Fresh Air, Celebrating Martin Luther King Jr.

By: Terry Gross

Narrated by: Terry Gross

Fresh Air celebrates the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., by talking with Shirley Ann Barnhard, Clayborne Carson, and James Farmer.

Shirley Ann Barnhard is a staff member and tour guide at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, GA, where Martin Luther King, Jr., was once co-pastor with his father. She has been a member of the church since she was a child and King was still preaching there.

Clayborne Carson is founding director of the King Papers Project, a long-term project to edit and publish the writings of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He's a professor of history at Stanford University, where the project is based. His books include Malcolm X: The FBI File and In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s.

James Farmer is the co-founder of CORE, the Congress On Racial Equality. He served as its National Director from 1961-1966. CORE was one of the Civil Rights groups of the 1960s, which followed Gandhi's principles of non-violent resistance. CORE also helped organize the Freedom Rides - multi-racial busloads of people traveling through the southern states making sure the Supreme Court's decisions on desegregation were being enforced. Farmer's long life as an advocate of civil rights was detailed in his autobiography, Lay Bare the Heart. Farmer died in 1999. (Broadcast Dates: January 19, 2004 and the Farmer interview took place in 1985)

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