Perhaps no name has been invoked more these days
than that of Martin Luther King Jr. Joining me now
is the daughter of Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott
King.
Please welcome Dr. Bernice King.
Hi.
Hi, there, Ellen.
How are you?
I'm-- you know.
Yeah.
As I say, it's a weird question to ask people right now.
It is.
It's kind of hard to answer that.
But thank you so much for being here.
So obviously, you are well aware of protests.
And now, everyone is quoting your father.
What would he say about everything
that's happening right now?
Well, honestly, Ellen, I think my father
would do what he did best, which is he would examine what's
going on and really encourage us to look at the human condition
and the history of how we got here from the hundreds of years
of violence, and oppression, and terrorism
against the African-American community.
And he would say to us that we've
got to spend our energy on eradicating
what he called the triple-evils of poverty, racism,
and militarism.
But he would say we have to do it through nonviolent means,
that the means that we use--
and that's all the way around--
have to be consistent with ends.
Because if we're trying to get to peaceful ends,
we have to have peaceful means.
And that includes love.
It includes nonviolence.
It includes justice, because I do love this quote--
that true peace is not merely the absence of tension,
but it is the presence of justice.
That's beautiful.
I mean, what a--
you were five or six years old when he was assassinated?
Five.
Mm-hmm.
And yet you have all this wonderful footage,
and writings, and teachings.
And I know that your mother was an amazing leader as well.
You must have had so much wonderful wisdom
coming towards you.
And I can't imagine how hard that
must have been for you, to lose your dad in such a horrible way
when he was such an amazing man.
But then to have your mother--
that must have been very helpful to have such an amazing woman
during that time.
It was.
And thank you for mentioning her.
I always tell people that we wouldn't
know Martin King in the iconic state he
is in today if it were not for all of her tireless efforts.
And so I appreciate you doing that.
My mom-- you know, it was hard when
my father was assassinated, especially with me being five,
trying to explain what happened to my daddy so violently.
But one of the things that she was very good at
is she was very good at exemplifying
what she wanted us to embrace as we
continued to grow through life.
And so she was a great seed planter and, sometimes,
a seed waterer.
And early on, part of that was embracing.
Sometimes, when it first happened,
she couldn't explain it.
She just had to embrace me so that I could feel the love.
And so our kids now are experiencing so much.
They need to feel that love, that energy, coming from us.
They need to be surrounded with that love and given space
to feel the emotions, the range of emotions,
that they will feel through this process.
And as I was going through my range of emotions,
there were different things she would say.
She said, somebody has to cut off the chain of violence.
I didn't quite understand that early on.
As I got older, I understood that I had to be that person,
or the viciousness of violence just continues.
And the other thing--
she used to always tell us, we can't hate the person
who killed your father.
And I think she was saying that because hate injures
the person who's hating more than it
injures the person who's hated.
And she wanted to protect us that way.
And then finally, as I got older--
I was an adult now--
I was about to make a decision in my life
that could have had serious consequences.
And she stopped me in the middle and said, baby, never
make a decision in your anger.
And I was like, whoa.
And all of that has helped me.
And so these seeds that you plant with children--
it enables them not to become the emotion.
But they may experience a range of emotions
as they continue to grow up.
Yes.
But it's so true that the person that's
holding the hate-- you're not doing any good hating someone.
But it's hard not to do that.
It's hard not to hate someone who killed your father.
And who was just such a--
But can I be honest with you?
I went through a stage where I hated white people.
But the seeds that my mother planted
were so strong that I couldn't stay there.
I couldn't become that.
I couldn't become the emotion of hate.
I may have experienced that emotion and that feeling,
but those seeds were so strong.
And I was able to move to another place.
And so, yes, it is hard.
But that's why it's important that we
surround our young people with love and examples of love--
not just words of love, but examples.
My mother exemplified love.
She exemplified forgiveness over and over again.