Introducing Holy Week

What do you make of the fact that when King was killed, he was

easily one of the most unpopular men in America?

He didn't poll, you know, he

in 1963, he was very popular, and every year since then, it lowered a little bit.

Right.

68 favorability, he was like 60 to 70 percent unfavorable.

He polled worse than the Vietnam War.

Um,

what do you make of the fact

that after that assassination, some version of him is made to be an untouchable hero?

Yeah, how does that happen?

Because he's dead.

He can't do any more damage.

When he was alive,

he represented

one of the greatest threats to white power in America.

I'm Claudina Bade, executive producer of Audio at the Atlantic.

Nearly 55 years ago, Martin Luther King Jr.

was killed.

The week following his assassination is the subject of our newest podcast, Holy Week.

The host of that podcast, senior editor Van Newkirk, is with me today.

Hi, Van.

Hi.

So glad you're here.

Thank you for having me.

Thanks for coming to Radio Atlantic.

Van, what made you want to turn to this moment in history right now?

Well, I've been thinking about this moment for a long time.

It's been this puzzle or cipher for me when I'm thinking about modern America.

Obviously, we're having all these conversations now about things like reparations.

We're having a real robust conversation about race in America.

And I've always been curious how that fits in people's minds with our standard narrative of the civil rights movement.

And that standard narrative teaches that in the 60s,

black people were not doing so hot.

Then we

had some boycotts.

A guy named Martin Luther King came along and we passed some bills and overcame.

And that's how it's taught, unless you're really doing actual critical race theory.

That's how it's taught in a lot of places still.

And

the fact that King was assassinated in 1968, when he was deeply unpopular, and he believed personally that he still had actually the bulk of his life's work in creating equality in front of him.

How do we square that fact with the sort of standard narratives that were given?

A few years ago, you hosted the podcast Floodlines that examined another moment in history, Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath.

And you spent time in New Orleans meeting with people who lived through that moment.

Similarly, here, you have also had a chance to speak with people who lived through the time when Martin Luther King Jr.

was assassinated and the week after.

And I'm wondering if you could tell me a little bit about who we heard you speaking with earlier.

Yes, this is John Burrough Smith, just a fascinating guy.

He is a member and founding member of the Memphis Invaders.

And they were a black power group in Memphis that actually met with Dr.

King the day he was assassinated.

They were the last group to meet with him in his room in the motel where he was killed.

And so they had a long history.

They actually clashed with King quite a bit.

And there's an actually just sort of fascinating turn in how they came to see him, how he came to see them, and this moment they had in the hotel room that really made a mark on John and his life.

And we followed that in him.

And I mean, I should also say that he is just like one of many very interesting people that you spoke with for this podcast who lived during this time period.

And, you know, as you've kind of alluded to earlier, maybe we don't quite, we being the American public, don't quite appreciate what this moment in history meant.

And I'm wondering if you can share a little bit about what you've uncovered.

as you've been working on this project.

So we focus on what happens after that assassination.

So

in over a hundred cities across America, people come out and they're in the streets.

They're rioting or rebelling or uprising.

And it's actually referred to by some scholars as the Holy Week Uprising because it was before Easter.

And so number one, just that fact, the fact that it was the most widespread street unrest, especially in black neighborhoods, between the Civil War and the protests for George Floyd in 2020 and the fact that it hasn't really been explored.

And what we found, I think, was I believe this time was not covered or is not often part of standard histories because it kind of complicates the picture.

It shows that people in real time themselves believed that the movement had a lot of unfinished business left to do.

It showed that the problems in the ghettos in black America had not even been close to been addressed.

And it shows that actually in the historical record, the thing that won in 1968 wasn't the black demand for freedom as far as American policy goes.

It was white backlash.

It was people who were afraid of the riots.

It was people who were tired of the civil rights agenda.

As we said in an interview with John, it was people who were turning against even the avatar of nonviolence in King.

And it wasn't something that ended because we did the thing.

America chose

to cease this project of making itself a better place for black Americans.

Knowing what you know now after having worked on this and speaking with so many people,

what of the events of that week do you think linger with our society today?

I think of this on two different levels because one thing I'm just fascinated with is what lingers in people's, individual people's minds.

And you see these common themes of

for people who decided to join in the uprisings, people who were on the streets.

There's a shared sense of ambivalence around their participation.

A lot of people who went out because they were angry and, you know were like they all think the anger was justified but still sort of regret being out there or that

nothing came of their anger.

This is something that seems to stick with all the people who I talk to and has shaped their lives in real ways.

You see a lot of people who

decided to who their lives really shift away from organized movement work towards smaller scale things in their neighborhoods.

People whose whole entire career trajectories are sort of dictated by

this sense of unfinished business.

And I think on a societal level, the things that stick with me and things that I think are still resonating in America,

you look at somebody like Akwame Ture, then known as Stokely Carmichael, and he was in the streets.

He was actually in D.C.

on 14th and U when the first uprising and riot in that city started, the most famous one across the country started.

And he was saying, okay, this could be the revolution that, well, we've been talking about the revolution.

This could be it.

This could be something that drastically changes America.

And hearing that perspective and then seeing the ways that it was either prevented from or failed to be that moment, it's fascinating.

And you can see a straight line from that and the message that, you know, like a Nixon was going and saying, we need law and order because he was showing these images of riots in the streets.

You can see a direct line between that and mass incarceration today.

Van, thanks for talking with me about Holy Week.

Thank you for having me.

You can hear all eight episodes of Holy Week on March 14th and can subscribe to the podcast now.

Let's listen to the trailer.

If they would shoot a man like Dr.

King

and shoot my little boy, they'd shoot my wife, they'd shoot me.

April 4th, 1968, is remembered by many as the end of the Civil Rights Movement.

A time of loss.

We had been taught about lynchings and the school bombings and Rosa Parks.

We had been taught about all kinds of stuff, but

we were angry.

We were angry because a white man killed a prominent person in our life.

Grief can have a way of warping the historical lens.

trapping us in a moment and overshadowing some of what came before.

We played every summer.

We were outside in the back: baseball, kickball, volleyball, tag.

What came after King's assassination was a week of uprisings that have largely been forgotten.

We broke out and went up to 14th Street.

What did you see when you got there?

Maybe about two or three thousand people.

When I got up there, they had burned most of everything down.

I'm Van Newkirk, senior editor at The Atlantic.

For the past year, I've been talking to people about the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

and the ensuing unrest that upended so many of their lives.

What I've heard is a story about a break in time.

A story that completely changes how I understand the end of the civil rights movement and the entire trajectory of modern America.

It's a story about the limits of racial reckonings and about how trauma lives with people through time.

It's a story about hope, about grief, about dreams, and about dreams deferred.

Had he been able to do

what he was planning to do,

we would be looking at a different America.

From the Atlantic,

this is Holy Week.

Listen to all eight episodes beginning on March 14th and visit theatlantic.com/slash Holy Week.