(This program was originally broadcast on April 2, 2025)
Sixty-two years ago today, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington and delivered his immortal “I Have a Dream" speech at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
In today's encore edition of Midday, we revisit Tom Hall's conversation last April with Dr. Jeanne Theoharis, a historian and Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Brooklyn College, and the author or co-author of 13 books on the American civil rights movement.
Her latest book makes the case that some of Dr. King’s most significant work in his fight for racial justice wasn’t in the Jim Crow South, as legend has it, but rather, in cities like Boston, Chicago, New York and Los Angeles.
Dr. Theoharis argues that despite his role in passing landmark civil rights legislation and the professed support he received from white liberals in the north, King was consistently betrayed by those whites, the press and the federal government.
Her book is called King of the North: Martin Luther King Jr.’s Life of Struggle Outside of the South.
Jeanne Theoharis joined us on Zoom from New York last April.
(Because this conversation is recorded, we won't be taking any new phone calls or online comments.)
