Martin Luther King Jr Is Still on the Case! by Garry Wills

What this episode covers

In 1968, just hours after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, the legendary historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Garry Wills—then a young writer for Esquire—rushed to Memphis, Tennessee, where he watched as King’s body was embalmed at the mortuary, then later traveled twelve hours by bus with mourners to King’s funeral in Atlanta. Nearly fifty years later, Wills’s “Martin Luther King Jr Is Still on the Case!” remains one of the most revealing and lasting portraits of King and his turbulent era ever written. Writer and director John Ridley—who won an Oscar for his screenplay for 12 Years a Slave—joins host David Brancaccio to discuss why Wills’s wrenching portrait of King continues to resonate today, what has changed in America since it was written, and, most important, what still needs to change.

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