SPEAKER_00: This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance.What if comparing car insurance rates was as easy as putting on your favorite podcast?With Progressive it is.Just visit the Progressive website to quote with all the coverages you want.You'll see Progressive's direct rate, then their tool will provide options from other companies so you can compare.All you need to do is choose the rate and coverage you like. Quote today at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive.Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates.Comparison rates not available in all states or situations.Prices vary based on how you buy.
SPEAKER_15: Okay.Okay.Hello?All right.So, hey, hi.Lulu, okay, you know I studied history in grad school.
SPEAKER_04: Yes.History of science.
SPEAKER_15: History of science.And I love history.And I really do think, as you know from how often I pitch history here, I feel like it's this, like, infinite source of stories that are cinematic and profound and that will, like, make you see our present in a totally different way.Mm-hmm. And yet, when I look at, you know, like the History Channel or just like pop history, right?Like you see what you see on TV or even here in podcasts.It's just so cartoonish and filled with like conspiracy theories about aliens and fixated on certain moments in history and kind of rehashing the same thing over and over and over again.
SPEAKER_04: It's also kind of very dull.
SPEAKER_15: It's like, OK, here's another documentary about like Civil War weapons or something.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
SPEAKER_15: There are precious few shows that that don't do that, that take history on its own terms and are able to tap into the profundity, the beauty, the what I think of is the real exhilarating part of like looking at the past.And one of those shows, which is the reason we're sitting here, is the NPR show Throughline.
SPEAKER_04: We love them.They do great stuff.And maybe there's some of you out there who haven't heard of them.And in certain ways, they're kind of, I would call them like spiritual cousins to us.That's right.Their hosts, Randa Abdel-Fattah and Ramtina Arablui, find these quirky, often untold history stories. They just do it in such a gripping way.And it turns out they've just hit their fifth birthday.Happy birthday.Happy birthday through line.
And I had the pleasure of kind of watching this show come into being.I actually sat like right next to Ramtin at NPR when I used to work there.And he came in as a musician who was really interested in reporting and was just always wanted to do more.And so he actually writes a lot of the original music in the show.We wanted to share one today.
SPEAKER_15: Yeah, there's so many of their episodes that we love.We could have chosen any of them, but we decided to pick one that was just released a few months ago.It's called Dare to Dissent.
SPEAKER_04: And this episode, it's structured into these three acts.Each has a super cinematic story where somebody dissents.
SPEAKER_15: And not just dissents, just sort of stands up and speaks their mind.Stands up and speaks their mind to their own in-group.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
SPEAKER_15: Saying something that their friends very much do not want to hear.
SPEAKER_04: And each tale shows in a different way how an act that maybe does not seem successful in the moment can have this long tale, like a little subtle butterfly effect that changes things for us today.
SPEAKER_15: We both found it really moving, especially nowadays, because, you know, it can feel really hard to speak your mind.Whatever your politics are, whatever your opinions are, if you disagree with your friends, it can feel really hard to say that.But if you do say something... There are often real consequences.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, we're seeing that all around in all different kinds of ways.So we wanted to play this one for you.Again, it's from ThruLine.It's called Dare to Descent.Here's Ramtin.
SPEAKER_19: When I was a kid, my father took me to see the film Malcolm X by Spike Lee.I had begged him to take me because I just read Malcolm X's autobiography.And I can think of no other movie experience that had such a profound impact on me.And there was one scene in it that I carry with me until this day, a scene that never fails to give me goosebumps.It's towards the end of the film. The scene begins with a shot of five black men riding in a Cadillac.It's the 1960s.Their faces look sullen and determined.The song by Sam Cooke, A Change Is Gonna Come, provides the score. Then it cuts to a shot of Denzel Washington as Malcolm X driving his own car.
His face is stoic as he stares into the distance.He and the men in the other car are headed towards the Audubon Ballroom in New York City, towards a point where their timelines will collide. When Malcolm X parks his car and gets out to walk to the ballroom, Spike Lee uses his famous dolly shot, which makes him look like he's floating towards his doom, almost like fate is pulling him magnetically.For the entire movie, he was defiant, rebellious, and strong.But here, in this scene, Malcolm X looks resigned and heartbroken. Malcolm X never seemed afraid of the US government.What seemed to worry him was the threat from his own brothers and sisters in the Nation of Islam, the organization he'd belonged to for more than a decade.Months before he drove to the Audubon Ballroom to give his final speech, Malcolm X openly and aggressively criticized the Nation of Islam's leaders for their corruption.He'd been suspended and then decided to leave the group. Malcolm X had made the impossible decision to criticize the organization that had helped him change his life, that had made him one of the most influential people in the world.
And he did it because he felt he had to tell the truth, no matter how much it cost him.And it was that action that made him a target for the Nation of Islam, a member of which would assassinate him at the Audubon Ballroom on February 21st, 1965. For me, the lesson of that scene in the movie was that in life, the most dangerous and powerful thing a person can often do is to stand up, not against their enemies, but against their friends.To question and criticize the beliefs of their in-group, the people who are on their side. In the next year, as the United States heads into what likely will be one of the most bitter and divided elections ever, that lesson may be an important one for us all to remember.Because the reality is, the more we cordon ourselves into sides, choosing to ignore our conscience simply in order to win, we are taking on a posture of war.And the outcome of that will only bring pain and loss. So a group of us here at ThruLine decided to tell some of the most powerful stories of people who stood up against their in-group and took the ultimate risk for what they thought was right, no matter the cost, just like Malcolm X did. I'm Ramteen Arablui, and on this episode of ThruLine from NPR, producers Christina Kim and Anya Steinberg will join me to tell you three stories of people who did that brave thing, what it cost them, and why they did it anyway.Coming up, Christina Kim brings us the story of Sophie Schell.
SPEAKER_06: Part One Spring will come again
SPEAKER_20: There are two roses on my bedside table.Strings of tiny beads have formed on the stems and the foliage, which hangs down into the water.What a pure and beautiful sight.
SPEAKER_03: Imagine you're a college student on your way to class at the University of Munich in Germany.It's Thursday, the 18th of February, 1943, and the sun is breaking out from behind the clouds.It's wartime, and even though you can't escape the reality of Hitler's regime, As you head to your lecture in the main building, you find yourself laughing and enjoying the sunshine as the Third Reich continues to double down on its ideas of total war and obedience.The minute class ends, you pour out of the building with your fellow students, eager to get some fresh air. But all of a sudden, you're hit with a waterfall of papers cascading from the sky.You timidly catch one in your hand.
SPEAKER_18: It says, For us, there is only one slogan, fight against the party.
SPEAKER_03: You instinctively throw the paper down to the ground.It's calling for the end of Hitler.It's urging you to wake up.It's dangerous, even to look at.
SPEAKER_16: We have grown up in a state which ruthlessly gags all freedom of expression.The Hitler Youth, the SA, and the SS have tried to homogenize, radicalize, and anesthetize us.
SPEAKER_03: It was 1943, and those words were part of a series of pamphlets written by the White Rose, a group of German students and one professor, who opposed the Nazi regime.
SPEAKER_18: So the sixth pamphlet really is calling on students to rise up, to escape from the shackles of Nazism.
SPEAKER_03: This is Alexandra Lloyd.
SPEAKER_18: I'm a fellow by special election in German at St.Edmund Hall at the University of Oxford.She's also... The author of Defying Hitler, The White Rose Pamphlets.
SPEAKER_03: On that day in Munich, if you dared look up, you would have seen a young woman, her hair cut short, throwing the papers off the highest balcony in the building.Her name was Sophie Scholl.
SPEAKER_18: Sophie Scholl was... In many ways, a typical girl of her generation.Sophie was a very enthusiastic member of the Hitler Youth Organization.
SPEAKER_03: Sophie did not begin her life as a radical.Far from it.But within her own household, she was exposed to other ideas.
SPEAKER_18: She was growing up in a house with a father who was an anti-fascist.He was absolutely opposed to Nazism, but he was also a true liberal.So he allowed his children to discover for themselves what was wrong with Nazism, rather than simply dictatorially telling them that they couldn't have anything to do with the Nazis.
SPEAKER_03: And when she was 16, something happened to Sophie that would spark a change in her.The Gestapo, the Nazi secret police, arrested her brother Hans for his alleged homosexuality and for participating in youth groups that were not Nazi-sanctioned.They also arrested Sophie and two other siblings.
SPEAKER_18: And I think this is a really important moment because it brings home how dangerous the regime is.And it brings home the idea that really no one is safe anymore. And the Scholl children are, and this is what's so remarkable in some ways about this story, the Scholl children are really ideal Germans for the Nazi regime.They're strong, healthy.They like all the right things.They're Aryan.They tick all of these kind of Nazi boxes.But at this point, there's a shift.
SPEAKER_03: It's a shift that's evident in Sophie's letters to her boyfriend, a German soldier.
SPEAKER_20: My dear Fritz, I just can't grasp that people's lives are now under constant threat from other people.I'll never understand it, and I find it terrible.Don't go telling me it's for the fatherland's sake.
SPEAKER_09: Hitler aber ist Deutschland, wie Deutschland Hitler ist.Hitler liegt hier!Hitler!
SPEAKER_20: I'm trying hard to remain as impervious as possible to current influences.Not the ideological and political kind, which have ceased to have the slightest effect on me, but atmospheric influences.
SPEAKER_03: It's necessary to have a hard spirit and a tender heart.
SPEAKER_20: To be honest, I'd rather hanker to be on my own, because I have a nourish, to act on what so far has existed within me merely as an idea, as what I perceive to be right.
SPEAKER_03: And what she perceived to be right was that people needed to stop being cogs in the Nazi machine and pay attention to what was happening. Thousands of German soldiers had died in Hitler's war.Jewish families had violently disappeared.And freedom of speech and thought were dead.Sophie was ready to do something.So on the eve of her 21st birthday, she moved to Munich to be with her brother Hans and study at the University of Munich.Once there, everything changed as Sophie's role in The White Rose began.
SPEAKER_18: The White Rose Resistance Circle was a group who took action against the Nazi regime by producing anti-fascist, anti-war pamphlets.
SPEAKER_03: Sophie's brother Hans co-founded the movement.The first pamphlet was produced in June 1942, and Sophie was there almost from the very beginning.
SPEAKER_18: She's one of a collective, but she is the only woman right at the heart of the White Rose.
SPEAKER_03: Sophie was tasked with the dangerous job of making sure the resistance pamphlets were reproduced and reached as many people as possible, which at the time was no small feat.
SPEAKER_18: Getting paper, getting a duplicating machine, a typewriter, ink, all of these things that you need is really difficult because it's wartime, so there are shortages.You can't go into a post office in Nazi Germany and say, I'd like 100 stamps.
SPEAKER_03: Sophie scoured for envelopes and stamps wherever she could find them.She even asked Fritz, her boyfriend, in some of her letters.
SPEAKER_20: P.S.Could you get me a pack of envelopes sometime?
SPEAKER_03: Once she'd gathered enough supplies without drawing suspicion, she and the other members would leave the pamphlets around Munich, as well as randomly select addresses and mail the pamphlets directly to Holmes.It might sound simple, but even walking to the mailbox was very dangerous.
SPEAKER_18: You are always at risk of being stopped and searched. So transporting copies of illegal pamphlets is in no way a safe nor sensible thing to do.
SPEAKER_03: For Sophie, the message she was spreading was worth it.
SPEAKER_02: We are attempting to reawaken the gravely wounded German spirit from within.
SPEAKER_17: Since the conquest of Poland, 300,000 Jews have been murdered in that country.
SPEAKER_02: This rebirth must, however, be preceded by full recognition of guilt with which the German people have burdened themselves.
SPEAKER_18: To have a piece of writing like this in this period calling out so directly the persecution of Jewish people is incredible.
SPEAKER_17: Here we see the most horrific crime against human dignity, a crime unparalleled in all of human history.
SPEAKER_02: We will not be silent.We are your bad conscience.The White Rose will never leave you in peace.
SPEAKER_03: And that's what brings us back to that sunny Thursday in Munich in 1943.The White Rose had just finished making their sixth pamphlet, but they'd run out of stamps and envelopes.So they concocted a plan to go to the University of Munich and leave copies in the main building.
SPEAKER_18: And it was decided that Hans and Sophie would be the ones that would do this.
SPEAKER_03: They had to time it correctly when all the students and professors were in class so that no one saw them.
SPEAKER_18: So the night before, they're going to do this incredible thing.At home, in the flat that they share, Sophie writes a letter to her friend.
SPEAKER_20: Dear Lisa, I've just been playing the Trout Quintet on the phonograph.
SPEAKER_18: And she describes listening to Schubert's Trout Quintet on the gramophone.
SPEAKER_20: In that piece of Schubert's, you can positively feel and smell the breezes and scents and hear the birds and the whole of creation cry out for joy.And when the piano repeats the theme, like cool, clear, sparkling water, oh, it's sheer enchantment.
SPEAKER_18: You would never dream from reading this letter what is going to happen the next morning. The next morning, on Thursday, the 18th of February, 1943, at about half past 10, Hans and Sophie left their flat.
SPEAKER_03: They walked to the university.
SPEAKER_18: They had with them a suitcase and a briefcase that were full of copies of the pamphlet.
SPEAKER_03: Their plan was to discreetly deposit the pamphlets all over campus and get away undetected.
SPEAKER_18: So they work really quickly.They follow the plan.They leave copies of the pamphlets.
SPEAKER_03: But just before they leave...
SPEAKER_18: Sophie, for whatever reason, decides to push one of these piles of pamphlets over the balcony, and they cascade down.
SPEAKER_03: A janitor sees Sophie do this and accosts her and her brother Hans.
SPEAKER_18: They call the Gestapo, who turn up, arrest Hans and Sophie, and take them into Gestapo custody. That's Thursday.On Monday, they're sent to trial.
SPEAKER_03: They're tried for treason.
SPEAKER_18: For undermining the war effort with these pamphlets.
SPEAKER_03: The trial starts in the morning on Monday and ends around lunchtime.
SPEAKER_18: At 4 o'clock, three hours later, they're told that they're going to be executed that day at 5.
SPEAKER_03: At 5 p.m.on February 22nd, 1943...
SPEAKER_18: Sophie Scholl, Hans Scholl are executed by guillotine for their involvement in the White Rose.The White Rose wanted the war to end, and it didn't.They wanted Hitler and his regime to fall, and it didn't.I mean, it would take another two years after they were executed. but it matters that they tried.It matters that they made the attempt.And I think that today is inspiring.
SPEAKER_03: Sophie Scholl and the other core members of the White Rose paid the ultimate price for standing up to their tyrannical government.They were executed, but their pamphlets and their ideas lived on.
SPEAKER_18: The sixth pamphlet was in fact smuggled out of Germany and made its way to Britain where copies were produced and then they were dropped by planes over Germany.So that image of Sophie scattering the pamphlets over the balcony is then somehow reproduced over the whole of Germany as these pamphlets rain down from planes over all the people.
SPEAKER_03: Almost immediately after the fall of Hitler, the White Rose was remembered and commemorated with monuments, street names, and even stamps bearing Sophie and Hans likenesses.Today, the courtyard outside the main building at the University of Munich bears their last name, and bronze versions of the flyers are embedded in the cobblestones.
SPEAKER_20: You can't help rejoicing and laughing. However moved or sad at heart you feel when you see the springtime clouds in the sky and the budding branches sway, stirred by the wind and the bright young sunlight.I am so much looking forward to the spring again.
SPEAKER_15: OK, we're going to take a quick break.And when we come back, a second story of dissent from our friends at NPR's Throughline.
SPEAKER_11: When you see actor Danielle Brooks on the red carpet at the Oscars, she will be in full glamour and in grief.
SPEAKER_12: I've been with Sophia for so long and I just know like after the Oscars, that chapter is really done.And that saddens me.
SPEAKER_11: I'm Kai Wright.A star of the color purple honors the role that shaped her career.Next time on Notes from America.Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
SPEAKER_04: I'm Lulu Miller.
SPEAKER_15: I'm Latif Nasser.
SPEAKER_04: We are back playing you all an excerpt of this show we admire, Throughline.It's hosted by Rund Abdel-Fattah and Ramteen Arablui.
SPEAKER_15: Right before the break, we did part one of their episode, and this is part two.
SPEAKER_06: Part two.No country for young men.
SPEAKER_19: On April 3rd, 1968, a man sits in his motel room, collecting his thoughts.He reaches down and grabs a cigarette, puts it to his lips, lights it up, and inhales.
SPEAKER_22: And he's exhausted.He's depressed.
SPEAKER_19: But he still has a job to do.
SPEAKER_22: He was supposed to speak to a rally.
SPEAKER_19: A rally in Memphis, Tennessee.
SPEAKER_22: He said he didn't want to go because he wasn't feeling well.
SPEAKER_19: He's too tired.And so he asks someone else to take his place on stage that night.He gets into his pajamas and heads to bed. Then his phone rings.It's the guy who went to give the speech in his place.
SPEAKER_22: He called him from the hall and said, these people don't want me, they want you.
SPEAKER_19: The tired man puts down the phone and makes up his mind.He was going to go.
SPEAKER_22: He was in bed in his pajamas at that point, but he got dressed and went over there and gave this incredible speech.
SPEAKER_08: Thank you very kindly, my friend.As I listened to Ralph Abernathy and his eloquent and generous introduction, and then thought about myself, I wondered who he was talking about.
SPEAKER_22: And many people feel like he was predicting his own death that night when he gave that speech.
SPEAKER_08: Well, I don't know what will happen now.We've got some difficult days ahead.But it really doesn't matter with me now.
SPEAKER_22: He even says, yeah, like anyone else, I'd like to live a long life, but that doesn't matter anymore.
SPEAKER_08: Longevity has its place, but I'm not concerned about that now.
SPEAKER_22: Because I just want to do God's work.I just want to.
SPEAKER_08: I just want to do God's will.
SPEAKER_22: See this through.
SPEAKER_08: And he's allowed me to go up to the mountain.And I've looked over.And I've seen the promised land.I may not get there with you.But I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land. So I'm happy tonight.I'm not worried about anything.I'm not fearing any man.Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.
SPEAKER_19: That speech was the last of Martin Luther King Jr.'s career.The next day, at 6.05 p.m., he was assassinated by a gunman while standing on the balcony of his motel in Memphis. Like many Americans, I was raised to believe in a certain version of Martin Luther King Jr.We remember him as a martyr for justice and nonviolence, the eloquent preacher whose prophetic vision redefined how the U.S.viewed itself, a person who was loved by most and hated only by the racist few.But that's just not the entire truth.
SPEAKER_22: We have all taken him for granted in a way.
SPEAKER_19: This is Jonathan Icke, author of the biography, King, A Life.
SPEAKER_22: And turned him into a monument and a national holiday and forgotten about the person.
SPEAKER_14: Civil rights, King, Van Ocker, roll 20, sound 36.
SPEAKER_19: In 1967, 11 months before his assassination, Martin Luther King Jr.gave an interview to NBC News at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where he was the pastor.The segment was called After Civil Rights, Black Power.
SPEAKER_07: Dr. King, this church is as good a place as any to go back over your commitment to the civil rights movement.
SPEAKER_19: In the video, Martin Luther King Jr.stands in front of a stained glass with a golden cross in the middle, a crown emerging above it.He was 38 years old at the time, but the look in his eyes belonged to someone much older.
SPEAKER_08: Many of the people who supported us in Selma, in Birmingham, were really outraged about the extremist behavior toward Negroes. But they were not at that moment, and they are not now, committed to genuine equality for Negroes.
SPEAKER_19: In the interview, King comes across more frustrated than usual, a bit edgier.He is measured in his words, but very confrontational in his criticism of America.
SPEAKER_22: When King rises to fame, he's mostly talking about Southern segregation. And that's something that a lot of northern white liberals can stand with him on.But when he starts talking about economic inequality, when he starts talking about white flight in the northern suburbs and segregation of schools in Chicago and New York and Philadelphia, suddenly people start getting nervous.
SPEAKER_08: It's much easier to integrate a lunch counter than it is to guarantee an annual income, for instance, to get rid of poverty for Negroes and all poor people. It's much easier to integrate a bus than it is to make genuine integration a reality and quality education a reality in our schools.
SPEAKER_22: He was really determined to make this his big shot across the bow, to declare a new wave of his movement, that he was moving from civil rights to human rights.
SPEAKER_08: And I think we are in a new era, a new phase of the struggle, where we have moved from a struggle for decency, which characterized our struggle for 10 or 12 years to a struggle for genuine equality.And this is where we are getting the resistance because there was never any intention to go this far.
SPEAKER_19: Martin Luther King Jr.understood that criticizing American capitalism and northern racism would potentially upset some of the same people who had supported his civil rights efforts in the South.But he still did it.And according to some polls, by 1968, nearly three-fourths of white Americans disapproved of him.
SPEAKER_22: It's because they were worried that, you know, Black people were coming to the neighborhoods and Black people were coming for their jobs and that King's idea, his message of equality might actually be put into action.It's a lot easier to say, I support Martin Luther King and even to get on the bus and go down and march with him in Selma.But when you get back and he's actually talking about your hometown, fighting to get Black kids enrolled in your kids' all-white suburban school... you know, suddenly it's a different story.
SPEAKER_14: From late 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.was the target of an intensive campaign by the FBI to neutralize him as an effective civil rights leader.
SPEAKER_22: The FBI surveillance of King is a hugely important factor in his life and an important factor in his legacy.
SPEAKER_14: Much depends on him still in these times when racial tensions have created an atmosphere of fear and foreboding among many Negroes and whites alike.
SPEAKER_19: The FBI had a years-long effort to monitor Martin Luther King Jr.and to use the information they gathered to publicly discredit him.This is a reading from the actual FBI files.
SPEAKER_14: It is King's contention that the government of the United States does not move until it is confronted dramatically.
SPEAKER_22: Robert F. Kennedy, the attorney general, authorizes the FBI to surveil King, to tap phones, because they initially fear that he may be under the influence of members of the Communist Party or former members of the Communist Party.
SPEAKER_19: They continue to monitor Martin Luther King Jr.'s every move.
SPEAKER_22: Right after the March on Washington, I have a dream, his most brilliant and memorable speech.Just two days after, the FBI produces a memo that says, given the power of that speech, we must now view him as the most dangerous man when it comes to race in America.
SPEAKER_19: But it's not just his stance on race they're worried about.
SPEAKER_08: I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice.A time comes when silence is betrayal.That time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.
SPEAKER_14: King spoke at the Riverside Church in New York, New York, at which time he was highly critical of the Vietnam War.
SPEAKER_08: Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak.
SPEAKER_14: He referred to the United States government as the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.
SPEAKER_08: I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam.I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken.I speak as one who loves America.The great initiative in this war is ours.The initiative to stop it must be ours.
SPEAKER_19: The speech was called Beyond Vietnam, A Time to Break Silence.He gave that speech in 1967, right in the middle of the Vietnam War.
SPEAKER_22: It's just stunning in its beauty, in its foresight, and yet the response to it is brutal. King is pilloried for this speech.The next day, the Washington Post, the New York Times, almost every major newspaper in America calls him out and says he's a fool, says he's unqualified to speak on these issues.
SPEAKER_19: He was shocked by just how harsh the response was to the speech.
SPEAKER_22: He's devastated by this.You know, he feels like... He can't understand why he's being treated this way.He sees himself as doing the right thing, and he's getting beat up for it.And it has a personal toll.It really leaves him feeling frustrated, sad.I think some of his friends are worried that he's clinically depressed at this point.
SPEAKER_19: FBI wiretaps captured conversations King had with his friends and colleagues in the days after the speech.
SPEAKER_22: There's one phone call right after Beyond Vietnam, and he's on the phone with Stan Levison, who's one of his best friends and closest advisors, and he's known him for a decade.And Levison calls him and says, that was a terrible speech.I don't understand why you said those things.That's going to hurt us.That's going to damage our cause.
SPEAKER_19: Part of that cause was the Poor People's March, an action in which King, Levison, Bayard Rustin, and other leaders were trying to organize thousands of people to march to Washington and stage a sit-in to demand more progressive economic policies for the poor and working class.Levison feared King's stance on Vietnam would alienate some of their financial supporters.
SPEAKER_22: It's going to damage our fundraising. And King says to one of his best friends, in essence, don't you know who I am?Haven't you been listening to anything I've said?Yeah, it might have been politically unwise, but I don't care about that because it was not morally unwise.
SPEAKER_19: They were both right.The fallout from King's stand on Vietnam was harsh.The director of the NAACP criticized him, saying that the racial justice and anti-war efforts have, quote, too little in common, and that King should, quote, positively and publicly give up one role or the other. When King tried to get the NAACP to put out a statement against the war, it was strongly rejected.An editorial in the Washington Post said that he had, quote, diminished his usefulness to his cause, to his country, and to his people.And all of this had a material impact on King's work.The Poor People's March was foundering, struggling to find supporters.
SPEAKER_22: He could have just stepped back and said, okay, I did this for 10, 12 years.Now it's someone else's turn.But he had such conviction, such belief in doing the right thing that that never even occurred to him.
SPEAKER_19: And according to Jonathan, even though that conviction cost King popularity and frustrated some of his own friends and fellow civil rights activists, it did actually make a difference for the anti-war movement.
SPEAKER_22: I think King's early opposition to the Vietnam War was a huge factor in galvanizing, especially white college students.They saw King speaking out on this, and they began to ask more questions.They began to think more about what they believed.And his courage to speak out on that had huge positive consequences.
SPEAKER_19: That last night in Memphis, almost exactly one year after his Beyond Vietnam speech, Martin Luther King was under immense pressure.He was paying the price for speaking his conscience, for speaking words some of his friends, comrades, and the American people were not ready to hear.And this image, the rebel shunned by much of America, is not the image we celebrate every year.I asked Jonathan why.
SPEAKER_22: Well, that's easy because it makes us uncomfortable.We stick with the stuff that makes us comfortable.I have a dream that we might all be brothers and sisters and sing in harmony and judge each other by the content of our character and not the color of our skin.That stuff's easy.That's safe.As Harry Belafonte said to me, this country only likes dead radicals.
SPEAKER_04: All right, now, there is a third story in this episode that's equally great, but we're not going to play it.You, to hear it, go check it out on their feed.Go on over to ThruLine to hear the third story in this beautiful episode.
SPEAKER_15: And while you're there, go listen to another episode about the history of Radiohead or the history of tipping or the history of any number of random things.
SPEAKER_04: What's that Sea People one called?That one's really fun.Hold on, let's tell them that name. Armageddon or something.It's called What Happened After Civilization Collapsed.
SPEAKER_15: Yeah.
SPEAKER_04: That's a great one.
SPEAKER_15: Go find them, ThruLine, wherever you got your podcasts.I'm Lulu Miller.I'm Latif Nasser.
SPEAKER_05: I'm Randa Abdel-Fattah.
SPEAKER_19: I'm Ramteen Adablui.And you've been listening to ThruLine from NPR.
SPEAKER_05: This episode was produced by me.
SPEAKER_19: And me and... Fact-checking for this episode was done by... Thanks also to Amelie Klaus, Niklas Becker, Ella Leshem, Casey Miner, and Johannes Dergi for their voiceover work.And thanks to Colin Campbell and Anya Grumman.The episode was mixed by Josh Newell.
SPEAKER_05: Music for this episode was composed by Ramtin and his band, Drop Electric, which includes... Navid Marvi, Sho Fujiwara, Anya Mizani.
SPEAKER_19: And finally, if you have an idea or like something you heard on the show, please write us at ThruLine at NPR.org.
SPEAKER_05: Thanks for listening.
SPEAKER_21: Hi, this is Jeremiah Barba and I'm calling from San Francisco, California. Leadership support for Radiolab science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation.Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
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SPEAKER_01: I'm David Remnick, and each week on The New Yorker Radio Hour, my colleagues and I unpack what's happening in a very complicated world.You'll hear from The New Yorker's award-winning reporters and thinkers, Jelani Cobb on race and justice, Jill Lepore on American history, Vincent Cunningham and Gia Tolentino on culture, Bill McKibben on climate change, and many more.To get the context behind events in the news, listen to The New Yorker Radio Hour wherever you get your podcasts.
