Lerone Martin
Description: Lerone Martin is an Associate Professor of Religious Studies and the Martin Luther King, Jr. Centennial Chair and Director of the MLK Research and Education Institute at Stanford University. His work looks at the intersection of race and religion within American culture and politics. In this episode, we focus on his second book about J. Edger Hoover and how the FBI used religion and scare tactics to interfere with the American Civil Rights movement. We wrap up by discussing Dr. Martin’s new book which focuses on Martin Luther King Jr.’s early life and what led him, an ordinary kid from the South, to develop into the impactful leader we all celebrate today.
Websites:
Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute
Articles:
J Edgar Hoover and a history of white nationalism
A Black Evangelist Who Opposed Dr. King
The FBI Claims to Have Learned From Its Surveillance of MLK Jr. - But It Keeps Doing the Same Things
“The Crossroads Project” to Advance Public Understanding of African American Religions
Publications:
Religion, Race, and Popular Culture
Books:
Preaching on Wax: The Phonograph and the Shaping of Modern African American Religion
The Gospel of J. Edgar Hoover: How the FBI Aided and Abetted the Rise of White Christian Nationalism
Show Notes:
[0:03] Introduction to Professor Larone Martin
[7:37] Transition to J. Edgar Hoover's Influence
[26:53] Exploring COINTELPRO and Civil Rights
[40:03] Blending Faith and Law Enforcement
[47:46] Legal Battle for FBI Documents
[58:24] Transition to Martin Luther King Jr.
[1:05:22] The Origin Story of Martin Luther King Jr.
[1:13:02] Advice and Reflections from Professor Martin
Unedited AI Generated Transcript:
Brent:
[0:01] Welcome professor Lerone Martin thank you for coming on today.
Lerone:
[0:04] Oh thank you for having me man it's a blessing to be with you both thank you we'd.
Keller:
[0:08] Love to start off by hearing a little bit more about your story what got you interested in race religion and culture and i ended up at stanford.
Lerone:
[0:14] Yeah you know i um i grew up in a christian household and mom and dad um had these discussions often, and I thought that they were pretty normal. My mother is Pentecostal. My father was Baptist, so they often had different viewpoints on Christianity, and that extended to their politics.
Lerone:
[0:40] My mother would always say that what's important is that we vote with God, And for my mother, that meant primarily about individual morality, sex, drugs and rock and roll. It didn't extend to thinking about how one could consider morality and economics or labor conditions. Right. It typically didn't extend to that. my father was all about that. My father was all about, I mean, he cared about individual morality, but he was more so along the lines of what about economic conditions? Like if we're going to be Christian, then we need to treat people in a certain kind of way. Right. And that extends to labor. So they would often, especially in the eighties, getting to these arguments, especially with the rise of the Christian right in this country and Ronald Reagan and, and, um, Jerry Falwell and those characters. And so my mother would often was kind of taken by those characters and going in that direction. And my father would say, you know, well, how can they be Christian when they're going to send all the jobs to Mexico or overseas? You know, like that doesn't make any sense. And my mother would always say, you know.
Lerone:
[1:59] Larry, you know, if we vote with god god will take care of our economic concerns so it was kind of a faith thing of my mother saw this being faithful i saw all these conversations i'm the youngest of five i saw all these conversations happen a lot and i actually thought they were normal.
Lerone:
[2:17] And then when I got to college and you start meeting people from all over the country and the world, I realized that those conversations weren't as common. And when they did happen, they weren't always across the dinner table and people still loved one another. People still got along. And I realized how particular my home environment was. And also how particularly I was raised in terms of seeing faith and political action going hand in hand. And I realized that a number of my friends didn't have the same perspective. And so that got me really interested in. And I've always been the annoying little brother who asked questions, usually too many questions. And um so those those interests kind of came together i originally thought because of this interest i was going to go into the ministry so i originally thought about going into the ministry um and so i went to college i went to anderson university in anderson indiana small christian school majored in religious studies and then from there decided to go um to divinity school had some wonderful professors who encouraged me that I, number one, had the ability and number two, that I should. So then I went to Princeton Theological Seminary.
Lerone:
[3:44] While I was there, part of the program there is you have to serve at a church. And I was serving at a church in South Philly, a wonderful church by the name of Church of the Redeemer in South Philly, Baptist Church. And I was teaching Bible study. And I think that's the moment when I fell in love with teaching.
Lerone:
[4:03] And I had this moment where a woman, I was teaching on other religions one Wednesday night. I'll never forget it. It was my second year of a three-year master's program. And a woman said to me, she said, you know, my son just converted to Islam. And he is now the perfect son. Prior to this, he was mean. He had taken money from her. He had called her out of her name. He'd been pretty horrible. And then he converted to Islam and he was the perfect son. And she said, but this church tells me that since my son is not a Christian, that he's going to go to hell. And she was like, please tell me that's not true. And I remember thinking like, dear God, you know what I mean? Like I'm probably like 23 at this time and I'm at somebody else's church. I knew what I believed at that moment.
Lerone:
[5:05] But I knew the church had a little bit more of an exclusive view as it relates to heaven and hell and things of this nature. So like any good teacher, I said, I don't know, what do you think?
Lerone:
[5:20] And she said, I think my baby's going to be just fine because he is living a life that the Bible talks about in terms of, you know, being faithful, being kind. And respectful. And she said, my son exhibits the fruit of the Spirit more than many Christians than I know. And I said, well, you go with that. But I remember that moment thinking, this is the kind of conversation I want to have in the classroom, the kind of learning I want to do in the classroom without having a more of a confessional environment that comes along with the church. I want to be able to explore these questions with people. I know what I believe and how my parents raised me, but, you know, I like being in a classroom where you can explore these questions and no one's going to tell you, you can't believe that, or that's not what our tradition says. So from there, I started applying to PhD programs and was quickly denied admittance to All the programs that I applied to. So I thought, okay. I was fortunate enough to have some professors at Princeton who allowed me to stay around, be a teaching assistant.
Lerone:
[6:40] And I worked at the gymnasium. Shout out to the Princeton University Gymnasium for hiring me. And I worked those jobs. And I also worked for a professor up at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn. Took the train up there. Read, pieced together some money, paid my rent, was living with two other guys who were living in an apartment trying to figure it out, and then I applied to PhD programs and then was admitted and started at Emory University and completed my PhD at Emory University in American Religious History.
Brent:
[7:15] Yeah. Yeah, go for it. We were doing the same thing outside.
Keller:
[7:28] The first chunk of the morning too. Thank you.
Brent:
[7:38] So now kind of jumping in to some of the work you've done. We want to start off with your, what was the second book? The focus of the second book. And in order to do that, I think we should probably get some background on who J. Edgar Hoover was and then how that led into his role as director of what became the FBI.
Lerone:
[7:56] Yeah. So I've always been interested in religion and politics, as I stated, and the intersection, especially as it relates to religious broadcasting. And J. Edgar Hoover is an interesting figure. He was the director of the FBI from 1924 until 1972. He's the longest serving FBI director for almost 50 years, half a century.
Lerone:
[8:26] And he is responsible for the creation of the modern FBI. I mean, he really is. And prior to his arrival, the FBI was the investigative force for the Justice Department, and they pretty much just were just that investigators. He brings along a host of innovations that creates the modern FBI, everything from the FBI agents carrying guns, having the ability to arrest people. Also, going beyond just investigating federal crime during the rise of World War Two is ramping up. Um, um, the, the president Franklin Delano Roosevelt gives him the, uh, issues, a presidential directive that says the FBI will be the clearing house for all things, national security. And that really creates another aspect to the FBI of it being the bulwark in this country, um, for national security. And that primarily, for Hoover's lifetime, that primarily concerns being concerned about the Cold War.
Lerone:
[9:42] Being concerned about communism, and being concerned about secrets being traded and spying between the U.S. And Russia and the communist countries. And so Hoover is really sits at the center of all of this, the red scare in this country as it relates to the communist scare. And Hoover is such an important figure in American life. And in many ways, we can trace the U.S. Century, the 20th century. Really, he's an interesting figure to chase trace that moment through because he is around and he's in the federal government for so long during a period of time where the U.S. really rises to be a superpower. And he dies in office as FBI director in May 2nd, 1972. So if you can just imagine going from 1924 America, right, with Calvin Coolidge as the president.
Lerone:
[10:45] All the way to 1972, he's in office. And so the president who actually gives his eulogy is President Richard Nixon. And the funeral is so important, such a moment in American history that it's televised. All three major networks televised his funeral. He is the first civil servant to lie in state at the Capitol Rotunda. His body lays in state there. That had been reserved primarily for presidents and statesmen, but he was one of the first to not be an elected official to have that.
Lerone:
[11:24] And an official who didn't have to be confirmed, right? I mean, he was just kind of appointed FBI director. So he was a really important figure, both in terms of the building of the modern FBI, but also to think about what America and all the changes America went through.
Keller:
[11:41] So is there any significance to his being appointed as director and coolidge at that time kind of with the ideological decisions that were made by hoover yeah and he wasn't elected he didn't really represent necessarily the will of the people and obviously has it changed over 50 years his ideology maybe didn't change a lot but that america might have like changed significantly yeah is there anything about that that is significant yes absolutely um.
Lerone:
[12:11] Hoover was in the FBI. He was in charge of alien investigations. And that was primarily around people that were thought to be in this country illegally. And he is involved in investigating and vetting people in terms of their their level of commitment to Americanness. Right. What it means to be an American. And during this time, an event happens called the Palmer Raids. This is where Attorney General Mitchell Palmer, his home, and several other officials have bombs explode outside of their house.
Lerone:
[12:56] And Hoover and many of the folks in the Department of Justice believe this is a communist plot And Hoover ends up organizing a roundup of folks that either he believes are in the Communist Party Or are not sufficiently patriotic And rounds up over a thousand people, and then afterwards fills out the warrant for the reasoning for arresting these folks, right? Well, it is a disaster. It's, as you can imagine, newspapers, statesmen, elected officials all say, like, this is America. Like, there's a constitution. You can't just go up and round people up without having a warrant, doing it after the fact.
Lerone:
[13:44] And somehow hoover um is able to place the blame on others and say i was just following orders and after that fiasco and most of the people who are rounded up were let go the majority of them were let go hoover ends up somehow being appointed to run the fbi it's this really fascinating moment he's able to.
Lerone:
[14:09] Um, negotiate and say like, look, I follow orders. And that's, that's the way he's able to spin this. I follow orders. I'm not going to be a political crony. I'm going to follow orders. You tell me to do something, Mr. President, uh, Mr. Attorney General, I'm going to do it. And he ends up because of that, it's seen as being someone who's faithful and who will be a good director of the FBI and remove, um, all political influence and that he's just going to be a guy who's going to be just about the facts, right? And from there, he's appointed from Calvin Coolidge in 1924, and again, stays until 1972. And it's because of him, part of the significance of that appointment, it's because of him now the FBI director has term limits. Today, the FBI director now has a 10-year term limit. And it's because of Hoover after he died, that was put in place because it was thought that it's not good to have one person to be running the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the top law enforcement agency in the country. One person should not be running that for decades and decades and decades.
Brent:
[15:20] Certainly. Probably say the same about Congress now. Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely, definitely.
Keller:
[15:26] And while he positioned himself as someone that was just going to follow orders and be by the facts, what were, I guess, maybe in the earlier parts of his career before the civil rights, movement, were there indications of his ideological leanings and how he was going to really take that position and use it for the worse when that time came?
Lerone:
[15:46] I think so. I mean, I think Hoover in many ways forever lived in that moment of the Red Scare in some ways. He's always felt that there was some type of conspiracy that was set to tear America down. He saw, for the most part, changes in terms of culture, family structure, music, style of dress. He saw all of that as tearing apart the moral fabric of America. He couldn't imagine a world where, you know, changes could be explained sociologically.
Lerone:
[16:30] When people started talking about crime and sociology and the arrangements of crowded accommodations and the lack of the economy in terms of jobs, Hoover just didn't really buy any of that. He really was committed to an idea of America as being right as it was constituted by the founding fathers and being a Christian nation. And anything that departed from his idea of what a Christian nation looked like, right? And that involved racial hierarchy, gendered hierarchy. It also involved ideas around sexuality, style of dress, propriety, the length of one's hair. Anything that departed from that he saw as sinful. And he saw as what he called in one radio interview, the spirit of the Antichrist. He said that in 1942 on NBC radio. And he just always felt that the answer, at least the answer he would put forward to the American people, was we've got to go back and rediscover the faith of the fathers, the founding fathers. And if we're going, that's the only way we're going to survive this rise in crime. And he was talking about primarily in the thirties with the rise of the famous gangsters of the day, right? You know, Dillinger and folks like that.
Lerone:
[18:00] And he would always go back to this, we got to go back to the faith of the fathers. He rarely accepted sociological explanations. But yet, his ability to fight crime was very advanced. He created an FBI laboratory where testing was being done and testing the threads and fabrics and evidence. I mean, he was very advanced in that regard. But when it comes to the solutions he would put forward to the American people, it was always spiritual in nature. And he did that in the 30s and he did it in the 40s. And of course, when the civil rights movement comes along, it's a movement that's really pushing for change. And he saw it as very dangerous. He felt that the civil rights movement was either A, being run by communists who were trying to tear down the country, or B, these people who are advocating for civil rights are being duped and they're being used by the communists to burrow a hole in the soul of the nation. And so either way, he felt they had to be stopped because they were articulating change. They were calling into question American society, right? America is not, society is not okay. The way things are going is not okay. It needs to be fixed. Hoover could not believe that. He felt individuals needed to be fixed, but not whole societies.
Brent:
[19:24] Yeah. And there's a lot of questions around his own moral hypocrisy, whether it be his sexuality or other actions he would take. Do you think him battling internal demons potentially led him to do some of the actions to take such extreme measures as director of the FBI?
Lerone:
[19:46] That's a great question, man. I'm going to leave that to the psychologists who are listening. But I will say this. There are a number of things that are, shall we say, curious in his life. So he lived in the house with his mother in his childhood home until he was 43 years old She died in 1938 He was 43 and he finally moved out and got his own place, The house was torn down and It was sort of sacralized and a church was built on top of it And it was a church, you know, a church that had a stained glass window in his honor But so we got that right He never married, He had a second in charge by the name of Clyde Tolson. They spent all their adult lives together.
Lerone:
[20:38] Hoover's driver picked him up every day. They went to work together. They had lunch together. They came home. They had dinner together. And they vacationed together in Hoover's archive at the National Law Enforcement Museum. There are pictures of the two of them on countless vacations throughout the years. Now, they never lived together. There's no evidence they were ever romantic, but they clearly had like a domestic partnership in many ways, right? But yet he was also writing material about the importance of family, the importance of heterosexual marriage. He would write essays on should you force your children to go to church, how you should raise your sons. It's something he never had.
Lerone:
[21:28] Um so and then he went after folks who we would now say today who were queer he went after them he punished agents um in the fbi one agent in particular whose son was gay just by virtue of proximity right your son is gay so you should have handled that clearly that means you're a failure as a family man right so there are a number of very curious uh data points in his life that seemed to be different than what he professed publicly in his own life. And then when he died, this is probably perhaps the most outstanding example, when he died at his funeral, he not only left his home and his will to Clyde Tolson, his second in charge and domestic partner, if you will. And then in front of national television, you know, when the flag that was draped on Hoover's coffin is taken up and folded up in the ritualistic way that it is.
Lerone:
[22:38] The flag is handed to Clyde Tolson as it would be for a spouse. So it's one of these moments in American life where it's like kind of a loud whisper, right? You know what I mean? People, I think, had ideas, the questions at which you just asked about. There's no evidence that they were ever romantically involved. But in many ways, I think that's besides the point, right? Like, we don't want to just say relationships are only meaningful if they're romantic. they had a living partnership that lasted over 30 years and even to the end Clyde was sort of treated as Hoover's partner yeah.
Keller:
[23:17] You mentioned how Hoover kind of positioned himself as a spiritual leader and in your book you say that he positioned the FBI as the foremost spiritual army for the United States I was wondering is that something that was a more internal within the government positioning, or was that something that American people at that time perceived Hoover to be?
Lerone:
[23:38] It's something that the American people perceived Hoover to be and the FBI to be, but it's something that has been lost in our histories of the FBI. There are countless letters in FBI files of people writing the FBI asking for spiritual advice. Mr. Hoover and the FBI, I want to know, is it okay for me to listen to Billy Graham on the radio? Mr. Hoover, I've heard about this guy named Oral Roberts. Is he okay? Parents writing in, Mr. Hoover, my child wants to join Campus Crusade for Christ. Is that an okay organization? Are they Christian? Are they communist? Just tell me. Mr. Hoover, my church wants to hold a raffle. Is it okay to do that or is that gambling? I mean, so he just had this stature in American life as being this righteous, pious Christian warrior who was holding up the banner for traditional America. And then when you have the FBI, right, that seemingly has eyes everywhere, an organization that.
Lerone:
[24:51] Seems to know all and be all, people looked to them as a clearinghouse in many ways, like, tell me what's right, tell me what's wrong. And Hoover was able to, because of the essays he would write, basically homilies he would write for Christian magazines, everything from the Pentecostal magazine for the Assemblies of God to Christianity Today, which is still very popular, to the Sunday School Bulletin and also Catholic publications, Americans really saw him as this really important Christian figure, right? And so while Americans may have asked their pastors, their bishops for guidance.
Lerone:
[25:41] It's in many ways Hoover surpassed all of that, right? Because he was both a citizen who was vetting what it meant to be an American And part of that was for Hoover to be a Christian. And in fact, he has an essay he wrote in the 50s called A Good Christian is a Good Citizen. And a good citizen is a good Christian, right? So he felt like there was this relationship between citizenship in this country and being a Christian as a way that he saw it. Now, of course, he's not going to see Martin Luther King Jr.'s Christianity as being really, really Christian. He's like, that's something else. And he believed people like Martin Luther King Jr. were either A.
Lerone:
[26:33] Really communist and just using the clergy as a disguise, or that King was a clergyman but was being used and duped, to use the Marxist phrase, a useful idiot, that he was being duped by the communists and being used by them.
Brent:
[26:53] Let's dive more into that and how the FBI kind of countered a lot of the civil rights movement and maybe starting off, what was COINTELPRO?
Lerone:
[27:03] Yes, great question. COINTELPRO stands for Counterintelligence Program. And it was a program the FBI launched in 1956, officially. They were doing some of this behavior beforehand, but it's officially March of 1956. It's a program the FBI started to engage in counterintelligence. So this was an effort to go beyond investigating, but this was an effort to get information and intel and use it against one's perceived enemies. So the FBI launches this officially against the Communist Party, where they start doing illegal break-ins, illegal searches.
Lerone:
[27:48] Trying to get information, and then using that information to damage the Communist Party in this country. So that involves breaking in, getting information, maybe leaking it to the press or giving it to someone to launder for you. And then they'll put it in their sermon or they'll put it in their newsletter. And it's a way of framing your enemy and using information to go on the attack. And this is, of course, beyond the scope of what the FBI is supposed to be doing. Right. They're supposed to be an investigative agency. But they began launching this. And so they had a series of counterintelligence programs, Communist Party USA, what they called the New Left, which would have been student groups such as Students for a Democratic Society, student groups such as the Muslim Students Association, Black Student Associations. They also had a counterintelligence program they launched against what they called black hate or black nationalist groups that would have they would have included Martin Luther King Jr. in that the Nation of Islam.
Lerone:
[28:55] And they also had a counterintelligence program against folks that they just felt perhaps were a threat. And so that kind of fell into, you know, a broad category. And they also had one against what they called white hate which is primarily against the Ku Klux Klan where they would actually um and, Figure out information on someone who was in the Klan and they would leak it, send it an anonymous letter to Klan members. Hey, the Grand Dragon of your local organization is having an affair with such and such's wife. Sometimes it was true. Sometimes it wasn't true. Hey, your local leader stealing money. I'm sending you this as a concerned Klansman. But it would actually be from the FBI. They did that to the Klan. They did that to the Black Panthers. They did that to the US organization. They did it to a number of folks across the board that they just felt were a threat to this country. Went beyond investigation and went on the offensive.
Keller:
[30:03] And how did some of those methods continue for MLK? Because I know they used that same method even towards the end of the civil rights movement to really try to disrupt the family dynamic.
Lerone:
[30:15] Absolutely. Absolutely. The FBI, after it's announced that King is going to win the Nobel Peace Prize, and King gets word of this when he's in the hospital because he's just completely depleted and he's exhausted wrestling with depression because of all the threats against his life and all that he's experienced, right? A number of a number of things, bombs and death threats. Right. And the FBI decides they're going to send him a letter and they have gotten permission from Attorney General Bobby Kennedy in October of 1963 to wiretap king. And the order that Bobby Kennedy gave was simply to say, you may install a wiretap at this address and at any place King shall move. That's the language that Bobby Kennedy gave. Now, it seems to me that it's meant that this wiretap can stay at this address. But if King moves from that address, moves from that home, you can install a cyber swipe type there. The FBI takes a very loose interpretation and basically decides we're going to start wiretapping and bugging hotel rooms anywhere King moves.
Lerone:
[31:39] So as a result, they decide in the end of after King is before he leaves to go get the Nobel Peace Prize. Otherwise, they send him a letter and they send along with it, if you will, are what we would say today a mixtape. And it is purportedly of King's activities in hotel rooms across the country, which they report contain him engaging in extramarital sexual encounters.
Lerone:
[32:12] So they send this mixtape of King in hotel rooms and a letter that says, you are no Christian, Mr. King. And it's written as if it's from a concerned African-American Christian. You're no minister, Mr. King. You know, you're a liar. You're a beast. Lend your filthy ear. This is a quote. Lend your filthy, exotic ear to the tape and you'll hear yourself on the record.
Lerone:
[32:40] And they go on to say, you know, this you're ruined you're done Everyone's going to know you for who you are. There's you're not a real clergyman. You're not a real christian Satan could do no more. That's a quote. They say satan could do no more. You're a filthy abnormal beast I mean, it just goes on and on and on and um They say, you know You know what it is. There's only one thing left for you to do king and you know what it is And there are 34 days left for you to do it. This number has been chosen for a particular reason. And it was 34 days before he was going to get the Nobel Peace Prize. And I don't know. It's clear what the FBI was trying to do. Right. I mean, like, I've just given you some of the highlights of this horrible letter. Many people interpreted it as the FBI trying to get him to commit suicide. That's the way that, excuse me, that's the way that Congress years later in the church committee hearings, in the Senate church committee hearings, that's the way that they interpreted it. But it could also have been they wanting him to just completely drop out of the civil rights movement, not take the Nobel Peace Prize and just go live a private life.
Lerone:
[33:52] But either way, it's clear they were trying to ruin him and they were trying to break him. And that's what King says. The FBI wiretap picks King up saying, you know, they're trying to break me.
Lerone:
[34:02] And, um, but, and it's, it's, it's, you think about it and you say, it wasn't very, it was horrible. It was mean. I would argue it was downright evil and immoral for trying to use this man's personal life against him instead of actually dealing with the claims he was trying to bring to America about its short shortfall as it relates to the democratic practice but it's also you say to yourself like it just wasn't very smart like what ordinary human citizen would have access to king's, hotel rooms i mean who else would have that information but the but the fbi what human being is traveling around following him and able to wiretap him and put a bug in his hotel room in D.C. and Hawaii and anywhere else he was. So, I mean, he knew it was the FBI. He knew it was the FBI. The interesting thing about this, and as it relates to our current moment, is that the FBI tried continually till his death to get journalists to publicize this stuff, right? As they were doing for other groups. Hey, we got the story on King. We got evidence. We want you to publish, you know, the fact that he's cheating on his wife or we want you to publish these, he drinks alcohol, he smokes cigarettes or whatever it may be, right?
Lerone:
[35:25] Interestingly enough, no journalist took the story. And there were even some white segregationist newspaper editors who hated King, who would say, even I've got limits, right? Like even I'm not even going to do that. And some of them said, and if you do that to King, no man is safe, right? So no, we're not publishing that. So you want to applaud sort of journalists of that day because you all know that today, it's on TMZ, right? But on the other side, none of those journalists ever reported the FBI, right? Like no journalist said, the FBI is like attacking this guy for his private life. The Department of Justice or whoever, they need to know. So there was one journalist who was Ben Bradley, who was running, who was working at the Washington Post. He did go to LBJ and say, hey, like King and Hoover met one time to try to settle their public beef. And while he was outside of that meeting, Ben Bradley said that journalists came, you know, the FBI was like, hey, we got something you might want to hear.
Lerone:
[36:46] He immediately went to LBJ and was like, can you believe this? Like, this has to you should know that they're trying to do this. And LBJ, according to Ben Bradley, is like, you know, thank you. I appreciate it. I'll be I'm on it. And then just tells the FBI after that, like, hey, don't give Bradley stuff anymore. Like, don't, don't, this guy's, he's not, he's not, he's not playing ball. So LBJ also knew he was getting reports pretty much almost daily on what King was doing and King supposedly his, his private life. But the, again, the frustrating thing about that is the extent to which the FBI using taxpayer dollars was willing to go to the extent to try to ruin a human being. As opposed to really deal with the claims that he was making, especially when we all know that many of these men from Hoover to LBJ, you know, themselves didn't have a, a squeaky clean moral slate. Now we're not, I'm not excusing anything. According to court rec, according to the court, a lot of this information, the specifics of King and his hotel activities reportedly will be unsealed in 2027.
Brent:
[38:04] Will it come here?
Lerone:
[38:05] It will be on the national, it's at the national archives and they're not in lock and key. And the national archives will probably just throw it on the, on the internet, Throw it on their website. And this will be information that, you know, will be recordings and transcriptions of recordings of King's private life. I don't think that it takes away whatever we find. I don't think it takes away from the what King articulated and what we all know to be true about what was happening in this country and what continues to happen in some ways in this country. But it just goes to show the extent to which the FBI was willing to ruin someone. And when King would always tell the FBI, hey, we're going to go do a campaign here. We're going to do a campaign here. We've heard some threats. Or have you heard any threats that we should be concerned about? You know, the FBI would always say, you know, we're an investigative agency. Like, you know, you want to go to Montgomery or you want to go to Selma? We'll have some people there and investigate any threats. But, you know, we're not we're not going to offer any protection. That's not what we do. But yet they were willing to invade his private life. Right. And I think that that's a legacy. The FBI in many ways still wrestles with today, especially as it relates to race in this country, as it relates to how citizens of color are treated when it comes to national security.
Brent:
[39:31] Yeah. So I think we've talked a lot about. Hoover, what he was doing personally, his personal beliefs, and what the FBI was doing. How did he start to blend those when he brought Christianity really into the FBI?
Lerone:
[39:46] Yeah, he started in the 30s. He started having his agents go through spiritual retreats. They would go to basic retreats, and they would go through the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius.
Lerone:
[40:03] And they would go through the spiritual disciplines, the spiritual exercises, excuse me. So that was one way agents were doing that. It was not required, but if anybody has ever been in a paramilitary organization, whether it be the reserves or police or the army, military, you know that, or even a sports team, right? You know that the best way to get ahead is to fall in line, right? You do what your superior asks you to do, and that's how you get ahead. So it wasn't required, but the FBI took attendance. Who was going? They were observed by their superiors to make sure they were practicing the spiritual exercises. Then the FBI also started having Catholic communion breakfast and worship services for their agents. And also Protestant worship services for their agents and their families. And all of this was used by Hoover as seen as to say, the FBI, we are cultivating you into spiritual soldiers. The job that you do is to protect this nation from all threats, foreign and domestic. And then Hoover started having his agents sign when they came on what he called a law enforcement pledge.
Lerone:
[41:25] And he basically said, every profession has a pledge, you know, doctors, lawyers. He said, so we're law enforcement going to have one. And in this law enforcement pledge, he put in part, and I'm quoting here that as a soldier, I will wage vigorous warfare against the enemies of my country and my beliefs. And as a minister, I will seek to provide aid and counsel.
Lerone:
[41:55] So Hoover really thought of his agents and he tried to shape them into being spiritual soldiers. And the worship services, the retreats, all of that was geared to further cultivate that into the FBI. And then eventually, you know, as a result of that, he starts telling Americans that the civil rights movement is un-American. That there's something nefarious going on there, that these Americans, these are not American citizens. These are probably communist people who want to ruin America. This is not, this is not, this is not true to what the nation is. And so he starts blending this in that these people aren't real Christians. This is a Christian nation. These people aren't real Christians because everybody knows in a Christian nation, if we're going to fix it, people need to give their lives to Jesus. You create change through individual commitments. We don't change this country by changing structural arrangements, he would say. We don't change this country by changing policy. People need to be changed. And if you do that, then the nation will change. I'll say this quote. He said, in 1944, he said.
Lerone:
[43:07] 47, excuse me, he said, And, you know, all this talk about social justice is like, it seems to me that if we practice the gospel of salvation.
Lerone:
[43:20] Then social justice will come as a result. So he really felt that the best way was for individuals to commit their lives to Christ. That's the best way to change America. And of course, the civil rights movement was saying, no, we need both. We need individual transformation. King was a Baptist minister, but we also need the soul of the nation to be transformed. And we got to do that through policy and do that through law. And Hoover saw that as unchristian.
Keller:
[43:46] And how did that start to extend beyond the FBI and into actual communities with Hoover sending essays to preachers and incorporating Lightfoot Solomon show into really targeting his message to get to the American people to really act as like this counterforce to the civil rights?
Lerone:
[44:03] Absolutely. Hoover's essays and Christianity Today about watch out for communism, you know, it's either going to be Christian America or it's going to be, you know, communist takeover, domination. People really love these essays. And so preachers start to preach these essays from the pulpit. So in many ways, and the FBI loves this, you know, in many ways, Hoover becomes the ghost writer of thousands of sermons because people write to the FBI. Thank you so much for the job you're doing, Mr. Hoover.
Lerone:
[44:36] My preacher, my minister, sometimes the preacher himself, you know, will write and say, you know, I use your essay and I just read it in the pulpit for my sermons.
Lerone:
[44:46] So Americans start hearing Hoover's gospel from pulpits and then study groups, especially led by women who didn't have access to the pulpit in the same way. They start to write to Hoover, please send us copies of your essays. We're having a study group around Christianity. We want to read your essays for study. So the FBI files are filled with countless things like that. And then Hoover, of course, starts recruiting people who will parrot his ideas and launder his ideas.
Lerone:
[45:19] Billy Graham starts to quote Hoover in some of his sermons, more popular sermons, interviews him for his magazine decision all about Christianity and leadership. And then there's one individual minister, Elder Lightfoot Solomon Michal, who's an African-American minister, first minister to have his own TV show in America, began in 1947, 1948, and also was on nationwide radio on CBS. Yes, he starts a relationship with the FBI and begins laundering FBI material to discredit Martin Luther King Jr., preaches a sermon against the march on Washington, telling and sends the sermon, the transcript of the sermon to the Kennedy White House to say, like, I know you just met with this guy named Martin King. I know he just gave this great speech, but that ain't what the Bible says, Mr. Kennedy.
Lerone:
[46:16] The best way to move forward is for everybody just to give their life to Jesus, and eventually things will get better. This guy who's trying to change policy and change America and civil rights bill, that ain't the way to go. And then he also writes a public letter to King telling him he needs to apologize to the FBI. And he goes to the FBI and gets a bunch of information from the FBI, says he does it independently, that he investigated the FBI independently, but he doesn't. It's just information the FBI gives him. He doesn't even correct the spelling errors. He just puts it in the public letter and then submits it to the press. And it's like, hey, King, you need to apologize to the FBI because they're doing an amazing job. And I don't know what you're talking about, but the FBI is an amazing Christian organization. So King, you need to apologize to the FBI, Mr. Hoover. So, you know, Hoover was brilliant in his strategy in terms of, controlling propaganda and media to make it seem as if everywhere you turn, somebody independently, and I put that in quotes, was discrediting King and somebody independently was saying, this guy really isn't really a Christian. The civil rights movement is infiltrated by communists. But in reality, Hoover was the source of that information. But it was disseminated and laundered in a way to make it look like lots of people were saying the same thing.
Brent:
[47:41] I think that gives an amazing overview of a lot of what happened.
Brent:
[47:46] And I think some people might listen and hear like, okay, how do you know this? And I want you to share your story about how you sued the FBI and won under the Freedom of Information Act and how all of these claims are documented.
Lerone:
[48:01] Yeah, thank you. I appreciate that. And the world we live in today, I appreciate you prompting me to do that. Um, so, uh, in the process of doing this, I, um, learned a great deal about the freedom of information act. And one of the things that I learned is that you can, you can request to see if the executive branch, the FBI in particular has any information on individuals once they've passed away. Billy Graham passed away February, um, and of 2018, I believe. And I immediately requested his FBI file. And according to the Freedom of Information Act, the FBI has 20 working days to reply to your request. I never heard from them. Two months later in April, I got a letter saying, we don't really know if we have anything in our files on Billy Graham. If we do, we'll let you know. Thanks. And that was it. So I was like, well, I guess I got to let it go. This is 2018. I happened to meet a lawyer a wonderful gentleman named Tuwan Samahan we got to talking, he's on the faculty of Villanova and I told him what I was working on and I said you know I made this request but.
Lerone:
[49:17] The FBI told me that they didn't have anything and they'd let me know. So, you know, there's really nothing I can do. And he said, I know exactly what you're going to do. And like a good lawyer, he was like, you're going to sue, man. That's what you're going to do. And I was like, what? Like, yo, you know what I mean? I don't know about suing the federal government, as my dad would say, right?
Brent:
[49:39] I don't know about that.
Lerone:
[49:40] Man. I'm not going to know about suing nobody. He said, no, no, no. Like, it happens a lot. Like, you know, this is my area of research. As a matter of fact, I'll take the case for you, pro bono. You pay the federal filing cost, and I'll take care of the rest.
Lerone:
[50:01] So I had never done this before. I was a junior faculty member. I did not have tenure. I was working on this book. Um and i went to my chair who's an amazing amazing amazing scholar uh and friend uh marie griffith and i explained to her like i'd like to use my research account money to sue the fbi, and i look back on and i'm like jesus what was i thinking but she's absolutely amazing and, she um said well you know it sounds okay to me but i we need to talk to the provost of the university about this so i went to the provost and explained to him like hi you know like i'm this junior faculty member that wants to sue the fbi and he was like uh let me think about that and he gets back to me maybe a day or so later he's like hey i looked at the faculty handbook there's nothing in there that says you can't so like go ahead so i think it was like 700 made the um filed suit and I believe it was August of 2018, and filed suit for FBI documents related to Billy Graham that the FBI was in violation of their own rules around letting me know if they had anything, Um, fast forward, we ended up, um, getting, we're filing the case in DC. We thought we would probably get a, uh, um, a better hearing in DC than in Missouri, where I was at the time I was at Washington university in St. Louis.
Lerone:
[51:27] And um yeah um we ended up the the court ordered the fbi to submit to us on a rolling basis documents they had related to billy graham and so on a rolling basis for more than a more than a year i quarterly received like 500 pages of information from the fbi now in this there was nothing that said that Hoover and Billy Graham were hanging out and plotting against King. There was nothing like that at all.
Lerone:
[52:04] But Hoover, I mean, Billy Graham, there was a picture of the two of them at Hoover's office shaking hands. And so I knew they had some type of relationship, especially since Hoover was working for Christianity Today. But what it did do for me, excuse me, was it gave me leads in other directions. So I said, okay, well, there's something here mentioning, you know, Christianity today, you know, and it was circles. And so on the FBI document. So I said, okay, I'm going to make a Freedom of Information Act request for Christianity today. Oh, there's something here on Campus Crusade for Christ. So it led me to other areas. And as a result of that information, the Christianity Today files over a thousand pages of information and essays and letters going back and forth and memos and so forth and so on. And that's what led me to get the information that I used to write the book that we've been discussing.
Keller:
[53:05] And do you think that the FBI has learned, obviously they're still putting up some roadblocks, but kind of looking overall at how they've changed from the 70s, do you think they've learned from their transgressions and how they were managing? Do you think there's aspects of the way that it's still run that kind of continued that legacy in some ways?
Lerone:
[53:28] You know i think that it's interesting you say this i think i think there's an there there is the perception that they've learned the fbi if you look every year on mlk day they tweet about king, and they also have a saying by martin luther king jr etched in stone at their training facility the time is right to always do what is right, and there is a module that FBI agents are trained on around what they did to him to say like this is too far.
Lerone:
[54:09] But I don't think that those lessons beyond just, hey, we did this thing, it was wrong, we shouldn't do it again. I don't think that that has transformed the FBI in the way that it could.
Lerone:
[54:26] The FBI seems to still struggle to take seriously the threat of white Christian nationalist violence. I think we saw that in January 6th. They had plenty of informants within the Proud Boys and other organizations that we came to learn. We learned, excuse me. But yet, January 6th still happened. You know, they have created a category called Black Identity Extremist. They created an intelligence assessment that was leaked that pointed out that African-Americans were going to be led by religious motivation and the perception that they're experiencing police brutality, that that might lead African-Americans to attack law enforcement. The perception of being treated unfairly by police. They've had the Westboro Baptist Church come to the FBI training facility to engage with new agent training class.
Lerone:
[55:38] Westboro Baptist Church is a really right-wing organization that is vigorously offensive as it relates to how it talks about queer people, people of color in this country, and soldiers.
Lerone:
[55:59] So Hoover's ghost is still very present at the FBI. You know, the headquarters is still named after him. Um, and, you know, one thing about a ghost is that it's everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Right. And I think that Hoover is that for the FBI, there are still aspects of the Bureau. It's still overwhelmingly lacks racial diversity, especially in positions of power. When Hoover was there, he hired exclusively all white Protestant and Catholic men. A few Jewish brothers made it into the FBI, but Hoover primarily was about white Protestants and Catholics.
Lerone:
[56:42] And the FBI still looks like that today. After Hoover left, a couple of African-American agents were hired. Women were also brought in as special agents after Hoover left. But the organization is still very much so lacks diversity. So we have a law enforcement agency that is policing an increasingly diverse nation, but yet that law enforcement agency lacks the kind of diversity. Now, I don't think that just because you put people of color within the FBI, the FBI is going to be more just. I'm not saying that. But I do think it speaks to the kind of values the FBI still holds dear and what they're wrestling with. So I think that the FBI has got a way to go as it relates to how it thinks about people of color and national security. And I think that your generation in particular, you all lived through the way that Muslim brothers and sisters were treated during 9-11 and after 9-11, excuse me, and how that is very different than how white Christian men are being treated today as it relates to after January 6th, right? I'm not saying that, you know, the white Christian men should be accosted the way that Muslim brothers and sisters were. I'm not saying that at all. I think, I hope that's clear. But what I am saying, though, is that you can see the distinct difference about the way people are treated.
Lerone:
[58:08] As it relates to race and religion in this country by the FBI. So I think the Bureau has a way to go in terms of how it relates to people of color and especially communities of faith that are comprised of people of color.
Brent:
[58:24] And kind of pivoting away from the FBI a bit, could you talk a bit about how the success of your second book kind of propelled you to Stanford and what then led you to writing your third book? About Martin Luther King and his early adolescence?
Lerone:
[58:41] Yeah, so I was, arrived here at Stanford as the director of the King Institute, the MLK Institute here, which is been licensed and recognized and ordered by the estate of Martin Luther King Jr. Because of the genius of Coretta Scott King. May she rest in peace. To have a papers project where Martin Luther King Jr.'s papers would be edited and published. Letters, sermons, memos, telegrams, things of this nature. Stanford has been the place that's assigned to do that. And I oversee that project here. And when I came here and arrived here, and obviously I'd written on King and I wrote about King in this FBI book and discovered something that had never been brought to the fore, right? The way the FBI was using other ministers against him. One of the things that I immediately noticed when I got here, was that King had talked about his adolescence and childhood and how having a trip to Connecticut and picking tobacco was a transformative moment for him. And I thought I knew a lot about Martin King when I got here. And I came across this story and I thought, wow, I've never really read about that and never really considered that.
Lerone:
[1:00:11] King led such an extraordinary life. It was only 39 years, right? But he led such an extraordinary life. So when you read about him, people are often in a rush to get him to be Martin Luther King, Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Understandably so. But reading his letters home that the King Papers Project published all the way back in the 1990s.
Lerone:
[1:00:36] Reading these letters he sent home during this time in Connecticut struck me, and I said, I've got to write this. I've got to tell the story that it wasn't inevitable for him to be Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He went through and had some experiences that led him to deciding to go into the ministry. And he says one pivotal moment was going to Connecticut, picking tobacco for a program to raise tuition dollars to go to Morehouse. And while he's there in Connecticut, he experiences things he's never seen before. And part of it is for the first time he's out of the South. For the first time he goes into public accommodations and is treated equally. And he writes homes, mom, dad, he's 15 years old. Mom, dad, I'm seeing things that I thought someone of my race would never see, he says. I went to a restaurant, the finest restaurant in Hartford, Connecticut. I sat where I wanted to sit down. Went to a movie, sat anywhere I wanted to sit.
Lerone:
[1:01:47] I, you know, black people and white people go to the same church. I mean, he's just 15. And so you get this moment of going inside the world of a 15-year-old and you can just read the letters are dripping with excitement, with awe, with this wide-eyed 15-year-old who's seeing a new world for the first time. And these are lost to history. But for the first time, we have evidence that this is the first time King ever preached. He had sworn off the ministry, not going into ministry. I'm going to be a lawyer, that's what he says. But he goes there and all the men who are working, they see something in him, right? And they say, you should be our religious leader. Part of that is because he's a horrible farm worker.
Lerone:
[1:02:37] He's horrible. He's voted the laziest farm worker. He's small. He's like five, six, five, seven. A lot of these guys are college age and some of them are grown men coming back from World War II. He's 15, he's five, six, he's five, seven. He's like 140 pounds. He's horrible. He's just doesn't really he's not really good on the farm. They call him runt on the farm. But they say, you know, you should you should be our religious leader. And he starts preaching for the first time. And the men are there. They're like, wow, like this 15-year-old kid, like there's something special about this kid. They say his sermons are the same way they was to the day he died. His sermons were about service, helping other people, loving people, trying to make the world a better place. And that's the time he's the first time he's ever preached. He comes back home. He has some more experiences in the South of being discriminated against. So he just says, I'm not going to go into the ministry. That's just not practical enough. I'm going to go back to being a lawyer. That's how I'm going to fix this, these conditions. And his whole college career, well, up until his junior year, he wrestles with this. Should I go into the ministry? Should I be a lawyer? And eventually by his junior year, he goes back to Connecticut, has an experience with the police, scares him.
Lerone:
[1:04:01] And like a lot of young people, it's like, you know what? Life is kind of serious. And so he decides, I need to get serious. I'm going into the ministry. So that's the story in the book that I'm writing as a way to say, look, it wasn't inevitable for King to go into the ministry. And I'm trying to write a book here that will help young adults who are in a similar situation. And parents hell i'm writing this book for myself too um about how do i how do i let how do i let my sons be who they want to be how do i how do i support that so it's a book and it's also a book about you know.
Lerone:
[1:04:47] King's sort of journey. He falls in love and proposes marriage to someone that doesn't end up working out. He ends up, of course, meeting Coretta Scott King, his wife. So it's a book about a young man trying to make his way in the world that stops when he gets to Montgomery and becomes a pastor. And we know that story, most of that story. I wanted to tell the part of the story that many of us don't know much about is that how King gets there because it's not inevitable for him to be Reverend Dr. King.
Lerone:
[1:05:18] And I think you can't understand him if you don't understand his story. And I like to jokingly say, right, that every superhero has an origin story, right? And you really can't appreciate the superhero and understand him until you know the origin story. So what I'm trying to do here is write the origin story of the hero that is Martin Luther King Jr.
Keller:
[1:05:36] Yeah. We were pretty late last night reading the draft you sent us and it It was very, very interesting. Oh, thank you, man. Growing up, we're faced with a lot of history of Martin Luther King, but that was by far the most insightful pieces we've ever read on it. And part of what we talked about in our intro was that you don't only want to make it a literature book, but you also want to make a graphic novel to make it approachable to all kinds of audiences.
Lerone:
[1:06:02] That's right. That's right. I'm publishing the book with Amistad, which is an imprint of HarperCollins. And that's the plan. We're going to make this, make a book. And then after the book is going to be a graphic novel as well, because, you know, I've got, I've got a 13 year old, I've got a nine year old man. And, and, uh, and I want this to be something that they'll pick up and read, you know, um, and something that they maybe can be inspired by. And not just my kids, but kids across the country and across the world that I hope that they'll be able to see themselves. Because part of, I think when Martin King, we see him, he's always in a shirt and tie. He's always composed. Even if there's like threats going against him, he's marching, people are screaming at him, calling all types of names. He just seems composed, right? And I think that that might give young people the idea that like, I can never be that. I could never be great. I can never be, I never practice excellence and courage. But I think this book will help them to see that that doesn't just change.
Lerone:
[1:07:11] Happen, right? He was made and he was formed by his community, by his experiences, by his time in college. And I hope that this book will help people actually identify more with him because they'll see that he went through some of the same challenges and love, struggles in college with his grades, trying to figure out who he wants to be in the world, being bullied, all of these things that and i hope that they'll that they'll now want to learn more about the adult king and all that he stood for and why he stood for those things so i hope it opens up a new world for for people across the nation who will read the book when it's published.
Brent:
[1:07:53] Yeah i think from the summary alone you'll get the job done on.
Lerone:
[1:07:56] That i appreciate it guys man i appreciate it.
Brent:
[1:07:59] Uh one thing we noticed mlk potentially met malcolm x in connecticut.
Lerone:
[1:08:05] Yeah and.
Brent:
[1:08:06] It'd be super cool to give like a quick summary.
Lerone:
[1:08:08] Of what.
Brent:
[1:08:09] That could have been and then what that could mean as well.
Lerone:
[1:08:12] During my research man i discovered so while king is king is in connecticut as i mentioned picking tobacco for this morehouse program malcolm x who's four years older so would have been 19 king was 15 malcolm x is working for this taylor in boston and malcolm is actually put on the road because Because these companies know that all these Southern workers are coming up North to work in Connecticut to pick tobacco. They send Malcolm in a blue truck, apparently, to going around to these tobacco farms and selling suits. And there are some men who recall buying suits from Malcolm. And so it is clear that Malcolm would have went past and stopped at the farm where King was working.
Lerone:
[1:09:12] That summer of 47. We don't have evidence that they met, that they talked. It's very possible. King came from a home that was fairly comfortable. He loved wearing suits. His friends called him tweed because he loved wearing a tweed suit. So it's possible King could have been attracted to say like, oh, let me see what this guy's selling. And Malcolm at the time would have been 19, six foot four. All the guys, the summer workers were like, yo, Malcolm was so smooth. They were Like, as soon as they got off the truck with this smooth lingo, it's urban New York style. They were like, we loved that stuff. We ate it up. It's very possible King could have saw that and said, let me check this guy out, right? Let me see what he's selling. Or it's possible that Malcolm might have heard about the boy wonder preacher on the tobacco farm. Let me check this guy out. Malcolm being increasingly growing hateful, as he would describe it himself, towards religion. So it's very possible that this 15-year-old, 5'7", Martin King, and this 6'4", smooth, urban, slicked-hair-talking Malcolm Little would have encountered one another in the summer of 1947.
Lerone:
[1:10:28] The two of them met publicly, we know, later in their lives in 1964 in Washington, D.C., when Congress was debating the civil rights bill. We don't know if they ever spoke about it. We don't even know if they knew, hey, I think we were in the same place one summer in 1947 because they were adults by then. But it does give us a moment to see that in 1947.
Lerone:
[1:10:57] Their lives in 1947, it's there that we sort of see the pattern for the rest of their life, right? That they are so close, but yet so far away. And that's how their lives go. They're in the same spaces oftentimes during the civil rights movement in their public lives, but not on the same page. In 1947, King is in Connecticut and seeing a different side of white folks he's never seen before. And King says that some of that summer and his time in college kind of helped him to see like, okay, all white people aren't evil, right? Malcolm, on the other hand, is moving in the other direction, right? Malcolm has experienced, he says, in his autobiography so much by the time he's 19 of being hurt and done wrong by white folks in the North. Malcolm's to the point where he's like, I can't stand white folks, right? And we all know that he ends up for a time in his life saying white brothers and sisters are devils. Of course, he later recants that belief. But at the time in 1947, he's moving towards that. So both of them are moving in different directions, like two ships passing in the night as it relates to their feelings around white people, feelings around religion. And then eventually, of course, in a couple of years, King will be in divinity school preparing for ministry and Malcolm will be in prison.
Lerone:
[1:12:19] And while he's getting his own education, but doing so behind bars. So the summer of 47 for both of them is really this moment where they're so close to ships passing in the night, but definitely going in different directions. So close, but yet so far away. And so it's a wonderful moment to think about the possibilities of what could have happened in 1947 with this 15 year old who's saying, you know, I'm thinking about the ministry and, you know, white brothers and sisters have a role to play in helping America be a better place and a 19 year old saying like, young man, you got it all backwards, right? So it's a wonderful time to think what could have been in the summer of 1947.
Keller:
[1:13:02] And as we wrap up, do you have any other pieces of advice you want to share to students? And also we're wondering if you would be willing to share MLK's favorite verse, something that'd be a really beautiful message to end on.
Lerone:
[1:13:13] Yeah. You know, the advice that I would share, man, that I'm learning from from writing this book on King is never lose the capacity to dream. You know, despite the lack of evidence that was in his life and the brutality he experienced being smacked, cursed out, discriminated against, he never lost the capacity to dream. I think that's so important, to dream of yourself.
Lerone:
[1:13:53] In terms of your profession, and the kind of world you want to see. And recognize that no matter what profession you're in, you can serve humanity, right? You don't have to be a minister. You don't have to necessarily be involved in a nonprofit, right? You can serve humanity, and you can make the world, help to shape the world to be a better world right where you are. And Howard Thurman, who also went to Morehouse and was an influence of King, King loved reading Howard Thurman's book, Jesus and the Disinherited. Howard Thurman has this famous saying where he says, especially to young people, he says, don't ask what the world needs.
Lerone:
[1:14:40] Ask what makes you come alive, because what the world needs is people who have come alive. And I think that that's the advice I would give to young adults, man. Ask yourself what makes you come alive. And if you can find that passion, that thing that you enjoy doing, you'll serve humanity because you'll do it in a way that is passionate. You'll do it in a way that you'll be joy. And that joy will just be felt by others. You'll interject that in every place you go. So pursue that. That's the advice I would have. King found what made him come alive. It was preaching, it was serving others, and it was challenging the status quo. That made him come alive. And that's what he was willing to die for. So that's probably the advice I'd give. And one of King's favorite verses was Luke 10, 27. And I think, yeah, we can leave it with this. Jesus said love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind and love your neighbor as yourself there it is all right there and thanks for having me guys thank.
Keller:
[1:15:56] You thank you.