What Truth Sounds Like

FEATURING MICHAEL ERIC DYSON – On May 25, 1963, the New York Times published a cover story entitled, “Robert Kennedy Consults Negroes Here About North.” The piece, written by one of the Times’ few black writers, chronicled a secret and explosive meeting that RFK had asked James Baldwin, the great writer and essayist to convene.

Attending the meeting were about a dozen prominent African American intellectuals and artists including Lena Horne and Lorraine Hansberry, all of whom gave RFK perhaps more than he bargained for.

While Kennedy walked out of the meeting angry and defensive, it came to be a defining moment for his evolution on the issue of race in America. Chronicling the story of that meeting and everything it represented 50 years after RFK’s assassination is Michael Eric Dyson in a new book.

Michael Eric Dyson, prominent public intellectual, author of the New York Times bestseller Tears We Cannot Stop, University Professor of Sociology at Georgetown University, contributing opinion writer for the New York Times and contributing editor for The New Republic, and ESPN’s The Undefeated. His new book is called What Truth Sounds Like: RFK, James Baldwin, and our Unfinished Conversation About Race in America.

**This segment was originally broadcast on June 18, 2018.