BILL MOYERS:
This week on Moyers & Company…
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR:
There are literally two Americas.
BILL MOYERS:
Martin Luther King and the dream of a fair
and just America.
JAMES CONE:
Freedom from fear is a necessary freedom to
get the civil rights, to get the jobs, to
get work against poverty even though the odds
may be against you.
TAYLOR BRANCH:
If you can deal with race and the fundamental
denial of common humanity through race, then
it opens up possibilities.
BILL MOYERS:
And…
KYLE DARGAN:
The idea of a more perfect union.
I love that because it suggests, rightfully
so, that it’s not perfect now.
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BILL MOYERS:
Welcome.
You may think you know about Martin Luther
King, Jr., but there is much about the man
and his message we have conveniently forgotten.
He was a prophet, like Amos, Isaiah and Jeremiah
of old, calling kings and plutocrats to account,
speaking truth to power.
Yet, he was only 39 when he was murdered in
Memphis, Tennessee on April 4th, 1968.
The March on Washington in ’63 and the March
from Selma to Montgomery in ’65 were behind
him.
So were the passage of the Civil Rights Act
and the Voting Rights Act.
In the last year of his life, as he moved
toward Memphis and fate, he announced what
he called the Poor People’s Campaign, a
“multi-racial army” that would come to
Washington, build an encampment and demand
from Congress an “Economic Bill of Rights”
for all Americans — black, white, or brown.
He had long known that the fight for racial
equality could not be separated from the need
or economic equity – fairness for all, including
working people and the poor.
That’s why he was in Memphis, marching with
sanitation workers on strike for a living
wage when he was killed.
With me are two people steeped in King’s
life and work.
Taylor Branch wrote the extraordinary, three-volume
history of the civil rights era, “America
in the King Years.”
The first of them, “Parting the Waters,”
received the Pulitzer Prize.
He now has distilled all that work, adding
fresh material and insights to create this
new book, “The King Years: Historic Moments
in the Civil Right Movement.”
James Cone, a longtime professor of theology
at New York’s Union Theological Seminary,
wrote the ground-breaking books that defined
black liberation theology, interpreting Christianity
through the eyes and experience of the oppressed.
Among them: “Black Theology and Black Power,”
“Martin and Malcolm and America,” and
this most recent bestseller, “The Cross
and the Lynching Tree.”
Before we talk, let’s listen to these words
from Martin Luther King, Jr., spoken at Stanford
University just a year before his assassination.
It’s as if he were saying them today.
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR:
There are literally two Americas.
One America is beautiful for situation.
And in a sense this America is overflowing
with the milk of prosperity and the honey
of opportunity.
This America is the habitat of millions of
people who have food and material necessities
for their bodies, and culture and education
for their minds, and freedom and human dignity
for their spirits.
[…] But tragically and unfortunately, there
is another America.
This other America has a daily ugliness about
it that constantly transforms the buoyancy
of hope into the fatigue of despair.
In this America millions of work-starved men
walk the streets daily in search for jobs
that do not exist.
In this America millions of people find themselves
living in rat-infested, vermin-filled slums.
In this America people are poor by the millions.
They find themselves perishing on a lonely
island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean
of material prosperity.
BILL MOYERS
Welcome to you both.
BILL MOYERS:
As he was trying to converge economics, race,
social and political equality, what was he
struggling for at that time when he, alone
among his colleagues, wanted to take on the
tough structure of prejudice in economics
in the North?
JAMES CONE:
I think he was thinking about class issues.
He talked about class issues to his staff.
He didn't do it primarily in speeches because
of the kind of anticommunism spirit that was
so deep in America at that time.
But on many occasions, he talked about the
economic and about America having 40 million
people who are in poverty in the richest country
in the world.
He was talking about restructuring everything.
And if you talk about restructuring, you're
talking about class too.
TAYLOR BRANCH:
Yes.
You have to understand that some of this class
tension was also within the black community.
Some of King's most stinging speeches were
to the members of his own, like Alpha Phi
Alpha fraternity, saying, "You spend more
money on liquor at your annual convention
than you contribute to the NAACP.”
"This is -- we're more concerned about, I
know ministers who are more concerned about
the wheel base on their Cadillac than they
are the spiritual base of their commitment
to this world."
So, King drew an awful lot of sustenance and
biting challenge from the basic notion of
-- I think that his favorite parable was the
parable of Lazarus and Dives in Luke about--
BILL MOYERS:
Which was?
TAYLOR BRANCH:
It was about the rich man who passed Lazarus
begging at his door and didn't notice him
and went to hell and saw Lazarus up in heaven.
And King interpreted this thing as saying
the rich man did not go to hell because he
was rich.
He went there because he didn't notice the
humanity of the man he was passing at his
gate.
And it was about humanity.
Remember how the sanitation strike started,
it started because two members of the sanitation
force were crushed in the back of a garbage
truck that was a cylinder, one of those compacting
cylinders, in a torrential rainstorm and they
were not allowed by the city to seek shelter
in storms.
Because the white residents didn't like it
if black garbage men stopped.
All the garbage workers were black.
And, so, they weren't allowed -- the only
place they could get shelter in -- they wouldn't
all fit in the cabin.
So, the ones that could fit in the cabin and
two of them had to climb in the back with
the garbage and a broom fell on the lever
and it compacted them with the garbage.
And that is the origin of the slogan, "I am
a man.
I am a man, not a piece of garbage."
And that connects to King's philosophy.
BILL MOYERS:
And the sanitation workers carried those signs,
remember?
"I am a man."
TAYLOR BRANCH:
"I am a man."
And to them, that was about Echol Cole and
Robert Walker, their two friends who had been
literally crushed with the garbage and nobody
noticed.
And King is saying, "You're going to go to
hell as a nation if you don't notice the humanity
of Echol Cole and Robert Walker.
JAMES CONE:
And that's why justice is so central for King
and why poverty became the focus of his ministry
after that civil rights and voting rights.
Because the civil rights and voting rights
is not going to get rid of poverty.
And, so, King saw that as central.
BILL MOYERS:
Let’s listen again to Dr. King, from the
speech he made to those striking sanitation
workers in Memphis just weeks before he was
shot to death.
What he said about poverty still rings true.
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR:
Do you know that most of the poor people in
our country are working every day?
They are making wages so low that they cannot
begin to function in the mainstream of the
economic life of our nation.
These are facts which must be seen.
And it is criminal to have people working
on a full-time basis and a full-time job getting
part-time income.
BILL MOYERS:
Could anything be more current right now?
TAYLOR BRANCH:
No.
It's hard to imagine, and of course, it's
chilling to think what the distribution of
wealth was when he made that indictment compared
to what it is now.
It is much more skewed now than it was then
and it was bad then.
So, you really get a sense of King's power.
I would only caution that we not assume that
he undertook these issues of poverty only
late in his career.
It was part of his message all along.
Certainly, if you look at Nobel Prize lecture
in 1964, he says, we are -- the world is seeing
the widest liberation in human history, not
just in the United States but around the world.
And we cannot lose this opportunity to apply
its nonviolent power to the triple scourge
of race, war, and poverty, what he called
violence of the flesh and violence of the
spirit.
This was a very, very broad vision early on.
It's only at the end of his career that he's
making witness on that because he sees his
time limited and he wants to leave that witness.
He made a wonderful quote when he was arguing
with his staff about doing the Poor People's
Campaign and most of them didn't want to do
it.
He quoted something saying, ‘At times, you
must finish with what you have, even if it's
only a little.’
BILL MOYERS:
You remind that the famous March on Washington
five years earlier in 1963 wasn't called the
March on Washington.
It was a march for jobs--
JAMES CONE:
Jobs and freedom.
BILL MOYERS:
--and freedom.
Which goes back to his early concern, as you
say.
JAMES CONE:
Actually, you know, King grew up, he was a
child during the Depression and he saw relief
lines, even as a young man, and he was disturbed
about that.
He came from a middle-class family, but he
was disturbed about it then.
And even when he got ready to go the Crozer
Theological Seminary out of Morehouse, when
they asked him why he wanted to go into ministry,
he connected it with helping people, helping
them deal with hurt and pain.
So, it's not new for King.
King has always been concerned about that.
I think it becomes sharp for him at the end
because he's accomplished civil rights, and
the voting rights, and now he sees that it's
still, he sees the cities burning.
BILL MOYERS:
Right.
JAMES CONE:
And he wants to provide an alternative to
riots.
BILL MOYERS:
I want to play you an excerpt of the speech
he delivered, one year to the day before he
was killed, at Riverside Church here in New
York City.
MARTIN LUTHER KING JR:
I am convinced that if we are to get on the
right side of the world revolution, we as
a nation must undergo a radical revolution
of values.
We must rapidly begin to shift from a thing-oriented
society to a person-oriented society.
When machines and computers, profit motives,
and property rights are considered more important
than people, the giant triplets of racism,
extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable
of being conquered.
BILL MOYERS:
A radical revolution of values.
TAYLOR BRANCH:
The revolution in values is to see people
first, to see Lazarus at the gate and not
pass them by.
So, I think the revolution in values is Christian
and it's democratic, but it starts with people.
They have equal souls and equal votes and
we are very stubborn, human nature, about
denying that and wanting to see anything but.
BILL MOYERS:
Was it theological?
JAMES CONE:
Oh, yes.
Because people are created in the image of
God.
If you're created in the image of God, you
can't treat people like things.
If we are interconnected with each other,
we can't treat each other like things.
If America is concerned with life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness, you can't have
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness
if you're treating others as things.
BILL MOYERS:
So, what was the turning point that moved
him from an understanding of what you're talking
about to an actual agenda of trying to achieve
it?
TAYLOR BRANCH:
Well, I think part of it is a natural progression.
If you are totally invisible, you're not even
up to the level of a thing yet.
The bus boycott, the sit-ins, the freedom
rides, getting the right to vote, if you're
not a citizen, you're not even up to the table
where you can start dealing with these issues.
To me, Martin Luther King saw race as the
gateway.
If you can deal with race and the fundamental
denial of common humanity through race, then
it opens up possibilities which I think happened
in history.
And finally, toward the end of his career,
he said, we have an opportunity.
Now that we are learning, at least the beginnings
of treating each other as equal citizens to
really tackle what he called the eternal scourge
of racism, poverty, and war.
JAMES CONE:
His fight against poverty was multiracial.
He wasn't just focused with black people.
Well, you can't get that multiracial fight
against poverty unless first black people
are regarded as persons.
So, civil rights, that earlier part, is, as
Taylor was saying, black people coming to
the table.
So, after they get to the table, if you’re
going to deal with poverty, it spreads across
races.
So, King was concerned about a multiracial
movement against poverty because that's what
the Poor People's Campaign was about.
BILL MOYERS:
So, that would help us understand the colorblindness
of that Economic and Social Bill of Rights
that he and the Poor People's Campaign developed
in the first, early part of 1968.
“The right of every employable citizen to
a decent job, the right of every citizen to
a minimum income, the right of a decent house
and the free choice of neighborhood, the right
to an adequate education, the right to participate
in a decision-making process, the right to
the full benefits of modern science in health
care.”
Quite a statement.
TAYLOR BRANCH:
And he had a workshop, one of the more remarkable
events that never made any news and is not
preserved in history, in which he had representatives
of Indian tribes, Appalachian white coal miners--
JAMES CONE:
That's right.
TAYLOR BRANCH:
--Latinos of every different stripe.
He had to do hurry-up education on how to
tell a Chicano from the Mexicans.
His rule was if they are poor, have them here.
And half his staff was revolting against that,
saying, "We are a black movement."
BILL MOYERS:
Why?
Because they felt it would dilute the impact
of--
TAYLOR BRANCH:
It would diminish the unfinished agenda for
black folks.
It would diminish their expertise.
Hosea Williams, who was a lovely rascal --
JAMES CONE:
That's right.
That's right.
He was strongly against it.
TAYLOR BRANCH:
He said, “You're taking my budget and giving
it away to Indians and Mexicans.
You can't do that."
JAMES CONE:
That's right.
Yeah.
TAYLOR BRANCH:
But he had this incredible conclave there
of people who didn't know each other.
And everything and he said, “If we can't
agree together that there's a poverty and
a common approach that's bigger than race,
then we should stop now."
But by the end of this thing, he had them
all together and the rival Indian tribes were
settling differences, and the Chicanos said,
"Okay, well, we're going to let the Indians
go first because they were here first," you
know and deferring.
JAMES CONE:
That's right.
That's right.
That's right.
TAYLOR BRANCH:
It was a remarkable event.
BILL MOYERS:
He was growing more impatient in the last
few months and more radical.
Let's listen to what he told those workers
we were talking about in Memphis.
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.:
Never forget that freedom is not something
that is voluntarily given by the oppressor.
It is something that must be demanded by the
oppressed.
If we are going to get equality, if we are
going to get adequate wages, we are going
to have to struggle for it.
And you know what?
You may have to escalate the struggle a bit.
If they keep refusing and they will not recognize
the union, and will not decree further check-off
for the collection of dues, I'll tell you
what you ought to do, and you're together
here enough to do it.
In a few days you ought to get together and
just have a general work stoppage in the city
of Memphis.
BILL MOYERS:
That was a genuine call to the barricades.
JAMES CONE:
Yes, it was.
And but you can't do that without that inner
freedom that he's talking about, which is
the freedom that empowers you to stop the
work.
It is the freedom inside that makes you do
that.
And for King, everybody has to claim that
freedom.
It's not a gift.
Freedom is something that you have to demand
from others, but you cannot demand it from
others unless you have it internally yourself.
And that's a kind of inner freedom.
BILL MOYERS:
In what sense was he free?
JAMES CONE:
Well, King was free because death did not
stop him.
That is, the fear of death did not keep him
from doing his actions for freedom.
See, if the fear can stop you, then you are
not free.
So, freedom from fear was crucial.
And throughout the South, having grown up
there, I know what that fear is like.
And what is the most amazing thing for me
is how King could inspire ordinary black people
by the masses, like in Memphis, to march when
white people have intimidated them for centuries.
What King taught was that inner freedom that
makes you confront the oppressor, even if
it means risking your life.
So the freedom from fear is the necessary
freedom to get to civil rights, to get the
jobs, to get work against poverty, even though
the odds may be against you.
And for black people, the odds were against
them.
BILL MOYERS:
But here's the unfortunate thing.
As you write about it, after his assassination,
riots broke out across Memphis.
And even though he acknowledged that, quote,
"Riot is the language of the unheard," didn't
this outbreak of violence in some way begin
the end of the movement?
TAYLOR BRANCH:
This is a very, very profound and difficult
topic and I would have to say that it had
already begun before.
Nonviolence was already not popular.
It had already become passé.
Some of the most hostile language toward nonviolence
came from the Left, people saying that nonviolence
is kind of Sunday school and outmoded now.
And that we want to adopt the language of
violence.
And King's answer to that was, “Nonviolence
is a leadership doctrine.
If we abandon nonviolence, it's not that we're
stepping up to demand the right to be just
violent, just like first-class white people.
We're stepping back from a leadership doctrine
in the United States."
And that's what America including especially
white America, does not understand.
One of the few speeches, by the way, in which
a white leader acknowledged that was Johnson.
Before he said, "We shall overcome," he said
“so it was at Appomattox, so it was at Concord,
so it was at Selma last week, when fate and
destiny met in the same moment."
So, he was putting a nonviolent black movement
not only in the heart of American patriotism,
but in the vanguard heart of American patriotism.
BILL MOYERS:
But do you admit that nonviolence ultimately
didn't work?
That it couldn't change America?
TAYLOR BRANCH:
No.
JAMES CONE:
No.
It did change America.
TAYLOR BRANCH:
It did change America.
JAMES CONE:
It changed it radically for me.
I grew up in Arkansas and I know what fear
is.
What the movement did, nonviolence did, was
to take the terror out of the South.
And for the first time, you can not only go
to hotels, but you can go all over the South
without much fear of harm.
That is a major achievement.
BILL MOYERS:
Certainly I recognize that.
TAYLOR BRANCH:
The white South was the poorest region of
the country when it was segregated.
It was totally preoccupied in this terror.
It was not fit for professional sports, even,
until nonviolence lifted it out of segregation
and white Southern politicians were no longer
stigmatized.
So, you get Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton
and all these people elected president.
And they're all standing on the shoulders
of a nonviolent black movement.
Whether they realize it or acknowledge it
or not.
That's the reason that our blinkered memory
of this period is such a handicap for us today.
BILL MOYERS:
Granted, but nonviolence did not bring about
the economic restructuring that King hoped
for.
So that today he could make the same speeches
about inequality, poverty, work that he made
45 years ago.
TAYLOR BRANCH:
Poverty is probably the toughest issue.
You're talking about how much nonviolence?
Maybe two or three years?
And for the time that it was active and that
it matured into what is the movement.
Movement is a word we use often, but don't
reflect on what it means.
It was the watch word of politics.
People were moved and literally moved history.
But in a very, very short time.
Now, the watch word of politics is spin.
You know, nothing’s going anywhere and nobody's
moving.
BILL MOYERS:
Not since Martin Luther King has inequality
been on the table the way it was at the Occupy
briefly appeared on the scene.
And I wondered watching Occupy from here if
a Martin Luther King had risen to embody that
movement, would they have carried us further
toward the changes that King and others wanted?
JAMES CONE:
It may would have.
I'm not sure.
But, you know, getting rid of poverty, redistribution
of wealth is not as easy as getting the right
to vote.
The right to vote doesn't cost anything.
But redistribution of wealth takes across
class lines.
That costs a lot.
And people will fight you in order to prevent
that from happening.
And I don't know what it would take in order
to make that happen.
TAYLOR BRANCH:
It's also not a simple formula.
Dr. King never said we were going to give
up freedom to have redistribution imposed
on us.
He never advocated something like that.
It is a hard intellectual, spiritual challenge
to figure out, "How do you preserve freedom
and address poverty?"
I don’t think Occupy got that far yet.
It didn’t take that much responsibility.
It was just kind of a sign of protest and
not a developed sense of responsibility the
way, even the sit-ins were taking lessons
from Rosa Parks.
JAMES CONE:
Yes.
That's right.
The sit-ins disrupted society.
The freedom riots disrupted things.
Occupy Wall Street didn't disrupt much of
anything.
They just camped down there and they were
not grassroots in quite the same way the Southern
movement was during the time of King.
BILL MOYERS:
King was identifying with labor and workers
and felt that unions were an essential part
of the civil rights struggle.
I have this speech from 1961, when he told
delegates of AFL-CIO convention, "Our needs
are identical with labor's needs: decent wages,
fair working conditions, livable housing,
old-age security, health and welfare measures,
conditions in which families can grow, have
education for the children, and respect in
the community."
He felt this radical structuring that you
talk about could not come without labor.
And today, 45 years later, unions are largely
impotent, smallest percentage of the workforce.
So, what's happened to labor today?
TAYLOR BRANCH:
Labor has fallen in disfavor and fallen into,
in some respects, an intellectual vacuum.
Because people take for granted the right
that we give capital to organize in form of
corporations.
Every corporation is a public charter.
It is a creation of our people.
It is a legal entity that we create.
And the notion that people on the other end
need some sort of vehicle in a global economy
in order to make their rights effective ought
to be an easy idea at least to begin a conversation
with.
But we're so frightened that anything -- I
guess we're beholden to corporations in the
way that people in the early movement felt
that they were beholden to segregation, that
their place in the order was threatened.
If you start messing around with this thing,
your whole place might go.
That's how they marshaled a lot of Southerners
who were not in sympathy with segregation
into not being for doing anything about it.
And, so, right now, you know, I think that
we're hostage to our fears and don't really
understand how we need to think about economics.
BILL MOYERS:
A year before his death, this time he was
speaking in California at Stanford University,
he said, "In the North, schools are more segregated
today than they were in 1954, when the Supreme
Court's decision on desegregation was rendered.
Economically, the Negro is worse off today
than he was 15 and 20 years ago.
"And, so, the unemployment rate among whites
at one time was about the same as the unemployment
rate among Negroes.
But today, the unemployment rate among Negroes
is twice that of whites.
And the average income of the Negro is today
50% less than whites."
Now, Taylor and James, he could practically
say the same thing today, 45 years later.
TAYLOR BRANCH:
Absolutely.
JAMES CONE:
Absolutely.
TAYLOR BRANCH:
And when he did it, though, he could also
say to American white people, "You tend to
think of black people as hopelessly caught
up in the rear.
The way you should look at this is that the
things that are happening to black people,
unless you make common cause, are going to
happen to you, too."
The poverty rates, the divorce rates in families
that were decried among black people now,
the white society has long since passed.
The notion that higher education is primarily
harder for men, which is now afflicting white
society.
Most of our college graduates are females.
That's been true in black society for years.
And it has had effects in the culture.
So, Dr. King said black folks are a headlight
of the problems we need to deal with.
And white people too often just see them as
something that needs to be left behind and
out of mind.
BILL MOYERS:
So, what would liberation theology say today
about what Taylor just described?
JAMES CONE:
Well, you know, liberation theology came into
being largely because mainstream theology
had not spoken to that gap.
So, it was in the late '60s, early '70s, throughout
the '80s, all the way up to the present day
that liberation theology has its meaning primarily
in seeing Jesus as one in solidarity with
the poor to get them out of poverty.
So, in actual fact, what I see King as, is
a precursor to liberation theology.
I see King actually making liberation theology,
particularly on the American scene, as real
and true.
And I think if he were here today, he would
be trying to bridge this gap between the rich
and the poor.
He focused on black people but it was always
multiracial for King.
TAYLOR BRANCH:
To connect it to what Jim just said, I think
that an awful lot of people today are fearful
of the basic economic structure and it keeps
them from thinking and rattling and getting
together to address these problems.
He said that King conquered his fear.
I say it took him a while to do it, but he
certainly did it.
JAMES CONE:
Yeah.
Yeah.
TAYLOR BRANCH:
Fannie Lou Hamer conquered her fear.
Everything that she did, including testifying
as an unpolished woman before the Democratic
Convention, she did when she was homeless.
She had been evicted from her plantation.
But she had gotten rid of her fear and had
a vision that would empower and make productive
whole generations of people who racism had
denied, you know.
So, we have an awful lot of productive people
in the society today who are productive and
educated and have talent because the movement
helped people conquer their fear.
But we're now at another stage.
Now it's hitting us and I think everybody
is afraid to deal with these issues in the
way that the movement dealt with them, which
was, "I'm going to let loose of my fear.
I'm not going to worry about my savings and
my wealth and whether my kids are going to
get into Harvard.
I'm going deal with the basic issues of how
we can cope with these things together."
BILL MOYERS:
Given the absence of a movement today, given
the power of money, corporations, and the
structure, what do you think Martin Luther
King would say to those in power today?
JAMES CONE:
I think he would say something about, “You
-- this society cannot survive with the huge
gap between the one percent and the 99 percent.
When you have that kind of gap, then you destroy
the possibility of genuine human community
and showing how we are interconnected together.
TAYLOR BRANCH:
I pretty much agree with that.
I think he would have to be saying, "Don't
give into pride and thinking that it is solely
your genius that's creating all these billions
that you're sitting on.
You are reaping the interconnectedness that
we have.
"And that interconnectedness is precious.
And it is political.
And that can vanish.
And so, you need to look beyond that."
We only have two hopes: enlightenment, which
comes from really wrestling and conquering
your pride and appealing to the young, quite
frankly; and catastrophe.
That's the only other hard teacher that we
would have, which is that we're going to ride
this system into a catastrophe.
And then we will wake up and say, "Why didn't
we do it before?
Why didn't we listen to Martin Luther King?"
BILL MOYERS:
Taylor Branch and James Cone, thank you very
much for being with me and for your thoughts
and ideas.
TAYLOR BRANCH:
Thank you.
JAMES CONE:
Thank you.
BILL MOYERS:
Martin Luther King’s eloquent truth-telling
and the sad reality of today, the dream of
economic justice, a dream deferred, the gap
between rich and poor worse than ever led
me to a young man who lives in Washington,
DC, where he teaches literature and writing
at American University.
His name is Kyle Dargan, and he wrote this
poem, “A House Divided,” It begins, “On
a railroad car in your America…”
KYLE DARGAN:
In your America, blood pulses
within the fields, slow-poaching a mill saw's
buried flesh.
In my America, my father
awakens again thankful that my face
is not the face returning his glare
from above eleven o'clock news
murder headlines.
In his imagination,
the odds are just as convincing
that I would be posted on a corner
pushing powder instead of poems—
no reflection of him as a father nor me
as a son.
We were merely born
in a city where the rues beyond our doors
were the streets that shanghaied souls.
To you, my America appears
distant, if even real at all.
While you are
barely visible to me.
Yet we continue
stealing glances at each other
from across the tattered hallways
of this overgrown house we call
a nation
KYLE DARGAN:
I mean in Washington, DC, where I live, you
know, I wake up in southeast DC where the
unemployment rate, it's around 22 percent.
And I go across the city to AU…
BILL MOYERS:
American University?
KYLE DARGAN:
Right, where, you know, unemployment is 3
percent, population's very affluent.
So you know, every day, I'm forced to deal
with those realities and reconcile them in
my head.
And I think, you know, that commute that I
have to deal with, every week, comes out in
my poetry, because I feel like often I'm trying
to reconcile or make sense of these conflicting
worlds that geographically aren't that very
far from each other.
BILL MOYERS:
Kyle Dargan grew up in Newark New Jersey with
working parents determined he would escape
a deteriorating city and make something of
himself.
But echoes of the inner city still resonate
when Dargan walks through his new neighborhood
in Southeast DC.
BILL MOYERS:
Isn't your neighborhood more or less in the
shadows of the capital?
KYLE DARGAN:
I think realtors want people to think that,
but actually, we're on the other side of the
Anacostia River.
Actually, my neighborhood now, I saw it listed
somewhere on a real estate website as Capitol
Hill East.
And I'm like, "That's a bit of a stretch,"
you know, if Benning Heights was on the other
side of the city, it would be Palisades.
You know, it would be Georgetown.
I mean, beautiful houses, beautiful view,
but you know, you’re on the other side of
the Anacostia.
It's not perceived the same way.
You know, people live one way on one side
of the Anacostia River and another way on
the other side.
BILL MOYERS:
There's a line in the poem that says “…where
the rues beyond our doors were the streets
that Shanghaied souls?"
Is that your community now?
The rues beyond the door?
Or the streets that Shanghaied souls?
KYLE DARGAN:
Sure, because cause I mean, lots of, lots
of good kids just get caught up in trouble.
And that's that line, when I'm talking about
my father, this is true.
You know, my dad, to this day sometimes we
talk.
And he's like, you know, "I'm just really
happy you're not one of those knuckleheads
out in a corner."
And as my father, as my father, I can see
where he has that concern, but to me, I'm
like that was never really an option.
Like I never really considered that you or
my mother would accept that.
That's where I come from, but what he says
is, like, "No, you don't understand.
Like whatever we wanted, there's the environment
to be contended with.
And sometimes you lose to the environment.”
And that's what you see with a lot of kids.
Like there are lots of good kids that just
lose to the environment, you know, not because
they want to.
You know, you don't want to be in that situation.
You don't want to be dead at 17.
You don't necessarily want to have multiple
kids, you know, at 16, 18.
But sometimes the environment leads you down
that path.
And you know, as a parent and this, I guess,
the big thing for me, because I don't have
any children.
And the question is, if I have kids, well,
I stay in southeast DC, because, like, do
I want to contend with the environment.
I want to be there, you know.
I want to be a presence but am I willing to
risk my kids for that.
I don't know.
BILL MOYERS:
I'm not sure that I understand why you chose
to live like that when you could have gotten
out and did.
Your parents worked hard.
You worked hard.
You got out.
You go to Washington.
You have a fine teaching position at an important
institution and you choose, in a sense, to
go home again, although it's only a couple
of miles away.
KYLE DARGAN:
When I first got to AU, I lived in Glover
Park, which some people call upper Georgetown
which is right around AU, very quiet, but
none of my neighbors really talked to me.
The police would follow me around sometimes,
which is fine by me, because I felt like I
had a police escort all the time.
I knew I wasn't going to do anything.
It's that idea of community, like why would
I want to live somewhere where none of my
neighbors talked to me, most likely, because
I'm young and my skin is brown.
That's not, that's not home to me.
When I lived in northwest, if anything, I
was constantly reminded of how I was an outsider.
When I'm in southeast, you know, no one, I
mean, no one even asks me what I do.
I'm just there in the community.
If I told them I was a professor, you know,
given my age they probably wouldn't even believe
me.
BILL MOYERS:
How old are you?
KYLE DARGAN:
32.
BILL MOYERS:
They would find that incredulous, right?
KYLE DARGAN:
Yeah, the reality for many of these kids,
like, and I know this is, you know, maybe
strange for us, but many of them, like, don't
expect to live past 19, 18.
So they even think that you're an African-American
young adult with a profession, like even that
for many of them is something that they just
don't see, I mean, when you have access to
many different identities in your community,
it gives you something to choose from.
You know, you have something else to look
at, to aspire towards.
So my thing is, like, I just want to be another
influence in my community, there are others.
BILL MOYERS:
You said they don't expect to live beyond
18 or 19.
KYLE DARGAN:
Yeah.
Like I hear them, because I ride the bus.
And you know, and on a Saturday morning, you
listen to teenagers talk about which of their
friends got shot the night before, who died,
who's still walking around with a coat that
has blood from one of their friends on them.
And it's a casual conversation to them.
And I'm going crazy inside, listening to this,
because you know, it's not normal.
It shouldn't be normal.
But it is for them.
And I think that's where you need, you know,
that generational exchange, so that someone
can come in and say, "Hey, you know, I know
you're living this right lifestyle right now,
but this is not normal for you.
It shouldn't be normal for you.”
BILL MOYERS:
Does politics make sense in your neighborhood?
KYLE DARGAN:
Well aside from some people I know having
jobs, working for the government, I don't
think most people in southeast DC see what
happens at the federal level in terms of,
like, having an immediate impact on their
lives.
You know, one thing that I heard bouncing
around the time that Barack Obama got elected.
And it's like, oh, this is going to be such
a symbol for kids, you know, to look up to.
You're going to have an African-American president.
But you know, having an African-American president
doesn't deal with the drug issues, doesn't
deal with the teen pregnancy issues.
It doesn't deal with the lack of parenting
issues.
You know, all those things that maintain the
reality, the negative realities.
It's not all negative, but the negative realities
of southeast DC.
So I think, you know, people see the Capitol
from the other side of the river.
But in some ways, these it's very much a different
world.
BILL MOYERS:
Read for us one of those poems you wrote about
those kids where you live.
It's called, "We Die Soon."
KYLE DARGAN:
"We Die Soon."
This jazz.
Once you learn it as your own,
you will listen to the brassy chatter of old
brown men riffing on recent murders
The boy who was killing folks
One who had a claw hammer No, in Virginia
The boy slashing women’s behinds
No, sir, this boy was stabbing people, cold
--seated on concave milk crates
or their sweat- and engine-
oil anointed limbs drooping
off a station wagon’s trunk door,
muscles slack save for fingers clutching cold
beer.
Through appreciation, you will learn
to distinguish the hollers of youngins
that end in sweet jabs and hand slaps
from the hollers that summon
lights and sirens up the hill.
Electricity
drowns the nights.
The restless
birds sing back to the evening
gunshots--a magnum’s baritone pow.
With age, you’ll come to lament June’s
music—
its melodies of bleeding boys, another
uneven tempo of jackings, strong-arm
thefts omitted from newspapers.
They want
to get white folks moving
over here.
No transcribed tunes.
These notes puncture, lodge in vertebrae,
make jukeboxes of our spines.
This living is to be erect with song,
and then be bent by it.
The poem, "We Die Soon," it takes its title
from the final lines of Gwendolyn Brooks'
poem “We Real Cool.”
And in the poem, Brooks was looking at these
truant kids in a pool hall.
And she decided, rather than judging them,
you know, for being children in the pool hall,
she's going to try to explore, "Well, I wonder
what they're thinking about right now?"
She's going to try to capture, like, "I wonder
what they feel," without judgment.
And so I think for me, I guess I wanted to
take a similar approach to writing about southeast
DC.
BILL MOYERS:
Do you read that to your students at American
University?
KYLE DARGAN:
No.
Poems like that I tend to share with the kids
from those communities and you know, I never
see myself as speaking for them, because I'm
not living their experience, but every once
in a while, you know, one of them will ask
me, like, are you from here?
And I say, "No."
And it's like, "Well, you sound like you understand
it."
And I said, "Well, I'm from, I'm from Newark.
It's somewhat similar."
But again, you know, I don't live their experiences.
So I try to get them to write, because the
world needs to see southeast DC as they see
it.
BILL MOYERS:
You attempted to have them last year read
at the White House.
Tell me about that.
KYLE DARGAN:
I guess someone from the President's committee
on the arts and humanities was looking for
a poet in the Washington, DC area to, you
know, run a program that would bring, you
know, poetry to kids.
And some of the children got to read in front
of Michelle Obama at the White House.
And it was it was funny, because I think the
entire time we were working on this project,
they didn't really believe that they were
going to go to the White House.
BILL MOYERS:
The kids?
Your kids?
KYLE DARGAN:
Yeah.
Like we tell them and they and they would
say, "Yeah, yeah, White House, whatever.
You know, yeah.
We see it all the time on the bus, we ride
past it."
But then when they actually got there and
they actually got to meet some of the members
on the president's committee their faces,
like Kerry Washington, their faces, like lit
up and they got nervous.
And I said, "You know, don't act nervous now.
You were all cool before, when you didn't
think you were going to come.
So now you're here.
Just relax and do what you have to do."
And they did a great job.
They did a really great job.
I'm proud of them.
BILL MOYERS:
Do you remember the first poem you ever heard
in school?
KYLE DARGAN:
You know, I like to think of hip-hop as one
of my first advanced English teachers.
I was lucky enough.
I had some teachers, Mr. Finley was one, he
played Nas has a song.
You know,” Whose world is this?
The world is yours.”
And that's sort of, like, the refrain of the
song.
And that was a really big moment for me as
a young African-American kid to hear this
rapper tell me that, to ask me this question,
you know, whose world is this?
And to say the world is yours.
And giving me the space to think about that.
You know, thinking about what does that mean?
What does that mean I have access too?
What does it mean I can do?
And you know, I saw lots of rappers I’d
see A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, artists
that were using language to make the world
theirs.
And even today, because a lot of those my
favorite hip-hop albums, they came out when
I was 11, when I was 10.
So I'm still going back and listening to them
as a man and saying, picking out different
metaphors, picking out different allusions,
saying, "Oh, that's what that meant."
So I mean, in many ways, I'm still learning
from hip-hop.
BILL MOYERS:
Give me an example of an allusion or a metaphor
that still resonates and informs your take
on the world today.
KYLE DARGAN:
A Tribe Called Quest has a song called "Check
the Rhime."
And in it Q-Tip, Abstract, the rapper, he
says, you know, you know, "If knowledge is
the key, then just show me the lock."
And as a kid, you understand, like, oh yes,
I go to school, because school's important.
But as an adult, you realize it's like, you
know, no, perspective is important.
And you know, critical thinking is important.
And the ability to know what you don't know
which is on the other side of the door, you
know.
You unlock one door and there's another door,
but then that door opens to what you don't
know.
You have to learn all that before to get to
the next door.
So seeing an image played out over and over
through my life you know, whenever I hear
that line, I smile a little bit, because I'm
like, "Yeah, I live that.
I've been living that, you know, for the past
20 years."
BILL MOYERS:
Tell me about this one and then read it.
KYLE DARGAN:
When I ride the bus, you see a lot of the
neighborhood tags, kids write their different
neighborhood crew gang tags on bus seats,
on stop signs.
And one day, I saw on the telephone pole,
there was a sign advertising rest in peace
T-shirts.
And I realized, like, you know, the kids writing
these tags on the busses are probably kids
that are going to have their faces and names
on these, you know, rest in peace T-shirts.
They're not gangsters.
They're not hoodlums.
They're just boys.
And so I wrote this poem, "Crews."
Those Clay Terrace
boys.
Those
Benning Park boys.
Those Simple
City boys.
Those River Terrace
boys.
After hours
those boys.
Those
shoot-and-dash boys.
Siren-fed boys.
Fatherless boys
siring boys.
Noise
them.
Urban
reservation—
hunt-
and-gather boys.
Keep the blood
on the reservation.
Hunt those boys.
Solve for X: how many
whys and zombies
equal those boys.
Give me dap
those boys.
My boy.
My cousin.
No taller than tree
trunks chopped.
Those boys
sundown colorful,
watch those boys.
Southeast hocus pocus—
you see / don’t see those
boys.
Then you read those
boys: police blotter those
boys.
Then they’re ink
those boys--RIP
graffiti on white tees:
those boys.
Those Clay
Terrace boys.
Those
Benning Park boys.
Those
River Terrace boys.
Those
Drama City boys.
BILL MOYERS:
I'm wondering can poetry really make a difference
when kids are going hungry or their friends
are being shot at with guns or their parents
are losing their homes?
Does poetry hold anything out to them?
KYLE DARGAN:
I think there's solace.
I mean, I think some are moved to action,
but I think there's unfair pressure put on
poetry.
Like I'm glad that people expect so much of
it, but you look at, I mean, honestly, like
you look at Congress right now, I mean, legislation
isn't fixing those things.
So why would you expect poetry to?
I mean, maybe poetry can inspire people to
get on their legislators to do something,
to fix something in their lives.
But I mean, that's the place where poetry
operates.
It doesn't operate at the infrastructure level.
It operates at the motivation level it gets
people.
And that's why I say it's important, you know,
if poetry isn't speaking to people, if you
can read a poem and it just washes over you,
goes over your head, you don't feel any human
connection.
Then I feel like that's a waste of the art
form, because it could be making that connection
with someone, possibly urging them to look
at the world differently, to do something
differently.
That may or may not leave them to taking actions,
but you know, if you don't try.
BILL MOYERS:
Kyle Dargan, thank you very much for being
with me.
KYLE DARGAN:
Thank you very much.
I appreciate it.
BILL MOYERS:
At our website, billmoyers.com, an exclusive
video report on California’s Silicon Valley
as microcosm for the extremes of wealth and
poverty in America.
High tech multi-billionaires have made fortunes
there, while the homeless live in tent cities
along a nearby creek.
That’s all at billmoyers.com.
I’ll see you there and I’ll see you here,
next time.
