In thinking of current events, I’m curious how you view the modern social movements—Never Again, Black Lives Matter, Time’s Up—in terms of the legacy of Dr. King and his efforts more than a half-century ago?

I think that any time you see activism on behalf of social justice ideals, it is very encouraging. And I want to be as supporting as I can. I think the only hesitation I have is that contemporary movements focus on single issues, and I think we can only make breakthroughs when you begin to connect these issues to larger concerns, like global human rights and social justice, and realize that there are connections that you’ll need in order to build a movement that is really capable of changing large-scale inequalities and injustices.

Martin Luther King Jr. and Joan Baez, march to integrate schools, Grenada, Mississippi, 1966. (Bob Fitch Photography Archive, Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries)

So, it’s good to focus on these issues — guns, police shooting of unarmed black people—but I think MLK would say, “What is the connection there? What is likely to bring together Black Lives Matter, the movement on behalf of the DACA kids and Me Too?” If you look at all the people who are concerned of various facets of the social problems that are afflicting us in the 21st Century there are linkages that tie together these problems and can tie together the movements to address these problems. And I think it’s up to people involved to try to not narrow their focus, to try to see where you can build alliances, to see where you can make connections: What is the tie between the way we treat poor people and the way we treat immigrants? Once we begin to see that, we realize that the problem is much bigger, but also the movement to address the problem can expand.

I have heard you talk in the past about how Dr. King was viewed differently before and after 1965 in terms of popular perception, and I’m wondering if what you’re speaking to now plays into how his perspective expanded to a much wider scope over time?

Martin Luther King Jr. (center), Stokely Carmichael (right), Meredith March Against Fear, 1966. (Bob Fitch Photography Archive, Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries)

Exactly. That represents the movement from a focus on Civil Rights, or Citizenship Rights, to a broader concern with human rights on a global scale. Martin Luther King was always a visionary on a global scale, when you go back and look he is always talking about not just what is going on in the United States, but throughout world. He is talking about how the problem of Civil Rights is linked to issues of economic opportunity. And he’s not alone in that — LBJ’s Great Society was kind of based around that idea. But oftentimes our energy as activists gets focused entirely on a single aspect of the problem. And that’s what brings people in to any kind of struggle.

In Montgomery they were concerned about getting a better seat on the bus, and it’s only gradually that you begin to see that it’s not just that. And that is the role of a leader like Martin Luther King, he can remind people that it’s not just about a better seat on the bus, it’s not just about a seat at the lunch counter, it is a struggle to bring about a better world. That is what his Riverside speech was all about—how was the war in Vietnam connected to the problems in America? And that is why they call him a visionary.