On tonight's The Glenn Beck Program, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s niece Alveda King joined Glenn to discuss her new book and what lessons of MLK we should be concentrating on and utilizing right now.
Glenn: There is a reason that everything in life happens, and there is a reason that I met Alveda King. And I don’t think that we have fully explored that entirely yet. I think there’s much more work to do together, but I think of you all the time. And I thank my Heavenly Father for having the opportunity to meet you. You’re a remarkable woman.
Dr. King: I feel the same way about, you know, you and your wife. And you said that…many things that you say and do touch me, but leave your bedroom door open and let your children walk by and see the husband and the wife on their knees praying aloud to God. See, my daddy and my mother used to do that, and I mention that in that book.
Glenn: And by the way, the name of the book is King Rules. Get the book.
Dr. King: And I said gosh, Glenn has a revelation, and that’s part of family, serving that family and serving your children and protecting them. And that’s why we were never afraid. I bet your children are okay because they see you and your wife praying together. No matter how bad things get, if they see that, they’re okay. I mean, somebody might threaten your daddy or they may be concerned when you go to work, I know, but they know you’re praying, and they’re going to be okay.
Glenn: How do you, because you talk about the family, and I want to get to the tweets here at the end because I think this is very wise, but how do you in today’s world…family was different. I think the world has flipped to where, I mean, woe unto him, good is bad, bad is good now, where we had an underlying at least in our own communities, whites and blacks, bad, you know, the white community, bad towards the black community, but each of our own communities were good, I think. It was when we get into race relations. But the black community was strong, had God. Much of the white community, strong, had God. We’re walking around with no God at all or man is God.
Dr. King: Home and family were a sanctuary, and we can get back to that, and I’m beginning to believe that if we just teach that and model that. And so family, wherein whatever that nuclear unit looks like. Now, we have blended families and various models of the family, but to come back and love and respect, not challenging, not fighting.
Even in my own family, we’ve had differences, but there has been a cease-fire. We are beginning to get together. I went to my cousin’s baby’s birthday party the other day and took my granddaughter, my daughters. So you have to have a cease-fire. No matter what the conflict is, come back to 1 Corinthians 13, love never fails. Call a cease-fire, no matter where you are today, if it’s race relations, family relations, marital relations, domestic, cease-fire. Come back to love.
Glenn: In your book, the end, you start doing tweets.
Dr. King: I did.
Glenn: Yeah, and these are tweets that if Martin Luther could tweet, you think he would tweet these.
Dr. King: I believe he would, and you know, I slipped some of granddaddy’s in there, my daddy, A.D., my mama. But many of them you’ll recognize from Martin but not only him. But uncle M.L. was a contemporary man even in his day, and so he and his brother, A.D., liked Star Trek, believe it or not, in the 60s before they died.
Glenn: I can’t imagine those two watching Star Trek.
Dr. King: They really did. Martin Luther King met Nichelle Nichols and told her don’t leave Star Trek, you’re a Negro woman, you’re making a positive image, keep the job. Yes, he did tell her that. Hercules, Batman in its rudimentary days.
Glenn: That is hysterical.
Dr. King: Yeah, that’s the truth.
Glenn: Let me just give, “God, help us to believe we were created for that which is noble and good; help us to live in the light of Your great calling and destiny.” We have a real problem with that.
Dr. King: One hundred-forty characters.
Glenn: “Lord, help me to accept my tools, however dull they are; and then help me to do Your will with these tools.” Explain that.
Dr. King: I saw something in your monologue today, and you were saying okay, everybody’s a genius, but don’t tell somebody to climb a tree, and they’re a fish. I’m paraphrasing, but you said something like that.
Glenn: Yeah.
Dr. King: So just because the fish can’t climb the tree doesn’t mean the fish can’t swim. So whatever tools you’re given, he said you could be a street sweeper or whatever but just be the most excellent of what you are. So take whatever tools you’re given, don’t be jealous of somebody else’s. I can’t walk in your shoes. I might look at you and say I wish I was Glenn Beck, but give me about five seconds of that, and I’d say take it back.
Glenn: Yeah.
Dr. King: Same thing with me.
Glenn: My parents used to say be careful what you wish for, but that is the same as be careful what you covet, because you don’t know.
Dr. King: You’re not prepared for it. You’re not designed for that. I’m designed to be me. You’re designed to be you. Be happy in that and grow. And there’s so much opportunity for everybody on the planet.
Glenn: Where do you go from here? What do you hope to accomplish with this book?
Dr. King: I’m 63 years old. It’s a how-to book. I want people to know what it’s like to grow up in the fishbowl, to grow up in the family of Martin Luther King, to expect to grow from the experiences of wearing a mantle. And when the world looks at that book or looks at Alveda King, remember that she wasn’t perfect, but she served the perfect God.
Glenn: I don’t know if anybody, I mean, you know, we see these images of people, and I don’t even know if it means anything anymore, you know? I don’t know if these images even, most people don’t even know what Abraham Lincoln did. And so I don’t know what those images mean, but we have a couple of problems: One, we’re self-hating egomaniacs. We’re just all about me, me, me, yet we claim that we can’t be perfect, we can’t be better than we are, we can’t be these great people. Then the other thing is we look at these icons –
Dr. King: And they’re not real, many of them. The image that they portray behind that –
Glenn: You lose the struggle.
Dr. King: Yeah, so let’s look for truth, and let’s look for reality. Let this honestly be the first day of the rest of our lives and let it be a good day to move forward, yeah.
Glenn: Alveda King, I love you.
Dr. King: I love you too, Glenn.
Samuel Corum / Stringer | Getty Images
Mark Wilson / Staff | Getty Images