TONYA MOSLEY, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. I'm Tonya Mosley. And in a rare convergence of history and politics, today is both Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Inauguration Day. It's only the second time this has happened since MLK Day became a federal holiday. This juxtaposition of honoring a civil rights icon while swearing in a controversial president creates a stark symbolic contrast - a collision of narratives that raises profound questions about the state of Dr. King's dream in modern America.
Joining me to talk about King's legacy and what it means to have this day shared with Donald Trump is sociologist and New York Times opinion columnist Tressie McMillan Cottom. She's a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and author of "Thick: And Other Essays." Also joining me is Princeton African American studies professor and religion scholar Eddie Glaude Jr., who has authored several books - most recently, "We Are The Leaders We Have Been Waiting For" (ph). Both are known for their insightful analysis of race, religion and politics in the United States.
Tressie McMillan Cottom and Eddie Glaude, welcome to FRESH AIR.
TRESSIE MCMILLAN COTTOM: It's a pleasure to be here.
EDDIE GLAUDE: It's a delight to be with you.
MOSLEY: You know, Dr. Martin Luther King's daughter, Bernice King, said that she's glad Inauguration Day happens to fall on MLK Day because it means that her dad is still speaking to us. And I want to ask both of you what you're reflecting on as we watch President-elect Donald Trump become the 47th president of the United States. I'll start with you, Tressie.
COTTOM: I'm reflecting on a lot of things this year, which actually surprises me. I have not found Donald Trump's reelection to be a moment that requires a lot of deep personal reflection. Trump and Trumpism is exactly what it looks like. But on Martin Luther King Day, I am thinking a lot about what has changed, because I do think it matters a great deal for us to be clear-eyed about such things. I think we can slide into hyperbole and say, you know, this country is racist, has always been racist, and will always be racist. And there's a certain level of what, like, people in my field will call abstraction or a certain bird's-eye view where that is true. But I think it's really important for us to also observe the ways in which that is not true. And I think there are a lot of ways in which that isn't true. But it also then becomes all the more urgent to me to consider what I think Martin Luther King's legacy would have us consider, which is, how is it possible for there have - to have been so much change - some of it positive, some of it what we might call progressive. And yet for there to still be this baseline of white animosity - the urge to do the sort of political reclamation that we see happening with Donald Trump's reelection. And how can we finally, hopefully develop the capacity to hold both of those truths - contradictory yet complimentary ideas. Like the ones I think Martin Luther King absolutely understood and really tried to develop a language around for everyday people. Which I think is one of our upcoming challenges, by the way.
MOSLEY: Eddie, what do you have to say to that? I'm really struck by the contradicting but complimentary ideas and being able to merge those two. I think that's really going to be a big basis of our conversation. Your thoughts, Eddie.
GLAUDE: You know, I think, you know, human beings are complex, you know? We are capable of extraordinary things and terrible things all at once. And the same, I think, holds true for nations. And that's all we need to do is tell the truth about the histories of countries, and we see that complexity in full view. I think what's going to be really fascinating, or what's fascinating to me is the kind of collision of two versions of America - two views of America. You know, Donald Trump is what he is. MAGA Republicanism is what it is. It's an echo of a long-standing view that ours must remain a white nation in the vein of Old Europe, and this idea of really reading the Declaration of Independence into the Constitution, right? To understand who we the people actually is. To really think about, all right, what does it mean that all men and women are created equal and to read that into a certain understanding of the country. And to bring the full weight of the history of race, the history of slavery more - particularly - or more specifically into that conversation is important. So, for me, it's this kind of ironic, startling in some ways, juxtaposition to have the inauguration of Donald Trump on the day that we celebrate MLK - Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. So...
MOSLEY: Yeah.
GLAUDE: ...It's a fascinating moment in the history of the country.
MOSLEY: You know, one of the things that I've been thinking about in the context of this moment is how we've been struggling with MLK's legacy really, I'd actually say for all of my lifetime. We seem to have, like, this collective amnesia about how vicious and brutal that time period before his assassination was and how he was vilified. And, Tressie, you've been thinking about how bluntly President Trump and the GOP have over the years kind of coopted King a martyr when you say that they would have hated King, the organizer. Can you say more about that?
COTTOM: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I think there's something to the American story that we even find ourselves here in this moment - that a man whose campaign draws from the worst racial repertoire of American history in modern complex times as the head of state is, by default, in charge of, at least in this moment, this year, the enshrinement of King's public memory, right? - the public memory project that the state does for Martin Luther King. I think it points out something that is important for us to relearn if we have forgotten it - to learn for the first time, if we're new here - and certainly to keep in mind as we move forward in the next four years, which is that the state project of memorializing Martin Luther King was never about who Martin Luther King actually was, right? It was about an idealized version of the King the state was willing to accept after he had been murdered, right? This is as much a memory project of reminding us, by the way, of the high cost of working against the American investment in oppression and inequality as it has ever been about memorializing Martin Luther King, the actual, who I would call an organizer, a mobilizer. I would maybe even go so far as to call him what they called him during his time, because I don't think it's an insult, which is to call him radical. Certainly, I think a radical philosopher and a radical thinker. And the fact that that is not the King that we remember. Instead, he has been frozen in time as the Martin Luther King of the quotables and of the excerpts from a speech that seems to memorialize United States America as an always-perfecting project when Martin Luther King, in actuality, believed no such thing. He believed in the power of people to shape this nation, certainly. But that's not the memory project we've undertaken. And perhaps the juxtaposition of seeing Donald Trump preside over the official state memorialization of Martin Luther King will remind us of our responsibility to remembering King as he actually was. Which, frankly, should be a people's project as he was a philosopher and organizer of the people.
GLAUDE: You know, Tressie, I think that's a very important point. We have to think about this moment as a kind of reflection of the continuous loop that is American history, right? This moment where the country seems to give voice to a notion of freedom, an idea of liberty. This commitment to democracy, but it's always shadowed by the ugliness of his commitment to white supremacy. This commitment to the idea that white people matter more than others. And so you always get, over the course of the country, this sense that, you know, we're making progress. And then we double down on the ugliness, and then, you know, we have to deal with this kind - we call it a backlash, a betrayal or however. King lived through that. And so to think about King post-March on Washington, to think about Dr. King in 1966 and 1967 and '68, dealing with the country that is turning its back on the very movement that he's risked everything for. He sees Ronald Reagan and what Reagan is doing in California. He understands - right? - what the state has deployed in terms of the repressive state apparatus and the way it's repressing Black organizers around the country. The way in which Nixoniansm is beginning to take shape, right? So what does it mean to really deal with Dr. King, right?
In 1966, he's in Grenada, Mississippi organizing to get some elementary students to integrate a school and some high school students - John Rundle High School, I believe. And you know what happened? These Black kids come out of that school, and white adults with baseball bats and tree limbs attack those babies. And King retreats to his bed. Andrew Young said he had never seen this level of depression in Dr. King. He refused to get up. And it wasn't until Joan Baez sang a chorus of "Pilgrim Sorrow" (ph) that he began to stir. So the depth of his despair, of his depression in the face of the country's betrayal, we rarely grapple with that on this day. Because we, you know, as Tressie has laid out, we have a certain memory of him that allows us to pat ourselves on the back.
MOSLEY: Let's take a short break. If you're just joining us, my guests are sociologist and writer Tressie McMillan Cottom, and scholar and writer Eddie Glaude. We'll continue our conversation after a short break. This is FRESH AIR. And today, I'm talking to sociologist and author Tressie McMillan Cottom and scholar and writer Eddie Glaude. We're talking about the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. as we enter another Trump presidency. Tressie McMillan Cottom is a professor with the Center of Information Technology and Public Life at UNC Chapel Hill. Eddie Glaude is the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of African American studies at Princeton University.
I really want to sit with the fact that you talk about the depths of despair that MLK's in during '66, '67 and '68, before he was assassinated. There's actually an interview that he did with Mike Wallace for CBS News in '66, and I want to play an excerpt from that. And the two of them are talking about King's belief and nonviolent resistance. Let's listen.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
MARTIN LUTHER KING JR: I will never change in my basic idea that nonviolence is the most potent weapon available to the Negro in his struggle for freedom and justice. I think for the Negro to turn to violence would be both impractical and immoral.
MIKE WALLACE: There is an increasingly vocal minority who disagreed totally with your tactics, Dr. King.
KING: There's no doubt about that. I will agree that there is a group in the Negro community advocating violence now. I happen to feel that this group represents a numerical minority. Surveys have revealed this - that the vast majority of Negroes still feel that the best way to deal with the dilemma that we face in this country is through nonviolent resistance. And I don't think this vocal group will be able to make a real dent in the Negro community in terms of swaying 22 million Negroes to this particular point of view. And I contend that the cry of Black power is, at bottom, a reaction to the reluctance of white power to make the kind of changes necessary to make justice a reality for the Negro.
MOSLEY: That was Dr. King talking with Mike Wallace in 1966. And, of course, we were calling ourselves Negro back then. I also want to make that note. You know, Paniel Joseph has done some excellent writing about MLK's belief in nonviolent action up against Malcolm X's philosophy of by any means necessary. He actually describes King and Malcolm X's revolutionary sides of the same coin and how the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020 actually amplified that and brought that idea into full view. Now we are several years away from 2020 - what folks were calling a racial reckoning. And, Tressie, you told me that you get the sense that a big issue for many Black people in despair at this moment is that they cannot process the uneven successes of social movements like BLM. Can you say more about that?
COTTOM: Yeah. You know, I'm a sociologist, and we have this concept called anomie, which is, you know, the sense that something about social norms have started to break down, right? And that to me feels like the sort of bigger response that I'm feeling from a lot of Black Americans in this moment. I think that when you look across the landscape of corporate America's retreat from even cosmetic displays of diversity with the attack on diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, the all-out attack on access and fairness. And I think really our most successful system of social mobility that this country has ever built. I don't think that that is an accident. And people feel despondent watching universities, their legitimacies just sort of being dismantled in front of our eyes. And something seems to have broken down in our social norms. Not that they've ever been perfect by any stretch of the imagination. But they seem to have, I think, a level of friction that feels dangerous and makes a lot of Black people in this moment feel vulnerable. And I think that what we are seeing here is more severe than just a temporary emotional state of apathy and anger. I think this is also us doing some delayed grieving for what could have been had the state and so many corporate interests not turned so viciously against Black Lives Matter.
GLAUDE: The answer is, of course, more complicated than just simply because they're racist. But there's a substantive moral judgment here. And it's a similar kind of logic that those students who risked everything and engaged in nonviolent discipline in the bowels of the South and Alabama, and Mississippi, and Georgia, and the like in confronting these brutal sheriffs, get the legislation passed, and the material conditions of their lives haven't really changed. And white America is telling them, what else does - you know, as James Baldwin hated this question - what else does the Negro want? He hated that question because he said the question reveals that they didn't think of him as a human being just like they think of themselves. They think of us instead as a charitable enterprise, you see? And so I think the anger, the grief is rooted in the deeply-skeptical view of the moral capacity of the nation in this moment. The skepticism is in full bloom. And one wonders, where do we go from here?
MOSLEY: I just can't help but keep going back to that time period, '67, '68, and the optimism of after the I Have a Dream speech in '63. And I actually want to play another clip. This one is from a 1967 interview with Sander Vanocur 3 and a half years after that I Have a Dream speech. Let's listen.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
KING: That period was a great period of hope for me, and I'm sure for many others all across the nation. Many of the Negroes who had about lost hope saw a solid decade of progress in the South. And in 1954, which was - I mean, '64, 1963, nine years after the Supreme Court's decision to be in the March on Washington meant a great deal. It was a high moment. A great watershed moment. But I must confess that that dream that I had that day has in many points turned into a nightmare. Now, I'm not one to lose hope. I keep on hoping. I still have faith in the future. But I've had to analyze many things over the last few years, and I would say over the last few months. I've gone through a lot of soul-searching and agonizing moments. And I've come to see that we have many more difficult days ahead. And some of the old optimism was a little superficial, and now it must be tempered with a solid realism. And I think the realistic fact is that we still have a long, long way to go and that we are involved in a war on Asian soil, which if not checked and stopped, can poison the very soul of our nation.
MOSLEY: That was Dr. King speaking to NBC in 1967. He's also referring to the Vietnam War when he mentions the Asian war. And, I mean, you know, they say, Eddie, of course, that history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes and that progress is not linear. These are all things that we talk about often. But what is notable to me is that optimistm (ph) lost, much like both you and Tressie are talking about right now.
GLAUDE: Right. And, I mean, he's trying to suggest that, you know, kind of realistic politics is necessary. But, you know, even in the way in which he characterized the moment, King is speaking - he knows he's speaking to a particular audience because the March on Washington is framed by death. Medgar Evers is assassinated before the march. The Birmingham bombing after the march is the response, right? We get '64 and '65, of course, with the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. But what's happening on the ground is horrific on a certain level. King is also grappling with the recalcitrance of the North.
You know, Jeanne Theoharis has a new book coming out soon on King in the North. And what we see is that he's in the North repeatedly throughout his career, right? So what is he seeing there? He's seeing these liberals decrying the violence of the South, but hiding behind that liberalism as they maintain deep, deep segregation in northern cities, right? As they themselves invest in the idea that certain people because of the color of their skin ought to be valued more than others. What does it mean to then address, right? Not just simply, you know, laws, right? Jim Croke, you know, counters or, you know, cafeterias or restaurants. What does it mean to deal with the structural reality of the ghetto in Chicago, police brutality in New York, right? And the like. And so King sees that it was easy to integrate - you know, to integrate a counter for a cup of coffee. But these deeper structural matters cut to the heart of who the nation and what the nation is.
MOSLEY: Let's take a short break. If you're just joining us, my guests are sociologist and writer Tressie McMillan Cottom and scholar and writer Eddie Glaude. We are reflecting on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s legacy on this holiday, which is also Inauguration Day. We'll continue our conversation after a short break. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF MILES DAVIS' "FOOTPRINTS")
MOSLEY: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Tonya Mosley, and we're talking about the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the wake of another Trump presidency with sociologist and author Tressie McMillan Cottom and scholar and writer Eddie Glaude. Glaude is the James S. McDonnell distinguished university professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, and Tressie McMillan Cottom is a professor at the Center for Innovation Technology and Public Life at UNC-Chapel Hill. She's also a New York Times columnist and a 2020 MacArthur fellow. I want to ask both of you - have either of you seen the new film "Nickel Boys" based on the novel by Colson Whitehead?
COTTOM: Have not seen the film. Enjoyed the book, yeah.
GLAUDE: I haven't, but I read the novel.
MOSLEY: Well, I really couldn't help but notice this subtle but constant imagery of MLK that is interwoven throughout the film. He's, like, the thread of hope throughout the entire film. And that just got me thinking we're basically 60 years since he was assassinated. We're still looking to him for a path forward. Do either of you ever think about that?
COTTOM: You know, I have often said, you know, with a little bit of hyperbole, but I think there is also a serious grain of truth in there that the only thing that has ever made meaningful change anywhere in the world is a powerful story. I think there is something to Dr. King's ability to articulate these complex, structural, interwoven, at times contradictory, yet complimentary forces in a cohesive story that does not foreclose on thought or action. And this part is key to me because there's a certain type of storytelling about what is affecting us, right? You know, think peace culture.
But there's a certain way that we can do these explainers about why things are the way they are, that, you know, you get to the end of them, you've read them, or you go to see someone speak. And they do their thing, and at the end, you have no idea what you were supposed to do with that information, right? You may even have an emotional response if they're very good at what they do. But there is another level of storytelling that is both gift and skill. I think we can focus too much on King's remarkable gifts - of which there were many - but downplay, as we often do when we are talking about Black people, the extreme amount of preparation and skill that had to meet those gifts to do that.
And I think that is a once in a lifetime, a once in a generation, a once in a millennium - I'm not sure - type of meeting of person to the moment that I think we look back to, particularly in times like these, when we are trying to do exactly that, tell a story about all of these things that are happening that I think you understand intuitively are interwoven. We know that Gaza has something to do with why Flint doesn't have water, right? We understand that the fires in LA have something to do with the climate change displacement that is happening across the most populated continent on Earth. Like, we have some, I think, intuitive sense that those things are interwoven, but have a very difficult time telling a story about how that doesn't send us into the depths of despair and it doesn't strip us of agency.
And I think we looked at Dr. King because he had an ability to tell a story in a very similar sort of historical moment that did not foreclose on acting, did not foreclose on our accountability to do something, to be engaged, not just in the discourse, but to take up the discipline of actually building power and capacity to change things. And it's not that I don't think we have those people today, for the record. I think we have people with the same gifts, but not the time and the protection and the investment they need to do that other part, which is to develop the skill for it. But King had both, and so we continue to look to him.
MOSLEY: Is that to the detriment of us, though? You know, I know that you probably have a lot of elders - at least I do - who talk about how there is no leader, there is no person, no guiding force in this moment.
GLAUDE: I'm King-obsessed. You know, my last three books each consists in a chapter or has a chapter on Dr. King. Trying to figure it out. And, you know, in the last book, we are the leaders we've been looking for. I'm trying to grapple with this figure in my own imagination, right? As a country boy from Mississippi who goes to Morehouse, I'm baptized in King's waters - right? - socialized in his career, his activism, his witness. And oftentimes, what happens is that we outsource our own responsibility to the folk who came before us. Oh, if we only had a Dr. King today.
Or we find ourselves being complicit or consenting to, rather, a style of leadership that allows us in some ways to abdicate our responsibility to change the moment right in front of us. King is so large that we become really small. You know, great people come to us not for us to be supplicants, but they come to us so that we can understand the greatness that's in us. They come as models for us, exemplars. And so oftentimes, Dr. King is invoked - right? - to discipline. Oh, let me say something that might be a little bit controversial here.
MOSLEY: No, say it, please.
GLAUDE: Dr. King is often invoked to justify certain people being in front of the march.
COTTOM: There you go.
GLAUDE: I was with him. I'm in his tradition. He's also invoked to discipline - what constitutes legitimate forms of political dissent. That's not what Dr. King would say. Remember what the mayor - former mayor of Atlanta, Kasim Reed, said? - Dr. King wouldn't take over a highway. The idea is to kind of contain and constrain what constitutes legitimate forms of political dissent. We can only engage in mimicry, imitation, in some ways, according to certain invocations of Dr. King. He's used to beat us over our heads so that we can't find the energy, the courage, the imagination, the creative will to speak to our moment with his legacy as the wind beneath our wings. Instead, we're supposed to kiss his feet.
Now, that's one critical orientation. But again, remember how I began - I'm King-obsessed. What does it mean to stand in that tradition? What does it mean to understand that Ms. Ella Baker, who was the first executive director of SCLC, was very critical and suspicious of charismatic leadership, used to say, you know, strong people don't need strong leaders. We need to understand that we are the leaders we've been looking for.
MOSLEY: Let's take a short break. If you're just joining us, my guests are sociologist and writer Tressie McMillan Cottom and scholar and writer Eddie Glaude. We are reflecting on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s legacy on this holiday, which is also Inauguration Day. We'll continue our conversation after a short break. This is FRESH AIR.
MOSLEY: This is FRESH AIR. And today, I'm talking to sociologist and author Tressie McMillan Cottom and scholar and writer Eddie Glaude. We're talking about the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. as we enter another Trump presidency. Tressie McMillan Cottom is a professor with the Center of Information, Technology, and Public Life at UNC Chapel Hill. Eddie Glaude is the James S. McDonnell distinguished university professor of African American studies at Princeton University.
You know, I want to talk a little bit about some of what Dr. King was working on in his last days that come back to this economic angst that we were talking about. So as you all both know, he was working on the Poor People's Campaign, which was focused on economic justice for everyone. And I was thinking about this in the context of today, because King desired to address what he called the triple evils, which was racism and militarism and poverty. Eddie, how are you thinking about those three in the context of today?
GLAUDE: Oh, absolutely. I mean, capitalism is broken, right? It presupposes scarcity. It presupposes the disposability of people. It orients us to the world that we just simply consume, where growth is the only value to whether or not we're succeeding as a society or not. King understood that, right? And what we've seen - I mean, we're in a second gilded age, where oligarchs are just getting richer and richer. They're using their means to influence government, the reins of power and the like. And you see folk who are vulnerable, right? They're vulnerable, and they're becoming even more - their situation's becoming even more precarious. And oftentimes, they're on the front lines of the catastrophes of climate change, not only in places like New Orleans but in unexpected places like central North Carolina - right?
COTTOM: Yes (laughter).
GLAUDE: ...That part of North Carolina. So I think it's important for us to understand that there are folk who are appealing to hatred and grievance while they're robbing the nation blind, while they're destroying the planet. And in so many ways, I think, to echo Heather McGhee's brilliant work, you know, they want us to believe, you know, that this is a zero-sum game, that there's only so much pie to go around because they're stealing all of it.
MOSLEY: Tressie, you say that we've retrenched into nationalist economics. I thought that was just, like, an interesting term.
COTTOM: Well, that's at the heart of what make-America-great, America-first isolationism is, which is this idea that you can imbue our current economic order, which Eddie so beautifully lays out there, as one not just about morals but about the sort of material landscape of extreme extraction and wealth on one end and this growing, yawning, indecent level of inequality, instability and insecurity not just on the other end, but on the other end and encroaching to the middle, which I would argue is the crisis that we find ourselves in, which is that people who have for a very long time seen themselves as middle class are realizing that they are working class at best. And that crisis of identity and position opens people up to a lot of demagoguery. So that's, like, the sort of, like, economic material landscape that we find ourselves in. And so there's a reason that a politics of nationalism - nation first - would look like a reasonable solution to a lot of people.
You know, I like this term. It's called, like, folk economics. And that's this idea that, you know, really economics, you know, running a state apparatus, especially one as powerful as the United States, is a really complicated, complex endeavor, right? And yet every two or four years, politicians come out, and they turn to the American public, and they talk about the U.S. budget like it is balancing a checkbook, right? How many times have we heard that, well, you pay your bills when you sit at your kitchen table - America needs to worry about her bills first, right? We reduce all of this complexity - militarism, by the way - you know, the vast cost and expense of running a vast network of military operations across the world can't actually be reduced to a family's checkbook, right? But that sort of folk economics gets people to think about the nation as their kitchen table. And so the thing about the kitchen table is everybody can't sit at your kitchen table, right? These are some of the first decisions you actually make about who is welcome and who is not.
And so it invites us to think about what is effectively a moral relationship to wealth and resources that the state is responsible for as really just being about our preferences and how much money we have at the end of the day when we balance the checkbook. That's been the neoliberal promise, that if you think about this country like you think about your personal checking account, at the end of the day, you will be better off than where you started, or certainly that your children will be better off than where they started. And that is not at all how that works, right? We actually have to make these big decisions about what our national values are relative to the rest of the world and our responsibilities to each other. And that's - that means you sometimes spend a lot of money on something like education or health care that won't actually balance in a checkbook at the end of the day but will mean fewer sick and dying children. And that is a moral value.
MOSLEY: Could either of you all see something like a Poor People's Campaign happen again and be successful? I mean, I know it fell short of its immediate goals. King was assassinated. I mean, but there are things that came out of that that we still benefit from today - expansion of social welfare programs, more low-income housing - and at a time where we need that now more than ever. Like, what would be a unifying force to help us all understand the needs for things like this? 'Cause we see clearly. The data shows us, but there's a splinter in our ideas of how to make those things happen and the government's role in it.
GLAUDE: Well, I would want to say that - you know, just that there is a Poor People's Campaign today with Rev. Bishop Barber - right? - and...
MOSLEY: Yes. Yes.
GLAUDE: ...Rev. Theoharis, right? So there is this effort. But, you know, it's the current environment, the current soil. And I think part of what we're experiencing in this moment is the - is a crisis of an economic or political economic philosophy that - its contradictions are in full view. That crisis has evidenced itself in education, health care, in crass and crude inequality. I mean, all of the contradictions of neoliberalism are in full view right now. So you have folk on national television saying, if we don't do something about this inequality, this vast gap between the superrich and everybody else, we're going to have revolution. And you actually hear that on mainstream news.
So I think what Rev. Barber's trying to do - and others - the conditions are emerging for some kind of breakthrough. The question is that just as those conditions are emerging, there are counterforces aiming to defend the status quo. And we have to understand that. And that's why organizing is so important. As we lift up Dr. King, we need to understand that he's a product of organizing, that he comes out of a tradition, and he is surrounded by a tradition of everyday ordinary folk organizing in pursuit of ends and goods that, in so many ways, can transform the lives of folks. So we have a Poor People's Campaign. We have a modern-day iteration. And we have the conditions, I think, for it to even become more important over the coming years.
MOSLEY: Let's take a short break. If you're just joining us, my guests are sociologist and writer Tressie McMillan Cottom and scholar and writer Eddie Glaude. We are reflecting on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s legacy on this holiday, which is also Inauguration Day. We'll continue our conversation after a short break. This is FRESH AIR. And today I'm talking to sociologist and author Tressie McMillan Cottom, and scholar and writer Eddie Glaude. We're talking about the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. as we enter another Trump presidency. Tressie McMillan Cottom is a professor with the Center of Information Technology and Public Life at UNC Chapel Hill. Eddie Glaude is the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of African American studies at Princeton University.
Tressie, you actually chose a clip from Dr. King's 1966 speech at Wesleyan University that speaks to the morality issue. Let's listen.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
KING: It may be true that morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. It may be true that the law cannot change the heart, but it can restrain the heartless. It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me. Religion and education will have to do that, but it can restrain him from lynching me. And I think that's pretty important also.
GLAUDE: Amen (laughter).
MOSLEY: That was Dr. King at Wesleyan University in 1966. You chuckle, Eddie.
GLAUDE: I think it's absolutely right.
MOSLEY: (Laughter).
GLAUDE: You know, I think it's right on. You know, I mean, this is not an either-or. We don't have to buy into the binary, right? We want to constrain evil as we fight evil. And we need to understand the workings of the law in helping us constrain evil as we try to become better people.
MOSLEY: Tressie, why did you choose that clip?
COTTOM: I chose this one because I think it goes to the issue that I raised at the beginning. The idea that we are going to have to hold contradictory, yet complimentary ideas at the same time. And that Martin Luther King, the status memory project, has worked very hard to flatten out those contradictions. Whereas, Martin Luther King, the actual person, the strategist, the organizer, the philosopher, the scholar, understood quite clearly the pragmatic nature of moral claims that this focus on content of character - as beautiful in line as that is, by the way - it is not the sum total of our responsibility to ourselves, to each other, or to Martin Luther King's memory. That Martin Luther King's memory is best served when we deal with the contradictions and the nuances that he understood so well, which is that there is nothing dirty about participating in politics. None of us have the privilege of being moral purists, in that sense. But also that changing law without a moral claim will just lead to more laws that double down on the existing cumulative effects of racism and classism and sexism and all of the others, right? That you do have to do both, and that none of us can afford to think that we live above the fray. The fray is where the people are. The fray is where we work out what our morality is. And we do that in part by concerning ourselves not just with people's hearts - or I might say one's racist bones, which I suspect live next to one's heart - that that is not just a product of heart and bones, right? That is a product of hard work of not just electoral politics, but, yes, also electoral politics. And if the mess did not scare off Martin Luther King, it probably should not scare us off either.
MOSLEY: You know, I initially wanted to end our conversation with an excerpt from Dr. King's I Have a Dream speech, but I think a speech you selected, Eddie, might be more fitting. This is King in March of 1968, one month before he was assassinated. Let's listen.
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KING: And I must honestly confess that I get go through those moments of disappointment when I have to recognize the fact that there aren't enough white persons in our country who are willing to cherish democratic principles over privilege. But I'm grateful to God that some are left.
MOSLEY: Eddie, tell us why you chose this clip.
GLAUDE: It's King confronting the reality of the challenge before him. That there are large numbers of people - of white people in the country who are more committed to their selfish pursuits than they are to justice. That they're willing to throw away a fundamental affirmation of the dignity and standing of everyday ordinary folk in pursuit of their own aims and ends. But he thanks God that there are a few who aren't like that. And, you know, it's that few, right? Those of us who are committed to a better world, that together we can fight for democracy itself. So I chose it because I'm grappling with how does King muster the resources to keep fighting in the face of the country's unwillingness to change fundamentally. And so here we see the realism, and we see the hope. And that's what we need in this moment, I think.
MOSLEY: Tressie, last word.
COTTOM: I could not agree more. You know, we have made the case here, as I think is often made that history is cyclical. History repeats itself. I like to think of history as a spinning top - that even as it moves forward, it wobbles, and the interior of it is going round and round. So sometimes progress does feel like turning in circles. And that our commitment to a transactional hope that when we do the hard work, when we go out to vote, when we sign a petition, when we march, that there has to be an immediate return to those actions to justify taking yet another action. Is one of the ways that the neoliberal order that Eddie has spoken about so eloquently here that so many of us are suffering through convinces us to divest from the things that matter to us. You do the thing that matters, whether it feels like you are moving forward or not. Because the thing about history is that you really don't know where you're standing until it has passed. That's why in the moment, we are supposed to be guided by something more, something bigger - morality, accountability, responsibility to ourselves, to our values, to one another. And that this is not the first time we've been called to do that. I take a lot of comfort in that. You know, Eddie says that's the reason why he chose that speech because it so mirrors our current moment. I actually take a lot of comfort in the fact that we have been here before, and we've not only survived it, we have figured it out. And so I think that we will continue to figure it out, but we probably need to give up the transactional nature of our hope and do the thing that needs to be done because it needs to be done. That's our responsibility to history.
MOSLEY: Tressie McMillan Cottom and Eddie Glaude, thank you so much for this conversation.
GLAUDE: Thank you.
COTTOM: Thank you. Cannot thank you enough, actually. This has been...
GLAUDE: Yeah.
COTTOM: ...Really edifying in a moment when I'm finding few things that do that for me. So thank you.
GLAUDE: Indeed, Tressie.
MOSLEY: Yeah.
GLAUDE: Indeed. Tonya, thank you so much.
MOSLEY: Tressie McMillan Cottom is a professor at the Center for Information Technology and Public Life at UNC Chapel Hill and a New York Times columnist. Eddie Glaude is the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of African American studies at Princeton University.
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MOSLEY: Tomorrow on FRESH AIR, Jesse Eisenberg on writing, directing, and starring in the film "A Real Pain." He and Kieran Culkin play cousins on a Jewish heritage tour in Poland. We'll talk about how the story relates to Eisenberg's life.
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MOSLEY: To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram @nprfreshair. FRESH AIR's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our senior producer today is Roberta Shorrock. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Ann Marie Baldonado, Sam Briger, Lauren Krenzel, Therese Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Challoner, Susan Nyakundi and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producer is Molly Seavy-Nesper. With Terry Gross, I'm Tonya Mosley.
(SOUNDBITE OF KENNY BARRON TRIO'S "RINGO OIWAKE") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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