In 'King of the North,' a spotlight on Dr. Martin Luther King's civil rights advocacy beyond the Deep South

(This conversation was originally broadcast on April 2, 2025) In today's encore edition of Midday, we revisit Tom Hall's conversation last April with Dr. Jeanne Theoharis, a historian and Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Brooklyn College, and the author or co-author of 13 books on the American civil rights movement. Her latest book makes the case that some of Dr. King’s most significant work in his fight for racial justice wasn’t in the Jim Crow South, as legend has it, but rather, in cities like Boston, Chicago, New York and Los Angeles. Dr. Theoharis argues that despite his role in passing landmark civil rights legislation and the professed support he received from white liberals in the north, King was consistently betrayed by those whites, the press and the federal government. Her book is called King of the North: Martin Luther King Jr.’s Life of Struggle Outside of the South.  Jeanne Theoharis joined us on Zoom from New York last April.