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GUEST: Michael Eric Dyson, Professor of Sociology at Georgetown University and author of several books including “April 4, 1968: Martin Luther King Jr.’s Death and How it Changed America”

More than forty years ago, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. stood atop a balcony at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4th 1968, when an assassin’s bullet struck and killed him. The civil rights leader had been invited to the city in support of striking black sanitation workers ahead of his plans for a poor people’s march on Washington D.C. The night before his assassination, Dr. King addressed a rally with his now famous and prophetic “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop,” speech. The assassination of the practitioner and promoter of non-violent resistance was followed by rioting nationwide. Dr. King and the manner in which his death changed America is the subject of Michael Eric Dyson’s latest book, “April 4th, 1968.” Michael Eric Dyson is a Professor of Sociology at Georgetown University, and in this latest book, he paints a picture of a preacher stalked by the specter of death but who never once resigned from the movement that placed him within the assassin’s scope. In the forty years since Dr. King’s death, Dyson also assesses the current state of black America and the leaders, from Jesse Jackson to Barack Obama, who have followed in his wake.

For more information, visit www.michaelericdyson.com.