(drum roll music)
- So, you were a student
at the Chicago Theological
Seminary School,
and what I thought was
kind of funny about this is
obviously you've had this
wildly successful career,
but in college you
actually were struggling
in seminary school.
How true is that?
- Well, I was struggling
because my attention span
was challenged by the movement.
I left Greensboro.
I had been jailed twice.
I'd been marching and I
was into social activism.
I was inclined to go to
law school, law seminary
and Dr. Sam Proctor convinced
me to go to seminary,
to try it for a year.
And I was torn, because
I'm in Chicago in seminary
and my boys are downtown
marching in Selma, Alabama.
Matter of fact, the Sunday
that the March took place
in Selma, I was in school.
I'd just came into the library
and I looked on television
and saw the beating.
I couldn't take it anymore
and I said to my classmates,
"If Jesus is real,
"we got to go to Alabama."
The cross is not just something to wear,
something to bear and I challenged
their sense of theological commitment.
And three cars of us drove
from Chicago to Selma, Alabama.
That's where I really met Dr. King
for the first time in an engaging sense,
I was hired shortly thereafter,
worked with him from '65 to
when he was killed in '68.
- March 7th 1965, you see what's going on.
Bloody Sunday, march through Selma.
You're driving down the next day
and despite eventually missing
your second child's birth,
you get your first real meeting
with Martin Luther King Jr.
What's discussed and
why are you pitching him
on bringing the movement to Chicago?
- He came to Chicago not at my insistence.
It was a big debate, should
you bring the movement North?
Should you stay South?
And they finally decided
to come to Chicago.
We began to organize ministers
and in organizing those ministers,
we gave him a base when he got here.
A base for fair housing marches.
We were searching for a way
to arouse the consciousness
of people and the open housing marches
became the final act of his life really.
- I think it was five days
before his assassination.
You end up getting into a
heated argument of sorts
and fellow activist Andy Young
says, you still remember that
that the last substantive conversation
the two of you had was
some sort of argument.
- It was not the last
substantive conversation.
He encouraged vigorous
debate in staff meetings.
We were not docile just waiting to go.
And the context of it was, he had said
when the meeting opened, "I
have had a migraine headache
"for three days and I don't
know if I can go any further.
"I'm being turned on."
He was being attacked by leaders.
He was maybe 62% in the Black,
in 62% of the negative among Blacks
when he was killed.
52% by Blacks and 72% by
Whites, in the negative.
Blacks were attacking
him for taking attention
away from Civil Rights, from the war.
His point was money for healing at home
is going to killing
abroad, you can't separate,
it's the same budget war or peace.
And he said, "Maybe I should
just quit, give up, stop."
And I said, "Dr. King
don't talk that way."
It was such a solemn thing.
Then he said, "Well maybe we
can turn a minus into a plus
"and go on to Memphis and on
to Washington to have sit-ins
"to end the war in Vietnam."
He left and went back home.
We went to our separate
places and we were together
in Memphis that Tuesday.
