As the nation prepares to honor Martin Luther King Jr. On the same day as the inauguration, I spoke with his son, Martin Luther King III. He's the C.O. author of a new book, what Is My Legacy?
Exploring the weight of his family name and the ongoing fight to fulfill his father's dream. We sat down for a very special meet the Moment conversation. Martin Luther King iii, welcome back to Meet the Press. Thank you.
Honored to have the opportunity. We are honored to have you here. I rarely do this, but I have to say, on a personal note, I probably wouldn't be sitting in this chair if it weren't for not only the work of your father, but your father's legacy. Every Martin Luther King Jr.
Day, my mother would take me to an event honoring him, would use it as an opportunity to teach me about my history. It was a day of service, a day of reflection. And so I thank you, I thank your family. And with that, I ask you, what do you think this day in which we mark your father's legacy means to little boys and little girls all across this country today?
Well, I hope that young people and people in general see it as a day. My mother used to say, a day on, not a day off. So that, you know, generally holidays, we relax and chill. This is not about that.
This is about working to realize the dream that he had of freedom and justice and equality for all humankind. So we come to the table every year and people ask me, well, did we realize the dream last year? Maybe we've realized elements over the years, but anywhere near the fulfillment of the dream? Absolutely not.
Dad wanted to eradicate from our society what he defined as the triple evils of poverty, racism and violence. And when we look at those areas again, some progress has been made. But we got a long way to go before we actually realize the dream. On that point, as we sit here today, we are a nation that is divided, fractured, struggling to communicate.
What do you think your father would make of this moment in which we find ourselves? So even I, as the son, can only speculate, none of us would actually know. What I can say is from his past writings. Number one, he wrote a book back in 1967.
His last book was entitled Where Do We Go From Here? Chaos or Community? And I would say in the last, quite over a number of years, 10 years, we've seen a lot of chaos, some of it constructive, some of it destructive. I think dad would always want to hear on the side of how do we create constructive engagement?
How do we build the beloved community? He'd be Quite disappointed, quite frankly, that we are where we are. Probably wouldn't be surprised, but he certainly would be disappointed because he always infused energy that was positive, bringing out the best of who we as Americans are. And quite frankly, unfortunately, in great tragedy, we see the best of who Americans are.
The tragedy that's going on in California, Los Angeles, Southern California, now, that is so. I don't even know how you navigate when you've lost everything. So our prayers go out for those in Los Angeles, in the greater area. And that's why we need to be unified, because we see if it's a tsunami, tornado, hurricane, we come.
That's who we are. But when it's over, we go back to our corners and live in bubbles and separate. We need to exhibit the behavior that we exhibit in tragedy universally all the time you talk about constructive engagement. How do you think this country can get back to a place or get to a place, Maybe the more accurate way to say it, of constructive engagement?
Well, the first thing is people have to learn how you treat people with dignity and respect and like they really are human beings. You can't denigrate, talk down, talk terribly to people, even if they do it to you. I mean, we all say we want to not just follow many of us, and it's not all, but many want to follow the Ten Commandments. And, you know, you treat your neighbor as you want to be treated.
We're not doing that. Some of us are, but nowhere near enough. It creates a different energy, a different climate. And in fact, you know, we wrote a book called My Legacy.
What is. What is My Legacy? It's right here. This is the book.
What is My Legacy? I hope people will read it. Yeah, we're going to talk about it in just a second. And the reason.
Part of the reason we did that is because we disconnected. Social media disconnects us. Other types of rhetoric disconnects us. And the first thing we got to do is to really engage in constructive dialogue.
I believe that that is one of the first steps that was a big part, in fact, of your father's legacy. I believe it's a big part of your work. Your father appeared on this program, and notably, it took the team at that time, here in the press about three years to find a way for him to come, in part because of security concerns. But for your father, communication was so critical.
What do you think he understood about communicating with a national audience, about communicating with people who completely disagreed with him? He understood, number one, that leadership dictates that you must communicate a message. And he chose the constructive route because people are going to mostly tune you out. You know, the thing I talk about is the I have a dream speech.
That is certainly seen as one of the most powerful messages, you know, of the 20th century when you. When you really are listening. Now, I've heard it thousands of times, but I haven't always listened. And what I mean by that, let's say I've heard it, as I say, thousands, but I've only listened less than 100.
Every time I listen, I'm brought to tears. Now, let me explain that a little further. We listen with our ears, but we hear with our heart. So when one is able to hear this message and not just hear words and tune it out, then there's an opportunity for change to be brought about.
And dad understood that, understood how to bring the phraseology that would make sense. And if we, if we're really listening and hearing, we're going to engage. Because he was talking about not something that is something that is at a higher level, but he was focused on bringing the best out of human beings. If somebody is 90% hypothetically bad, you need to focus on that.
Focus on the 10% good and extract that out of the human being. And that's what we need to be doing today. Even whatever our agenda may be, nothing has to be done in a negative way. But when you separate and divide and it's all being done for control, it's not being done because this is the right thing.
When you attack, you know, not just attack people, but attack concepts, history. We are the nation that purports to be a land of freedom, and yet we are moving books out of schools. I mean, that's what those who we say are adversaries, like communists who want to control. They disallow books.
When did America get to the point where we need to start banning books now? I don't think children should be exposed to certain things at a child's age. But as an adult, we're a free country. We're a free nation.
We need to live that and not put laws in place that restrict us from knowing affirmation. Because people that do not know or remember the history are doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past. Well, speaking of history, you talk about your father's legacy being more complex than most people understand. And you talk about in the context of a living legacy.
Tell me what that means. So it means two things, because quite frankly, all of us have a living legacy. And it really is about legacy now, not at the end of Your life, it's not. It can be about accumulating a lot of resources to pass on to the next generation.
It can be about doing enough wonderful things in society so that your name is put on a building. But the reality is we live a legacy every day. We're not all going to have these huge, monumental, well known legacies, but every last one of us has something to deposit. Just a little something, hopefully, to make the community better than it was when you arrived.
One of my favorite quotes is a quote by Horace Mann on the campus of Antioch College, where my mother went, which says, be ashamed to die until you want a victory for humanity, very, very powerful. And I had to. It took me a number of years to break that message down. That message is basically saying, look, you can win a victory on your street, you can win one in your school system.
You can win victories in our city. Some will win victories in our state and our nation, and some even in our world. But the words only mean you're ashamed to die until you've done a little something to make the better the world a little better than it was when you arrived. And guess us can do a little something.
And if we all, and I mean really all, were doing something a little bit, this would be a phenomenal nation and world. Well, you write in your new book, what Is My Legacy? Which I love this section because you talk very candidly about how you're grappling with your legacy, your work here. You say if dad had been a physician and owned a medical clinic, I could have built on his work by opening a chain of clinics.
But my dad's name is known throughout the world and honored with a national holiday. I can't better that. So I've recalibrated my expectations of myself. I hope I can be known for my own body of work instead of the son of.
I hope to be known as Martin Luther King iii, who happens to be the son of Martin Luther King Jr. How do you come to terms with those complex feelings? Well, again, that's what I have chosen to do. Let me just say I'm grateful, so grateful for my mother who liberated me when I was, I don't know, 12, 14 years old.
She's telling me, you don't have to go to Morehouse College, you don't have to be a minister, you don't have to be a civil human rights leader. Just be your best self, whatever that is, we will support. So I did end up going to Morehouse. I did end up becoming a civil human rights leader.
But I did not go into ministry, not because that's not something I considered. It's just because I feel that's a very special, unique calling. And I didn't feel that. I don't feel like that's what my calling is.
Although a ministry is the work that we do, so we are involved in the ministry. In fact, we have launched an entity called Realize the Dream. And this is for 2029, the actual birthday of dad, where we will engage the nation in 100 million acts of service, which equates to about $3 billion. But if we can get a movement of people working together on something bigger than themselves, their choice, by the way, we're not saying you got to work on environment, you got to work on mental health, but whatever people want to do what speaks to their hearts.
100 million hours of turning together, not turning on each other, because the nation, some have a feeling like we're turning on each other. We got to turn to each other. It's like each one teach one, each one teach one, we got to rise to a higher level. So I don't even focus any more on my dad, per se, other than the fact that the work that he and my mom, I must say my mom were attempting to do, it's nowhere near fulfilled.
So we all must engage. And I will continue working on this mission to certainly eradicate those evils, to be of assistance anytime I can. Most recently, I took a position on the death penalty because there are many in this country who believe in the death penalty, and I don't now personally, my father was killed, Everybody knows in 1960, my grandmother, my father's mother, was gunned down in the church while playing the Lord's Prayer. So I certainly could advocate a position of, somebody does me wrong, I'm going to come after him.
But I don't believe that that's what I've chosen not to do, that I've chosen to show a different perspective. All of that, in my judgment, is part of legacy. And then finally, my wife and I are raising our daughter in that same tradition. So she feels at this point that she wants to be engaged.
And I, you know, we are just a lady so grateful and thankful that she's choosing to do what she's doing now because she's an activist by choice. She's extraordinary. I can't imagine how much pride you must feel in her that she feels so confident to speak out at such a young age to make her views heard. What does that feel like?
And do you sometimes sit back and say I see my dad in her. Well, I have. And she has very strong opinions. She does.
She really does. And she has a very strong moral compass. And that is a reflection of certainly my dad and mom, but probably my wife's dad and mom as well. So she's a mixture of all.
But she has just some unusual qualities that I'm so. We're so thankful for. It is such a blessing to be sometimes just communicating with her. And I hope we're doing.
We're doing as good of a job as we could. We couldn't be more proud of what she wakes up every day and how she shows up in the world because she doesn't have to. And we told her that you don't need to do anything but do the things that speak to you. When you think about the arc of the civil rights movement, of everything that you are now fighting for, that your father was fighting for, that your daughter fights for, we are now 60 years this year mark 60 years of Bloody Sunday, 60 years of the passage of the Voting Rights Act.
How do you see the road ahead? There have been enormous advances in progress made and also some setbacks. Well, one of the things I would say is that my father used to say that whenever there is a perception, any reality of progress, they're always inevitable setbacks. And I say that because 1963, when he was at the Washington Monument delivering, between the Washington and Lincoln monuments, I should say, delivering the I have a Dream speech.
The nation was very excited because you focused on jobs and freedom and you had 250,000 people and everything felt really great. But less than three weeks after the march, the 16th Street Baptist Church was bombed. Now, let's come to. We did the 60th anniversary just a couple of years back, Reverend Sharpton and I, and we had a vast coalition.
Now, that same afternoon, as we were, the march was closing out, a guy who appeared to be a certainly white supremacist went into a store in Jacksonville, Florida, a Dollar General. He first went to a black college and he ended up shooting three black people, killing. Excuse me. Now, the setback didn't wait.
The climate is what sets the climate, really sets the tone. So it's the rhetoric which causes people to elevate to untenable levels and do things that are just disastrous. I'm saying that to say, you know, when George Floyd tragically was killed, for about a year, we were doing all kind of incredible things to create opportunities for people who've been excluded historically. After about a year, the pushback came.
And now we, and we started banning books. We are starting to dismantle, excuse me, dismantle dei. And right after this president, incoming president, got elected, the clock was even started turning faster. And, you know, I think we need to realize and understand how we appreciate diversity, equity, inclusion.
It's not about giving someone an opportunity who's disqualified, which is a misnomer for what it really is, but it's about representing the best of who we are. And so we have to figure out, how do we change that paradigm, get people to at least consider, as opposed to saying, oh, well, these people are not qualified. They don't need to be at the table. That's destructive.
The way we make a great country is by that notion of diversity, equity and inclusion. This year, the day that we remember and mark your father's legacy falls on the same day of the inauguration of president like Donald Trump. What will you be listening for? In his speech, you said you're gonna be paying for.
He has said that he wants to create some semblance of unity. Now, what that means is you got to be in dialogue with everybody. You can't just say, well, this is what some want me to do, so I'm going to do it. Doesn't mean that you will do it, but you at least have to be in dialogue, and you need to set that tone.
If you said you wanted to be a uniter, then those who didn't support you, you got to. You need to reach out to them or allow them to reach out to you. Don't keep the door closed and say, no, we're not going to ever do that, because that's only going to be counterproductive if you really want to bring the nation together so that it is the manifestation of what we call ourselves, the United States of America. We're not reflective of the United States of America right this moment, in my judgment.
What is your message to people all across the political spectrum who don't feel like they can open that door to the person who they disagree with, who don't feel like they can sit down at a table and have that tough discussion with someone with who they have fundamental differences? Well, my message would be, look, we don't have the luxury of not engaging every part of the history of this nation and the world people have had to have. Now, if you choose to give up and to give out and give in, then you're right, you're done. We don't.
We're not going to stop doing the work that we need to do because the country, leadership and you know, the universe, interestingly enough, is going forward. Humankind and some political leaders are trying to take us backward. Now, at the end of the day, you're not going to be able to stop that going forward. You can slow it down, which may be the case right now.
But again, we are so much better when we are working together. And I'm sure people are frustrated and upset because in some circles, in political circles, including what I believe, we went in a different direction, but this is where we are. So I think we have to make ourselves available. And quite frankly, I was at an event a few days ago where people were talking about, we're not going to allow people to disrespect us.
You know, we contributed a billion, a trillion dollars in this economy. Black folk now, just black folk. And, you know, what my father learned was we have to divest sometimes to get respect. And maybe it's time for communities of color to come together and divest.
And this is, you know, some people say, well, why would you do that? Well, when you treat people with dignity and respect, it's mutual and you support each one another. But if you start treating people with disrespect, people have to decide. And that's what happened in Montgomery.
For 381 days, black folk didn't ride buses. And after that time, the bus company, whether it did it for the right reason or not, it had to come to the table because economics were not making sense. You know, and I'm saying that we have that kind of power today, and that really goes beyond just black people. That's all people.
But we need to decide how are we going to exercise our rights for society that sometimes is mistreating us. Nobody should ever be mistreated. When you say divest, just very quickly divest in what specifically? Well, specifically companies that are a part of this treaty.
Some companies are saying, we're no longer going to think about dei. Now, the reality is, if we just executed on the DEI and not necessarily say it, put a flag up and say, oh, this is dei. Just do the right thing. You don't have to even specify if you're doing the right thing.
The problem is, it's like we go on our way to acknowledge that we are not going to do this anymore. I mean, if you look at enrollment levels at Harvard and some of the other schools of African Americans and communities of color, they've gone down because you've removed these opportunities. Again, the opportunities were never for someone who's not qualified. I mean, Clarence Thomas, who is against affirmative Action.
He went to Yale only because of affirmative action. Here's the issue, whether I like that or not. If Clarence Thomas had not been prepared, he would have punched out and flunked out of Yale. But he showed that he could perform.
But each issue is. He historically would not have had an opportunity. And that still is the case. There are people who qualify but don't have the opportunity because you overlook them for certain other things.
I'm just saying, you know, we will not give up. We will not give out. We will not give in. We're going to keep positively in the spirit of nonviolence also, because that's critical.
You know, I don't think that it's productive to violently do things. An economic boycott of some kind is a constructive way of nonviolent way to say, hey, okay, we need to stop and think about this and maybe do it in a different way. And of course, your father is remembered for his message of nonviolence. We talked about the I have a Dream speech.
There's another part of a speech I want to play with you. A sermon, actually, that he gave two months before his death. He talked about his own eulogy. It's a very powerful moment.
I want to play part of it for you. We all think about it, and every now and then I think about my own death, and I think about my own funeral, and I don't think I've been to mortgage since. Every now and then I ask myself, what is it? I won't say it.
Is that something you think about? What would you want said about you, About Martin Luther King iii sometimes think about it. But yes, I do add that actual sermon is called the Drum Major Instinct. The organization that I'm the chairman of the board of is called the Drum Major Institute, which arose from that sermon.
Now, you know, I think dad was highly focused on how are we going to make these changes in our society. And they're not made because I, you know, had over 35 honorary degrees or I had a Nobel Prize. He wanted to be known for service. He wanted to be known for clothing those who had no clothes, for feeding those who had no food.
And in a real sense, you know, I certainly think about all of that. And the work that I'm involved in, I hope is moving the ball forward. So I'm thinking about that. But more than anything else, I hope that the legacy we create is one that is really kind of for Yolanda, even though she's making her own Lacey right now.
But the work we're doing, the organizations, you know, and actually, if there could be some level of fulfillment, I used to say I was the fourth president. Dad was president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. He always worked for that organization. Well, I was the fourth president.
So it was dad, it was Dr. Abernathy, it was Dr. Joseph Lowry, and I was four. And I used to say if we could work ourselves out of existence, then we would have fulfilled a mission.
The unfortunate part is these organizations are needed, maybe even more today, which is sad. So we've gone backwards to go forward. And again, I still believe that. I believe there is enough goodness in the world, in the nation, in our communities, to actually create that.
We have to make a dramatic turn. You know, my father was planning to preach a sermon after his death. And I mean before his death, excuse me, In April of 1964, he was going to preach. He was killed on April 4th.
He would have been preaching on April 13th, a Sunday. And the name of that sermon was going to be America May Go to Hell. And, you know, that was 57 years ago that he would have preached that sermon had he lived. And we are almost, in a sense, if we don't make some dramatic changes, change the trajectory, we may be faced with something that we don't want to be faced with.
People, we got to turn again to each other, not turn on each other. We're doing more turning on each other than we should be. We are so much better than that. Again, we know it because we see hundreds and maybe even thousands of people going out to la helping those who can't are sending clothes, sending things, you know, doing all that they can.
Some who have significant funds of sending money. That's the best of who we as a nation are. And we got to keep exhibiting that behavior. And there probably is nothing we cannot resolve if we're working together.
It's such a powerful message and call to action. And I do want to ask you on that note, we've talked so much about your father's dream for this country. What is your dream for this country? Well, in a similar way, my dream is in alignment with my mom and father because I wish that we were at a different place and work had been done, but it's not.
I just believe in young people so much. I believe that young people want to be engaged. Many of them, some are disconnected again. And this is why we're given an opportunity for us to reconnect, to redefine, to really build community.
And, you know, as I said, my hope is in the young people. I guess part of it is because my daughter. And even when we don't tell her, she just seems to figure it out and she wants to make a difference. And that is wonderful.
But she's just one of many. So I believe there's a consciousness that's coming. Not here yet, but coming. And so I want to be a part of helping, whatever I can do to make us this truly amazing nation, the nation that it ought to be not just great again, because it's not about being great again.
Some would say, when was that point? And I would almost concur because I'm not clear what that was. But what I am clear on is we can become a nation that treats people with dignity, with justice, with righteousness, but we have to set the tone. Thank you so much, Martin Luther King iii.
Such an honor to speak with you. We really appreciate it. Thank you for the opportunity. Thank you so much.
He was a young Marine. She didn't care about convention. They made a life together. Then one night, the Marine died.
And then the death investigation took a wild, unexpected, an utterly bizarre turn. I'm Josh Mankiewicz and this is Trace of Suspicion, an all new podcast from Dayline. Listen to all episodes of Trace of Suspicion now, wherever you get your podcasts.