MLK’s 1964 Playboy interview
The men’s magazine’s long, poignant interview with the civil rights leader
In January, 1965, Playboy — a magazine people occasionally do read for the articles — published an interview with Martin Luther King, Jr. that was, at least to that point, the longest King ever granted to a publication.
The interview’s introduction describes King as “heartfelt and eloquent,” but also “gravely serious.” And really, really busy: “So heavy ... were his commitments when we called him last summer for an interview, that two months elapsed before he was able to accept our request for an appointment. We kept it—only to spend a week in Atlanta waiting vainly for him to find a moment for more than an apology and a hurried handshake. A bit less pressed when we returned for a second visit, King was finally able to sandwich in a series of hour and half-hour conversations with us among the other demands of a grueling week.”
Much of the interviewer’s questioning focuses on King’s actions in places like St. Augustine, Fla. and Birmingham, but Atlanta also figures prominently, particularly in anecdotes about his first recollection of becoming aware of racial inequality and having to explain segregation to his oldest daughter Yolanda (who passed away in ‘07) ...
About the latter, King said ...
The family often used to ride with me to the Atlanta airport, and on our way, we always passed Funtown, a sort of miniature Disneyland with mechanical rides and that sort of thing. Yolanda would inevitably say, “I want to go to Funtown,” and I would always evade a direct reply. I really didn’t know how to explain to her why she couldn’t go. Then one day at home, she ran downstairs exclaiming that a TV commercial was urging people to come to Funtown. Then my wife and I had to sit down with her between us and try to explain it. I have won some applause as a speaker, but my tongue twisted and my speech stammered seeking to explain to my six-year-old daughter why the public invitation on television didn’t include her, and others like her.
...
Pleasantly, word came to me later that Funtown had quietly desegregated, so I took Yolanda. A number of white persons there asked, “Aren’t you Dr. King, and isn’t this your daughter?” I said we were, and she heard them say how glad they were to see us there.
He also addressed the necessity to come to terms with the threat of assassination ...
If I were constantly worried about death, I couldn’t function. After a while, if your life is more or less constantly in peril, you come to a point where you accept the possibility philosophically. I must face the fact, as all others in positions of leadership must do, that America today is an extremely sick nation, and that something could well happen to me at any time. I feel, though, that my cause is so right, so moral, that if I should lose my life, in some way it would aid the cause.
And the future plans he’d never have a chance to realize ...
Well, at one time I dreamed of pastoring for a few years, and then of going to a university to teach theology. But I gave that up when I became deeply involved in the civil rights struggle. Perhaps, in five years or so, if the demands on me have lightened, I will have the chance to make that dream come true.