, ralph abernathy, who was his best male friend. Of course, you know. Bayard rustin. I mean, i thought he was outstanding. A philip randolph, thurgood marshall. We