A Word on Words; 3625; Peggy Shaw And Neil Skene

geezer geezer geezer geezer liz from national television studio way celebrating offers literature and ideas for more than three decades this is word on words with johnson ron johnson and the welcome once again jordan where our guest today a piggy show and usually they're here to talk about their new book voices reflections on an american icon two words i'm sure and a new book on the world weren't sure that it was here to talk about voices this is a book that reflects mother the king's life through the eyes of others and it

includes not only on the boat bought a wonderful a set of music and the two of you came together to work on this project to create this book weather donation process that the publisher of the arab news someone at the coral our society washington their friends and kaiser some point there and they were thinking about doing a book and cd set and then we found out that every year the pro our society does this annual tribute concert to dr king and when we figured out that this was going to be the fortieth anniversary of the year that he died without wouldn't be great to celebrate his life this year like doing a book and cd set and celebratory banners you look in the studio there right below to honor and remember it right and that's how the va the title voices came about because oysters but as the music is part of that but then

you don't you create voices of another saw right through people will be years in march attended since with him or maybe you were just sentenced to ten we have a few children to where we're talking about what to do with his word meant and today will allow the vote and he has had a full disclosure of a moral voices and i thank you for that for including me in that i think those who had the chance to encounter in the face to face person to person and talk to him even if he hadn't been alive today would remember the encounter such a compelling human being well let's talk about the selection how did you decide what goes in voices going on in the music is one thing the concert is there right now the rest of the book deals with hard work and a lot of travel and a lot of encounters and a lot of work

together as collette i think he was a tough it was a tough thing to make the listing on my mind it started with people are people who are obviously julian bond and gene patterson he writes it eloquently during that period the editorials and dealers are both improv when i knew her dorothy height harris wofford chris i thought of you you were working at bobby kennedy at the time and we just made a list and started down the list and try to get as many people as we could and it was so important to me to get as many people as we could because i felt that that time because timing on that it might be the last time that a lot of these people are gathered together in one place to get their recollections about dr king and some people we didn't get we were disappointed not to be able to get i think my odds will do it was yale at the time and we we can i get an interview with her but some people like nikki giovanni he was a young poet at the time an up and coming she was very gracious with their time in fact the day that i was supposed to

interview her was the day of the virginia tech shootings last year she's now the writer in residence at virginia tech who were older really telling comment drew that's right and we don't prevail we are virginia tech and i think she helped unify the campus after that and i had to wonder if part of that was in her experience in the civil rights and an end singing people gathered together and becoming a unifying force well so much of this was that was king's ability to create a cadence with his with his speeches which were really sermons and he had a he had a lyricism of his own to arm and it was interesting peggy was talking about the competition virginia tech and the same kind of cadences that she uses poetic lyrical laws that remove think so many people will only

because on one day he says i'm from lincoln's statue and gave at compelling speech on and it's amazing as i during the anniversary of that for years has flown bias of a spoken some classrooms or high school college amazing how little is known i'm so glad you said that because that's what i found out when i was an indian schoolchildren and that was when you know we wanted to educate people of that to this book and we weren't inspired people but it was so important to me that we've been alive today two children and adults too and that's why i try to get vignettes from people about what he was like an aunt and his humor was talked about that that job about driving with andy i'm an indian was riding too fast and and he

said you know i'd think robin good to have an understanding that there today the members immediately the nice and there were great stories at a lovely roger wilkins story about a about healthy of the dune the chicago riots when i was a kid when king was living in a ghetto chicago and i'm roger wilkins city went down there in and around six talking in this crowded apartment and realized he was there with these ghetto kids doing what he called a teach in on nonviolence and and it was just one of those great moments of a very close you know we know in for the speeches but this ability with taking it to be very human in small groups and the dutch people as you say people remembered contact and then you know there is that there was that speech movement toward their incredible was almost certain almost reflexive permission well what he would love to have that you know i think i've heard from several people i interviewed that that as time

when i'm heat heat exhibit at another say fear but a little bit more caution and then and roger wilkins told me that he'd and this is another humanizing factor that that he was a person who was you know afraid that he was that he was someone he said he would never see his grandchildren you know there is the area there is a in a conversation with us only on your demonstrators who are pushing him and a free ride comes as chaos as dangerous and blue to mention it beside really going on and them into disaster freelance and he says to them which i think it again almost on a lot of television writing of

there's danger there and knows ultimately interfaces no further than that i think my interviews with nikki giovanni she would she was so energetic and so then she took a lot of time with me and she she talked a lot about music and that that that the story of her family that the slaves and african americans an emerging in this country that that that the story has moved along by the songs and i was really intrigued by that martin king said that he considered music to assault civil rights music and mittman and she talks about how a music and forms and it inspires us an end at the old spirituals were blended into jazz and gospel and and other forms and that's one of the ways that you knew the story along but also loved it and her her poem that she wrote after his death where she says on that that debt as a slave's freedom and she gave us permission to

use that on she talked about what she heard that dr king's interview that i think our viewers might really and it is a for the new department will provide affordable edition of the lawyer she says you always need music you need the negro spirituals i think musical it's our spirits informs us and that's the job of music and if you go back to the enslaved americans africans if they hadn't had a song how would they have remained saying they created this body of work that has become the voice of america from the spirituals we flow into gospel jazz blues that's how you pass the story along and report itself shows his headstone said free at last free at last the deficit slaves freedom we seek the freedom of free man and construction of a world where martin luther king could have lived and preach nonviolence

and what a great idea this was an end how'd you come together over well you did your full disclosure mind is that this is really katy's bulletin hold on to an early part about how the how organized the book and so i became kind of the the editor behind the scenes of all the other end and the i would go and you would know you get a vicarious pleasure of just participating in somebody who's doing all the good work on a story like this on a book like this so we we were together vanderbilt i won't say how long ago in the nineteen seventies and so and we stayed in touch the newspapers over the years was the checkout and did i said this in the times and so he called a sudden this book will go up and so we did was just one phone and how did you go about we'll get refocused i think you did this by myself an end and having a lot of different people i was interviewing in and i was trying to break the book up into musical sections to go

along with the dea on this the cd we we decided to break it up into discord beginning of the surratt smith and crescendo as violence in an uneven escalated march toward harmony around the march on washington an analogy of course around his death and funeral and then symphony because he talked about a symphony of brotherhood trying to organize it that way and just getting some interviews together nearly help keep me focused on writing the interventions to those sections and what i should include and should include had so many stories i couldn't use all the stories and it was it was tough to cut the others and poor decision was actually the voices speak wrote them doing a lot of writing of our own and the claim i think that worked for one noted that and still the instilled of bridges the bridges of a variety arkansas is in rome and then retaken

from one rung one moment one commentator in one area can i was tempted to read a lot of us pressure cell to discover things as well and it was a i think an important discipline to keep those bridges over a short and does that bring up without having a newspaper background probably don't listen and i think going to be a journalist without work together in mutual respect and our mutual respect for you know you're right is but in this case it's a respect for your constituents when what this program is about is not just the content of the book about how our ideas rod hull says go about creating books that people want to read and i must say that there is no much mr morton playing for lovers both common un you've given as him through the eyes of so many people who knew him on

encounter them in unique and different ways and beyond that so many people like nikki who who really were inspired ives i think her role as a teacher and band and an activist really was influenced by his inspirations what's your favorite well um um um um a big urging patterson family mourn for a long time outside be times literally i'm no value in here among the creditors of out of the sixties and the seventies on monday was a routine and a religious warrior legend in my mind but but gene she wrote a wonderful he wrote two wonderful pieces that are in here one is so his story from the washington mall on august thirtieth after the i have a dream speech and talking about the cadences an end of the rhythms of king's speech and the other is his store and the funeral martin luther king or

where again he had the music is an important part of g notes in a lot of thought about the life and death of martin luther king so i think now is in georgia injured regions of those inputs so eloquently when you were when you were really really don't want to vote well i mean i think you know really sort of put you in a funeral and going in and you know is going to say that he was gracious gracious enough to give us an interview but on sunday atlanta journal constitution's was good enough to to allow as it is the date the atrocity also gives the letter that monitor king had written to him whit talks about the vietnam war and also about how a manned the real the real manners major times of hardship and so you we have the nice government to mr patterson was very generous with his time and i'm sure you lead to cooperate but this guy is where these people who are in casual conversation is more liberal than many

people are when they set their painfully construct find this is a top ten list that is but it touches his art his elegy staging here talks about television didn't close the distance the head to the inside ebenezer baptist church he says you've got to sit between the mourners untouched shoulders with them in the crowd and feel the heat come up through issues from the hot pavement as you march with them behind the casket drawn with perfect fitness bike to neil wide and you have to be there in the pews for the funeral of martin luther king jr to know the full truth that we whites have committed the monstrous wrong with rusting away a people we do not even know and hurting them out of our fear borne of our ignorance knowing and loving her neighbors is the needed memorial to dr king and that is so easy when you're among them that you know of i mention

this is that speech where that all of the mission there is in the church in memphis the night before it dies he opens that speech with and i love and i know patterson wrote an ode to you about it he opens a speech resigning from the liberty is assured in the first human somewhere somewhere i heard of friends be somewhere heard freeman approaches somewhere in the right places the most important and then he goes on at the end to take it up to the mountaintop or even the scene over the other side it was to live a long life and then you include in the book robert kennedy's remarks in indianapolis on the night king dies and just to

put in context iran indianapolis and everyone said king has died the only terrible violence of bomb exploding inner do not go to make that region in the city and on those goals and he goes contrary to the wishes of the mayor the police chief country which is almost everybody in his campaign except job and you have an excerpt of that speech been there and it is a powerful egos crowd to recognize the king's non violence was his way of life and a way of life here they envision inflammation and it's one of the most powerful speeches in it and i was not that familiar with that and i was a child growing up in the fifties and i'm stretching from high school the year that dr king

barbara candidate rick elden i just had not really remember desiree lived a lot of their own individually totally on my brother was killed while one side and floating you the mujahedeen and i can't learn words include an excerpt that you include so that you have that you publish what he quote just close it isn't an earthly pain that will not forget four it was uncomfortably organism understanding that he was of course on his way for a political campaign speech in another speech and that he achieved gymnast he wrote this really fantastic it was it was it was a matter of us instead of going back of a truck is that shortly and when he and when he announces an end and john lewis said about you cannot come many of these people don't know an effect essentially held a

political end to end and since many causes with those words lust and seventy thousand and the jungle life for the world and it was known lived in indianapolis that night what about rugby welcome speech there's got to be there's the others the defeatism and i think the thing that roger wilkins and so this struck me so much was it again a perspective the humanity of dr king when he told me that a lot of people thought that dr king did not experience fear inside an art something that that that he had said he said i've heard some people save martin was never afraid that's not from the time around nineteen fifty five when somebody tried to blow up his house until the day he died martin knew that there are people out there who wanted to kill him every morning when he woke up over those thirteen

years he knew that they were out there not to feel fear in that situation he would've had to been crazy martin was not crazy and he got up in the morning and he went out and did what he had to do to know that mortal danger is lurking and to do your work anyway that's seriously brave award that that really struck me it and feel it's almost the city talking about almost brings back images of of world of pain in our minds and as you read what others say about it is it really hit you take you back down and i think the words in the music combined i now have go sit in the car

and i drive and boyden an has been sometimes all the emotional experience of flying on and drive a particular so heavy haven't made music that he lost and those voices that are so which was a nominee that is so compelling it's these a lot of roma that their support saying i haven't we use force couple precise appearances with him right at the golf applying and convinced them to hear that i had run into trouble in the justice department and trouble along and as the freedom riders were assaulted and as i cut health problem i am time and cut myself was knocked unconscious then sometimes he came

into town and as i was leaving the damaged took me out i was in the front seat of it and in those days you know you know the jet way to go directly from the point to the plane that brought him in from atlanta was about it was going to take me to washington it was the most commercial delta plane came down off the airplane down those voters and the marshals have come in to try to quell or identical for president they came over it was the mountains and we have you read one of the words and it was so like him to reach out to say you know thanks so happy are your item there's a new danger he knew others there's danger to

the entire in my case i simply haven't been there were both government and sent me there and i get caught the maelstrom and trying out a couple young women who are innocent but his generosity of spirit we could have put him in a minute carl and pushed him on it's right in the center is the size that story because i wanted to show that people don't you were talking with them you're talking about the music and when you listen to the cd and critically that the religious music in the degree which people who were participating this move and why did people put themselves at such risk and you know we we've seen the pictures and the panda and the newsreels of the of the fire hoses and the dogs and all things that people braved to show they're like they're concerned for what was going on this country and and you listen to the news again and dub songs like was an assurance jesus months

since that but there is something better that as we go through these a job like trials that there's a purpose they are not think that was once hardly move people and why the religion and the faith was so important and that movement will end and then a chorus of view they include not just on the cd bach on the written page you give those dams music we tried try to to choose a the hand that went with every section and freddie and for example we chose so precious lord take my hand because apparently that was dr kings favorite hymn and done a couple of different people told me that i'm a close every year the kennedy center for the indiana contribute to today they closed the concert with with this and all of the choirs are onstage and kind of this innocent than you brotherhood if you will and they're all sing together and they

actually ask the audience if they would like to send to you and it's a it's a very as you say an emotional moment i was there in january for the twentieth concert when julian bond received a humanitarian award been very was hosting and they it was it was very moving and then there is sun sent weldon johnson's the photo anthem for americans and then of course your book about music would be complete without can you leave i can't i can't i can talk a long time ambassador hill and people will read this book and field a wonderful little touches hundreds and they call it uva watching florida words and john single or keep reading for

their mayor