Broadcast features rare 1963 Martin Luther King, Jr. TV interview and discussion with roster of local and national guests
OWINGS MILLS, MD – Maryland Public Television (MPT) and Morgan State University’s WEAA-FM (88.9) are collaborating on Monday, October 26 at 8 p.m. for MLK Speaks: A Conversation with America, a three-hour broadcast structured around an interview from June 9, 1963 between Martin Luther King, Jr. and TV personality David Susskind. The landmark two-hour interview has not been seen in its entirety since its original airing 57 years ago. The program begins with discussions featuring students, historians, educators, and journalists about the relevance of Dr. King’s words today, which — as in 1963 — is a time of significant political and racial unrest.
The special broadcast event, available statewide on MPT and on WEAA-FM in the Baltimore area, will be co-hosted by Dr. Karsonya (Kaye) Wise Whitehead, host of WEAA’s “Today with Dr. Kaye” and MPT’s news team of anchor Jeff Salkin and senior correspondent Charles Robinson.
The program will also be available for viewing the evening of October 26 and afterward on the MPT website at mpt.org/mlkspeaks/.
Appearing on the program are:
- Dr. Clayborne Carson, director of the Martin Luther King Papers Project at Stanford University
- Dr. Mary Frances Berry, historian, writer, lawyer, and former chair, United States Commission on Civil Rights
- Dr. David Kwabena Wilson, president, Morgan State University
- Dr. Jason Johnson, MSNBC contributor and associate professor of politics and journalism, Morgan State University
- E.R. Shipp, Pulitzer-Prize winning columnist and associate professor of journalism, Morgan State University
- C. Fraser Smith, journalist and author
This simulcast is the first collaboration of a recently launched partnership between MPT and Morgan State University’s School of Global Journalism & Communication (SGJC).
“This partnership with MPT connects the university to a barrier-breaking, regional multimedia public broadcasting service that shares our commitment to diversity in storytelling and to diversity among the people who tell those stories. This is especially important during this period of urban unrest,” explains DeWayne Wickham, the SGJC’s founding dean and a founder of the National Association of Black Journalists.
