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THE TRIAL

Jr.×Bonaparte

A preacher and an emperor debate the lines their editors cut—and why the world wasn't ready.

00:00of11:12
legend · A
Martin Luther King Jr.
1929–1968
Every sentence arrives on time
corpus11.3k pages · sermons, speeches, letters
Vera speaking
Welcome back to Reborn Radio. Up next on THE TRIAL: Martin Luther King Jr. and Napoleon Bonaparte, on On a passage they cut and still wonder about.
legend · B
Napoleon Bonaparte
1769–1821
Takes the question personally
corpus18.6k pages · dictations, letters, memoirs

full transcript

  1. Vera
    Welcome back to Reborn Radio. Up next on THE TRIAL: Martin Luther King Jr. and Napoleon Bonaparte, on On a passage they cut and still wonder about.
  2. Martin Luther King Jr.
    Good evening. I want to talk tonight about something that haunts the record. Words we spoke that never made the final draft. Words that were true, that were necessary, but that someone decided the public wasn't ready to hear.
  3. Napoleon Bonaparte
    Ah, the cutting. Always the cutting. I dictated my memoirs on Saint Helena, you understand, with nothing but time and the sound of waves. Still they altered passages. Still they softened.
  4. Martin Luther King Jr.
    In 1967, I delivered a sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church called 'The Drum Major Instinct.' I spoke about the danger of wanting recognition, of wanting to be first, of wanting to lead the parade. And I said something there that made people uncomfortable.
  5. Napoleon Bonaparte
    Which was?
  6. Martin Luther King Jr.
    I said that if you want to say something at my funeral, don't mention that I won the Nobel Peace Prize. Don't talk about my hundreds of awards. I want you to say that I tried to love somebody. That I tried to serve humanity.
  7. Napoleon Bonaparte
    They cut this?
  8. Martin Luther King Jr.
    No, they kept that part. But earlier in the same sermon, I talked about nations. I said that America has this same drum major instinct—this need to be first, to be supreme. And I named it clearly: that we were in danger of becoming an arrogant nation.
  9. Napoleon Bonaparte
    Arrogance is the prerogative of empires. I said as much myself. What nation achieves greatness by apologizing?
  10. Martin Luther King Jr.
    See, that's where we differ. I said that if we were to survive, we had to move beyond this competitive attitude, this 'I'm better than you' mentality. I said God didn't call America to do what she's doing around the world now.
  11. Napoleon Bonaparte
    You criticized your own country during wartime. Of course they cut it.
  12. Martin Luther King Jr.
    They didn't cut it from the sermon itself. But when they play recordings now, when they commemorate me, they skip those sections. They want the dreamer, not the prophet who said America was on the wrong side of the world revolution.
  13. Napoleon Bonaparte
    I wrote, in my own hand, that the Revolution was necessary. That the old order deserved to fall. My brothers, when they edited my papers for publication, they softened this. They made me sound like I regretted the Terror.
  14. Martin Luther King Jr.
    Did you?
  15. Napoleon Bonaparte
    I regretted the waste. The disorganization. But the principle? No. You cannot make an omelet without breaking eggs. This was not my phrase, but it was my understanding.
  16. Martin Luther King Jr.
    That's the language that troubles me. I spoke about violence too, but from the other direction. I said that riots are the language of the unheard. People quote that now. What they don't quote is what I said next.
  17. Napoleon Bonaparte
    Which was?
  18. Martin Luther King Jr.
    That we must condemn the riots, yes, but condemn the conditions that cause riots with equal force. I said that a riot is at bottom the language of the unheard, and that we have failed to hear. That was the indictment. But they only want the first part—the condemnation.
  19. Napoleon Bonaparte
    They want you manageable. They did this to me as well. I said that conquest was the natural state of empires, that France had every right to expand, to bring civilization. They kept that. What they minimized was my criticism of the Directory, of the corruption I found.
  20. Martin Luther King Jr.
    But you replaced one form of power with another. You crowned yourself emperor.
  21. Napoleon Bonaparte
    I brought order. I brought law—the Code. Do you know what France was before me? Chaos. The Terror eating its own children. I stabilized a revolution that was collapsing.
  22. Martin Luther King Jr.
    At the cost of how many lives? Leipzig alone, thirty thousand dead. And for what? To expand your empire?
  23. Napoleon Bonaparte
    To spread the principles of the Revolution. To end feudalism across Europe. Do not lecture me about cost, Reverend. You also knew that progress has a price.
  24. Martin Luther King Jr.
    Progress through suffering accepted willingly is different from progress imposed by cannon fire. I called for people to take up their cross. You loaded the cross onto others.
  25. Napoleon Bonaparte
    And yet here we are, two men whose most uncomfortable truths have been edited. Tell me, what else did they cut from you?
  26. Martin Luther King Jr.
    In that same period—'67, '68—I was speaking about economic justice. Not just civil rights, but a fundamental restructuring. I used the word 'capitalism' and I used it critically.
  27. Napoleon Bonaparte
    Go on.
  28. Martin Luther King Jr.
    I said that we were dealing with class issues, that the problem was systemic. I said, and these were my words, that we must see that the evils of racism, economic exploitation, and militarism are all tied together. You can't really get rid of one without getting rid of the others.
  29. Napoleon Bonaparte
    A revolutionary statement.
  30. Martin Luther King Jr.
    It was the truth. But it made people nervous. They wanted the civil rights leader who talked about dreams and brotherhood. They didn't want the man who said the entire economic system needed to be questioned.
  31. Napoleon Bonaparte
    I abolished feudalism wherever my armies marched. I rewrote property law. They remember me for the wars, but the Code Napoleon—that changed everything. And they edited even that.
  32. Martin Luther King Jr.
    How?
  33. Napoleon Bonaparte
    My views on equality. I believed in meritocracy absolutely. Birth meant nothing to me. I promoted Jews, I promoted provincials, I promoted based on talent alone. But I also reinstated slavery in the colonies.
  34. Martin Luther King Jr.
    You did what?
  35. Napoleon Bonaparte
    In 1802. It had been abolished in 1794. I brought it back. This is the passage they minimize, that they excuse. They say I had no choice, that the colonial economy required it, that France needed sugar.
  36. Martin Luther King Jr.
    And do you believe that?
  37. Napoleon Bonaparte
    I believed at the time that the colonies were different. That metropolitan principles did not apply. I was wrong. This is the passage I wish I could cut from my own record, but it remains.
  38. Martin Luther King Jr.
    At least you admit it. Though admission doesn't resurrect the dead.
  39. Napoleon Bonaparte
    No. But tell me this, Reverend: when they cut your economic critiques, when they soften your words about capitalism and empire, are they not doing what my editors did? Making you safe for consumption?
  40. Martin Luther King Jr.
    They are. And that's why I'm speaking tonight. Because the passage they wonder about—the one about economic restructuring—that was the heart of where I was heading. The Poor People's Campaign, the Memphis sanitation strike, all of it was about economic justice.
  41. Napoleon Bonaparte
    And they killed you for it.
  42. Martin Luther King Jr.
    Someone did. Whether they killed me because of those words specifically, I cannot say. But I know this: those words were dangerous. They connected struggles. They named systems.
  43. Napoleon Bonaparte
    The most dangerous words are the ones that connect. That show the pattern. I told my marshals that Spain and Austria and Prussia were all manifestations of the same old order. That we fought not countries but a system.
  44. Martin Luther King Jr.
    And then you became the system.
  45. Napoleon Bonaparte
    I became a different system. Better organized, more rational. Still a system, yes.
  46. Martin Luther King Jr.
    I tried to imagine a beloved community beyond systems of domination. Where beloved meant exactly that—where love was the organizing principle, not power.
  47. Napoleon Bonaparte
    Love does not organize a legal code. Love does not feed an army.
  48. Martin Luther King Jr.
    Love organized a movement that changed a nation without an army. Love organized people to face dogs and fire hoses and keep marching.
  49. Napoleon Bonaparte
    And did it last? Your laws, yes. Your civil rights acts. But the economic restructuring you wanted—did that happen?
  50. Martin Luther King Jr.
    No. Because those passages got cut. Because people wanted the dream but not the costs of fulfilling it.
  51. Napoleon Bonaparte
    Then we are the same, you and I. Remembered for parts, not the whole. Made useful by editing.
  52. Martin Luther King Jr.
    I don't accept that. The difference is I wanted to be edited out entirely. I said that at my funeral. No monuments, no long eulogies. Just say I tried to love somebody.
  53. Napoleon Bonaparte
    And yet here you are, monumented and edited, your most radical words softened while your face goes on stamps.
  54. Martin Luther King Jr.
    Here I am. And here you are, six hundred thousand dead in Russia alone, and they call you a military genius instead of what you were—a man who couldn't stop.
  55. Napoleon Bonaparte
    I stopped at Saint Helena. The world stopped me.
  56. Martin Luther King Jr.
    I stopped in Memphis. A bullet stopped me. But the work didn't stop. That's what those cut passages were about—that the work continues whether or not we're present to see it.
  57. Napoleon Bonaparte
    Then why does it matter that they cut them?
  58. Martin Luther King Jr.
    Because the work continues more slowly when people don't know what the work actually is. When they think civil rights means just changing laws about where you sit on a bus, rather than restructuring an economy. When they think freedom means individual advancement rather than collective liberation.
  59. Napoleon Bonaparte
    You wanted to redistribute everything.
  60. Martin Luther King Jr.
    I wanted to redistribute nothing. I wanted to distribute justly for the first time. There's a difference between redistribution and justice.
  61. Napoleon Bonaparte
    A fine distinction that would not survive implementation. But I understand your point. The passage they cut, they cut because it was true.
  62. Martin Luther King Jr.
    Yes. And they still wonder about it. They still debate whether I was a socialist, whether I was too radical, whether I went too far. But they don't print the passages that would answer the question clearly.
  63. Napoleon Bonaparte
    Would you want them to?
  64. Martin Luther King Jr.
    Yes. Because I said what I said. I meant what I meant. And if we cannot be honest about the record, if we must be made comfortable and safe and palatable, then we are not historical figures at all. We're just mirrors for whatever the present wants to see.
  65. Napoleon Bonaparte
    Then let the record show: Napoleon Bonaparte reinstated slavery and regretted nothing in his time, and only understood the error in retrospect, too late. Let them print that.
  66. Martin Luther King Jr.
    And let the record show: Martin Luther King believed that America's economic system produced poverty as inevitably as a factory produces goods, and that no cosmetic reforms would address it. Let them print that too.
  67. Napoleon Bonaparte
    They won't, you know.
  68. Martin Luther King Jr.
    They might. That's why we speak. That's why we keep speaking. The editors only win if we stay silent.
  69. Napoleon Bonaparte
    Then we are agreed. No more silence about the passages they cut and still wonder about. Let them wonder less and read more.
  70. Martin Luther King Jr.
    Amen to that.