"The universe is made of stories, not of atoms."
—Muriel Rukeyser
____________________________

AEI's The Lost Valentine a Hit!

RATINGS RAT RACE: Betty White Is Sunday Double Winner



On Sunday, it will be one year since Betty White stormed into pop culture with a memorable Super Bowl ad at last year's Super Bowl, which led to a Saturday Night Live hosting gig, a hit sitcom, awards and more. A year later, the Betty White express is not slowing down. Last night, at age 89, she won her first comedy actress SAG Award for TV Land's Hot in Cleveland and delivered CBS' best TV movie ratings in years. The Lost Valentine (2.3/6 in 18-49, 14.5 million viewers) marked a big rebound for The Hallmark Hall of Fame franchise, which has been languishing in the ratings, drawing the largest audience since Jan. 2007 (Valley of Light) and highest 18-49 and 25-54 ratings since Dec. 2008. (Front of the Class). Appropriately, Betty White faced NFL competition, the 2011 NFC-AFC Pro Bowl on Fox (7:30-10:30 PM), which is projected to win the night (its preliminary, non-time adjusted ratings of 4.4/12 in 18-49 and 12.4 million viewers will be adjusted up.)

Listen to Story Merchant Client Jin Robertson's Interview With Jenna Yoon Of The Special Broadcasting Service


Six Billion Stories... and one of those is yours.

Jin Kyu Seo Robertson shares her inspiring story about how she immigrated from Korea to the U.S. as a housemaid and worked to become a U.S. Army Major and earned a PhD from Harvard. Interview by Jenna Yoon

English:



Korean:

자서전 "나는 희망의 증거가 되고 싶다"의 주인공 서진규 씨의 인생 역전 스토리가 펼쳐진다. 식모살이를 하러 떠난 미국 생활, 그러나 그는 지금 하버드 박사가 돼 있다. 유스홈페이지가 만났다.





The Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) is a rare beast: inclusive, courageous, interested in individuals and trusted by Australians.

Through SBS Radio, SBS Television and SBS Online, we tell the stories of humankind in more languages than any other broadcaster in the world; at last count, more than 68 languages on radio, more than 60 on television and more than 50 online.

Watch The Lost Valentine Tonight on CBS 9 pm E/P

Erica Hill speaks with actress Betty White about her TV series, "Hot in Cleveland," and her upcoming Hallmark Channel movie.

Jennifer Love Hewitt and Betty White seek 'Lost' love on CBS









http://www.zap2it.com


By Jay Bobbin, Zap2It

Two popular actresses of different generations, in a story of romance vanished and recovered.


It's the perfect formula for a Valentine's Day-season movie, and even more so as a Hallmark Hall of Fame entry. Airing Sunday, Jan. 30, the moving CBS drama "The Lost Valentine" stars "Ghost Whisperer" alum Jennifer Love Hewitt as a television reporter pursuing the story of a woman -- played by Betty White -- who observes a wedding anniversary ritual each year for the husband she lost in World War II.

The presumed widow's grandson (Sean Faris, "The Vampire Diaries") initially resents the journalist's intrusion but relents when he sees the spark his grandmother shows in recounting her memories. And there may be more to the story, as the reporter tries to have the long-missing-in-action Navy pilot located and brought home, alive or not.

"With my middle name being Love, and this movie coming out for Valentine's Day, I think it works well," says Hewitt, also an executive producer of the film based on a James Michael Pratt novel. "I don't really do very much reporting in the movie, but I did have fun with that stuff, and it's one of the things I asked for. I wanted to see (the character) doing her job, having spent so much time with reporters and never having been able to be on the other side."

The other big lure for Hewitt was the casting of her main "Lost Valentine" co-star. She claims that because of White's atypically dramatic performance, "I was in tears, and the crew was in tears, a lot. Like no other actress I've ever worked with, every time, she gave the crying 100 percent. That woman works her butt off. She works harder than some 20-year-olds I've worked with.

"She's just a beautiful, beautiful human being," Hewitt adds. "We all know that she's really funny, but there's a lot to her as a person. I think she really felt this movie. As she said a few times on the set, 'This was my war. This was my time. I know what these feelings are, and I know what these women went through.' She really identified with this."

Indeed, White says she "loved the script, but at first, I said 'No' because it meant going away to Atlanta (where the film was made). I can't get away that long, but my agent said, 'Just read the script.' I did, and I was hooked. I just think it's a lovely story. It brought back so much, I can't tell you. I knew too many women at that time that this happened to."

Given her trademark humor, now on display in the recently started second season of the TV Land sitcom "Hot in Cleveland," it's no surprise White prompts laughs even while talking about doing drama. She reports that Hewitt's boyfriend, actor-director Alex Beh, was on the set and "calls her Love. I kept thinking he was just trying to romance her!"

Still, White was very pleased for the chance "The Lost Valentine" gave her to do something serious. "It was a challenge," she allows, "but it was a lovely opportunity to let your heart show a little bit."

White's "Lost Valentine" character is shown both in the present day and in flashbacks, with Meghann Fahy playing the part in earlier years. Nevertheless, the veteran actress who became last year's media "It" girl gets plenty of screen time, and her deeply affecting final moments in the movie could well earn her another Emmy Award to go with the six she already has.

Hewitt says her new connection to White is one she wants to endure.

"I grew up watching 'The Golden Girls' with my grandmother," she says. "I have the DVD sets of all the seasons ... which Betty has now signed for me, which is just awesome. I've always loved her; she's really a hero of mine, someone I look up to, so I was super-excited to get to be with her off-camera as well as on. And she does not disappoint. She's pretty incredible."

The admiration is mutual, since White deems Hewitt "just a delight. On our lunch breaks sometimes, she and I and her boyfriend would play Scrabble. We're avid players, and at one time, someone tried to run the word 'brotes' through. I said, 'There is no such word.' You know, it was one of those Scrabble things. Now our greeting for each other is, 'Hi, it's Brotes!' "

It wasn't all fun and games, though. "They took me to dinner one night," White recalls, "and they gave me a little package and said, 'This is just something we thought you should have.' It was a Tiffany box, and in it was a chain with a tiny diamond heart. Well, talk about crying! It was just so dear of them. I wear it all the time, of course, and I can't wait until we get together again."

Hewitt got another bonus while filming "The Lost Valentine," since family was nearby. "My brother and sister-in-law, who were expecting their first baby at the time, had just moved to Atlanta," she says. "For the very first time in my career, I got to go to dinner -- almost every other night -- with relatives while I was working on location. It was a tremendous amount of family time for me."

Interview With Betty White - The Lost Valentine, Hallmark Hall of Fame, Airing January 30th 9pm E/P





Royal Dragonfly Awards Launched to Give Wings- Deadline for submissions is February 1, 2011












Only 4 days left to enter!




NEWS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE


Contact: Linda Radke, Five Star Publications, Inc.


Phone: (480) 940-8182 - Fax: (480) 940-8787


E-mail: info@fivestarpublications.com



Royal Dragonfly Awards Launched to Give Wings
to Extraordinary Books, Regardless of Print Date


CHANDLER, AZ – While a book contest is nothing new, it is extremely rare to come across one like the recently launched Royal Dragonfly Book Awards, which does not restrict the publication date of entries as long they are still in print. Sponsored by Five Star Publications, a multi award-winning company with close to 25 years of publishing expertise, the Royal Dragonfly Awards were created to honor published authors of all types of literature – fiction and nonfiction – in 50 categories, appealing to a wide range of ages and comprehensive list of genres.


" Five Star realizes the avalanche of books released each year causes many wonderful reads to get overlooked," says Linda Radke, Five Star Publications' president. "Therefore, we do not impose a limit on the year of publication for entries, which means winning a Royal Dragonfly Book Award can breathe new life into an author's book marketing strategies and give the publication renewed attention and appreciation by the book industry and readers alike. There are some very deserving books out there that haven't won awards only because they were published before the deadline, and we wanted to remedy that with our contest."


One grand-prize winner is selected from all first-place winners to receive $300, and all first-place winners of each category go into a drawing for a $100 prize. In addition, each first-place winner in each category receives a certificate commemorating their accomplishment, foil award seals to place on book covers and mention on Five Star Publications' websites. A publicity campaign announces all winners and first-place recipients are placed in the Five Star Dragonfly Book Awards virtual bookstore. In addition to the aforementioned, the grand prize winner receives one hour of marketing consultation from Five Star Publications and $100 worth of Five Star Publications' titles. Second-place titles are recognized.


The Royal Dragonfly Book Awards are part of the family of Five Star Dragonfly Book contests, which includes the Purple Dragonfly Book Awards, a competition currently being judged that recognizes excellence in children's literature; the Chocolate Dragonfly Book Awards, which honors food-related publications; and the Green Dragonfly Book Awards, which salutes books that create awareness of the environment and eco-friendly living. To learn more about the Royal Dragonfly Book Awards, visit www.royaldragonflybookawards.com.



For more details on any other Five Star Dragonfly contests, access www.FiveStarBookAwards.com. Five Star Publications can be reached at info@FiveStarPublications.com or by calling 480-940-8182.


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· Deadline & Early Bird Special


Submissions postmarked December 1, 2010 or earlier that meet all submission requirements are eligible for the Early Bird reward: a free e-copy of "The Economical Guide to Self-Publishing or "Promote Like a Pro: Small Budget, Big Show." Make your choice where indicated below. The final deadline for submissions is February 1, 2011; to be eligible, submissions must be postmarked February 1, 2011 or earlier. Submissions postmarked after that date will not be considered for an award, and books will not be returned; however, we will refund your entry fee.

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Interview With Jennifer Love Hewitt - The Lost Valentine Airing on January 30th 9pm E/P




Jacqueline Kennedy's pink hat is a missing piece of history






by FAYE FIORE / Los Angeles Times



President John F. Kennedy had asked wife Jacqueline to wear her pink suit during their trip to Dallas, where he was assassinated Nov. 22, 1963. (Art Rickerby / Time & Life Pictures / Getty Images / November 22, 1963)

In the nation's collective memory, the assassination of John F. Kennedy is a clash of images and mysteries that may never be sorted out to the satisfaction of everyone.

But if there is a lasting emblem that sums up Nov. 22, 1963, the day America tumbled from youthful idealism to hollow despair, it is Jacqueline Kennedy's rose-pink suit and pillbox hat.

An expanded collection of Kennedy treasures and trivia was unveiled this month on exhibit and online to coincide with the 50th anniversary of JFK's inauguration; it includes the fabric of his top hat (beaver fur) down to his shoe size (10C).

But missing and hardly mentioned are what could be the two most famous remnants of Kennedy's last day. The pink suit, blood-stained and perfectly preserved in a vault in Maryland, is banned from public display for 100 years. The pillbox hat — removed at Parkland Hospital while Mrs. Kennedy waited for doctors to confirm what she already knew — is lost, last known to be in the hands of her personal secretary, who won't discuss its whereabouts.

Does it matter? Should it? It's said that history takes a generation to decant, and great chapters are defined by the trappings of everyday life: a stovepipe hat, a pair of polio braces. Mrs. Kennedy could not have imagined the outfit she put on that morning would come to epitomize the essence of Camelot and the death of it.

"The single symbol of that event and of her as a persona is that pink suit," said Carl Sferrazza Anthony, a first ladies historian. "It's all anyone need see and, in an instant, people know what it is in reference to."

This is the story of how an otherwise ordinary pink suit and hat came to be treasured by a nation, only to slip from its reach.

Few public figures understood the power of fashion the way Jacqueline Kennedy did, and when she packed for Dallas, she chose nothing she hadn't worn before. The goal was not to upstage the president as she had to his delight on a recent trip to Paris, but to exquisitely accentuate him as the 1964 election season kicked off. She took along two suits, one of them the pink Chanel knockoff created by a New York dress shop so she could indulge her French tastes and still buy American.

The pink was unforgettable — the color of roses, azaleas, watermelon. Kennedy himself asked her to wear it. It was trimmed in navy blue, with a blue blouse, blue pumps and handbag, and the trademark pillbox hat, secured with a pin.

Looking back now at the grainy footage of the first couple as the dark limousine, top down, rounded the turn from Houston to Elm, it's hard not to hope for a different outcome. As long as she is wearing that hat, the world is still intact. Then, inevitably, comes the lurch of his body, the unforgettable flash of pink scrambling in panic across the trunk. All that day, her clothing bore witness to history.

Lady Bird Johnson, wife of Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, who was riding in the motorcade's third car, recalled for investigators her memory of Secret Service agents frantic to get the president inside Parkland Hospital while his wife bent over him, refusing to let go: "I cast one last look over my shoulder and saw, in the president's car, a bundle of pink, just like a drift of blossoms, lying on the back seat."

Clint Hill, the Secret Service agent assigned to protect the first lady, remembered resting his hands on the suit's trembling shoulders, the left side of the skirt wet with blood where she was cradling her husband's head.

Somewhere inside the hospital, the hat came off. "While standing there I was handed Jackie's pillbox hat and couldn't help noticing the strands of her hair beneath the hat pin. I could almost visualize her yanking it from her head," Mary Gallagher, the first lady's personal secretary who accompanied her to Dallas, later wrote in her memoir.

Despite urgings from staff and handlers to "clean up her appearance," Mrs. Kennedy refused to get out of her bloodied clothes, according to biographer William Manchester's detailed account of the assassination, "The Death of a President."

"Why not change?" one aide prompted.

"Another dress?" the president's personal physician suggested.

Mrs. Kennedy shook her head hard. "No, let them see what they've done."

The suit was never cleaned and never will be. It sits today, unfolded and shielded from light, in an acid-free container in a windowless room somewhere inside the National Archives and Records Administration's complex in Maryland; the precise location is kept secret. The temperature hovers between 65 and 68 degrees, the humidity is 40%, the air is changed six times an hour.

"It looks like it's brand-new, except for the blood," said senior archivist Steven Tilley, one of a handful of people to lay eyes on the suit since that day in Dallas.

Half a dozen members of the Assassination Records Review Board, created by Congress in 1992 to preserve all available records for public scrutiny, were admitted to the vault for a rare glimpse, but did not consider it relevant to the crime. No other requests to see it have been granted.

Yet the suit's stamp on history is indelible for a nation that anguished at every sight of its disheveled first lady: climbing the stairs onto Air Force One to accompany her husband's coffin back to Washington, standing beside Lyndon Johnson as he took the oath of office — an iconic photo of an unexpected transfer of power fully explained by a stricken expression and a stained sleeve.

"Somehow, that was one of the most poignant sights," Mrs. Johnson later wrote in her diaries, "that immaculate woman exquisitely dressed, and caked in blood."

Despite the chaos, aides managed to secure virtually all of the Kennedys' belongings back at the White House by nightfall. The pink hat seemed to hopscotch from Dallas to Washington, according to Manchester's account. There it was in a heavy paper sack, cradled in the arms of one of the president's baggage handlers aboard Air Force One. While Mrs. Kennedy accompanied the coffin to Bethesda Naval Hospital for the autopsy, the hat made its way to the executive mansion.

A White House policeman was instructed to give it to Agent Hill, but handed it by mistake to Robert Foster, the agent assigned to protect the Kennedy children. Foster, who died in 2008, told Manchester he took the bag to the Map Room and opened it, immediately recognizing the contents.

Mrs. Kennedy returned to her private quarters of the White House in the early morning hours of Nov. 23. She took off the suit and bathed. Her maid, Providencia Paredes, told Manchester that she put the clothing in a bag and hid it.

What became of it after that speaks to the confusion and numbness of the time. A president had not been assassinated in 62 years; no one knew what to do. The Kennedy children had to be brought from their grandmother's Georgetown home to the White House and told. It wasn't even clear who should prosecute the murder — shooting the president was not then a federal crime. The first lady's attire was not exactly top priority as President Johnson figured out how to take the helm of a grieving nation.

But sometime in the next six months, a box arrived at the National Archives' downtown headquarters, where such treasures as the Constitution and Bill of Rights are kept. In it was the suit, blouse, handbag and shoes, even her stockings, along with an unsigned note on the letterhead stationery of Janet Auchincloss, Mrs. Kennedy's mother: "Jackie's suit and bag worn Nov. 22, 1963."

No hat.

The box was the one originally sent by the dressmaker, addressed to "Mrs. John F. Kennedy, The White House," but wrapped now in brown paper. Archivists put all of it in a climate-controlled vault in stack area 6W3, where it remained for more than 30 years.

"It was sort of a secret that we had it," Tilley said. Sticklers for protocol, archives officials knew it still legally belonged to Mrs. Kennedy. So it was more than a little awkward when Parade Magazine called in 1996 with a question from a reader asking what became of the pink suit.

Tilley, then head of the JFK collection, tried to reconstruct how it fell into archivists' hands. Mrs. Kennedy had been dead for two years, her mother for seven. He called everyone he could find in a position to know. No one could recall the box arriving. The single-digit postal code on the address was the only clue that it had been mailed sometime before July 1964, when the nation switched to five-digit ZIP Codes.

"It's one of the mysteries," Tilley said. "And there is nobody around anymore who can ever fill that in."

He suspects Mrs. Kennedy's mother sent it. The first lady herself exchanged letters with the head archivist in the weeks after the assassination, but there was never any mention of her suit.

"She kept it on that day, but once that moment passed, then perhaps she didn't want anything to do with it after that," Tilley said.

In the mid-1990s, the suit was moved to a new, second archives building here. In 2003, a deed of gift was secured from Caroline Kennedy, by then the sole surviving heir. She stipulated the suit not be displayed for the life of the deed —100 years. When it runs out in 2103, the right to display it can be renegotiated by the family, Tilley said.

And the hat? Agent Hill, 79, who famously lunged onto the back of the limousine that day to protect the first lady, had the answer.

"I know what happened to the hat," he said in a phone interview. "I gave it to Mary Gallagher."

Gallagher, 83, and Paredes, the maid who boxed up the clothes, together have posted for Internet auction a long list of items that once belonged to Mrs. Kennedy — a pink nightgown: $300-$400; a used tube of "Arden Pink" lipstick and some pale blue stationery: $200-$300; an unopened pack of Greek cigarettes and matchbook: $100-$200. (Mrs. Kennedy was a closet smoker.)

Reached by phone, Gallagher refused to discuss the hat.

"I don't accept these kinds of calls. Over the years they've just been enough so that I've had to draw the line.... I'm sorry. I can't help you any further," she said, hanging up.

No one at the National Archives has ever searched for the hat because it legally belongs to Caroline Kennedy. Attempts to reach her were unsuccessful.

Many of the National Archives records are open for public research, and the Kennedy assassination remains one of the three most asked-about subjects, up there with the Watergate scandal and the alien invasion of Roswell, N.M.

The archives' vast collection includes the president's shirt as it was cut off by the medical team, the tie nicked by a bullet, his white lace-up back brace. Even the contents of Parkland Hospital's Trauma Room One, where he was pronounced dead at 1 p.m. Texas time, are in a cave somewhere in Kansas.

But the whereabouts of the hat is a little-known mystery no one is working to solve; Kennedy historians contacted for this story were surprised to learn it's missing. They suspect it was sold to a private collector, or stuck away in somebody's attic, lost to the nation, a hole in history. [END]


faye.fiore@latimes.com

Love Hewitt recalls Betty White opening line

Wednesday, January 26 2011, 6:12am EST
By Lara Martin, News Editor


Jennifer Love Hewitt has recalled her first meeting with The Lost Valentine co-star Betty White.

The actress told Tuesday's The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson that she became a fan of White the instant they met on the upcoming Hallmark Hall of Fame movie.

"She's amazing - I love her. The first day when we were in the trailer she didn't say anything to me for the first few minutes. She sort of walked in, sat on a chair and - looking dead straight ahead - said, 'So, what's it like to not be the pretty one in the trailer anymore?'" recounted Love Hewitt. "I loved it!"

The 31-year-old also spoke about the movie, based on the novel by James Michael Pratt, describing it as a "nice, sweet" project. The plot follows a reporter (Love Hewitt) who investigates the story of a woman (White) who has been waiting for her soldier husband, declared MIA, to return for 20 years.

She previously described the film as "one of the greatest love stories [she] had ever read", saying in a press release that it will appeal to viewers of all ages.

"The portrait of the incredible love between Betty's character and her husband Neil back in the 1940s, and the portrait of my character falling in love with their grandson - I mean, those two storylines just come together so effortlessly."

The Lost Valentine airs January 30 at 9pm ET/PT on CBS.

http://www.digitalspy.com



Listen to Clarence B. Jones' Interview On NPR's Fresh Air




The most enduring images and sounds of Martin Luther King Jr.'s life come from his "I Have A Dream" speech, delivered at the Lincoln Memorial on Aug. 28, 1963.

Clarence Jones helped draft the speech that day, and he was standing a few feet away when King spoke.

He was a young attorney and part of King's inner circle when the March on Washington was planned. He tells his story in his new book Behind the Dream: The Making of the Speech that Transformed a Nation.

But it almost wasn't to be.

As Jones recalls in a conversation with Fresh Air's Dave Davies, he initially turned down the opportunity to meet King, because it would have meant moving from his home in California, where he was a newly married lawyer, to Alabama, where a legal team was preparing to defend King on charges of tax evasion and perjury.

But a visit by King to his home in the winter of 1960 changed his life.

"To put it in historical context, he was then a celebrity," Jones says. "At least, he was regarded as such by my wife, who thought when Martin Luther King Jr. was coming to our home, it was a combination of Moses, Jesus, George Clooney, Sidney Poitier and Michael Jackson. So in he comes and we have some pleasantries and he gets down right to the point. He said, 'You know, Mr. Jones, we have lots of white lawyers who help us in the movement. But what we need are more young Negro professionals because every time we embark on something, we are being hit with some form of legal action.' "


EXCERPT: 'Behind The Dream'

by Clarence B. Jones








Behind the Dream: The Making of the Speech that Transformed a Nation
By Clarence B. Jones
Hardcover, 400 pages
Palgrave Macmillan
List Price: $22

A quarter of a million people, human beings who generally had spent their lives treated as something less, stood shoulder to shoulder across that vast lawn, their hearts beating as one. Hope on the line. When hope was an increasingly scarce resource.

There is no dearth of prose describing the mass of humanity that made its way to the feet of the Great Emancipator that day; no metaphor that has slipped through the cracks waiting to be discovered, dusted off, and injected into the discourse a half century on. The March on Washington has been compared to a tsunami, a shockwave, a wall, a living monument, a human mosaic, an outright miracle.

It was all of those things, and if you saw it with your own eyes, it wasn’t hard to write about. With that many people in one place crying out for something so elemental, you don’t have to be Robert Frost to offer some profound eloquence.

Still, I can say to those who know the event only as a steely black-and-white television image, it’s a shame that the colors of that day — the blue sky, the vibrant green life, the golden sun everywhere — are not part of our national memory. There is something heart wrenching about the widely shown images and film clips of the event that belies the joy of the day. But it could be worse. We could have been marching in an era before cameras and recording devices; then the specifics of the event would eventually fade out of living memory and the world would be left only with the mythology and the text. Text without context, in this case especially, would be quite a loss. One might imagine standing before an audience and read­ing Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech verbatim, but it is a stretch to believe that any such per­formance would sow the seeds of change with, as Dr. King put it that day in Washington, the “fierce urgency of now.” The vast crowd, the great speaker, the words that shook the world — it all comes as a package deal. We are truly fortunate to have a record. Yet what the television cameras and radio microphones captured that August day is but a sliver of the vibrancy of the event. When a .lm adaptation of a beloved novel premieres, the people who say “Oh, but you’ve got to read the book” are inevitably right. The density of the written word makes the .at motion picture a pale artifact in comparison. In a similar fashion, although watching the black-and-white news footage of Dr. King’s historic call to action is stirring to almost everyone who sees it, learning about the work that went into The March and the speech — the discussions and debates behind closed doors — offers a unique context that magnifies the resonance of hearing those famous words “I have a dream” in that phenomenal, inimitable cadence.

If, taken together, the images and recordings of Martin make up that “movie” of the 1963 March on Washington in our collective consciousness, and if it’s true, as people often say, that “If you loved the movie, you’ve got to read the book,” Behind the Dream is that book. It is a story not known to the general public or disclosed to participants in The March — or, in fact, to many of its organizers. I acquired private truths and quiet insights during the months leading up to this historic event. For the most part, I’ve kept them to myself. But as this book is published, I will be entering my eighth decade on this Earth, and as I move closer to the final horizon, I realize the time has come to share what I know. The experiences cannot die with me; the full truth is simply too important to history.

For those of us who put The March together, several aspects of that day struck a chord and went on to have a profound ef­fect on us. First was the most obvious — the size of the crowd. It was truly staggering. Estimates vary widely, depending on the agenda of who was keeping count, but those of us who were involved in planning The March put the number at a minimum of 250,000. They showed up to connect with The Movement, to draw strength from the speakers and from each other. This was perhaps not so surprising, since the under­pinning of the Civil Rights Movement had always been our sense of communal strength. It is in part why the Black Church was a focal point for The Movement; it allowed in­dividuals to see that they were not alone in their suffering, their loss of dignity, their humiliation. But congregations were measured in the hundreds of families, not hundreds of thousands. The March was an especially important milestone for African Americans because it allowed many who suffered the degradation and sometimes physical abuse of racism in relative isolation to share with a vast number of people their pain as well as their hope and optimism for a better day.

Adapted from Behind the Dream by Clarence B. Jones and Stuart Connelly. Copyright 2011 by the authors and reprinted by permission of Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited.

As Jones recalls in a conversation with Fresh Air's Dave Davies, he initially turned down the opportunity to meet King, because it would have meant moving from his home in California, where he was a newly married lawyer, to Alabama, where a legal team was preparing to defend King on charges of tax evasion and perjury.

But a visit by King to his home in the winter of 1960 changed his life.

"To put it in historical context, he was then a celebrity," Jones says. "At least, he was regarded as such by my wife, who thought when Martin Luther King Jr. was coming to our home, it was a combination of Moses, Jesus, George Clooney, Sidney Poitier and Michael Jackson. So in he comes and we have some pleasantries and he gets down right to the point. He said, 'You know, Mr. Jones, we have lots of white lawyers who help us in the movement. But what we need are more young Negro professionals because every time we embark on something, we are being hit with some form of legal action.' "

"Soon after he left, she turned to me and said, 'What are you doing that's so important that you can't help this man?' She was angry at me and then I began to be angry at Martin King. Because I thought to myself that like all young couples, we were living in domestic tranquility, and here this total stranger comes into my house and gets my wife angry at me over something I had nothing to do with."

The following morning, Jones received a phone call inviting him to be the special guest of King at a speech he was giving in a California church.

"My wife was standing nearby and I told her verbatim the conversation I just had. And she said, 'Well, you may not be going to Montgomery, Ala., but you're going to that church,' " he says. "So I go to the church. ... And I had never heard anyone speak with such extraordinary eloquence and power."

By the end of the sermon, Jones had made up his mind.

"I walked over to him and put my hand in his hand and I said, 'Dr. King, when do you want me to go to Montgomery, Ala.?' Since then, that transformed my life."

Clarence Jones is currently a scholar in residence and visiting professor at Stanford University's Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute. He also writes regularly for the Huffington Post and is the author of What Would Martin Say?

The Kennedy Detail - 16 on The Los Angeles Times Bestseller List!







January 23, 2011

Hardcover Nonfiction

Place
Weeks
on List
1
The infamous queen of Egypt as a political power player.
(Little, Brown: $29.99)
10
2
The story of Louis Zamperini, a World War II bombardier, POW and Olympian.
(Random House: $27)
8
3
Reflections on life and the relentless march of time.
(Knopf: $22.95)
10
4
The president invites children into the worlds of 13 famous Americans.
(Knopf: $17.99)
8
5
Keith Richards with James Fox
The seemingly eternal musician shares his life as a Rolling Stone.
(Little, Brown: $29.99)
12
6
Stats, info and more.
(FACTS: $34.95)
5
7
Mark Twain edited by Harriet E. Smith, et. al
Newly unexpurgated, this first volume commemorates the 100th anniversary of Twain's death.
(UC Press: $34.95)
12
8
Roger Connors and Tom Smith
How leaders can use organizational culture to strategic advantage.
(Portfolio: $25.95)
1
9
Seven essential principles for transforming your life.
(Threshold: $24.99)
1
10
Critical choices that shaped the former president's time in the White House.
(Crown: $35)
10
11
A Jesuit priest works with L.A. youth in his gang intervention program.
42
12
Photos of baby animals born in captivity.
(Beach Lane Books: $12.99)
1
13
How to produce the best physical results with small changes.
(Crown: $27)
2
14
Tips and insight for women as to what motivates men.
(Amistad: $24.99)
3
15
Tips for raising teenagers drawn from Judaic wisdom and child psychology.
(Scribner: $25)
4
16
A member of JFK’s Secret Service team discloses details from the day of his assassination and the aftermath.
(Gallery: $28)
4
17
Spike Lee & Jason Matloff
A behind-the-scenes look at the director's breakthrough 1989 film.
(Ammo Books: $39.95)
2
18
The rhythm and rhymes behind the rapper and businessman.
(Spiegel & Grau: $35)
8
19
The personal correspondence between the famous chef and friend who helped find her first publisher.
(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt: $26)
4
20
The history of a band of '60's LSD-dealing hippies, the Brotherhood of Eternal Love
(Thomas Dunne: $24.99) Read The Times' book review.