And when I come to any project I come to it, I try, if I think I know something about a subject I do mind wipe and I say to myself why does King matter? Why does Carver matter? Why does Bethune matter? And then I try to dig into the research and find the person, the human being. With King the most important research I did was listening to him.
And not just “I Have a Dream” but listening to sermons that maybe aren’t that well known, when he was tired and his voice cracked and I started to realize oh my god, he lived in fear. He sometimes wanted to throw in the towel and that’s what makes him great because they present him as though he sprang from his mother’s womb ready to crusade for justice. It’s like no he wasn’t, he was like I don’t want to be a Baptist preacher, I want to be a lawyer, I want to be slick, I want to be cool.
He was the reluctant warrior and he was terrified a lot of times and he did know days of despair. You know when he wanted to say at one point he told Abernathy after the march in Memphis went violent maybe we just, maybe there’s no hope. And I think that’s what people need to know because if you think he’s a perfect human being who had it all together, was courageous, then I could never do that.
But oh, he had failings, you know he was terrified. Well then I’ve known fear and terror, he went on, maybe I can go on. So I think our job as biographers is to make the person human.