Susan dr. Peniel joseph, you and i planned this interview three months back, but we got sideways with the covid lockdown. As a historian, how are you processing this time this country is going through . Prof. Joseph i have been writing a lot, both opeds in for a longer piece. It is extraordinary watershed moment. I think we are living through a third american reconstruction effort to reconstruct democracy so that it is multiracial, multicultural. Our first efforts were after the civil war. 1865 to 1877. We did achieve some racial progress. We had 15 black elected officials. We had a freedmens bureau. We had the creation of black churches and Public Schools, but we also institutionalized racial segregation rather quickly by the 1880s and 1890s. We did it through racial violence and public policy. Our second reconstruction is the Civil Rights Movement between 1954 and 1965. When we think about Public School desegregation and the Voting Rights act and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Bute was racial progress, that was really quickly closed off when we think about 1968, the assassination of Martin Luther king jr. , the assassination of Bobby Kennedy, the assassination of malcolm x. Now, we have another effort. In a way, we are experiencing something we have never experienced before. We have so many White Americans who are joining these protests. It is multiracial, multicultural. It is led by young black people, but so many White Americans have joined that the very face of the country is being changed every day. Susan what do make of the fact that protests are not just happening in the United States, but globally as well . Prof. Joseph we have great historical precedent for that. Things that happen in the United States impact the world. Things that happen around the world impact the United States. The United States when we think about the Civil Rights Movement, it was a movement against colonialism. It was a movement that wanted liberation in india and asia and latin america and the caribbean. We saw all these Different Networks of activists and human rights and civil rights organizations. Certainly, malcolm x and Martin Luther king jr. Were two iconic black civil rights and black power activists who visited the middle east, who visited europe, who visited africa. That is not surprising. The depth in breath and intensity but we definitely have historical precedent. Susan there has been a number of times since the 1960s when there have been movements for social justice. What do you think are the elements that make this transformational this time around . Prof. Joseph i think covid19, the pandemic and the fact that africanamericans and other people of color are disproportionately vulnerable to covid19. They were diagnosed at higher rates. They were more likely to be public facing employees in meatpacking and the post office and delivery service. The mass unemployment that followed that. Really just a breakdown of the way in which our government responds to inequity. There is a rising wealth gap. Certainly, the criminal Justice System and the tragic killing of george floyd becomes the precipitating event. All of these things have come together and converged at the same time to produce this really historic moment in American History that is impacting culture. It is impacting politics. It is impacting sports, business. Higher education, you name it. It is deeper than the criminal Justice System. It is about more than confederate flags and monuments. It is about reimagining american democracy to create what Martin Luther king jr. Called a beloved community that was going to be not only free of racial and economic injustice, but citizens were going to have guaranteed rights, guaranteed income, decent housing. There was not going to be pervasive systemic racism. People would have deep empathy toward each other. The government would reflect that. People are demonstrating in the street in a way that amplifies all of these historic civil rights protests we have seen before going way back to racial slavery and abolitionism. We are seeing that come to full force in 2020. We are going to look back at 2020 as this extraordinary watershed year. Susan as a historian, this must be an interesting time to be looking at what are you doing to gather all of the elements of the moment so that you and your fellow historians can study this time in future years . Prof. Joseph a number of different things. I am interested in both in what is happening locally in austin, texas where i live, seeing the people calling for defunding the police, prison abolition, intersectional justice in the way in which these contemporary movements are intimately connected to public policy. In a way, when we think about the Civil Rights Movement, people are interested in changing policy. When you think about Voting Rights act and the Civil Rights Act, i do not think we had a social Movement Like the black lives Matter Movement that is interested in policy changes at a granular level. We think about everything from criminal justice to juveniles in incarceration to Public School segregation and residential segregation. Environmental racism, Mental Health in black communities, lgbtq lives mattering. As a historian, you are trying to gather as much data as you can and link that data to the archive because the archive is how we make our trade. It is going to definitely be newspaper reports, social media. From many different perspectives, youre seeing this story be told. Journalism is going to be the first draft of history. Historians are going to try to connect this to what they call a thicker description. How are these institutional changes people are advocating in 2020 connected to 1958 . What we did or did not do as a nation. How is what is happening in 2020 connected to 2008 when a lot of americans thought we had finally licked what people referred to as the race problem with the election of barack obama. You have a longer view of these events than most journalists. Susan the 1960s, there was a great deal of focus on the passage of the civil rights legislation. The list you made of the many threads in society seeking changes is really long. How does that broad list with so many people having things they want addressed in society as opposed to a common focus in the 1960s translate to momentum for change . Prof. Joseph i think the Civil Rights Movement was always a human rights movement. I think it still is. It is a movement that wants universal rights but through the lens of black liberation and black history and black peoples struggle and dignity in the United States. That, ifts in a way you end systemic antiblack racism, youre going to free up access to resources, dignity and citizenship. Scores of different groups whether those are latinx or indigenous and native americans are also people who have mental illness, people who are lgbtq. People who are the most marginalized in our society by virtue of who they are. In a way, the black freedom struggle has been the most expansive movement for democracy not because black people are so special, but because of the historical conditions and socioeconomic conditions they have been in in the United States. They have always been pushing to expand what we think of when we think about american topography american democracy. Martin luther king jr. Is one of the most eloquent voices. In his letter from the birmingham jail in 1963 when different white faith leaders are asking him to stop the protests in birmingham, he says the young people in birmingham being arrested and incarcerated are going to one day be lionized by the nation as heroes for bringing us back to what dr. King calls great wells of democracy that were dug deep i the founding fathers. The whole entire black freedom struggle is an effort to expand american democracy so it is not enough tos broad include black people. Even this idea of black lives matter, i think it is an extraordinarily eloquent phrase, but it is a testament to the fact that throughout American History, black lives have not mattered. It has been quite the reverse. There is always this push to try to get those lives to matter in law and policy, but also in our culture. I think that is what is so important. We need new policies. Institutions. New we have to change hearts and minds. Have a culture that will respect all people. Susan lets spend more of our time on your book. This period of the 1960s of malcolm xives and Martin Luther king. The book is on display. It is the sword and shield. Lets start by hearing these two men in their own words. I do not think when a man is being criminally treated that some criminal has the right to tell that man what tactics to use to get the criminal offense off his back. When a criminal starts misusing me, im going to use it ever is necessary to get that criminal off my back. The injustice inflicted on the negroes of this land by uncle sam is criminal. I read of the freedom of assembly. Somewhere i read of the freedom of speech. Somewhere i read of the freedom of press. Somewhere i read that the greatness of america is the right to protest our rights. Susan you write in your introduction that the idea of a dual biography as these two men have been germinating with you for a long time. Why did you take it upon yourself to study these two men and how it approached the goal of civil rights in the United States . My scholarly trajectory, my career as an academic and as a citizen and activist has been based on civil rights and human rights, the connection between race and democracy and black freedom in the unites states and globally. I have written books on the black Power Movement. Ive written books on barack obama. I have written a biography of stogie carmichael. Through those books and that research, i became fascinated with malcolm x and Martin Luther king jr. I began to imagine what their roles in transforming american democracy was through study and finding out more about them in great biographies. Looking at their papers, the at looking at their speeches and i came to the conclusion that we think of them as dueling opposites. One is talking about nonviolence. The other one is talking about selfdefense. One is saying by any means necessary. The other is talking about a beloved community. One is harlems hero and the other is americas apostle. I came to the conclusion they are both revolutionary. They are dual sides of the same revolutionary point. When we think about the sword and the shield, we think about malcolm x as the political sort sword of the black community and of Martin Luther king jr. As the shield of the black community. They both served those roles simultaneously in the book. By doing a dual biography, you are able to see what each was doing at the same, simultaneously. As you see in the sword and the shield, a lot of times, they are thinking about each other even if they use surrogates to debate each other. Really towards by 1963, a lot of what they are doing is in tandem and they are going to meet at the United States senate in 1964. They are going to cultivate a relationship that is less adversarial, less rivals than at times complementing each other in this pursuit of radical black dignity and citizenship. Susan you write in the book that at the time malcolm x was seen as dr. Martin luther kings evil twin. Prof. Joseph malcolm we heard the clip. Malcolm is black americas prosecuting attorney. He is charging White America with crimes against black humanity. Malcolm x is one of the innovators of his own 6019 project where he is talking about 400 years of racial oppression in the 1950s. He is contrasted with Martin Luther king jr. Especially in the 1950s and early 1960s. Martin luther king is defending black humanity to the white mainstream. He is defending white humanity. Malcolm x is different. He takes black humanity as a given and he is not going to try to defend black humanity to whites. Malcolm is viewed as Martin Luther kings evil twin because malcolm is a muslim. Malcolm is a former prisoner. He is an excon. At a time when that is not something that was glorified in our society. Malcolm is incarcerated for 76 months in three different prisons. He is an unusual black liberation leader to get that kind of political celebrity and achieve that kind of celebrity. His denunciations of White Supremacy are so bold he both enthralls white media, but he also turns people off because he is such a vociferous critic against structural racism. He is willing to name names. He is a big critic of president eisenhower, kennedy and johnson. In a way that Martin Luther king jr. Is trying to work with the established and with the establishment. Susan building on that point, you tell us that dr. King evolved in his thinking and i toward the end of his life, he rethought the use of violence as a tactic. Is this a new thesis . Prof. Joseph dr. King never moves away from nonviolence. What he rethinks is using massive disobedience in a way that is going to be even more coercive than birmingham or selma. King becomes a revolutionary because he is no longer willing to sit quietly about the vietnam war. He connects the vietnam war to the shortcoming and the failures of the Great Society in terms of eradicating poverty, eradicating racial segregation. The urban rebellion, hundreds of civil disturbances. King says these are not just riots that are the language of the unheard. He says the United States has to get to the root of the oppression. What we see with king, he starts talking about using nonviolence as early as 1965 after the los angeles rebellion to paralyze cities, to leverage nonviolent civil disobedience to transform american democracy. Malcolm x had called for the same thing at the march on washington, which malcolm criticizes because he wanted a display of civil disobedience that was going to be muscular enough to end the racial status quo in the United States of america. We think about king between 1965 and 1968, he is the biggest critic of White Supremacy after malcolm xs assassination. King is talking about white racism running wild in the halls of congress. King speaks to audiences by 1967 and says the biggest impediment to Racial Justice in the United States is white racism shared unleashinghich is chaos, yet whites are in a kind of perpetual denial. They say they will only commit to a Racial Justice once there is peace in the city even though dr. King points out they are the reasons why there is chaos in the city. This is not the Martin Luther king jr. We think of annually. King becomes a man on fire between 1965 and 1968. He breaks with the Lyndon Johnson administration. There are no more photo ops. There is only truth. That truth is a radical truth. It is a hard truth. When he speaks at the Riverside Church in new york city in 1967, he calls the United States the greatest purveyor of violence in the world. King says we can have a bitter,ut it or but beautiful struggle to achieve our country. A beloved community where instead of spending tens of billions of dollars on vietnam and american imperialism, we transform urban and Rural America in a way that is racially and economically just for all people. He becomes this extreme era figure. That is the revolutionary king i argue people do not know about. People who are contemporary activists, they do not know how deep of a revolutionary figure Martin Luther king jr. Was because we sanitized king. We say malcolm was the revolutionary. We sanitized king because we want a king that is like a teddy bear we can all hug. That if he were alive today, he would give all of america one big hug and ask us to love each other. That is not the true Martin Luther king jr. He is deeply empathetic, but he is also deeply critical of inequality wherever that inequality may be. Susan one of the most interesting facts found in your book is that these two men whose spheres of influence overlapped, only met in person one time. Was that intentional or was it simply coincidental . Prof. Joseph i think it is both. They met march 26, 1964. Right before they met at the u. S. Senate, one of the most interesting parts about that meeting, they are both at this and that while the senate is filibustering the Civil Rights Act. They both are supporting the Civil Rights Act. They both say that unless this is achieved, there might be racial violence. Malcolm said that even if the bill is passed, it is going to lead to a civil war in the south and a race war in the north because White