This week, SEDGE THOMSON presents Lift Every Voice -- Reflections on the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  What he has to say is as timely today, this week, and this past year, as in 1968.

THE PERSUASIONS -- the sublime acapella group started on street corners in Philly, championed by Frank Zappa who took them to Carnegie Hall with The Mothers of Invention.  The Persuasions will break your heart, and when one singer tells us toward the end of the show about tire irons, and his friendship with Dr King, you might well think of so-called presidential tweets as the tire irons of today's media streets.

TAYLOR BRANCH - his magisterial three-volume biography of Dr King tells of his life and the context of the wider America of the day, of LBJ, the Vietnam war, and non-violence.  We hear of the struggles for Dr King against a mocking press, and of the soaring narratives that inspired a movement.  It's important to hear these voices, because they tell us who we are, and what values we have and are in danger of losing.

We'll hear an excerpt from the speech Dr King gave, his last, the night before his assasination.  It's what we need to hear now, in this country, which unlike, as Dr King says, China or Russia, where we have the right to demand our rights.  His view from the mountaintop in Memphis in 1968 reaches to January 2018.