I notified people on Facebook and Twitter regarding this interview a couple days ago, but I realize many who read this blog may not be connected to me via social media, so I want to place a link here as well. WNYC has released a previously unedited interview with Martin Luther King, Jr., recorded in 1961. You can listen to it here.
Dr. King discusses a variety of thing related to being Black in the south, his education, his reason for becoming a minister, his understanding of the “social Gospel”, his approach to non-violence as influenced by the teachings of Jesus and Gandhi, and much more.
One quote from early in the interview that I appreciated in this one (statement starts around 2:54): “I came to see that religion could be emotionally satisfying as well as intellectually respectable.” I agree, Dr. King!
the archives near Emmaus 
Along lines of some of us never living in the South or in areas of high racial mix, I will recommend a great series on Public Television, now in its latter episodes, I think: The Abolitionists”. I’ve only gotten to see the latest one (2 nights ago), which was very educational as well as engaging. Based on the one, I highly recommend the series…. Showed just how deeply slavery and its offspring have affected our society… in the mid 1800’s particularly, but it’s not hard to extrapolate to today.
I was raised in rural San Diego County and don’t think I even spoke at any length to any black people, let alone knew one well or saw any regularly until after high school. So, as to my beginning to gain some sense of things in the South during my youth, just as the Civil Rights Movement was going on, and the 1965 Civil Rights Act (or whatever the title) enacted, I somehow decided (probably for a class… but I forget) to read “Black Like Me”… once very popular but little remembered by younger people today. I was shocked to learn, via the author’s experiences, what conditions were like in the South, still so long after slavery had been ended and supposed equality established. I do think a lot of progress has been made since then, culturally as well as legally, but for younger people to know our relatively recent past in much of the country, I think this would still be a valuable read. It helps to understand a bit of why supposed “equality” of opportunity is not as real as we’d like to think, why racial tensions continue, often high, in an increasingly multi-cultural society, etc.
I saw someone recommend that series recently. I wonder if it will be available online. I think I missed its airing on TV (TV schedules are hard to follow these days, unless one has some on-demand or recording option).
I haven’t read ‘Black Like Me’, though I have heard of it. Where I was raised in Napa, CA, Blacks were a very small percentage of the population, but Latinos were a quickly growing group, and it threatened Whites quite a bit. My best friend was Mexican-American, so I had a first-hand opportunity to learn that in spite of my father’s racist accusations against non-Whites, it was completely untrue that others were somehow “less” than us. Amazingly, it isn’t just southerners who have shown continued resentment in this department, many LePorts in northern California were as bad. It is ugly. I’ve seen it first hand.