'Meet the Press' transcript for April 6, 2008

MR. RUSSERT:  I went through the five appearances of Martin Luther King here on MEET THE PRESS.  This one is from April of 1960, and it's particularly appropriate in light of the discussion we've had of Reverend Jeremiah Wright and some of the things said in black churches.  Here's Dr. King talking about the differences between white churches and black churches and what happens 11:00 in the morning on Sunday.  Let's watch.

(Videotape from MEET THE PRESS from April 17, 1960)

MR. FRANK VAN DER LINDEN:  Dr. King, how many white people are members of your church in Atlanta?

REV. DR. KING:  I don't have any white members, Mr. Van Der Linden.

MR. VAN DER LINDEN:  Well, sir, you said integration is the law of the land and it's morally right, whereas segregation is morally wrong and the president should do something about it.  You mean the president should issue an order that the schools and the churches and stores should all be integrated?

REV. DR. KING:  I think it is one of the tragedies of our nation, one of the shameful tragedies that 11:00 on Sunday morning is one of the most segregated hours, if not the most segregated hour in Christian America.  I definitely think the Christian church should be integrated, and any church that stands against integration and that has a segregated body is standing against the spirit and the teachings of Jesus Christ, and it fails to be a true witness. But this is something that the church will have to do itself.  I don't think church integration will come through legal processes.  I might say that my church is not a segregating church; it's segregated, but not segregating.  It would welcome white members.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT:  Dr. Dyson, 40 years later we still have segregated churches.

DR. DYSON:  It's so true.  The quote Dr. King was citing there was from Listen Pope, who was the dean of the Yale Divinity School, a white man.  So even in his acknowledgement of this segregated social hour, Dr. King was acknowledging a tradition that has been acknowledged by white liberals.

But here's the tragedy.  In black churches, things are said and done that may offend or somehow surprise the broad swath of white Americans, but the white church kicked the black church out, so to speak.  The black church began in racial politics.  When the white church subordinated its theology to its politics, black people had to leave because they didn't want to worship equally.  Black people then celebrate God in different ways, but they also--many, many similar ways to white America--but they also articulate the rage, the grief, the pain, the suffering, the agony.  And they try to transmute that pain, suffering, grief and agony in light of their commitment to God.

When you heard Jeremiah Wright, what you heard was the latter-day Martin Luther King Jr. When you hear Barack Obama, you hear Dr. King up to 1965. In black churches, Martin Luther King Jr. said, "We have been subject to American genocide." He also went on to say that he didn't want to be treated the same way the Japanese brothers and sisters did when they were put in the concentration camps.  And the sermon he was going to deliver, Tim, the next Sunday, were he to live, found in the effects after he was murdered, was a sermon called "Why America May Go To Hell." That's the Martin Luther King Jr. with which the broad swath of America is not familiar, and they don't understand within the black church, the articulation of a theological tradition that responds to hatred, doesn't respond in hate but prophetic anger and then, ultimately, love, love enough to speak justice to the nation. Justice is what love sounds like when it speaks in public, and Martin Luther King Jr. did this when he did--when he talked specifically to black churches.

MR. RUSSERT:  Ambassador Young, we went back--you were here on MEET THE PRESS back in 1977 and said something that is rather prescient.  Here is the question, "Do you think the Democratic Party might be ready by 1984 to nominate a black vice presidential candidate?" Andrew Young, "Or presidential candidate, but the black presidential candidate or vice presidential candidate is going to have to do the same thing that a white Southerner had to do.  He's going to have to get out here and raise some money, run in about 30 primaries, fight off all kinds of opposition, and just demonstrate that he is a better politician and strikes a chord of leadership and response in the hearts of American people that transcends race." Well, it wasn't--didn't happen in '84, but in 2008, is that a description of what you witnessed in Barack Obama?

AMB. YOUNG:  That certainly is, and he's done a wonderful job of going around making a case, really, for the American dream.  But I still say that that '63 speech was about America presenting the negro with a bad check, and it's the question of economic justice that we're going to have to address in this election.  And you can't come together as a people if you don't address the problem of whites and blacks.  It's not just blacks anymore.  It's Native Americans, it's the Irish-Catholics in the inner cities, and I think that Martin Luther King III is pointing us in that direction.  And I hope he will talk about a study group that will begin to get us all thinking about how we can do things like making sure that every family has a checking account.  To be in a free enterprise system without access to capital is as bad, if not worse, than being in a democracy without the right to vote.

MR. RUSSERT:  Tom Brokaw...

AMB. YOUNG:  And I think that...

MR. RUSSERT:  Go ahead.  Ambassador, thank you.

To Ambassador Young's point, King's message, moving beyond race to poverty, to economic justice in a biracial way.

MR. BROKAW:  You cannot separate them, Tim, racism and, and poverty.  And it exacerbates racism, as a matter of fact.  And we have been witness in the last several years to a lot of bloc politics in this country.  There's enormous tension, for example, between Latinos now and African-Americans in the inner city, and it's rooted in economic opportunity.  And that has to be resolved as well.  And in many parts of America, that includes Asian-Americans and very poor white people that get overlooked in rural America.  So to--for Martin Luther King III to put this on the agenda is, I think, the appropriate gesture as a way to not only memorialize his father but to continue his legacy.  And there has been a response.  Newt Gingrich gave a, a very eloquent speech at the American Enterprise Institute just a week ago saying it was a courageous speech that Obama made and Republicans have to figure out how to respond to it.

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