Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. Shake Hands
An iconic photograph captured the Washington meeting of these two titans as the Senate debated the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Library of Congress
Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. talk after the Georgia civil rights leaderâs press conference at the U.S. Capitol in 1964.
Itâs in the low 70s and partly cloudy in Washington when members of the Senate gather on March 26, 1964. There are two motions on the agenda this Thursday morning. The first is a noncontroversial one: to call up the civil rights bill that has recently been passed by the House of Representatives. The second is less predictable: Should the Senate refer the bill to the Judiciary Committee for a ten-day review?
For 30 years, from PBS s
Eyes on the Prize through last year s
Mr. Soul!, Sam Pollard has been one of the most important documentarians of the civil rights struggle. His latest,
MLK/FBI, may be his most challenging yet, because it runs into that thorniest of challenges. It s that old adage: Consider the source.
From 1963 to 1968, the Federal Bureau of Investigations wiretapped and bugged Dr. Martin Luther King. Jr. At first, the trigger was a growing concern about his closeness with Stanley Levinson, who the FBI feared was a Communist and potential Russian agent. Over time, the bugging became about King and became weaponized, playing into old paranoias about Black sexuality, even leaked in an attempt to wreck his marriage and push him to suicide.
and wyatt walker and andy young. radical relationists with a passionate concern for justice but also a patient spirit of hopefulness regarding reconciliation. that is a special kind. that is the kind of guy he was. right. a first radical in a sense because he saw some things other people didn t see. you looked at him. you saw his afro. everybody knew that here is a guy who has come from mixed ancestry. in his blood there were white and black forces at work. he saw the dark, demon ic aspecs of race. and he understood that whatever it was, it was like the plague. he affected white folks and black folks. and he had a desperate desire to see us come to our senses and recognize, listen folks, we were in this together.
like most of you trump rolled up in a stretch limousine. however he was just fulfilling his civic duty like the average american. this weekend was a different story. he was bat man. donald offered helicopter rides to children during a saturday campaign stop. one nine-year-old asked, are you bat man. trump confirmed, i am bat man. the missed engagement was a small blip on an otherwise successful week. trump avoided the state fair soap box sponsored by the des moines register as the by-product of the newspaper. a new poll shows trump still leading, doubling the candidate in second place. the strong poll numbers come after the tense republican debate. trump wasn t happy. he openfully complained that fox news wasn t treating him well. the president of the network called trump the next day. the relationship is pack on track. his relationship received a warm welcome. early christmas gift to conservatives who have looked at the immigration problem in this country and said can t
with on this earth. he no longer belongs to us. he belongs to the ages. for now let us pause and give thanks for the fact that nelson mandela lived. a man who took history in his hands and bent the arc of the moral universe towards justice. may god bless his memory and keep him in peace. mandela spent nearly a third of his life as a prisoner of apartheid, but he never stopped believing in freedom for himself and his country. outside his home just moments ago, the people of south africa were singing. we ll be going live to south africa in just a moment, but first i want to bring in nbc news contributor charlene hunter galt. she spent years covering both nelson mandela and the anti-apartheid movement in south africa. thank you for being on tonight. thank you very having me on, reverend al. you know, i know from being a teenager in new york and the civil rights struggle going forward you were one of the first writers at new york times that really wrote about this mov