Stanford's Dr. Lerone Martin & NC State's Dr. Jason Miller on MLK's Dream & Langston Hughes’s Poetry

The Learning Curve With Jason Miller And Lerone Martin

[00:00:00] Albert Cheng: Well, hello everybody, and welcome to another brand new episode of the Learning Curve podcast. I’m one of your co-hosts, Albert Cheng, and with me is Alisha Searcy. Alisha, what’s going on? Hey Albert. How are you? Doing well, doing well. Ready to celebrate MLK day, or at least kind of remember his life here.

[00:00:18] Alisha Searcy: Yes. I’m excited about this episode. Excited about the holiday as always. But you know what else I’m excited about? What’s that? I heard that you just came back from Rome, so I wanted Trip. That’s what i’m excited about.

[00:00:31] Albert Cheng: Yes, I did. Yes, I was. I was in Rome this past week for the International School Choice and Reform Conference.

[00:00:37] It was a great time reconnecting with colleagues. And look, Alisha, many of our friends, many of whom we’ve had on this show. Yes. Talk about the latest in school choice research, education reform, research, you know, practitioners, leaders in the space, wrestling with tough questions, accountability, how do we design these programs, et cetera, et cetera. So great time. We need to get you on the program in future dates and maybe record a set of special episodes of the Learning Curve podcast there.

[00:01:05] Alisha Searcy: I think that would be very cool. I think our listeners would appreciate that and it sounds like some excellent information that we all need to hear and be a part of.

[00:01:13] So yes, count me in the next time. I love it.

[00:01:17] Albert Cheng: All right, well, we’ll see, uh, where it is in the future. Well, why don’t we get to our show? I mean, just so you know, we tease it a little bit. We’re gonna commemorate Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. And we’re gonna have Dr. Lerone Martin, as well as Dr. Jason Miller.

[00:01:31] Both are gonna talk about MLK, but we’re gonna take a special angle at it. We’re gonna also consider how the great poet, Langston Hughes had an impact on Dr. King. So I’m really looking forward to the show. I think it’s a special way to remember the work of Martin Luther King Jr.

[00:01:47] Alisha Searcy: Yes, and what we know is that I think this topic around this holiday is something that our listeners really, really appreciate.

[00:01:54] So keep listening and we look forward to the show today.

[00:01:57] Albert Cheng: That’s right. Well, let’s get to news first, like we always do. Alisha, what caught your eye this week?

[00:02:02] Alisha Searcy: You know, you mentioned accountability. So I came across this article by Dr. Ivory Toldson, who I’ve followed for many years, and he has a piece that he just put out.

[00:02:12] It’s a very interesting title. It is the duplicity of the achievement gap, and the subtitle is the same dreary script, the same recycled headlines year after year. And so I encourage our listeners to read this. It was a good read for me. Essentially, he’s talking about how for years we focus so much on the achievement gap for students, you know, in our public schools.

[00:02:38] And I think there are a couple of good points to be made, particularly around the language that we use. I would even add expectations that we have about kids groups, if you will, of how they’re performing or if they can perform. So there’s a, a language conversation here, but he’s also talking about how we might consider changing what we’re measuring.

[00:03:00] At my organization, I lead Center for Strong Public Schools. I had us as a team read this article and we had some really interesting conversations about not going down the hole of watering down standards, not wanting to have accountability in place. And I don’t think this is what Dr. Toldson is arguing, but I think there is a school of thought that believes, you know, we should just throw accountability out the door.

[00:03:24] And I think in this article he is talking about looking at students in terms of the assets that they bring to the table. The students, even within subgroups that are actually performing well. But those numbers kind of get washed away, if you will, and we don’t get to see whether it’s low income students, whether it’s students of color, whether it’s students in rural communities, you know, all these different subgroups that in some cases don’t perform at the highest levels.

[00:03:51] That there are actually students within those subgroups that do perform well. And let’s look at what they’re getting right in terms of their education, in terms of the teacher quality, all of the things. Let’s look at what they’re getting to see how they’re performing at high levels and do more of that.

[00:04:07] And so I think it was a very good article for us to think about how we talk about accountability. What does it really mean? What do we do once we have the information? And you know, he’s pretty provocative in his writing and in his research, and it’s a very well written, passionate and strong piece, but he also kind of questions do people benefit, right from talking about achievement gaps versus actually doing the work. Very interesting article, I highly recommend people check it out.

[00:04:38] Albert Cheng: Yeah, yeah. No, it’s really got me thinking and considering a lot of things. And you know, Alisha, I mean, oftentimes, and I’ll, I’ll speak for myself and, and probably a lot of other folks that, you know, day in, day out, do empirical research and get in the data and I’ll be the first to confess my own ditch that I sometimes fall into, which is to reduce people into data points.

[00:04:59] Lose sight of the actual people that are behind these numbers. And so I, I think there’s definitely some, some food for thought in this article. So thanks a lot for sharing it. Sure. It’s a great point too. Well, I, uh, want to give some attention to an article that showed up in the Wall Street Journal. It’s a short essay to derived from a forthcoming book by James Traub.

[00:05:18] The headline here is How Classical Schools Teach Kids to Be Citizens. And I wanna bring up this article, not just because I really think there’s something to classical liberal education, but I wanna link it to our episode today, Alisha, as we commemorate Reverend Martin Luther King. You know, one of my favorite essays that Dr. King wrote is on the purpose of education. And you know, I’ve assigned it to my students before, but you know, this is where I think a lot of people have heard the quote, “intelligence plus character, that is the goal of true education.” That’s Dr. King for you. And you know, in this essay, you know, he talks about how education isn’t just about kind of knowledge dissemination, it is about character formation.

[00:05:57] You know, he goes on it, right? The complete education gives one, not only the power of concentration. But were the objectives upon which to concentrate. And so the importance of character and, and look, he’s writing in the time, pre- civil rights when segregation was the law of the land. And you know, it makes you wonder like, well, how do all these people who have an education, what happened? You know, why didn’t they say more, you know, about segregation? What happened to this injustice? And so there’s this misalignment between, you know, being educated and having the right kind of moral character or moral vision, not the world. And so I I think this essay really calls attention to that, at least Dr. King’s does. And I wanna link it to this, related to this article, because really I think what Dr. King is describing is a lot of what classical schools want to do, they want to cultivate virtue. I actually saw, uh, another recent article that described classical education as training students, not just to think clearly, but to deliberate across difference, to listen with charity and to pursue the common good.

[00:07:01] We often talk about the need for civic renewal, but yes. How about those three things? You know, deliberating across difference, listening with charity, pursuing the common good in education that does, that I think will go a long way to forming citizens. And so anyway, I just wanna flag this more recent Wall Street Journal article, but also link it to something that I think Dr. King was passionate about as he articulated a vision of education.

[00:07:25] Alisha Searcy: I love that. And what a perfect way to make that connection. And obviously given the times that we’re in right now, the need for civility and character, connecting with people, understanding not just Civics, but virtue and integrity. So I love that and I’m glad that there are more classical schools coming.

[00:07:44] Um, it’s something as, you know, an area that I’m learning more about. It wasn’t as prevalent when I was in the charter space as a practitioner. And so I’m learning more about the classical education and I just, why not? Right? We wanna create good citizens, we wanna create good people, and we want, again, as I, I think about what’s happening in government on both sides of the aisle, we just need more civility and that was my wish as the legislative session started this week in a bunch of states, let it be productive and let it be civil. Need more of that.

[00:08:17] Albert Cheng: Yeah. Well, we could go on here, but we ought to get to our guests because I’m really chomping at the bit here to really consider the influence of Langston Hughes on Dr. Martin Luther King. So our guests are coming up on the other side of this break. Stick around.

[00:08:35] Dr. Lerone Martin is the Martin Luther King Jr. Centennial Professor in religious studies, African and American Studies, and the Nina C. Crocker faculty scholar. He also serves as the director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University. Professor Martin is an award-winning author of the Gospel of J. Edgar Hoover, how the FBI Aided and Abetted the Rise of White Christian Nationalism.

[00:09:02] His commentary and writing have been featured on the NBC Today Show, the History Channel PBS CSPAN and NPR, as well as the New York Times, Boston Globe, CNN.com and the Atlanta Journal Constitution. He currently serves as an advisor on the upcoming PBS documentary series, the History of Gospel Music and Preaching.

[00:09:21] He earned his BA from Anderson University, an M. Div. From Princeton Theological Seminary and his PhD from Emory University.

[00:09:30] Alisha Searcy: Dr. W Jason Miller is a distinguished professor of English at North Carolina State University. He curates the website Backlash Blues. Nina Simone and Langston Hughes, and is author of the books Langston Hughes Critical Live series, origins of The Dream Hughes Poetry and King’s Rhetoric, and Langston Hughes and American Lynching Culture.

[00:09:51] Professor Miller’s research on Martin Luther King Jr’s. First I have a Dream Speech is a subject of the documentary film Origin of the Dream, featuring actor Danny Glover, ambassador Andrew Young, Reverend William Barber II MLK Pulitzer Prize winner David Garrow. And the final on-camera interview with Julian Bond will be available nationwide on PBS in February of 2026.

[00:10:16] His work has also appeared in The Washington Post. Boston Globe, the Guardian Atlanta Journal, constitution USA today and on ABC and NBC National Evening News, CNN, BBC, NPR, and the Rachel Maddow Show. Miller completed his undergraduate and MA degrees at the University of Nebraska at Kearney and his PhD at Washington State University.

[00:10:40] Albert Cheng: Dr. Martin, Dr. Miller, thanks for taking your time to be on the show. It’s just a pleasure to have both of you on.

[00:10:46] Dr. Lerone Martin: Thank you for having me. It’s just a, a blessing and a privilege to be with you.

[00:10:50] Dr. Jason Miller: Delighted to be joining you, especially with the great Lerone Martin.

[00:10:53] Albert Cheng: Dr. Martin, we’ll start with you. You know, this is our episode to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day, to commemorate and remember his life and legacy. Why don’t we start off, just have you talk about Dr. King as a religiously centered civil rights leader. I mean, he spoke of saving the soul of America, and I mean, his speeches, you know. They embody timeless, unifying themes of human dignity and, and come from a whole range of sources, scripture, history, ancient and modern America’s fin ideals. Why don’t you just set the stage and just kind of describe that aspect of Dr. King for us?

[00:11:28] Dr. Lerone Martin: One of the best ways I think to understand Martin King as the orator, I think, is to relate it to music as a jazz man. And that he was able to pull in so many different styles and genres and notes, if you will, and take those, remix them and improvise them to create something new.

[00:11:52] And the way that I think the great Jasmine, do you know King borrowed, as you mentioned, heavily from America’s founding ideals, was often quoting the founding documents, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, but also the great philosophers of America. And also of course, the Bible and he was able to weave all of this in.

[00:12:16] And one of the ways I like to explain this is actually something that Jason mentioned years ago, was to really consider that when King is borrowing from other folks, it’s a way that, and from the, the tradition in which he was raised in as a creature and that. You know, words are not something that one privately owns, right?

[00:12:36] But words are something that one can borrow and remix and improvise, and that’s what he did throughout his career. Oftentimes you’ll hear elements of speeches he gave all the way as early in the fifties. You’ll still hear some of that in the sixties, but improvised or said differently or modulated differently with his voice.

[00:12:57] And so I think. The best way to understand him is as a jazz man. He’s able to pull from various different traditions and then improvise and create something new, and I think that’s what draws us to him, is not only the way that he pulls from our founding ideals, but how he says it that his musicality and his voice, all of that, I think creates resonance with listeners then and obviously with us still to this day.

[00:13:23] Albert Cheng: Speaking of using words. Well, let’s turn to you, Dr. Miller, and talk a bit about Langston Hughes. ’cause we want to unpack the relationship between Dr. King and, and Langston Hughes. I mean, you’re the author of the book, origins of the Dream, Hughes’s Poetry and King’s Rhetoric. Could you start for now, just to give us a, a brief overview of the book and just some important contextual details we might need to know, like, tell us about the Harlem Renaissance. What do we need to know about Langston Hughes and the poets that influenced him?

[00:13:53] Dr. Jason Miller: I love this idea of thinking about King as a jazz man, and one of the people he riffed off of was the great poet, Langston Hughes. The book documents the seven different poems that Dr. King invoked from Langston Hughes, from the very beginnings of his career in 1956 in the public to the very ends, of course in 1968.

[00:14:14] What’s startling about? This use of Hughes’s poems is from exactly April of 1960 to March 15th, 1965. Dr. King couldn’t invoke Langston Hughes directly, so like a great musician. He sampled Hughes’s works. Buried the themes, especially of dreamings in his works, but didn’t allow the subversive communist anti-American reputation that was haunting Langston Hughes to become attached to Dr. King and his movement at a time when the FBI. As Lerone knows better than anyone was tracking Dr. King’s every move. The Harlem Renaissance as defined by most of us for years was this movement in the 1920s around central great artworks and artists, incredible names crock up like the great Aaron Douglas.

[00:15:07] We think of unbelievable artists that step forth and and write great works for us, like the Zora Neale Hurston for about 10 years. Folks in my field of literary studies have turned the phrase to start talking about the new Negro movement, trying to recapture what the people of the time wanted and turning attention away from just the artwork they produced in its beauties.

[00:15:29] Langston Hughes, we only learned about eight years ago, was actually born in 1901. There’s only one book on the market that has that birth date, right. He was not born in 1902 or 1901 and he died in 1967, less than 11 months before Dr. King’s assassination that usually startles people ’cause they don’t think of these two men as contemporaries as they were finally the influences on Langston Hughes.

[00:15:55] Well, it’s fascinating because we imagine him invoking dialect, which he did. And so people like Paul Laurence Dunbar are important, but Hughes created the genre of blues poetry, and so he took blues songs and turned them into poems, and so he was listening to as many musicians as others when he cited his two favorite poets.

[00:16:13] They were Carl Sandburg and Walt Whitman, and very famously when he was traveling overseas to Africa the first time, he wanted to get rid of all the baggage of America. And so he told us symbolically threw all his books overboard. He’s going to Africa to start over, except there was one book he couldn’t throw overboard, and that was Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass.

[00:16:33] Very briefly, Hughes’s Influence on others is incredibly important. Working directly with Gwendolyn Brooks, people like Margaret Walker and even the great musician, Nina Simone were people that Hughes himself influenced.

[00:16:48] Albert Cheng: Well, thanks for that background and for the next couple questions, let’s get into the ways these other texts, if you will, and other writers influence Dr. King. So, Dr. Martin, I wanna start with you. Let’s talk about some of the scriptural influences, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. He’s the author of the Landmark Book. The Prophets was one of the most important Jewish theologians of the 20th century and perhaps a key ally of Dr. King during the civil rights movement.

[00:17:16] Could you talk about the influence of the Old Testament prophets, scripture and and the Psalms on Dr. King’s ideas and vision of leadership?

[00:17:24] Dr. Lerone Martin: King starts off as a young man growing up in church. He says that he was taught in the fundamentalist way, but then eventually as a teenager, like many teenagers, wonders away from the church, and he says that he sort of thought the Bible and religion more generally just was not respectable in a modern era. And so he kind of looked to the Bible, especially the Old Testament, with talking animals and miracles and you know, Red Seas that open up, he dismissed those as fairytales. But he has this professor named George Kelsey at Morehouse who really helps him to see the Bible differently. And King says that this professor helps him to see that behind these miraculous stories are these moral truths. And King really gravitates to the Old Testament as a result of that. In fact, in one of his exams, he writes for this class on the Bible that he says clearly in the Old Testament prophecy is not a magical thing, but it’s a moral thing, and that prophets orientate themselves not to the future, but to their own context and their own moment, and he’s very attracted to that, especially to the prophet Amos King will often cite Amos because Amos, of course, is a regular citizen who feels called by God to go and to speak to the ruling authorities and to tell them that their displays of religiosity, their conspicuous worship means nothing if they don’t establish justice and morality within city governance and within society.

[00:19:15] King really gravitates to that as a young man and continues with that. And in fact, as many people will know, he will quote Amos five throughout his life, especially at the March on Washington, when he will say, let justice roll down like waters and righteousness, like an ever flowing stream. That’s from Amos and one of King’s favorite prophets. And so I think for King, right, he sees these prophets addressing themselves to the injustice of their day. And I think he saw himself as addressing the injustice of his day. And so in that sense, he found a great deal of inspiration from the Old Testament by way of his amazing professor in Morehouse, George Kelsey.

[00:19:55] And I have to mention George Kelsey just because I think it’s important, as Jason just pointed out. To understand the influences upon Dr. King. I shout his name off for that. And also selfishly, because you know, Jason and I are professors, and so it’s nice to think about the idea of having a professor influence one of their students in such a way that Kelsey influenced Martin King.

[00:20:17] Albert Cheng: That’s right. Well, it’s a sobering thought to think about the potential influences that we all as teachers might have on our students, so thanks for that. It’s interesting. Dr. Martin, you mentioned the passage from Amos, you know, just comparing, I mean, similarly, right? Justice rolling down like waters. So, Dr. Miller, I wanna turn to you as we think about Langston Hughes’s poetry and the, you know, use of poetic language. This is really a topic you discussed in your book. I mean, how Hughes’s poetry and, and its influence on king’s ideas, sermons, and speeches. Could you just talk about Dr. King and, and perhaps his wife, Coretta Scott King’s, maybe their educational background, particularly their exposure to timeless literature and poetry. What were they exposed to and how do you see that influence in his oration?

[00:21:05] Dr. Jason Miller: Just as in so many of our lives, we’re kind of a amalgamation of our formal education and our personal schooling, our families and culture and the institutions we’re a part of. And it certainly is clear that Dr. King and Coretta had various exposure to Langston Hughes’s poetry, very young. One of the most interesting ones involves Coretta when she was a young girl. When we interviewed Andrew Young, he told me off camera that his wife Jean, had actually been at the same Langston Hughes poetry reading near Marian, Alabama as Coretta had been when they were about 14 years old.

[00:21:44] So we have to also remember that we don’t just reach Langston Hughes in books. He was a very much a person that gave an incredible amount of public readings around the country. And so we know that Coretta had an experience with Langston Hughes very early. Almost all of the books of Langston Hughes were in her personal collection, and she serves as the personal inspiration for the first time Dr. King actually invokes Langton Hughes’s poems publicly in 1956. Coretta is celebrating her first Mother’s Day. She’s just given birth to their first child, and so Dr. King and the pulpit wants to do something special, and so he recites the poem mother to son from memory, especially for her. And this impact was startling because here was the PhD, Dr. King invoking the poet of the people. The low down. His nickname was the poet. Low rate of Harlem instead of Laureate. And invoking Hughes in this way made Dr. King very accessible and likable. And the response must have been amazing in that May of 1956 because from that moment on, Langston Hughes never left Dr. King’s oratory and in fact just continued to grow and grow as time went past. One final thing is very interesting, there’s a children’s book that was written by Yolanda, the granddaughter of Dr. King. So her parents, of course, being Martin Luther King III, and his wife Andrea. And that book is entitled, We Dream A World. And in the very back,

[00:23:17] Martin III and his wife Andrea, talk about how important the poem I dream a world was in their household. So I think it’s always wonderful to think about how broad that term education is. I love Lerone’s idea of professors influencing students. I love the idea of what parents do for children, and I love the idea of what happens in institutions, whether they’re academic or spiritual. All those things were working because Langston Hughes was completely in the Zeitgeist to Black culture during the time that Coretta and Martin Luther King are growing up.

[00:23:51] Albert Cheng: Well, let’s continue down this theme of importance of education. And so, Dr. Martin, I’d like you to weigh in on what you think teachers and students in our schools probably should know about MLK’s role as a young spiritual leader and preacher, particularly in Montgomery, Alabama during the largely female led bus boycott in 19 55, 56. What do you think teachers and students ought to know?

[00:24:14] Dr. Lerone Martin: I’m learning so much right now listening to Jason, this is great. One of the things I think. That I’ve been writing on that I think is important, especially as I raise three sons myself, is that often King is too pre is presented as someone who is just fully formed and arrives on the scene in 19, as Jason mentioned, 19 55, 19 56, and just has everything figured out and is just the perfect leader.

[00:24:44] I think it’s important for people to understand how King arrived where he was, and also it’s important for them to understand that it was a process that he was not really sure he wanted to be a minister. He was not really sure what type of vocation he wanted to have. He went from, from everything from wanting to be a doctor to a lawyer, and he says that becoming a minister is something that happened to him gradually. It wasn’t some light flashing from heaven. It wasn’t some type of great sign. He says that this urge to join the ministry happened gradually, and I think that’s really important for young people to hear is that sometimes it’s a process.

[00:25:28] You’re not always gonna have everything figured out. You’re not always gonna know exactly what to do. But if you can continue along the journey, and I think what’s most important about King’s journey that I’ve seen in his life is that even when he did not always know what to do, he remained committed.

[00:25:45] His principles to wanting to serve others and wanting to make an impact in this community never wavered. Now, how he would go about doing that changed and he always didn’t have the right answers, but his commitment was there, and I think that’s what teachers and young adults need to know. You may not be perfect, but if you can have perfect commitment.

[00:26:06] You can just be perfectly committed to serving your community. You will find the right path. You will find the way that your time, your treasure, and your talent will meet the world’s needs, and you’ll find a way to serve. And I think that’s what’s most important about Martin King, is that this is someone who is in process, who is learning, who was changing and growing along the way.

[00:26:28] And I think as biographers and scholars, we need to give him space to do that. And I think. As parents and as citizens of this country, seeing young adults, we need to give them that space as well. And as Jason mentioned, provide the spaces and institutions, classrooms and resources, whatever you better may have you, for those individuals to grow and to find their own path to service.

[00:26:54] Alisha Searcy: That is so powerful and beautiful, and I think adults need to be reminded of that too. Dr. Martin, thank you for that. My question is for Dr. Miller. Dr. King wrote to Langston Hughes, quote, I can no longer count the number of times and places in which I’ve read your poems in quote. His poem, 1951 Harlem A Dream Deferred strongly influenced Dr. King’s most famous sermons and speeches about dreams. While Mississippi 1955 was written as a poetic response to the murder of Emmett Till, would you discuss these two Hughes poems and the impacts that his verse hat on Dr. King and the American Civil Rights Movement?

[00:27:36] Dr. Jason Miller: One of the most important poems in American history is Langton Hughes’s’ poem first titled Harlem, then Retitled Dream Deferred by Him. He drafted it on August 7th, 1948, and when I held that rough draft in my hand for the first time, I realized that what I actually had was the first time Dr. King ever invoked the metaphor of dreams in public. The date was April 5th. 1959, and I asked myself, why would Dr. King be talking about shattered dreams and blasted hopes in 1959? Taking the ideas from that poem where Hughes ends, what happens to a dream deferred? Does it explode? What happened is this, Dr. King had just come back from famous trip overseas to visit the land of Gandhi in India. The first Sunday back was a Palm Sunday, so he gave that sermon.

[00:28:27] The next Sunday was Easter, so he gave that the first free Sunday he had was April 5th. On March 19th, the Play A Raisin in the Sun had debuted on Broadway. And when I had a graduate researcher named Megan Myers go through the Montgomery Advertiser in New York Times, who papers King Red Daily, we found that the response to that play that was running across Dr. King’s desk, that was a play about shattered dreams. People who had their hopes blasted. Dr. King first invoked that poem and talked about dreams as things we have not achieved. It was not aspirational. It was not idealistic in that particular regard. So that poem’s history starts there and then eventually ends all the way with the idea of what it means to be a dreamer.

[00:29:14] Those who are waiting for a deferred citizenship equally interesting is the incredible poem about the horrific lynching of Emmett Till, which happened around August 28th, 1955. Langston Hughes was often the first to respond to tragic events, and he had a very clear poetics of resistance. It included four prongs, it included travel.

[00:29:40] He felt that leaving the country let you see America differently when you came back and he always came back. It included, being interdisciplinary, talking to musicians, talking to artists, being in the same circles as painters and photographers, and it allowed him to retell history. He found he could talk about the past by commenting on the present, but the Emmett Till poem brings us to the fourth prong, the easiest one of all.

[00:30:07] The one that eventually guided even the lyrics of Nina Simone. Memorializing the dead through Elegy. And what is fascinating on this last point about the Emmett Till poem is when everyone else in America was seeing this as an individual tragedy, Langston Hughes poem published. Immediately afterwards, the Chicago defender said, why is this happening again?

[00:30:30] Why has this not stopped? Because Langston Hughes had written almost three dozen poems about lynching going all the way back to the 1920s. And in fact, at the same spot in Mississippi, he had written about Charlie Lang and Ernest Green, two young men who were lynched in 1942. Langston Hughes context was Emmett Till’s murder is a long, horrific moment in a trajectory he saw in the big picture. And those kind of things have really impacted the civil rights movement because of his stance of thinking about how to create a poetics of resistance.

[00:31:04] Alisha Searcy: Wow. Fascinating and super powerful. Dr. Martin, this question is for you next. After Dr. King co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with the SCLC in the late fifties, he played a secondary role in the Freedom Rides in 1960 to 61, and the SLCs efforts in Albany, Georgia in 61 and 62 were unfortunately largely unsuccessful. Can you talk about this period and the lessons Dr. King learned from these experiences?

[00:31:35] Dr. Lerone Martin: Absolutely. And yeah, Jason, that was amazing. I think one of the things that King learned from both Albany and the Freedom Rides was the importance of having a focus in one’s protest. So lemme start with Albany. In Albany, the protest there were against segregation in general.

[00:31:59] As a result of that, King felt that the protest and the organization and the resources being used were not used to their full capabilities because the protests were so dispersed. There were protesting segregation and accommodation. Segregation and restaurants, buses, and everything else in the community, and King felt that that diluted the protest.

[00:32:22] In fact, he’ll say as much. And so when they launched the protests in Birmingham in 1963, King realizes that in order to be successful, the protests need to be focused. And King focuses the protest on the downtown stores, segregation in downtown stores, and shopping. He learns that as a result of what happened in Albany.

[00:32:46] I think with the Freedom Rides, I think what King learns unfortunately, is that it is violence. The outright naked violence that protestors endure is what brings federal government attention, and when the Freedom Riders are brutalized on several occasions. It brings the federal government involvement and provokes the federal government to want to do something about the Freedom Rides.

[00:33:16] Mm-hmm. So I think King recognizes that. And then in Birmingham, it’s something that the protests are counting on. They’re counting on Bull Connor and city officials to react to their simple pleas for equality and equal treatment under the law to provoke a kind of violence, which then brings cameras, media attention, and federal government intervention.

[00:33:40] And I think those are the two principles that King learns from those two protests.

[00:33:45] Alisha Searcy: Yeah, it’s an important strategy for the movement, for sure. This question’s for Dr. Miller. We learned that you came across a transcript of, uh, speech Dr. King gave at Booker T Washington High School in Rocky Mountain, North Carolina on November 27th, 1962, and eventually you tracked down the only known recording of this relatively lesser known 1962 speech.

[00:34:08] Please tell us about this speech. How it was influenced by Langston Hughes Poetry and its wider historical significance for Dr. King’s later, more famous speeches and sermons.

[00:34:20] Dr. Jason Miller: Lerone’s background and history on Albany and Birmingham is so prescient and so detailed and helpful in thinking about this moment for Dr. King. What is startling is that the speech that Dr. King delivered on November 27th, 1962 is the first recorded time we have him ever using the phrase, I have a dream. This is nine months before the march on Washington. Dr. King’s speech at that time is contextualized by two things. One he is rewriting his book strength to love his 10 best sermons.

[00:34:54] And I still remember the yellow legal pad and the blue ink I held in my hand of Dr. King rewriting that same April 5th, 1959 speech about blasted hopes and shadow dreams, and there’s a line in there where he’s rewriting in 1962. We as a people have long reamed of freedom. And he takes his blue pen and he traces over the word dreamed four, five, and sixth times like a seventh grader that can’t pay attention in math class.

[00:35:23] Dreaming is literally the metaphor. Dr. King can’t get passed on the page at that moment in life. So when he arrives in Rocky Mount, the invitation of his childhood friend George Dudley, a man who knew Martin Luther King when he was young enough to be known as Mike, Dr. King walks into Booker T Washington, and he takes out a speech he had first delivered on August 11th, 1956, in which he had ended about imagining a new world.

[00:35:52] At the end of that speech about a new world was taken from the Langton Hughes poem. I Dream A World In 1956. Dr. King is thinking about a new world of integration. He doesn’t engage the metaphor of dreaming, but with the rewriting of that speech being stuck on the idea of dreaming, he goes into Booker T Washington and he now takes that same speech and instead of imagining a new world, he says, I have a dream.

[00:36:20] And the key line in the Hughes poem is a world I dream, we black or white, whatever race you’d be or share the bounties of the earth. And every man is free. And I remember talking to Dorothy Cotton, a very good friend of Dr. Kings, and she said, I don’t remember Martin Luther King saying that in a speech.

[00:36:38] When did he say that? That wasn’t Dr. King, that was Langston Hughes. Even her astute ears knew that those sounded far too similar to be separate. So Dr. King used that phrase from that poem at a particular time again. Acknowledging the past and updating it for the future. If we are high school teachers, we call it illusion.

[00:36:58] If we are musicians, we call it riffing or sampling, and if we are in a different scholarly setting, they might call it signifying. That repetition with a difference is what says a yes and a nod to the past, but also says it needs to be updated and I need to be part of its present and future.

[00:37:15] Alisha Searcy: Wow. I love that.

[00:37:16] That is, again, we always learn more and more, and this connection is so interesting. Dr. Martin, in 19 63, 200 50,000 demonstrators marched. To the Lincoln Memorial in Washington where Dr. King gave his famous, I Have a Dream speech, which now means a whole lot of other new things for us. And in the late 1964, he won the Nobel Prize for Peace.

[00:37:42] Can you discuss these events and the famous speeches, Dr. King delivered at them?

[00:37:47] Dr. Lerone Martin: Yeah. You know, I would just say at the outright that. More than the speeches. I think King, when he receives the Nobel Prize, really takes seriously, you know, his role as an ambassador of peace and it’s Coretta who really encourages him to really.

[00:38:06] Take that to heart and take it seriously and to expand his purview, public purview, I should say, to really begin talking about. Uh, and I think he takes that very seriously. And in the speeches you can see this. So of course, as Jason just told us about the I Have a Dream speech, which I’ve learned so much from Jason about, and the speech for the Nobel Peace Prize, one of the things that jumps out.

[00:38:32] To me in that speech was where he talks about the discrepancy between our technological progress and our moral progress. Hmm. And he talks about, even then he says, we have computers and we have spaceships, and we have airplanes, and all of this has shrunk time and space, and we have tremendous technological progress, but our technological progress has not kept up with our moral progress.

[00:39:00] Mm-hmm. And that’s the part of the speech that jumps out to me where King is really challenging our society to measure ourselves differently, not to simply measure ourselves by the technology of convenience that we’ve been able to generate, not by skyscrapers, not by airplanes, not by vehicles, but really to measure.

[00:39:21] Society based on our moral progress. And I think for King basing this on the question earlier about Old Testament prophets for King, that moral progress has to be measured on how we treat others and how we treat the least of these. And I think if you were to look at that in the 1960s when King said it, even today, you would see that, I think his words ring true, that are chronological progress has exceeded our moral progress, especially when measured by how we treat others. And for King, that becomes extremely important, and he takes that Nobel Prize seriously, as many King scholars know. He gives the money away that he receives for the award doesn’t want to be perceived as getting rich off the movement.

[00:40:06] My understanding from all the records that we have at the King Institute is that he gave all the money away, but he did keep the Rolex watch, but he gave all the, he gave all the money away and really take seriously what it means to be an ambassador of peace. And of course, eventually that will lead to him coming out forcefully and publicly against the Vietnam War.

[00:40:27] Alisha Searcy: Hmm. So important. So I hate to say this, but this is our final question, and it’s for you, Dr. Miller, as we celebrate Dr. King and his legacy and his work, and learn more about the impact of links and Hughes poetry. We’re excited about the. PBS documentary film, origin of the Dream. That’s featuring actor Danny Glover, ambassador Andrew Young, and MLK Pulitzer Prize winner, David Garrow, um, is going to be released.

[00:40:57] And so tell us about the film, what you hope a wider public audience will draw from it. Regarding the far ranging impact of Langston used poetry and on Dr. King’s rhetoric and world changing Oratory.

[00:41:11] Dr. Jason Miller: Thank you, because we’re talking about two American icons, right? Langton Hughes and Martin Luther King.

[00:41:17] You can imagine that having new insight of bringing them together has shaped not just books, but teaching lesson plans, articles, celebrations around the country. And as I say, I have like three children’s books on my desk next to me that have made this connection. So the next step really is to take the same story and put it in a different medium, and that medium being filmed.

[00:41:40] So the film is for a general audience to think about these two American icons and their relationship. Fortunately, we’re able to see the letters they exchanged. Talk about a trip they took together in Nigeria in 1960 and even show documentation of the fact that Langston Hughes’s last act on Earth was to ask for a pencil in paper and write a personal letter to Dr. King in May of 1967. And that letter. Was received at a time when we all need it. Most we’re in the lowest points of our life when Dr. King was being challenged for standing up for all the moral courage that Ron was talking so eloquently about. So there’s that aspect of making that available. But the other part is I am honored enough to live an hour away from the actual city of Rocky Mount.

[00:42:34] So we have five citizens who attended that speech in 1962, telling the story of being. In the room where it happened, right? And so what did it feel like? Where did they sit? What did Dr. King do? One person even had a personal moment of, of meeting with Dr. King one-on-one, and it changed these people’s lives, and so we get that personal, intimate feel.

[00:42:58] Fortunately, the gymnasium still stands, these people’s testimony is there. And so it has that twin narrative of. The big features of one of the most recognizable speeches in the world, but then also the personal feel of why does a person like Martin Luther King end up at Rocky Mount, and what does it do to listeners and how does it change the course of their lives?

[00:43:20] Dr. Lerone Martin: Ooh, I just want to add to that really quickly, if I could please. Absolutely. Just the Ja- Jason’s discovery is so important. We have a researcher here. Who spent months working on the volume of the King Papers project, which we’re looking at 1963 trying to track down, you know, how many times did King used the I Have a Dream refrain.

[00:43:44] And I just wanna point out how important Jason’s finding and research is because it is the earliest audio we have of King using it. And you know, we’ve did research for months, a team of researchers, and to have Jason to have found that is just absolutely amazing. And to be able to talk to people who were present during that time is absolutely phenomenal.

[00:44:09] Both in terms of a personal level and a scholarly level. Morality as well for our own moral, just our own sort of morality. It’s so important and I just wanted to put a pin in that. And so the film, we’re also excited for it to be released and to to share it with our community, our friends, our neighbors, because it’s such a important historical moment that Jason has brought to life for us, and I can’t wait.

[00:44:35] Dr. Jason Miller: So very generous and kind, just very brief. I’ll say none of the research would’ve been possible without the work of the MLK Institute and the support of Lerone and everything that’s gone on there. So thank you for building that incredible context and for continuing to push the legacy forward. It’s thrilling to see where it’s going.

[00:44:52] Alisha Searcy: I’m glad both of you made those remarks because what I hope the listeners will understand, number one, is that we’re really making history in this interview to have both of you here. You’re prolific researchers and you’ve done such incredible work. On these subjects and so to have you both together talking to each other and both of you are admirers of each other’s work.

[00:45:15] It’s, it’s a moment. So it really is an honor to have you both and to be able to interview and you and hear more about Dr. King and Langston Hughes. So before we close Dr. Miller, we would love to have you read a paragraph for us.

[00:45:29] Dr. Jason Miller: This is in the introduction to the book, Origins of the Dream, Hughes’s Poetry and King’s Rhetoric.

[00:45:35] Just kind of painting the picture for some of the things the book will talk to. The repeated appearances of Hughes’s poetry in Kings’ speech reminds us that Hughes made lasting contributions to the C’S two most significant African-American initiatives in very different ways. Hughes’s poetry is just as important to the Civil Rights movement as it is to the Harlem Renaissance.

[00:45:59] Oftentimes we’ve ignored the later years of Hughes’s life, the late civil rights movement, dependent on the coalescence of a variety of factors, including the use of poetry. By transforming Hughes’s poetry, King was able to inspire, unify, and organize people to work towards making lasting changes in American society.

[00:46:23] Such motivations do not stem solely from logic or anger, King’s visions are so invigorating because they are poetic. From the mouth of King, Hughes’s reinvented metaphors gave voice to black demands on stages all across America. Rather than fading into history, Hughes’s poems returned as echoes that were used to move America.

[00:46:48] King validated Hughes’s words more than any other poets because both of them wanted America to achieve. It claimed to believe.

[00:46:58] Alisha Searcy: Beautiful. Thank you very much. Absolutely.

[00:46:59] Dr. Lerone Martin: Beautiful.

[00:47:00] Alisha Searcy: Thanks to both of you for joining us. Thank you.

[00:47:03] Dr. Lerone Martin: Thank you. Thank you.

[00:47:05] Sit down.

[00:47:16] Oh, I.

[00:47:18] Albert Cheng: Wasn’t that a great way to commemorate and just remember the work of, of Dr. King and just even consider the influence that Langston Hughes had on him?

[00:47:27] Alisha Searcy: Yes. And you know, as many times as we’ve heard about the work of Dr. King and his legacy, I’m so grateful for this holiday and for this episode. ‘Cause I always learn more. There’s always more to learn about his work and the impact that he’s had, and just be reminded, right, that this is not a day off, it’s a day on, and we have work that we must continue to do. Yeah. Yeah. Great episode.

[00:47:52] Albert Cheng: Yeah, indeed. Well, Alisha, thanks again for co-hosting with me.

[00:47:55] Alisha Searcy: Of course. Always great to be with you, Albert.

[00:47:58] Albert Cheng: And here’s the tweet of the week, everyone that’s from Education Next, miss Portraits of a Graduate, the latest EDU fad. Let school shift focus from traditional academics to subjective student attributes. Anyway, go check out that article written by our friend Daniel Buck.

[00:48:15] We’ll raise a lot of questions to answer a question that we alluded to at the beginning of the show. What is the purpose of education? What do we want our graduates to look like? So check that article out and then after you do that, stay tuned for next week’s episode. Should be another good one. We’re gonna have Jay Tolson, who’s the editor of the Hedgehog Review, and a senior fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies and Culture at UVA.

[00:48:38] He’s the author of Pilgrim in Ruins, A Life of Walker Percy. Who is gonna be the subject of our show next week. So hope you join us next week. But until then, happy Martin Luther King Day and be well.

[00:48:52] Alisha Searcy: Yes, take care.