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This King Holiday Weekend tribute was first broadcast in 2018 on the 50th anniversary his assassination.

Nina Simone

performing Gene Taylor's

Why? (The King of Love is Dead)

​about this song


Les McCann & Eddie Harris

performing Gene McDaniels'

​"Compared to What?"

Dr. Irma McClaurin, PhD in Raleigh, NC
Past president of Shaw University, award-winning author, activist anthropologist, and diversity strategist. IrmaMcClaurin.com


Dr. Ted Landsmark, PhD in Boston 

Director, The Kitty and Michael Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy at Northeastern University. President Emeritus of the Boston Architectural College. Northeastern.edu/DukakisCenter

W. Mark Colvson, in New Paltz
Dean, Sojourner Truth Library at the State University of New York at New Paltz.  Library.NewPaltz.edu


Tags: Dr. King, Assassination, Civil Rights, Mark Colvson, Ted Landsmark, Irma McClaurin, Nina Simone, WJFF 


The show airs and streams live Saturdays at 4:00 pm on WJFF.  Subscribe to our podcast and listen to past shows on SoundCloud.

Heard on the show:​

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Music on this week's show:​

"All we say to America is be true to what you said on paper."

Dr. King, April 3, 1968, in his final public speech, "I've Been to the Mountaintop," the night before he was assassinated. 


​This week, we mark fifty years since the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King with a panel discussion about what led up to that moment, what happened afterward, and, as always, where do we go from here.

​Where were you when?  What did it mean in your life, what was its effect on American society, and what does it mean for us now – 50 years later?  With us on the show today are three guests who experienced that time and lived to tell the tale.   

On April 5, 1976, Ted Landsmark -- then, attorney for Black construction firms seeking their fair share of city contracts -- was crossing Boston City Hall plaza en route to a meeting with the mayor and unaware of a demonstration brewing on the steps.  Supporters of antibusing proponent Louise Day Hicks yelled, "Get the nigger! Kill him!" and lunged after him.  He was grabbed from behind, his arms were pinned, and he was speared with the American flag to which the crowd had just pledged its allegiance.  The candid photo, "The Soiling of Old Glory," later won a Pulitzer Prize for its photographer, Stanley Forman of the Boston Herald American.  

source: Janus Adams, Glory Days: 365 Inspired Moments in African-American History [HarperCollins, 1995]