Attempted Portrait
One of the great things of not watching much TV is that you get to have your own private epiphanies–sudden realizations that would probably be hammered into your brain if you were habitually tuned into to some 24-hour news channel, but which you get to somehow happen upon in non-television meanderings.
I happened onto one of these realizations today–I was lucky enough to receive an email from Leonie Haimson who runs Class Size Matters, an organization that focuses on trying to improve the New York City school system, in part through reduction of class size. In today’s email, Ms. Haimson embedded a video of an interview of Martin Luther King Jr. with Martin Agronsky in 1957.
The interview, conducted at Dr. King’s church in Montgomery, Alabama (made only a couple of years after Rosa Parks’ arrest) is incredibly impressive. King is articulate, thoughtful, carefully analytical, profound and generous. And so so young.
My “revelation” (undoubtedly more of a remembrance than a true epiphany) was about King’s youth–the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize at 35, assassinated at just 39, in his twenties in this particular interview.
I always think of him as having that kind of slightly rounded face that doesn’t show age, but the fact is that he didn’t attain a very old age. Just 39 at death. So impressive, so young.
The interview (embedded in Ms. Haimson’s blog) can be found here.
PS – Sorry to self-promote, but please please please check out “Going on Somewhere” on Amazon, and if it’s not a strain, get a copy! (If it’s a strain, drop me a line and I’ll send you one at a heavy heavy reduction.)
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