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Citizen King
Presented by filmmaker Orlando Bagwell
January 21, 2004, 5:30 p.m. Room Change:
Ward Circle Building, Room 1
 On
a steamy afternoon in August 1963, a thirty-four-year-old minister
gave a speech that enthralled a crowd of more than two hundred thousand
gathered at Washington's Lincoln Memorial, and millions more across
the country who watched on television. With passion and precision,
he proclaimed his vision of a nation free of racism, declaring "Now
is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children."
What came to be known as the "I Have A
Dream" speech was a high point in the public career of Martin
Luther King, Jr. But it was also a turning point in his personal
life, as he embarked on a controversial, often lonely, struggle
to redefine and redirect the movement he had helped lead. The quest
would not end until his untimely death five years later.
On Monday, January 19, 2004-the seventy-fifth anniversary
of Martin Luther King's birth-AMERICAN EXPERIENCE premieres Citizen
King, a two-hour documentary from acclaimed filmmakers
Orlando Bagwell (Africans in America,
Malcolm X: Make It Plain) and Noland Walker (This Far
by Faith, Africans in America).
Citizen King explores the last
five years in King's life by drawing on the personal recollections
and eyewitness accounts of friends, movement associates, journalists,
law enforcement officers, and historians, to illuminate this little-known
chapter in the story of America's most important and influential
moral leader. A comprehensive companion Web site will launch in
January, prior to broadcast, at pbs.org/amex/mlk.
"There is probably no other person in the
twentieth century who was followed,
scrutinized, and admired like Dr. King," says Bagwell. "His
leadership, his life, his words were a part of every American family,
every American classroom. The power of this story rests in the first-hand
accounts of the people who worked with, walked with, reported on,
or investigated the life and activities of Martin Luther King, Jr."
Framed by the Lincoln Memorial speech and his
assassination in Memphis, Tennessee, Citizen King
traces King's effort to recast himself by embracing causes beyond
the civil rights movement-to "transform and re-structure the
whole of American society" as he put it. In this brief, five-year
span, his decision would alienate many of his closest friends and
further inflame his enemies. King took repeated leaps of faith as
he cast aside political caution in favor of following a path that
would make more difficult-and dangerous-his already challenging
life.
 As
he began to speak out against the war in Vietnam and refashion himself
as the leader of a crusade on behalf of the poor and dispossessed
in America, King was accused of abandoning his mission. But for
King, the change heralded a return to his roots as a preacher and
provided a welcome relief from the public persona he had reluctantly
taken on years before. He traveled to big cities and small towns
not to speak to poor people, but to listen to the testimony of their
lives, promising them that through him a nation would hear their
voices.
In April 1968, in defiance of his closest advisors,
King took a side trip from his Poor People's Campaign and traveled
to Memphis, Tennessee, to show his support of a tense, unpredictable
strike of garbage workers. He was determined to fulfill his pledge
that the needs of poor and working-class people were the causes
to which he must dedicate his life. His fateful decision brought
about the collision of a nation's hopes and fears, as King's prophetic
voice was abruptly silenced by an assassin's bullet.
After spending two weeks traveling with King
in 1967, the journalist David Halberstam observed, "Dr. King
has decided to represent the Ghettos. . . he will work in
them and speak for them. If King is to speak for them truly, then
his voice must reflect
theirs; it, too, must be alienated, and it is likely to be increasingly
at odds with the rest of American society."
Citizen King shows how, in
his crusade for economic justice and an end to war,
King found himself at odds not only with white American leadership,
but also with many influential black leaders. He and his family
were harassed daily with threats against his life and theirs. He
questioned the values of his country and its preoccupation with
material gain, and was distraught by the silence of a great many
of his fellow Christian clergy. Yet through it all, he remained
steadfast in his profound spiritual commitment to the human rights
of all people and to the way of non-violence and creative peacemaking.
"This is not a film about the last days
of a great leader," says Bagwell. "Rather, it is the story
of a man losing fear, gaining courage and becoming great."
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