Vann R. Newkirk II - Challenging the Easy Narrative of MLK in The Atlantic

One of the more interesting, uh conversations that I got started because of your writing was specifically about teachers being armed, and you argued that in its very essence, it goes against the Second Amendment. Wh Why would you make that argument? Yeah, So the Second Amendment is supposed to be this thing that protects people from the government. The entire ethos of it is you get people, you give them guns, and you give them guns so they can build a militia,

but to protect themselves against tyranny. And so you have teachers who are state agents right paid by the state, who are taking care of our kids, who have sometimes done bad things for those kids, and you're giving them guns. So especially in Florida. You have a guy who was known to use the in word with his students and was suspended for doing it. You give that guy a gun. That's the tyrannical government. I never thought of that as

an idea. I go like, but you know, it's it's It's one of those ideas where people go like, this seems like a good idea because everything leads to more guns. You go like, just give the people more guns, and then it solves the guns because if everyone has a gun, then I guess means no one has a gun. I don't know how it works, but I get my gun a gun. You give a gun a gun, that's emotion because guns don't kill people. People kill people. What if it gives a killing guns? I don't think a gun

is a gun has killed a gun. I saw that the movie wants the gun shot the gun on the guns. There no one talks about gun on guns islands. You you you you have an interesting way of looking at the world, and this issue of the Atlantic I think looks at Martin Luther King from so many different places and through so many different lenses, which I really found interesting. Martin Luther King is one of those figures in America that I've always felt is mythologized and oftentimes misunderstood, And

it feels like you've captured that in this article. Why do you think it was necessary to have an entire article about Martin Luther King Jr. So what we want to do is challenge people, you know, we want people to read every single article in this issue and come away thinking about something new, something they had never thought about, something they never even fathomed about. Dr. King. And what that does as a whole is so many times politicians bring up on people who will have an agenda, bring

up Dr King. They quote the dream speech. They do the same thing. Okay, he wants us to live in a color blind society where our kids can go to school together. They quote it's one part, but they don't quote the part about him being against the Vietnam War. They don't say his his speech, his letter from Birmingham Jail where he talks about the white moderate, and nobody asked themselves, am I the white moderate? So nobody everybody now is pro King and not racist, but nobody's reading

King now for how to be anti racist. It's interesting that you say that because there was a specific article or piece of it that that connected with me written by you in this and it was specifically about the idea of modern Luther King and his assassination. And you say here in the official story told your children, King's assassination is the transformational tragedy in a Victoria struggle to overcome.

But in the true accounting, his assassination was one of a host of reactionary assaults by a country against the revolution, and those assaults were astonishingly successful. Yeah, that's an interesting point of view because many people feel like modein Luther King being assassinated was the beginning of the great journey that got black people to where they needed to be. And you're arguing that it ended the revolution that was starting. How how do you prove that or why do you

believe that? So? I remember when I was in school and I had a teacher who told me straight up that the civil rights movement was victorious, that we want that we and we won. And what I could never reconcile was, how did we win if Dr King was assassinated while protesting? How do we win the civil rights movement? How are we victorious if while protesting for higher wages for sanitation workers in Memphis. He was assassinated and his Poor People's movement was derailed. So I always want to

revisit that point. So when I wrote that essay, I was listening to Nina Simone's song Why the King of Love Is Dead. She wrote it three days after he was assassinated, and she's talking about will the country stand or fall? She's talking about a country that seemed then

on the verge of an apocalypse. And so I really wanted to go back to that moment and and see how we get from that moment where were you're talking about the end of the world the black community and shambles and tears and unrest and riots, and how you go from narrative here in fifty years and say we won. How does that happen? People would say, but van look at how much progress black people have made since Martin Luther King. Surely things have gotten better black people on

the upp in America. Well, some studies are showing that that may not be the case. So we've got some studies out from the Economic Policy Institude that are saying that black wealth, black home ownership rates, segregation in schools haven't gone anywhere in fifty years, so so in fifty years, so,

so what are we talking about here? And we're talking what we were saying that the gap between blacks and whites now in terms of wealth is just so staggering that it's how do you even build policy to bridge that gap? Education has risen, but our kids are now in schools that are as segregated as a word nineteen seventies. So what we talk talking about. That's a that's an

interesting point of view. And I guess I know a lot of people argue back on that, and they'll say, well, I mean Obama became president fan, So I mean that's uh, that's progress, isn't it. Yeah, obam was president eight years and now will we ever have another black president? Will you ever have another president? Is the question I asked um. Here, here's something that I that I really connected with. And I guess because of South Africa's history and also because

it is International Women's Day? Is this beautiful quote in the in the article women have been the backbone of the whole civil rights movement. This popular narrative of the civil rights movements too often relies on great men, the great men version of history. King Malcolm Expergan, Marshall, Stokey, car Michael or other names you know. And it ignores the importance of women who also organized and led the movement and shows how their contributions have been sidelined, hidden

in plain sights. That is a powerful narrative that many people forget, and that is credit. Scott King wasn't just a sidekick. She wasn't just the woman at home. Why do you think it's so important to acknowledge these women and what wol the instrumental in doing in many movements. Yeah, I learned a lot reading that essay from from Geene Deal harris Um. She was talking about Coretta Corretta, Scott King and how Martin's development politically came from conversation with Corretta.

So a lot of what he was doing was sort of man's playing in Corretta. Right. He was going out and saying, Okay, she was against the Vietnam War years before he was. She when they were courting each other, and and and uh and when they were still dating, she was the one who was sort of giving him these economic ideas, passing him along text about what to read and how to learn and grow. So you look at me if you look at Corretta, Correta Scott King, not just as Kings helped me, as someone who was

an active is in our own right. You start looking at just all these other women in the movement who did so much. Rosa Parks, who wasn't operative. We're talking school that she was a tied old lady who sat down. She was out there. She built the same organizing structures that actually King relied on when he was doing the boycotts. Those were built by black women against sexual assault. And so when you when you look at these stories, how

do you think it plays out? Because Martin Luther King exists in a place where some people use him to stage a protest and others go, we should use him to sell trucks in America. Um, everyone sees him in a different light. If Mortin Luther King were around today, from what you have read and what you've learned, like, how happy do you think he would be? Would he think people have reached a mountain top? I think from reading him, his thing was never being satisfied with where

we are, because there's always space. The mountaintop in that speech wasn't the place where we need to be in terms of race, the mountaintop was having the vision to see where we needed to go. And I think that vision was that the road is ever, everlasting. The moral arc of the universe is it's always bending forwards justice, and we've bend it. So I think King would he would be protesting regardless of whatever situation is on the ground right now in America. He would be protesting because

that's what he does. That's what an activist does. They were always agitating and so that's what I want people to take away from the magazine is that his activism was always agitating. It was always moving forward and progressing. And you see in the last year of his life, before he was assassinated, he sat down and thought, how do I move this forward? And he came forward with the most ambitious program to fight poverty, to fight militarism,

and to fight racism across the globe. And that was King. That was King. It's an amazing article. Thank you so much for being him. It's an amazing issue of The Atlantic. King the special commentative. The issue off The Atlantic is un News stands now through May, and you can alred the Atlantics dot com, slash and LKA to puntures a copy, Venue Cook Everybody. The Daily Show with Trevor Noah Ears Edition. Subscribe to the Daily Show on YouTube for exclusive contents,

and stream full episodes anytime on Paramount Plus. This has been a Comedy Central podcast